> Instead, Boeing tried to claim that flight 427 crashed because a pilot had a seizure and depressed the rudder. NTSB investigators dismissed this as ridiculous.
> Boeing had no choice but to carry out the changes, but the company never stopped trying to deflect blame. While the investigation was ongoing, it adopted a philosophy of trying to avoid paying out damages to families of crews because this could be legally interpreted as an admission of responsibility. It had tampered with the PCU from the Colorado Springs crash and repeatedly tried to misdirect the investigation with “alternative” theories.
I do not wish to diminish how serious any tampering with the evidence would have been, or of Boeing's more general attitude of dismissing signs that there was a problem with the equipment, but it is not entirely clear from the article that someone from Boeing removed the Colorado Springs PCU spring and end cap. The article says the item had apparently been in the possession of United Airlines and valve designer/manufacturer Parker Bertea before their absence was noticed. The unit is also described as having been heavily damaged in the crash, to the point where several other parts had to be replaced before it was tested.
Boeing's more general attitude of dismissing signs that there was a problem with the equipment
Having worked in software for decades, I've noted a particular sort of bias in myself and other developers. We tend to feel that our creations are like our children, and we are far too ready to blame the user. I've caught myself doing this. I've been caught out by QA doing this. I've caught fellow developers doing this, where I am in the position of the user. On that last count, I'm still surprised at the unrealistic levels of incompetence and/or malice ascribed to me in support of those face saving theories.
Emotions are a tricky thing. Do not formulate theories in the heat of them. If you care about being truthful, be especially mindful of your incentives in those moments.
That's why dogfooding is so powerful. The best way to first hand experience the shortcomings of your product is to use it. This makes me wonder if anyone at Google is using G-Suite themselves.
My child has bypassed the lock screen on my laptop and caused a gray-screen-of-death, just by banging on the keyboard. I saw it, I am unable to replicate it. Everything should be tested by a child before it can enter production service.
I know exactly what you mean - from toggling a mode on a mechanical keyboard I didn't know existed and spent 20min looking for how to turn it off, to managing to delete several Powerpoint slides that were not on the screen at all, solely via keyboard (so that I didn't notice it until saving/closing the file and losing them forever). It's amazing :)
I recall a kids game where the game exited when the spacebar was touched. It was pretty exasperating, because the kiddies couldn't figure out how to get the game running again.
Arguably, not enough people at Google use the competitors stuff. The employees are sitting there thinking they're making a great minidisc player while the rest of the world has moved on to streaming audio...
In my experience end users are very often wrong, QA departments are rarely wrong. If pilots are saying I pressed the rudder and it didn't move healthy skepticism may be needed, I'd hazard less skepticism than for an average end user as the pilots are presumably highly skilled users of the product. But if after very thorough investigations a large group of pilot reports and the NTSB are telling you something is wrong then you should assume that something is wrong and do your best to prove it otherwise.
As you note emotions, and frankly legal liability, play huge roles in this realm. Worrying about legal liability might be harder to tame but in my experience it is easier to disabuse yourself of the notion that you can do no wrong.
In my experience end users are very often wrong, QA departments are rarely wrong.
This is true. However, even in the cases where I have spent considerable time analyzing the situation and have included specific information, I get the distinct impression that devs simply don't listen to what users say. I get the distinct impression that most of them simply disdain me and don't even listen to what I have to say.
The cases of "surging" where people claimed they were pressing hard on the brake when the car lept forward come to mind. (The most credible explanation is they put their foot on the gas instead, or are simply trying deflect blame away from themselves for the crash.)
I don't buy it. Heck, I've even stepped on the gas instead of the brake. Besides, the brakes are much more effective than that little Toyota engine is. Try it yourself. Go full throttle and step hard on the brake. You'll stop.
With wide open throttle, why would the power brakes lose vacuum? Vacuum is lost when the engine quits.
Besides, just to stand on one foot requires 100 lbs of force exerted on your foot. If you can walk, you can do that. Pressing with 175 lbs is not a problem.
The point is, the brakes can override the engine torque. Unless, of course, you're standing on the gas instead of the brake.
You can also just turn the key off on a runaway engine.
That would require more evidence than it sounds like there is. And that's assuming that you subscribe to the motivations put forward in this article. I generally follow Hanlon's razor - "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence". I have a hard time believing that a cover-up in Boeing was orchestrated over several years by a group of people all who didn't care about loss of life. I can easily believe that they didn't take the problem seriously, and that they were biased towards conclusions that weren't their fault.
> I have a hard time believing that a cover-up in Boeing was orchestrated over several years by a group of people all who didn't care about loss of life.
No orchestration is needed. Managers only need to look with disdain to anyone that brings the issue.
If your company does not put a lot of resources to make it transparent it is going to be opaque by default. Transparency is hard to achieve when humans are so good reading a superior expression of disapproval. Most people does not need to be told to not bring that problem again, all that we need is a subtle clue.
