[bioneuralnet]

My first thought is "WTF!" But my second is this: every single person who's ever criticized Boeing is going to die (eventually). With so many people in a position to notice and speak out about Boeing's issues, it isn't terribly surprising that a few deaths have occurred.

Combine that with one headline-grabbing (apparent) suicide during a deposition, and we're now all primed to notice these deaths and attribute intent.

[cbsmith]

> With so many people in a position to notice and speak out about Boeing's issues, it isn't terribly surprising that a few deaths have occurred.

Also, let's not kid ourselves, even if Boeing doesn't retaliate (and there is a lot of reason to think they have), being a whistleblower adds a tremendous amount of stress & disruption to your life. Whatever your life expectancy was before you were a whistleblower was, it's going to be lower (likely MUCH lower) afterwards. It's a terrible price to pay, which is why they deserve as much protection & support as possible.

[jen729w]

Indeed. In my home town we had the ‘metric martyr’, a greengrocer who defied EU law and continued selling bananas in metric measures.

There was a whole court thing, he lost, and then he died aged 39 of a heart attack.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/metric-...

[riffraff]

> continued selling bananas in metric measures.

Probably in imperial measures? Unless bananas were somehow sold in metric grams and the EU imposed some weird unit I don't know about.

[pdpi]

Yup, you're right. From the link:

> The prosecution of Sunderland greengrocer Steven Thoburn for selling bananas in imperial measures helped turn public opinion against the EU

[jen729w]

Brain fart from me, yep!

[seabass-labrax]

To be pedantic though, refusing to comply with a recently-passed law is not whistleblowing; it is civil disobedience.

[gfourfour]

You’re right, that is pedantic

[b3lvedere]

"The appeal failed in 2002 and Steven returned to work but things for him and the country were never the same again. He died aged 39 after a heart attack in 2004 leaving a widow, Leigh, their young children Georgia and Jay and a son Rhys from a previous relationship. Leigh also passed away in 2017."

To die of the stress caused by (indirectly) being enforced to use a 'new' measurement system must be one of the weirdest causes of deaths i have ever read about.

[autoexecbat]

An actual arrest seems wildly disproportionate for this. Simple administrative fines should have been enough

[snapplebobapple]

Even fines seem wildly disproportionate. Its one thing to regulate how one interacts with the gocernment, it is quite a lot less appropriate for government to regulate private transactions when the validity is easily and cheaply verifiable by either party.

[outop]

Regulating weights and measures is a basic function of government since Babylonian times.

[randombits0]

Sure but dictating what units to use is a bit overboard. A pound should be a pound and a kilo a kilo but what units I use in commerce is my business, not the state’s.

[surgical_fire]

One of the main roles of governments is regulating private transactions.

Also, he should have done what every supermarket does around here and sell bananas at a flat price per bunch.

[shiroiushi]

It would have been a lot easier for him if he had simply sold the bananas at a flat per-banana price. That's typically how many grocery stores in the US sell them (notably Trader Joe's). Here in Japan, they typically sell them in small bunches for a fixed price, with the small bananas sold at a lower price (for a group of 3 or 4) and the larger ones at a higher price next to them. There's no need to weigh bananas at the point at the point of sale at all.

[webninja]

That’s an awful lot of BS to swallow. I know the blue pill is nice and all. But just know, the day you finally doubt what you’ve typed, the red pill is there waiting for you when you’re ready to see fact over fiction. But I warn and caution you in hopes of deterring you: the Truth is usually more depressing than the fantasy.

[fennecbutt]

This isn't the Matrix. Life is almost never binary.

[janalsncm]

I guess what’s missing is the denominator. How many Boeing whistleblowers are there? It’s a nice little math problem.

Let’s say both of the whistleblowers were age 50. The probability of a 50 year old man dying in a year is 0.6%. So the probability of 2 or more of them dying in a year is 1 - (the probability of exactly zero dying in a year + the probability of exactly one dying in a year). 1 - (A+B).

A is (1-0.006)^N. B is 0.006N(1-0.006)^(N-1). At 60 A is about 70% and B is about 25% making it statistically insignificant.

But they died in the same 2 month period, so that 0.006 should be 0.001. If you rerun the same calculation, it’s 356.

[mulmen]

You are ignoring literally every other variable, especially the ones that are likely common to whistleblowers in general, Boeing employees in general, and Boeing whistleblowers in particular.

Characteristics like having spent a career building airplanes surrounded by all kinds of mechanical and chemical hazards.

