Dharma Double bind secrecy

[Thinker]

It be a bit academic now, but something I do find myself wondering about:

The Dharma 'Tempest' Station was supposedly 'just' a power plant...yet it was also or really a very nasty chemical factory/storage facility.

The 'Orchid' Station was, apparently as far as most Dharma folks knew, a greenhouse...yet there was secret research into time travel going on underneath it. To judge from Juliets reaction, even most of the 'others' didn't have a clue as to the true nature of the place, or even that it existed.

Going from the stuff on the wiki site, apparently the Dharma folk - and later on the 'others' - assumed that the Swan station had been abandoned for decades, a view reinforced by the way the crew manning it was kept isolated.

The Staff station came complete with its own built in secret room.

And then there is the man of many names (Marvin Candle). A different name in each orientation film he's appeared in.

So...what was going on here? Some of this might be due to compartmentalization, but with some of it at least, it looks almost like there were different Dharma factions working 'illegally' on different projects or at cross purposes.

 

[snoochface]

Hydra was also assumed to be abandoned, but wasn't.

These are good thoughts. I think there were probably upper-management Dharma who knew what was going on, but were not on the island (hence the training by video tape). Lower-level Dharma peons who actually had to work on the island, and potentially risk their lives doing so, weren't given all the information. They were the ones who either rebelled and turned into Others, or somehow survived with minimal knowledge of what was really going on. Bring in Mikhail and Richard and their ability to access information from off the island, and over time some of them were able to piece some of the information together.

 

[FatBurger]

I'm guessing compartmentalizing was the main part of it. It's a much smaller blow to learn that your magnetic research was compromised than ALL your research.

We've seen other signs too:
Flame - looks like a farm, has some equipment inside, and more underneath
Staff - hidden passageways in the medical station
Pearl - the entire station itself was hidden, plus the workers inside were lied to about what was going on outside

 

[Thinker]

I have no qualms with compartmentalization being part of the secrecy issue, but taken collectively, it seems excessive - like mere compartmentalization wasn't enough. My suspicion is that certain projects were ordered 'killed', but were instead relocated under even greater secrecy than before - the time travel experiments at the Orchid being a prime example.