Editing The Andromeda Strain (section)

==Odd-man hypothesis==
The "odd-man hypothesis" is a [[hypothesis]] that states that unmarried men are better able to execute the best, most dispassionate decisions in crises—in this case, to disarm the nuclear weapon intended to prevent the escape of organisms from the laboratory in the event the auto-destruct sequence is initiated. In the novel, the odd-man explanation is a page in a Hudson Institute report of the results of test series wherein different people were to make [[command responsibility|command decisions]] in nuclear and biological wars and chemical crises.

Hall is briefed on the hypothesis after his arrival at Wildfire. In the book, his copy of the briefing materials has the hypothesis pages removed; in the film, he is criticized for failure to read the material beforehand.

Dr. Hall is assumed to have the highest "command decision effectiveness index" among the Wildfire team; this is the reason why he is given a control key to the self-destruct mechanism. Hall initially derides this idea, saying that he has no intention of committing suicide before he is told that it is his job to ''disarm'' the weapon, rather than to ''arm'' it: Stone then admits that the odd-man hypothesis, while accurate (in the confines of the book), was essentially a false document used to justify handing over a nuclear weapon to private individuals and out of government control.