Whistleblowing itself is extremely stressful for the attention it draws, the personal and professional relationships it strains, the media attention and of course the rampant speculation of assassination.

Does personal health influence the psychology of a whistleblower? If you get a terminal diagnosis would you be more likely to spill the beans?

[janalsncm]

That’s why I said the denominator is important. If you hit a home run on your first at bat it doesn’t mean you can bat 1000 the whole season.

On the other hand, the more variables you add the more variance you’ll get. Actuarial tables use deaths per 100k. To my knowledge there haven’t been 100k Boeing whistleblowers.

[mulmen]

Why would there need to be 100k whistleblowers? That’s not how actuarial tables work. They’re normalized to a population of 100k, that doesn’t mean they’re derived from a population of 100k.

Yes, reality is complex and messy and confusing and we often don’t have data to describe it. That’s why it’s important to know when we are dealing with relevant facts and when we are constructing a spherical cow out of scraps in their absence.

[coldtea]

Everything is going to die eventually.

This is some very specific, public, whistleblowers, in the span of months. Not some pool of thousands, or even hundreds people with mere "potential to criticize".

[arp242]

Unlikely things happen. And there have been more than two (former) Boeing employees who have come forward, most of whom managed to survive.

[exoverito]

Corporations also conspire, especially those deeply embedded in the military industrial complex.

[arp242]

Corporations conspiring to kill not just one but several undesirable employees is very rare. Actually, I don't really know of any other example.

And here it also doesn't make any sense; the cat is out of the bag, there is nothing to cover up because we already know about Boeing being a clusterfuck. Killing anyone doesn't really make much difference.

"Surely it can't be coincidence", "corporations conspire", and vague references to "military industrial complex" are exceedingly poor arguments – actually they're not really arguments at all because you can say that sort of thing about almost anything.

[janalsncm]

> there is nothing to cover up because we already know about Boeing being a clusterfuck

We know about the results, when doors blow off and tires fall off. You don’t need a whistleblower to tell you that.

We know less about what’s happening internally. I think the relevant information is the extent to which Boeing knew about problems and what they did with that information.

[dialup_sounds]

We know less about what's happening internally

That's literally what both of these guys already made public at different times about different facilities. Is there reason to think they had additional information that they just decided not to share?

[ClumsyPilot]

> And here it also doesn't make any sense; the cat is out of the bag, there is nothing to cover up because we already know about Boeing being a clusterfuck

Executives are the ones that have motivations, not the abstract entity of Corporation.

'Cat out of the bag' would be 'we have specific evidence that allows us to prosecute a specific executive for criminal negligence or manslaughter'. That would be why you might kill someone, to save your own skin.

[dialup_sounds]

'Cat out of the bag' would be 'we have specific evidence that allows us to prosecute a specific executive for criminal negligence or manslaughter'. That would be why you might kill someone, to save your own skin.

Is there any reason to believe that either one of these men had any such evidence and had thus far not shared it?

[mistermann]

>> Corporations also conspire, especially those deeply embedded in the military industrial complex.

> "Surely it can't be coincidence", "corporations conspire", and vague references to "military industrial complex"...

That was a slick transformation, I wonder if anyone noticed.

> ...are exceedingly poor arguments – actually they're not really arguments at all because you can say that sort of thing about almost anything.

Were they presented as an argument, or merely as a factual observation?

[spacemadness]

You show zero imagination here. All you need is someone powerful that doesn’t want to be implicated.

[wryoak]

Describing what one can have readily seen on Netflix is not a display of imagination

[somenameforme]

No you don't know of any other companies doing this. Nobody does. And in a few years, nobody will even remember this either. Whistle blowers, or witnesses, against powerful interests have this habit of constantly dying in really exceptional circumstances. And there's never any proof available that it was anything other than just extremely rare events, happening constantly, and in a very small population of people. Go figure.

The reason groups want to get rid of whistle blowers is two-fold. The first is to try to prevent on record testimony. But the second is to intimidate other whistle blowers. If you see some funkiness, even the sort leading to deaths, going on at Boeing right now, you're going to be thinking long and hard about these 'mysterious deaths.'

[ryandvm]

There is almost certainly no crime these whistleblowers are going to uncover that is worse than ordering a hit. Besides, I can't think of any crime more likely to fail, be a sting, or have monstrous blowback.

The reality is that the top brass are NEVER held accountable for the kind of mistakes Boeing has been making. Even when it leads to deaths, the worst one of these guys can expect is to resign with only a 15 million dollar parachute.

