I first crossed paths with Dr. E. Scott Geller at the annual meeting of the National Safety Council in 1987. A standing-room-only crowd of six or seven hundred safety professionals packed a session where Dr. Geller paced enthusiastically up and down aisles and across the speaker's platform. I couldn't even get into the room at first; his audience spilled out into the hallway.

As I listened I discovered something – I never heard anyone talk about workplace safety like the fellow I would come to know as “the Doc.” His voice boomed off the ballroom walls. He joked, told personal stories, and ripped through a stack of overhead transparencies. This was 1987, remember. The man was passionate and positive. His vitality contagious. Laughs rolled through the ballroom and echoed out into the hall, where a group of us stood on our toes peeking through the door, trying to get a glimpse of this wiry, wired professor with the energy of a rock-and-roll drummer.

Scott was not another motivational safety speaker. What separated Scott was his message, his substance and depth. He had a knack for making ivory-tower research and principles somehow interesting and decipherable. Scott's scholarship is all about why we do the things we do, how to help people do better, and how to help people care for one another – to actively care.

I was intrigued when introduced to Scott's thinking. In those days, psychology wasn't talked about much in workplace safety circles. I took notes of that 1987 presentation. Two years later I spoke with Scott for the first time, by phone, for an October 1989 cover story on how to handle the “accident-prone” worker for my magazine, Industrial Safety & Hygiene News. “Accident-prone” is no longer part of the workplace safety lexicon; it's politically incorrect and perceived as a blame-the-victim concept. Even twenty-five years ago, Scott didn't like using the term, preferring “injury repeater.” In our interview he said, “Where's the data, we don't know that certain people have more injuries.” (Note that Scott has been screaming ever since I met him that we should avoid the popular term “accident” whenever knowledge is available to avoid the injury, because this term implies lack of control.)

That was, and is today, E. Scott Geller. Speak from empirical data.