KTVU erroneously names Asiana Flight 214 pilots
Channel 2 News apology for incorrect names of the
And then the apology:
So that was a case of improper due diligence, but what is
below is real racism (or at least ignorant, ethnocentric poor
reasoning) IMO.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/07/malcolm-gladwells-cockpit-culture-theory-everywhere-after-asiana-crash/67058/
...could the fact that the pilots were Korean have anything to do with their behavior leading up to the crash? -The Atlantic
http://www.theatlanticwire.
...could the fact that the pilots were Korean have anything to do with their behavior leading up to the crash? -The Atlantic
There is bad assumption on top of bad assumption here, with little to no official evidence released by authorities yet. Was the cause primarily pilot error? If so, did the rookie make the mistake because he was inexperienced (and his co-pilots weren't correcting him because of cultural norms, even at the risk of their own lives), or maybe because he deferred to the bad instructions of his superior without question? Because there are literally dozens of other speculative explanations, all of them supported by the same amount of data - zilch. It's a pointless exercise in gossip, but one that some love to undertake.
"I can understand why my Outliers chapter has been of interest, given how central cockpit communication issues are in plane crashes," Gladwell told The Atlantic Wire in an email, adding, "My sense is that we should wait for the full report on the crash before drawing any conclusions about its cause." - MG (well Ohlheiser, and CNN too, decided not to wait)
Ohlheiser makes a cop-out at the end of her story, saying that there "isn't enough evidence" (duh) to implicate deference as possibly contributing to the crash, but just raising the offensive question on such a public forum is the harmful act - not necessarily determining whether the controversial theory holds water. I am against the censorship of opinions (no matter how silly), but responsible, thoughtful free speech is preferred. Forgive me here, but all this is almost as bad as saying, "While there is no evidence and it's almost impossible to prove, could it be that Bernie Madoff's Jewishness contributed to his greedy and scamming actions?" No one would dare pose that question, much less try to argue for it, without expecting to be labeled an ignorant racist. But against Asians it's fine?
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/
What the media may fail to acknowledge is that SFO is one
of the worst designed and least safe airports in the US, according to
Travel & Leisure. It is built on landfill in a very windy, foggy
part of the SF Bay, and it's 2 main runways are very close to each other
and totally parallel, with secondary runways crossing them mid-way.
There were 55 "incidents" from 2006-2010. SFO was also ranked the 2nd
worst airport in 2013 for flight delays, and their ATC has a reputation
for being crappy (as partly evidenced by their on-time record).
With the airport’s crossing runways and so many flights impacted by fog and other weather delays, SFO administrators have long advocated a complete realignment of its runways into a safer configuration. This involves extending the airfield into the bay—a plan vehemently opposed by Bay Area environmentalists and windsurfing enthusiasts. - T&L
http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/tls-most-dangerous-us-airports/5
http://www.news10.net/news10picks/slideshows/specials/243745/339/The-5-worst-airports-in-the-country-for-flight-delays
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I wrote to the author Ohlheiser about my issues with her story, and to be fair here is her reply and my reply.
----
----
Thank you, Ms./Mrs. Ohleiser.
Sorry I don't watch TV news much because I feel it is of such low value, so I was not aware how much they have already posited the question. I agree that you were not the first nor the most blatant carrier of the message. But I have respect for The Atlantic from my past experience, and I hoped that you would not further add visibility to the silly story, even if you were subtly trying to criticize or shed light on it.
Maybe this would not be possible for you, but I would have liked to see you explicitly call out the other outlets for even raising the question without much evidence from the incident. And if they bothered to do some actual journalism before blabbering out speculations, the pre-existing body of knowledge suggests that their "theory" is unlikely to be true anyway. For me, it's not good enough to just say the media outlets are rushing to judgment (it's for-profit TV news after all, we should expect that). We have to hold them to account when their judgments exhibit such absurd reasoning, bias, and ignorance - even if arguably supported by Gladwell's past writing (applicability to the current SFO crash is questionable, as Gladwell also noted). We know that TV news can take things out of context to support the opinions that they wanted all along.
I have not yet read Outliers, but I generally respect Gladwell's work. As he intimated, I am not sure how the specific circumstances and conclusions of the Korea Air story can be used to explain other seemingly related (but we can't be sure yet) incidents like the Asiana crash - isn't it likely that Asiana mgmt. has also carefully studied the Korea Air case? There are instances of deferential, one-way communicating, high power-distance org's succeeding, as well as cases of low power-distance, free-communicating org's failing miserably. How do you make judgments and generalizations then? It depends on circumstances. Unless there are some controlled experiments and/or rigorous research, I am not sure how much we can scientifically and fairly attribute deference to successes or failures during unusual events.
"We don't know" is a fair (and optimal) response in many cases. Better than ridiculous snap judgments anyway.
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With the airport’s crossing runways and so many flights impacted by fog and other weather delays, SFO administrators have long advocated a complete realignment of its runways into a safer configuration. This involves extending the airfield into the bay—a plan vehemently opposed by Bay Area environmentalists and windsurfing enthusiasts. - T&L
http://www.travelandleisure.
http://www.news10.net/
----
I wrote to the author Ohlheiser about my issues with her story, and to be fair here is her reply and my reply.