[constantcrying]

Sure, but how many people are whistleblowers about Boeing misbehavior. I would guess at most a hundred, the chances that two of them die in such a short time seems low. What are the odds that an apparently healthy person just drops dead in two weeks over the span of maybe two years. Certainly seems somewhat unlikely.

[mulmen]

In the absence of data everyone is apparently healthy. That’s the point. There are more mundane explanations than a Boeing assassination conspiracy.

[graywh]

32 whistleblowers in the last 3 years

[throwup238]

That’s a lot of assassinations! I bet Boeing gets a volume discount.

[mattmaroon]

I assume he meant there were 32, of which those two died, not 32 died.

If 32 died, ok, they're killing people. If 2/32 died, that's within the realm of possibility.

[slg]

Yes, it is 2 dead out of 32 total [1].

We can ballpark these odds relatively easily. Dean was 45 and Barnett was 62. Let's assume they are somewhat representative of the average whistleblower and the average whistleblower is in average health. Let's use the standard government actuarial tables[2] and assume the average age is 56 just to make the math easier since the odds of a single 56 year old dying in a given year is roughly 1%. The odds of at least 1 of the 32 dying would be 28% and the odds of 2 dying would be 4%. Unlikely enough to be suspicious, but not unlikely enough to be anything close to the smoking gun that some are suggesting.

[1] - https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/19/boeing-subject-o...

[2] - https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

[outop]

Wouldn't it be fair to distinguish between the baseline probability of any death, and the baseline probability of a death that could plausibly be suspicious, such as gunshot suicide?

[slg]

Sure, this was back of the napkin math and there will be plenty of ways to improve it. The problem is that the more details you add, the more difficult it will be to find actual numbers to put on these things as opposed to using the above actuarial tables if we lump all deaths together.

And for what it is worth, one of these deaths would be in the "suspicious" category and one wouldn't.

[janalsncm]

Usually below 5% chance is considered statistically significant.

[foxyv]

I always love people who actually do the math.

[ekianjo]

> The odds of at least 1 of the 32 dying would be 28% and the odds of 2 dying would be 4%.

the deaths happened in two months. not in the space of a year. you need to take that in account.

[slg]

I think that would be a statistical mistake to cherry-pick the cutoff like that. What would be the argument for ignoring the X months/years beforehand in which no one died?

If I asked you for the odds of the next three coin tosses being heads, you don't start counting on the first heads. The first toss being tails is a possible outcome that can't be ignored.

[amelius]

Thank you!

[throwup238]

So what you’re saying is that there’s a 96% chance Boeing did it. If that doesn't conclusively settle the matter, I don't know what would.

Boeing would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for us meddling hackers!

[blueelephanttea]

> If 2/32 died

Also his isn't quite correct. John Barnett (first death) left Boeing in 2017 and his whistle blowing did not occur within the last 3 years. The 32 complaints stat is for the last 3 years.

Also it's not even clear if the most recent death (Josh Dean) would be included in those stats. He worked for Spirit and claims that he reported improperly drilled holes in the 737 Max fuselage and that nothing was done. The claim would probably be against Spirit not Boeing. It's being reported in the media as Boeing, but in paperwork it would probably be against Spirit.

[coliveira]

People should stop and do some very serious investigation about a company that has 32 whistleblowers just in the last 3 years....

[mulmen]

Stop what? The very serious investigations that are happening?

[orblivion]

Out of how many wistleblowers? How does that compare to other people with the same demographics?

[orblivion]

(I can't edit or delete anymore but see the sibling comments. 32 is the total, not the dead.)

[tootie]

Where did you get that number?

[dustfinger]

Where did you get that number from? Do you have links?

[CrazyPyroLinux]

> (apparent) suicide

The one where he specifically told his family beforehand that he wasn't suicidal...

[mattmaroon]

My ex killed herself not long after telling me she wasn't suicidal. This may surprise you, but suicidal people often lie about being suicidal. Or, they rapidly go from not being suicidal to being so. Or, due to mental illness, they've lost a grip on reality.

[shepardrtc]

This is a little different, he literally said to his friend, "I ain't scared but if anything happens to me it's not suicide."