So, to get a cover up you only need to do nothing.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
Exactly right - same thing that happened at NASA. There aren’t grand conspiracies - just people acting in their own interests, based on the incentives that have been set up (or evolved) in the organization.
No orchestration is needed. Managers only need to look with disdain to anyone that brings the issue.
Networks and social media extend the reach of these kinds of disdain, and take these mechanisms beyond the walls of the office and organization. In the present day climate, where accusations causing outrage tend more easily to become viral, one need not be someone's manager or even have a close relationship to exercise such power of disdain. The incentive structures in social media can act as a very efficient transmission substrate for these mechanisms.
One doesn't have to look far, to see how social media amplified groupthink has short circuited professional judgement -- even in highly visible and public circumstances. In particular, forums, email lists, and social media groups of journalists can be seen to be having such effects.
So, to get a cover up you only need to do nothing.
With just a modicum of digging, this can be seen quite clearly in 2019, in the mainstream media, which is declining but still trusted by the public.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
This effect is very real and very powerful. This is why we as a society should be wary of the political exclusiveness of entire professions, entire industries, and of academia. If you're surrounded only by people of like minds, you're far less likely to have your idea checked by people highly motivated to find your faults. It's only diversity of opinions which guards against groupthink.
It’s not really social pressure when managers have so much direct power not just in major events like a lay off or promotion, but also day to day tasking. This generally results in people becoming hypersensitive to their boss’s disapproval.
Social networks on the other hand have far less direct impact which results in less socially accepted statements becoming common.
This generally results in people becoming hypersensitive to their boss’s disapproval.
In 2019, there are lots of examples of people being quite sensitive to approval over social media. This differs by individual circumstance. However, in 2019 there are entire fields where people must ascribe to some form of group consensus, or basically become un-personed from it. Media work seems to be particularly sensitive to this.
not just in major events like a lay off or promotion, but also day to day tasking
There are examples of journalists consulting and influencing each other in the context of news cycle events.
Social networks on the other hand have far less direct impact
This was once true but now is simply out of date and very wrong. In 2019, there are social networks which have very direct impact, and very large impacts on people's livelihood. There are entire fields where such social networks and online communication can get someone un-personed. These are basically the 2019 version of the "old boy network."
Over 32,000 journalists are working full time in the US, social media focus on a minute fraction of them.
You're conflating two entirely different things here. Much of the dysfunction/groupthink occurs through things like legacy media journalists using social media.
The point is that networks and social media enables offline channels for groupthink, which then affects other media.
So sure many NYT reporters might post their wedding photos online
This of course, isn't an issue. (But mistakenly considered as such, it might as well be a strawman.) What is an issue are blue checkmark journalists engaging in toxic groupthink on Twitter. This also happens on email lists and industry insider forums.
(This isn't actually a new phenomenon. There are Vietnam era journalists who complained about how some correspondents never left bars in Saigon. The difference is that the groupthink can follow people around in their smartphone and come at them every waking hour.)
My point is group think requires significant interaction over social media. This requires more than visiting a bar one a month / posting wedding photos. It requires significant amounts of time and crossing that threashold is not very common.
So, sure a small fraction are significantly influenced but the majority is not. Making the overall influence far less significant than it might appear.
On top of that mainstream news organizations like FOX, CNN, NPR differentiate based on appealing to different groups. Which creates different spheres of social media for each segment. This has been intensified with online sources the Drudge Report going mainstream and gathering vast followings. Which means social media is pulling different reporters in different directions.
My point is group think requires significant interaction over social media.
Then the behavior of many journalists over social media should greatly concern you.
This requires more than visiting a bar one a month / posting wedding photos. It requires significant amounts of time and crossing that threshold is not very common.
This is common among journalists. Particularly those working in niche media.
Making the overall influence far less significant than it might appear.
Those who know the facts behind certain niche stories are amazed at the degree of reality warping done by the mainstream media. Just look at what happened around the Covington kids.
The Covington Kids story shows how social media amplified both sides of an issue. It’s the opposite of group think with multiple narratives showing up.
What you’re describing “group consensus” is a systemic bias. A historical example of say US WWII propaganda qualifies as essentially all US news is shifted in the same direction.
Waves of news with story X being updated to story Y over time is a different thing. That’s a question of which organizations get involved over time. You can find examples that support any narrative based on timing. But, bias would mean the story did not evolve.
The Covington Kids story shows how social media amplified both sides of an issue.
The behavior of mainstream journalists calling for the doxxing of and violence against these kids just strikes me as amazing. The groupthink involved with accepting the initial narrative is quite apparent.
What you’re describing “group consensus” is a systemic bias.
When systematic bias reaches the point where journalists completely abandon fact-checking and basic adult judgement, it's more than just "group consensus." Offering sexual favors to do things against kids? I'm sorry, but if I made something like that up, it would be purple prose. Journalists were swept up in that kind of groupthink!
