The lawsuit on the molasses case was so disruptive that as a result, a number of universities whose faculty were hired or called as experts in the case inserted clauses in their tenure contracts prohibiting faculty members from testifying against each other in any future disputes of the kind (as "hired consultants"). Of course this just resulted in lawyers asking the court to issue subpoenas for them, to which of course they were obligated to respond; so it had relatively little real effect.

As recently as the early 1960s, one could still find professors at MIT, Harvard, and at a couple of other Boston area Universities who'd been on opposing sides in testimony on the case, and there was "remaining tension" visible on the subject among some faculty members.

Analyses of the possible causes of the molasses tank failure were applied to apparently similar failures in the *North Sea Tanker fleets built hastily during the early part of the War (II), and it wasn't until the tanker problem was successfully resolved that numerous consultants accepted the prevailing view of the cause of the molasses debacle and abandoned their previous pet theories.

- Or some of them did -

* Liberty Ships, built 1936-1940, suffered a reported 1,500 incidents of cracks now **believed similar to the molasses tank inititating failure, and several sinkings resulted during the early period of their use.

** Except by a few profs who never did change their minds.

John