[nathancahill]

Not leaning either way, but there was a famous case about a lawyer in Guatemala who recorded a video message claiming he wasn't suicidal and that the government was out to kill him. He was killed days later and the video was released. The country was (briefly) thrown in to turmoil. A few days later it came out that he had ordered a hit on himself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigo_Rosenberg_Marzano

[nkingsy]

That article is an absolute hodgepodge of statements and retractions, but the same hitman appears to have also killed the laywer's clients, who were causing problems for the regime. That seems like pretty strong evidence that it wasn't a suicide by hitman, unless the lawyer also had his own clients killed?

[kenjackson]

I'd never considered a technique to strengthen your argument. Put in that light -- it makes it more plausible.

[lordnacho]

Wasn't there an old movie about this scenario? Guy orders a hit on himself, decides actually he wants to live?

[karaterobot]

He was also in the middle of testifying against the company that had made his life hell for years. That is a rather strange time to kill yourself.

[mattmaroon]

I don’t know, it was presumably extremely stressful. Extremely stressful events or when a lot of people kill them themselves.

I don’t really have a strong opinion on this particular instance one way or another. It seems unlikely to me that even Boeing is like hiring hitman to whack people and make it look like suicide, and that seems much more unlikely than a guy who was about to commit suicide saying he wasn’t going to make it look that way.

But also, it is not impossible. People have undoubtedly killed for a lot less money than what this stuff is costing Boeing.

[ClumsyPilot]

> I don’t know, it was presumably extremely stressful. Extremely stressful events or when a lot of people kill them themselves.

Or sometimes to attack the people who made their lives extremely stressful. Or someone who works for them. Or commit arson. But somehow that's not what we are observing

[mattmaroon]

Perhaps he viewed Boeing’s malfeasance as killing people. It did. And it was a clever form of martyrdom. That’s not exactly 3D chess, it’s just thinking one move ahead.

I really have no idea. I just don’t think we can say definitively that he didn’t kill himself because he said he would not.

[ChrisRR]

Mental health is not a logical thing. Try telling someone who's in their darkest moments to just look on the bright side. It doesn't work.

[mattmaroon]

That’s why it always cracks me up (in a sad way) when people tell someone suffering an anxiety attack to just calm down, or someone depressed to cheer up. Like oh, why didn’t I think of that? Thanks genius!

[gitaarik]

Telling someone you're not suicidal and then committing suicide sounds more like she was depressed and people worried about her and she wanted to calm people by telling them she won't commit suicide.

The wisleblower of a worldwide famous controversial airplane company didn't seem suicidal or depressed, and then he says if he hits the news that he commuted suicide it's not.

That's 2 completely different situations that you can't really compare.

[mattmaroon]

You can compare any two things. Abraham Lincoln is taller than a turtle.

I wasn’t equating the two, just pointing out that suicidal people are not in their right mind and thus their word cannot be taken at face value. Perhaps he did the sequence of events we’re discussing specifically so that we’d be saying it can’t be suicide. He was, after all, trying to take Beoing down right? Maybe he viewed it as a worthy way to give his life.

I’m not saying that’s the case, I surely have no idea, just that it very well could be.

[gitaarik]

It just doesn't make sense to me that someone would commit suicide with the idea that people would think that he was murdered by a company you want to expose. That's just a ridiculous idea. Yes it's an idea and a possibility, but yeah it's very very unlikely I would say, so unlikely that it's not worth considering too much. Because it highly probably didn't happen like that, because it doesn't make sense, it doesn't add up. It's not a good theory. Even if it's a possibility.

People that commit suicide is because they stopped caring about their life. They won't have any side goals for their death, they won't care about taking down a company. Especially not if that covers up the truth of them being fed up with this world which would be the only message they would want to leave behind.

If someone really wants to take a company down, they would do stuff for that, not commit suicide with the idea that you might have blamed them for it without having assurance, and with the risk of being remembered as someone who faked their suicide in order to harm a company. It just really doesn't make logical sense to me.

[gitaarik]

As if taking down Boeing is more important than your own life. Who would have such logic?

[dralley]

>The one where he specifically told his family beforehand that he wasn't suicidal...

This game of telephone is absurd.

His family has said no such thing. A proclaimed "friend of the family" claimed he told her this.

[ChrisRR]

If only mental health were that simple. Many people aren't suicidal until it gets too much and then the thoughts take over

[danielfoster]

Not to mention how old some of them must be.

[dingnuts]

well this guy was 45 and described as healthy in the article, but shows up to the hospital with a mysterious lung problem and then gets MRSA

it's not exactly a smoking gun but you can't blame the guy's age, either. 45 is just middle age, I hope

[cft]

The chance to die from all causes at the age of 45 is 0.41% https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

Combined with the suicide two months ago (with his prior warning "please don't believe that I committed suicide") this deserves an investigation, not a simple dismissal.

