Har har. But there's a serious question here: The major beats of the ostensibly blockbusting new article were sussed out by a small group of amateur sleuthers within a few weeks of MH370 vanishing. Why did they beat the first thorough airing in a mainstream outlet by 5 years?
Langewiesche's article is a skilled repackaging of what's long been the most plausible theory, but adds little new information. The scoop of the anonymous friend of the pilot Zaharie is valuable, but hardly dispositive about his motive or state of mind.
The New York Post aired this same theory 9 days after MH370 disappeared, complete with suspicion on Zaharie over the co-pilot, and the interpretation of the 40k-foot climb as an attempt to knock out passengers and crew: nypost.com/2014/03/17/mis…
There is indeed a good deal more evidence to back the pilot-suicide theory now.... And there's also more evidence to contradict it: thedailybeast.com/the-atlantics-…
There is no explanation for what happened to MH370 that can't be quickly picked apart. The only defensible take is that it was the work of a malevolent demon bent on mocking the vanity of our pretense to institutional management of epistemic chaos.
The major point of my piece on this 5 years ago was that no one in charge of the MH370 search had given us good reason to be confident they knew what they were talking about. I still think that. theatlantic.com/technology/arc…
The only truly false note in the Langewiesche article is this: "finding the wreckage and the two black boxes may accomplish little.... At best it will answer some relatively unimportant questions"
?????????
Lest it need stating: There is a great deal to be learned from actually finding the plane. Count me among those for whom MH370 is a lesson in how our epistemic status is poor, not rich.
Just to name one seemingly important point we might learn from finding the plane: Where it is, and whether that's the same general area people think. This can still be rationally -- not plausibly, but rationally -- questioned.
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I remember hearing Nate Silver interviewed by a big-name reporter about the model showing Clinton with 65% odds. The reporter says "Okay, 65%, put that in context—how often does someone with that big a lead win?" There's an awkward pause. Silver says: "Well, 65% of the time."
Imperfect analogy, but this account of democracy feels like arguing that a marriage certificate not only constitutes a marriage, but is all that constitutes a marriage.
If you go to certain Melanesian islands and find long strips of pavement and wave your hands around in just the right way, will huge quantities of food drop from the sky? Well, sort of, yes! Under the right conditions. (Namely: If it's 1942 and you are a soldier for Tojo.)
In virtually every case where engineers view their life mission as "saving humanity," it's a huge win for society if they can be successfully diverted from it.
The scientists/engineers who've done the most for the survival of the species were driven primarily by ordinary careerism and a tinkerer's obsessiveness. The ones who set out specifically to "save humanity" wind up either trying to destroy it or founding a rationalist subreddit.
This article is based on a remarkable falsehood: "at nine weeks the nascent embryo is not discernible to the naked eye."
At 9 weeks of pregnancy, a human embryo is 3/4 to 1 inch long — med books compare it to a penny or a peanut. My naked eye can see that and yours can too.
Suggesting what @suzania argues here. It's not a small detail but the entire sustained claim of the piece — everyone's been duped that you can see embryos at that stage. Whether the error was deliberate or not, the article should be retracted.
Here are images of embryos up to week 8, with scale. At week 9 they are another 50% or so longer. By week 4-5 the embryo is easily visible to the naked eye.
Planting one quick flag, for the record: Not just with hindsight but knowably at the time, the masking flip-flop was an unforced error. Public health should have recommended it 4-6 weeks earlier, and before that there was no reason to belittle the public for considering the idea.
That posture of condescension set the tone for much to follow, and it was throughline when, in March, public health otherwise did a 180, not just on masks but broadly, from downplaying the risk and worrying that precautions were irrational to pushing hard on restrictions.
My Times piece on Dr. Fauci has dropped right as we're on the finish line with sending the Fall 2022 issue of @tnajournal to the printer, but I'll have more to say soon.
For those coming to my feed from my Times piece, I'm placing this here as a show that it's not an exercise in Monday-morning quarterbacking. I've been writing about public health's dysfunctional relationship to science, and to the public, since 2015: thenewatlantis.com/publications/t…
That article has a lengthy investigation of the masking question in particular, in the context of Ebola and SARS.
From 2015: "the broader institutional factors that led to the failures of public health in 2014 remain unchanged. We must understand and fix these problems, for the next outbreak may be of a disease more contagious than Ebola, and even worse understood." thenewatlantis.com/publications/t…