Taking Malcolm Gladwell to Task
 

Malcolm Gladwell's new book, "Outliers", includes a segment on air safety, and how the cultural backgrounds of pilots might play a role in crashes. Gladwell focuses on the crashes of Avianca flight 52, near JFK in 1990, and Korean Air 801 in Guam several years later.

In this week's ASK THE PILOT column on Salon.com, Patrick Smith takes issue with some of Gladwell's analysis.

You can read the whole thing here, for free...

http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/...skthepilot301/

Below are a couple of excerpts...

"...culture issues were possibly at hand, but so were language issues, technical issues, a failure to follow standard operating procedures -- and perhaps, most critical of all, a communications breakdown facilitated not by culture per se, but by the personality dynamic within that particular crew..."

"Gladwell: The single most important variable in determining whether a plane crashes is not the plane, it's not the maintenance, it's not the weather, it's the culture the pilot comes from.

That is a reckless and untrue statement. There is nothing, statistically or empirically, to justify such a conclusion. Looking over the accidents from the past several years, and I see crashes involving airplanes from Nigeria, Cyprus, Kenya, France, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand…. Looking further into their various causes, I do see a pattern of pilot error, usually in response to technical failure or some other unusual situation, but the majority of fatal mistakes were strictly technical/operational. A factor in a limited number of accidents? I can accept that. But “the single most important variable in determining whether a plane crashes?” That is totally absurd, and I am extremely disappointed that somebody as influential as Malcolm Gladwell had to say it...."

I am usually a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell (missed him when he was here in London week before last) and thoroughly enjoyed Blink and The Tipping Point, in addition to dozens of New Yorker articles over the years.

I do think, however, he's wide off the mark here. There seems to be no scientific analysis here, only some vague and reckless platitudes about stereotypical cultural behaviours. I think he's treading on dangerous ground.

It's unfortunate that even though his conclusions are patently ridiculous, they will probably be considered legitimate by many.

Yes, they will be considered legitimate by many, ridiculous by some, and a few of each group will actually take the time to read the book. Such is the way these debates often end up.

That's precisely right - most of the people on each side will never read the book and (given the name recognition) he'll even sell copies to some of the people who disagree with him.