[somenameforme]

Actuarial tables are for all people. So it also of course includes deaths from cancer, obesity related diseases, alcoholism/drug abuse, etc. The odds of a healthy 45 year old just randomly dying from a mysterious infection are going to be orders of magnitude lower than 0.41%.

[kingTug]

Does anyone know if they're investigating that? It was supposedly in his car, in the hotel parking lot he was staying at for the deposition. Seems implausible there wasn't a security camera somewhere in the vicinity.

[danielfoster]

People can easily be paranoid and suicidal at the same time.

[rootusrootus]

Heck, I bet that Venn diagram has quite a lot of overlap indeed.

[rootusrootus]

Per year. If the whistleblowers have been known for several years, then it's not just the current year that counts.

[tootie]

A friend died at 40 from lung cancer despite never smoking. It's rare but it happens. How many proven assassinations of corporate whistleblowers have happened in the US? I think it's zero in the last 100 years at least.

[jjk166]

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdga/pr/two-sentenced-their-rol...

Assassinations of corporate whistleblowers also falls under the category of "it's rare but it happens."

[tootie]

I mean, that's not exactly the same. These guys were running a local tree-cutting serving, not a Fortune 500. And they weren't just accused of negligent business practice, they were accused of human trafficking and theft. They murdered a whistleblower to keep themselves out of jail, not to protect share prices.

[jjk166]

> These guys were running a local tree-cutting serving, not a Fortune 500.

I imagine Boeing can do anything a local tree-cutting service can do.

> And they weren't just accused of negligent business practice, they were accused of human trafficking and theft. They murdered a whistleblower to keep themselves out of jail, not to protect share prices.

Boeing execs are accused of committing massive fraud which endangered the lives of thousands, as well as other crimes to cover up the safety issues. They are currently under criminal investigation, with many individuals facing possible jail time. When people say corporate assassination, they mean people working for a corporation orchestrate the death of a person for reasons associated with the corporation.

[ClumsyPilot]

> they murdered a whistleblower to keep themselves out of jail, not to protect share prices.

And Boeing is accused of far worse, hundreds of people have died.

If a whistleblower has proof that a some executive has personally ordered to put into service a dangerous product, knowing full well that it will kill people? That's jailtime.

[rootusrootus]

As someone who crossed 45 not that long ago, I gotta say that I have definitely noticed an uptick in people dying who I'm acquainted with.

[lamontcg]

> then gets MRSA

That's just due to what is happening to health care in this country.

The underlying cause is the same short-term-profits capitalism that has fucked over Boeing.

The conspiracy is just the trivial one that requires only perverse economic incentives and not assassination.

[neom]

In my opinion it's highly unlikely he was murdered, however if he was, personally, I would be more inclined to pin the blame on an adversary of the Americans to sew some distrust vs Boeing or it's shareholders.

[delfinom]

OR, we are living in a simulation and this is just a joke.

I mean just the other day, the emergency slide fell off a Boeing aircraft and landed essentially, in the backyard of the lawyer suing Boeing. Lol

[paul7986]

omg lol https://www.businessinsider.com/missing-delta-emergency-slid...

[rootusrootus]

You have to remember that anything about Boeing gets clicks, and immediately engage your critical thinking. The Boeing 767 has been in production for over 40 years, and at this point is very nearly out of production aside from a few that are built each year for cargo use. The plane in question is 33 years old. A typical airliner lifespan is 20-25 years. Any problem with a plane of that age is maintenance, not design.

[delfinom]

Yea but the slide landed in the backyards of a lawyer suing Boeing.

It's a bit more than just "OMG BOEING PLANES FALLING APART" clickbait. Lol.

It's the universe fucking with us.

[NekkoDroid]

> Any problem with a plane of that age is maintenance, not design.

I am p sure noone has been saying the designes of the aircrafts are fundamentally unsafe and a risk. It's always been a problem of negligence and lack of security culture, which maintenance problems fall under.

[snypher]

In my subset of aviation the end user is only to follow manufacturer approved maintenance guidelines, with no deviations. So I believe it's not a critical thinking problem, as much as a distinct lack of domain knowledge in comments like these.

[michaelmrose]

The proper comparison is not the size of the employee pool over a human lifespan its the size of the list of people actively advocating or publicly known to be testifying against Boeing over the course of a month.

[tomca32]

well yeah but the previous whistleblower committed suicide after literally telling his family "If anything happens to me it's not suicide".