A historical example of say US WWII propaganda qualifies as essentially all US news is shifted in the same direction.
Read Manufacturing Consent -- it's the same in 2019 as it was in the 1980's, we in the west just do it faster and harder with the bias, emotional words only for one side, and selective coverage. The thesis was that the west is just as bad as Pravda. In 2019, I find that Pravda was more subtle about it.
bias would mean the story did not evolve.
Bias can also mean that the retractions were either absent or all but meant to be invisible. In 2019, the typical media modus operandi is to technically be about the truth and retract, but engineer this to have basically zero effect. The number of mainstream sites who will edit a story, but give no indication of that, is just amazing to me.
Individual action does not imply collective action. Talking points can make it seem that way.
You need to factor in how stories are simply copied around the ecco chamber of mainstream news. But also how stories evolve not just what gets retracted.
You are focusing on an individual story, but also a specific point in time. A different narrative showed up and was passed around mainstream media changing your view of what happened. That’s more than a simple retraction.
What I find fascinating is it was even considered a story in the first place. But, it really resonated with you, so I guess they know what they are doing.
> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence"
I don't see that that should be applied as a rule of thumb to investigations involving civil liability and possible criminal liability.
We have a situation where there are literally piles of dead bodies, massive civil and possible criminal liability, and key evidence goes missing when in the possession of the party that was in the end found to be at fault, who more than anyone else would have realized that the evidence that disappeared was a smoking gun. It's reasonable to assume that malice might have been a factor in such a scenario and it's a reasonable hypothesis to investigate.
As a rule, it has high performance, but as a policy, it's trivial to exploit. Children figure out how to play dumb before they figure out how to articulate complete sentences. If you let conmen do it, they'll bleed us all dry.
There is the implication in the article that Boeing purposefully went and stole springs that could be used to diagnose an issue that they were fully aware of. That I would describe as 'active' and I have trouble believing.
Didn't put credence, time and effort into reports because they were inconvenient I would describe as 'passive'.
Passive is still bad - likely results in the same number of people dying, but a different interpretation of the situation.
> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence"
That's why we have a term "criminal negligence", because sometimes it's impossible to tell malice from incompetence.
So the law basically decided, "Well, fuck this, if you do something as stupid as (putting a faulty brake on a train, for example), then you deserve to go to jail, and we don't care if you were actually thrilled to kill passengers or were simply too stupid to understand what you were doing."
I don't think Hanlon's razor should be applied to multi-billion dollar corporate persons. Private individuals, even small to medium sized institutions with limited resources and unproven levels of competence, are fair applicants to Hanlon.
But a) Boeing is typically a hyper competent corporate person, having executed massive, multi-decade engineering projects that have been largely successful, and b) regardless of (a), the disappearance of a very specific piece of technical evidence while in the possession of the potentially liable party, while the rest of the evidence is successfully delivered, is not adequately explained by incompetence.
Agreed. The implications of the story make a good movie script, but it's hard for me to imagine how this could play out practically across so many people and so many years. I mean whole careers started and ended in this saga.
I was thinking a more likely explanation is that once the original issue that ultimately was found to be the cause was dismissed, and after more and more fatalities built up, the consequence of admitting the problem may have been perceived as game over for Boeing. As in the financial and legal consequences would be unrecoverable. So basically like the web of lies problem - once they passed a certain point they couldn't go back.
The root motivation may very well be greed - I'm not attempting to go that deep. And whether or not they should or shouldn't suffer consequences is also a different issue.
"The razor" is for credulous morons. "Never attribute"? Yeah that sounds logical we should just stop thinking bad thoughts and being suspicious of people who got rich by destroying our society.
I was about to say, then that is a definition you have made for yourself. My understanding of the word malice is to mean "desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another" as Webster defines the word.
But I discovered there is a second, legal context for the word which means "intent to commit an unlawful act or cause harm without legal justification or excuse" so I guess in the law, "malice" is just another word for "deliberate."
I still think the first definition is what most people are familiar with, and that unless you think the engineers deliberately designed the rudder control system to behave in this way, knowing it would cause crashes and fatalities, the company having a bias after the fact to not blame themselves does not rise to that standard.
I would call it human nature. Like Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
I think you might be missing the point stated in the article: the damage to the reputation of Boeing and possibly US economy is more important than the loss of a few (hundred) lives. You can say they cared about the loss of lives, just not as much as the damage to their company.
would it be a stretch to say criminally negligent? or conspiring to obstruct an active investigation? obviously it would require further investigating the back channel of communication within the company and the individuals involved, but in this day and age courts can request company emails and phone records.
> Boeing had no choice but to carry out the changes, but the company never stopped trying to deflect blame. While the investigation was ongoing, it adopted a philosophy of trying to avoid paying out damages to families of crews because this could be legally interpreted as an admission of responsibility. It had tampered with the PCU from the Colorado Springs crash and repeatedly tried to misdirect the investigation with “alternative” theories.
Should not there be some criminal charges?