----
I appreciate your thoughts on my piece, but I am worried that you
may have misread my intentions. The first line you quote from me, "could
the fact that the pilots were Korean have anything to do with their
behavior leading up to the crash?" was, I thought pretty clearly, a
paraphrase of a question I believe to be erroneous that has been raised
widely in the media over the past few days. I wrote (citing a press
conference in which this subject was raised, as a result of already
existing speculation among many journalists):
"the
conversation turned to a media speculation meme that's been bubbling
about the deadly incident for about 24 hours: could the fact that the
pilots were Korean have anything to do with their behavior leading up to
the crash? "
In
my article, I linked to multiple outlets who asked this question
without any hint of self-awareness, prompting me to ask Gladwell for his
thoughts on the use of his essay to raise this question, in my opinion,
absurdly prematurely.
----
Thank you, Ms./Mrs. Ohleiser.
Sorry I don't watch TV news much because I feel it is of such low value, so I was not aware how much they have already posited the question. I agree that you were not the first nor the most blatant carrier of the message. But I have respect for The Atlantic from my past experience, and I hoped that you would not further add visibility to the silly story, even if you were subtly trying to criticize or shed light on it.
Maybe this would not be possible for you, but I would have liked to see you explicitly call out the other outlets for even raising the question without much evidence from the incident. And if they bothered to do some actual journalism before blabbering out speculations, the pre-existing body of knowledge suggests that their "theory" is unlikely to be true anyway. For me, it's not good enough to just say the media outlets are rushing to judgment (it's for-profit TV news after all, we should expect that). We have to hold them to account when their judgments exhibit such absurd reasoning, bias, and ignorance - even if arguably supported by Gladwell's past writing (applicability to the current SFO crash is questionable, as Gladwell also noted). We know that TV news can take things out of context to support the opinions that they wanted all along.
I have not yet read Outliers, but I generally respect Gladwell's work. As he intimated, I am not sure how the specific circumstances and conclusions of the Korea Air story can be used to explain other seemingly related (but we can't be sure yet) incidents like the Asiana crash - isn't it likely that Asiana mgmt. has also carefully studied the Korea Air case? There are instances of deferential, one-way communicating, high power-distance org's succeeding, as well as cases of low power-distance, free-communicating org's failing miserably. How do you make judgments and generalizations then? It depends on circumstances. Unless there are some controlled experiments and/or rigorous research, I am not sure how much we can scientifically and fairly attribute deference to successes or failures during unusual events.
"We don't know" is a fair (and optimal) response in many cases. Better than ridiculous snap judgments anyway.
------------
My
piece was intended to add some context to what was a very, very,
visible question over the past week. In other words, to explain why
several outlets and cable channels ran long segments or articles
rehashing the theory in the first place, and to push back with that
context on why it wasn't really smart reasoning to undergo — the line of
mine you call a "cop out," was, in fact, my point, that the outlets
using Gladwell's theory here had no evidence to support it.
For your further reference, here area few examples
of outlets raising this question without a critical eye (I think I
linked to some or all of these in the piece)
and a good debunking (which, sadly, I missed
while writing my piece, as it's kind of buried in a larger analysis of
the crash itself): http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/transport/2013/07/asiana_airlines_crash_stop_blaming_sfo_s_runways_and_korea_s_pilots_for.2.html
Thanks again for reaching out, and I appreciate your engaged criticism here.
To your second point: I am not equipped to do an analytical,
evidence-based take on the veracity of Gladwell's theory itself, which
is precisely why I refrained from doing so in my piece. However, you may
find this very thoroughly argued critical take, published after my
quick response to the speculation, interesting: http://askakorean.blogspot.hk/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-and-airplane.html
------------
I am embarrassed that I misinterpreted your purpose so badly (my
fault for scanning hastily). However, I construed your comments about
Asiana being a "much smaller" airline than Korean Air, and citing their 2
previous crashes, as comments intended to cast doubt whether Asiana was
above the problems that Korean Air experienced and learned from - and
therefore the deference explanation may still be valid. Maybe for
balance and to avoid misunderstandings, you could have provided context
that Asiana is in fact a highly rated airline with a very good safety
record - as I expect many Americans have never heard of Asiana prior to
this month and may make incorrect assumptions about them considering the
recent media coverage and the single data point of the SFO crash.
You did describe how the deference theory was spreading like wildfire with little to no evidence, and you included Gladwell's quotes to show that he does not think such speculation is useful at this time, nor does he really support using the older Korean Air story to explain the current Asiana crash. But maybe to drive the point home, you could have cited some previous gaffes, such as the right wing media-propagated rumor that Iraq was behind 9/11 leading to a scarily high % of Americans still believing it today, in order to remind your readers of the dangers of jumping to conclusions (or even making casual prejudiced speculation) without sufficient proof.
Thanks again and best wishes with your work.
You did describe how the deference theory was spreading like wildfire with little to no evidence, and you included Gladwell's quotes to show that he does not think such speculation is useful at this time, nor does he really support using the older Korean Air story to explain the current Asiana crash. But maybe to drive the point home, you could have cited some previous gaffes, such as the right wing media-propagated rumor that Iraq was behind 9/11 leading to a scarily high % of Americans still believing it today, in order to remind your readers of the dangers of jumping to conclusions (or even making casual prejudiced speculation) without sufficient proof.
Thanks again and best wishes with your work.
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