Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
Everything is subject to human interpretation, and thus human manipulation and error.
True, and I think in this age of the conspiracy theory we often underestimate the impact of error. Personally, given a choice between conspiracy and ####up I'll default to ####up almost every time, unless the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. What's the rule... never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity?

That rule has some relevance to the case Rhonda was discussing earlier. It is to me at least superficially plausible that NTSB could make a premature announcement based on a faulty translation and then try to cover their ass. The contention that

This is about Boeing sales and stock prices and maintaining American financial interests
is a bit harder to sustain, for the following reasons:

1. High probability of exposure. The number of people involved in these investigations is enormous, and too many people would have to know that the game was being fixed. Very hard to keep a secret at that level.

2. Extremely high penalty for exposure. If NTSB were caught covering up a mechanical failure on behalf of Boeing the consequences for both the agency and the company would far exceed the consequences of simply admitting mechanical failure.

3. Low necessity. Looking at previous examples where the company was clearly at fault (eg Japan Airlines flight 123) there's nothing to suggest that the impact of a single crash due to mechanical failure would be catastrophic to BA sales or share price.

Any company in that industry has a procedure for dealing with crashes, and the normal attitude is to eat it and move on. Unless there was something really extraordinarily damning about this case it's hard to see why a coverup would be necessary.

Or possibly I am ideologically predisposed (assuming that the investigation was compromised, which I don't know to be the case) to think a bureaucratic ####up and a scramble to cover is a more likely scenario than an organized conspiracy to protect a company... or perhaps Rhonda has the opposite predisposition, or both. Even where data are consistent and unquestioned, the narratives we frame from data will invariably reflect our experience and prejudices.