A month later another whistleblower who was in good health dies suddenly and unexpectedly.

I don't think it's surprising to think that this combination of events is extremely unlikely.

[BobaFloutist]

> well yeah but the previous whistleblower committed suicide after literally telling his family "If anything happens to me it's not suicide".

I mean if I had dedicated my life to taking Boeing down and was contemplating suicide, I'd consider saying that too.

[gitaarik]

That's a ridiculous idea. If you commit suicide because of years of depression that you can't get out of and don't have any positive outlook on the future, you wouldn't care about wisleblowing and bringing some bad rep to a company.

And especially you wouldn't cover up your suicide. You wouldn't want to lie to your family about the cause of your dead just to get back at some company you worked for.

I don't think this is a good theory. I don't see the logic in that. Much more logical if he was assassinated because he was spreading info that people with big money didn't want out.

[behringer]

This one might be, but the first one is almost certainly no suicide.

[tootie]

This is not alleged as a suicide. It was acute bacterial infection.

[gitaarik]

Yeah, they played safe with this one.

[tootie]

Or he just got an infection. How do you think they MRSA into his lungs? Not even Putin can pull off an execution that slick with a chemical weapons lab.

[gitaarik]

How do you know that? If they can they'll make sure other people wouldn't find out easily.

[tootie]

In your elaborate fantasy there is no upper limit to how sophisticated Boeing's execution squad is, but they can't keep their planes in the air.

[andreygrehov]

Not that I disagree with you, but since the is the most upvoted comment - had this happened in, say, Russia, people would say: "The bloody Putin's totalitarianism!". But in the US, well: "[...] every single person who's ever criticized Boeing is going to die". This is absolutely hilarious and deserves the best comment of the year award.

[vicary]

45 y/o and healthy though?

[ChrisRR]

No-one is truly healthy. Everything is a game of statistics

You may be totally healthy and the peak of physical fitness and a sudden stroke destroys you. Everyone can improve their chances, but no-one can guarantee they're indestructible.

[akira2501]

> every single person who's ever criticized Boeing is going to die (eventually)

That's extremely tautological.

> it isn't terribly surprising that a few deaths have occurred.

It's surprising they have so many whistle blowers that more than one has died in a short span of time, in particular, before the investigations over their allegations have been satisfactorily and publicly completed.

> and we're now all primed to notice these deaths and attribute intent.

That doesn't mean it's pointless to ask questions and to investigate further. There's a lot of people who seem very eager for this all to just "go away." That should make anyone, let alone a forum of hackers, somewhat suspicious.

[sxg]

I'm baffled by this comment. It's exceedingly rare for two middle-aged and otherwise healthy people to die without warning.

> With so many people in a position to notice and speak out about Boeing's issues

So many? Both were whistleblowers of which there are allegedly no more than 32 in the last few years.

[genewitch]

I'd say it was exceedingly rare for people in that cohort to die suddenly without warning. Now, though?

and one died after ventilation?

[dudeinjapan]

2 down 30 to go.

[cbsmith]

> I'm baffled by this comment. It's exceedingly rare for two middle-aged and otherwise healthy people to die without warning.

No. It happens every day. Yes, if you pick two random middle-aged people at random, it's exceedingly rare for both of them to die without warning. However, if you pick a large population of otherwise healthy middle-aged people, the probably that two of them might die without warning is actually quite high.

The question is, how large is the population? If the union is to be believed (and there's a lot of credibility there), Boeing whistleblowers are a pretty large population. Add in to that the stress & disruption of being a whistleblower, and then layer on the stress from any retaliation from Boeing (which allegedly is happening on a daily basis), and the probability of two of them dying around the same time isn't really that low.

e.g., if you assume a mortality rate of 1 in 1000/yr (which seems very low, considering their circumstance) and a population of 100, the odds of two of them dying over the course of a year is over 50% (1-0.999^100)^2 = 53.29%.

[somenameforme]

I'm really trying to figure out where you got 53.29% from. Your formula is not only not how you'd calculate this, but gives 0.009. If you want to know the right answer, the easiest way is to do a binomial calculation, which is easiest using a calculator [1].

The answer is there being at least (so this value includes all possible values >= 2) 2 deaths in a population of 100 with a rate of 1 in 1000, would be 0.464%.

[1] - https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial

[cbsmith]

You're right. I screwed up the math.

[LZ_Khan]

So... it's extremely unlikely two would die in the same year from natural causes.

(given a pool of 100, not even 32!)

[cbsmith]

If we assume their base mortality rate is 0.1%, that the pool is only 100, and that the deaths are completely independent (and we know that since they were both whistleblowers, both worked for the sample employer, that may very well not be true), it's a low probability case, yes. The sense is that those are both extremely conservative numbers.

Try looking at the cumulative probability for P(X>=2) when you manipulate the numbers a bit. Even if you just change the base probability of mortality to 1%, it jumps to 26% chance. If you restrict the population to 32 people, the threshold for it be more likely to happen than not is a 5.2% chance of death.

[sxg]

I agree with you in that the population size is the key question here. However, I have two issues:

First, otherwise healthy people don't just die from stress. Stress can sometimes exacerbate underlying health issues and lead to a long, downward spiral in health that can result in death, but it does not happen in a matter of just weeks or a couple months. It also does not happen in people without underlying health issues.

Second, while a mortality rate of 0.001/yr is reasonable for middle-aged men, that assumes we know nothing about them or their deaths—that isn't the case here. John Barnett's death was a suicide. According to the CDC, there were 14,668 suicides in the 45–64 age group in 2021. The 2020 census shows that there are 85 million people in the US in that same age group. The suicide mortality rate comes out to 0.00017, which is about an order of magnitude lower than your estimate. Josh Dean was otherwise healthy from what's being reported. Given his age and state of health, his 1-year mortality rate is also likely substantially lower than your estimate

[cbsmith]

> First, otherwise healthy people don't just die from stress. Stress can sometimes exacerbate underlying health issues and lead to a long, downward spiral in health that can result in death, but it does not happen in a matter of just weeks or a couple months. It also does not happen in people without underlying health issues.

First, there's a difference between being "otherwise healthy" and appearing to be "otherwise healthy". People who seem otherwise healthy but under a tremendous amount of stress are absolutely more likely to die from a sudden heart attack or stroke. People who seem otherwise healthy but under a tremendous amount of stress are absolutely more likely to commit suicide. People who seem otherwise healthy but under a tremendous amount of stress are absolutely more likely to be in a car accident...

> Second, while a mortality rate of 0.001/yr is reasonable for middle-aged men, that assumes we know nothing about them or their deaths—that isn't the case here. John Barnett's death was a suicide. According to the CDC, there were 14,668 suicides in the 45–64 age group in 2021. The 2020 census shows that there are 85 million people in the US in that same age group. The suicide mortality rate comes out to 0.00017, which is about an order of magnitude lower than your estimate. Josh Dean was otherwise healthy from what's being reported. Given his age and state of health, his 1-year mortality rate is also likely substantially lower than your estimate

I don't agree that John Barnett's death was as likely to occur as anyone else in that age group. He was almost certainly experiencing stress above the level of the top percentile of the 45-64 population. The mean likelihood of suicide mortality isn't representative of his risk condition.

But you're right, if you narrow it down to the specifics of the deaths, you can absolutely reduce the probability to ridiculously low percentages. Like throw in the day of the week that they died, the hour of the day, the use of a gun, the specific gun used, etc. Does that really reduce the chances that they died though?

[jjk166]

> But you're right, if you narrow it down to the specifics of the deaths, you can absolutely reduce the probability to ridiculously low percentages. Like throw in the day of the week that they died, the hour of the day, the use of a gun, the specific gun used, etc. Does that really reduce the chances that they died though?

The chance they died is 100%. The question we're asking is what are the odds we'd be talking about their death. If it had been a different day of the week or a different model of gun, that would not have an influence. If the cause of death were different, it would. No one would be talking about foul play had he died of say a long term chronic condition, or cancer, or a natural disaster. The odds of dying under suspicious circumstances are inherently less than the odds of just dying in general.

[ClumsyPilot]

> No one would be talking about foul play had he died of say a long term chronic condition, or cancer, or a natural disaster. The odds of dying under suspicious circumstances are inherently less than the odds of just dying in general.

This is an extremely important point, looking at most causes of death, they are things like Heart Disease, Alzheimer, Chancers, diabetes. Nobody would be accusing Boeing if that was the case. Comparing this to general chance of death will lead to vast overestimate.

You have to compare to causes of death that are sudden, where the person was healthy enough to testify in court just a few weeks ago.

[cbsmith]

> The chance they died is 100%.

There you go. Because it is after the fact, it's a given. It's not surprising that you can find a connection of some kind between them after the fact. Just because you can, after the fact, draw the connection, doesn't change the probability that they are dead.

[peter422]

One of those people died of a gunshot wound, so whether it was self-inflicted or not, their age and health and any related statistics have nothing to do with the death.

[cbsmith]

> One of those people died of a gunshot wound, so whether it was self-inflicted or not, their age and health and any related statistics have nothing to do with the death.

Mental health is health. Age and physical health are factors that can effect mental health, particularly when someone is under tremendous amounts of stress. Their age and health could very well have something to do with their death.

[cbsmith]

> Both were whistleblowers of which there are allegedly no more than 32 in the last few years.

Yeah, out of a population of 32, it's unlikely to happen. It seems likely that this number is grossly underrepresenting the size of the population. Maybe whistleblowers are being targeted, maybe there are a lot more than 32, maybe both of those are true, but it seems unlikely that both of them are false.

[jjk166]

There were 2 deaths from the population of known whistleblowers. If there are additional unknown whistleblowers, they still don't count as members of the population. There's no way to count deaths among unknown whistleblowers.

[cbsmith]

"I'm baffled by this comment. It's exceedingly rare for two middle-aged and otherwise healthy people to die without warning."

That statement is not even limited to whistleblowers.

If you restrict the population to known Boeing whistleblowers whose first name starts with J, the odds get even longer.

[jjk166]

And if someone had predicted ahead of time that the second dead boeing whistleblower would have a first name starting with J that would have been quite astounding. But since we are waiting until after the two whistleblowers are dead and then choosing something we already know they have in common, no it is not any less probable.

[dialup_sounds]

I'm baffled by this comment. It's exceedingly rare for two middle-aged and otherwise healthy people to die without warning.

Suicide is the 7th leading cause of death for men 55-62. It's considerably more common than murder.

Both were whistleblowers of which there are allegedly no more than 32 in the last few years.

Barnett hadn't worked for Boeing since 2017, and was being deposed as part of his appeal of his original whistleblower complaint. It makes no sense to think that someone trying to silence him would wait until 7 years and one Netflix documentary have transpired.

[squigz]

How many would have to die under these circumstances for you to consider they're not natural deaths?

[mulmen]

As many as it takes to leave even a shred of evidence.

[ClumsyPilot]

Q: How many witches have to burn before you accept that inquisition is doing something wrong?

A: As many as it takes for god to interfere.

i.e. You are just staying wilfully ignorant

Here is a recent case from Britain, there was evidence and the government covered it up. It took almost 50 years for us to learn the truth.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-68881821

[dialup_sounds]

That doesn't make any sense. You're calling someone ignorant for favoring evidence over hearsay and hysteria. That's the exact opposite of witch trials, where the whole concept is finding guilt without evidence.

[rootusrootus]

> i.e. You are just staying wilfully ignorant

You're trying to defend a conspiracy theory by saying that waiting for even a shred of actual evidence is willfully ignorant? Really? And your point of comparison is a religious belief, something by definition not based on evidence? Wow.

[ClumsyPilot]

Apologies, I put my argument across poorly.

Here is an illustration that demonstrates that the OP’s expectation is unrealistic and that nobody here actually thinks that way:

Dozens of Putin’s opponents died by falling out of a window, and no evidence of any kind was found that they were murdered. However, if I clam that Putin’s opponents were murdered, nobody calls it a conspiracy theory. Why?

Because a) we would not be told if there was physical evidence b) dozens of specific people dying suspiciously is statistically impossible, that is evidence in its own right.

So either the OP thinks that Putin is innocent, in which case his opinion is questionable

Or his position is based on a-priory trust to an institution and not on evidence, in which case it is also questionable.

It is probably the second - some people trust Boeing and some people think, hey, they already killed several hundred passengers, civility and sanity can no longer be taken for granted.

But as improbably events happen more and more, a sane person must shift their position to account for this. Ignoring improbably events and demanding physical evidence as people die would be madness.

[mulmen]

Evidence of Putin murdering opponents has been discovered. Alexander Litvinenko being an excellent example.

The problem with your speculation as it relates to Boeing is that you have extrapolated from “someone had someone killed once” to “everyone who dies was assassinated”. I don’t believe you are making such an assertion but you’re attacking the method of thinking that avoids it.

You need to leave some room for there to be other causes of death, even in cases that feel suspicious. If there are suspicious circumstances they should and will be investigated. But if nothing nefarious is found that’s not evidence of foul play.

[volkk]

at LEAST one more...then i'll raise an eyebrow!