[ngneer]

A rather well-written piece. My takeaway is that the French investigators are pros and the Egyptians are hacks. And that safety culture matters. One must not bend the facts to draw a desired conclusion. One must review the data without bias, or else recuse oneself.

[Ozzie_osman]

It's easy to say this sitting in the west, especially since Egypt is run by an authoritarian government. I'll point out though that even sans-authoritarianism, there are plenty of examples of Western "investigators" arriving at politicized and often false conclusions with far worse consequences. The history of the CIA/FBI is chock-full of examples. And you don't even have to go that far back or dig that deep... The whole Iraq WMD debacle.

Anyway, not saying the Egyptian investigators were right in this case (it seems clear that they weren't). Or defending authoritarian governments. Just providing an alternative view point, as someone who lived half his life in Egypt and half in the US.

[sofixa]

> there are plenty of examples of Western "investigators" arriving at politicized and often false conclusions with far worse consequences. The history of the CIA/FBI is chock-full of examples

BEA and the NTSB really really cannot be compared to CIA/FBI/DGSE. They are professionals with clear and apolitical goals. See the NTSB and BEA regularly criticising various government agencies, including in this case BEA being raided by the transport gendermes. Hell, even the MAK (equivalent air crash investigation agency for most of the former Soviet Union) dares criticise and publicly shit on and get into disputes with on government agencies not doing their job.

It's the Egyptians who are really the counterexample here in being absurdly terrible at their jobs. Wether it's just sheer incompetence, corruption, nepotism, or not wanting to embarrass the regime, we'll never know. Maybe it's a mix of the above. But especially in this crash, there is no reason for them to be so absurdly terrible at their jobs, there is nothing for them to be covering up (unlike the previous crash which was genuinely embarrassing for the country).

[sofixa]

It's not the first time Egyptian investigators disregarded reality to keep face:

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-crash-of-egyptair-fl...

[eddythompson80]

> My takeaway is that the French investigators are pros and the Egyptians are hacks

Describing them as "hacks" is weird. In most dictatorships, the concern is usually "What does the country's leadership want the official story to be" rather than "What actually happened". Take this quote from the article for example

> "In my opinion, the problem with the report is that it appears to treat the findings of the Triple Committee — the group appointed by the public prosecutor’s office — as the unquestioned truth, and fails to push back on any of its assertions, even the ones that they disagreed with. Instead, because the Triple Committee concluded that a bomb in the galley was the cause of the crash, the EAAID bent itself into a pretzel trying to make the evidence fit that theory. Unfortunately, we don’t know why the Triple Committee and the EAAID chose to die on this hill"

EgyptAir is a government owned enterprise. It's managed by the "Ministry of Civil Aviation" who's head is always some general or commander from the Air Force. If the EAAID investigators were allowed to say that there was a "faulty equipment" then a lot of questions would have had to be answered. A lot of questions that have the possibility of embarrassing people all the way up the chain (especially that as mentioned, that particular oxygen mask was reported faulty from another aircraft and removed for maintenance before, and the crew frequently reported that the pilot oxygen supply always decreases on every flight).

Saying "it was terrorists" is something that no one has to feel embarrassed about. In fact in 2016 the Egyptian government were in the midst of a lot of arrests and suspension of most freedoms to "curb terrorist activities". And such thing plays well into that narrative.

Are you an EAAID investigator who wants to say "it was a faulty oxygen mask"? Ok. How do you fancy you, your brother, cousin, and neighbor spending the next 15-30 years in jail pending investigation on conspiracy against the country?

[ngneer]

You make a valid point. I stand corrected. "Hacks" is not an accurate term, and fails to account for the full circumstance. I was merely appalled at how willing EAAID were to jump to conclusions and twist facts towards a convenient narrative. France is a democracy, and that makes for an unfair comparison between the two agencies. I am sure that even the most intellectually honest individual will choose their own safety if faced with the reality of imprisonment.

[nico]

> France is a democracy

And even there, sometimes people will get treated like terrorists for saying the wrong political thing

Like it’s been happening for the last year. Including some protests getting outright made illegal

And as you say, even people that care a lot about the truth, will choose something else to protect themselves or their loved ones

[brnt]

Such are the mechanics of fascist dictatorships. Individuals are in no way empowered to think or act in ways not supporting the Great Leader. You being unsafe is the method of control.

Take care, America.

[mlinhares]

Please don't put the blame on dictatorships alone, democratic countries do the same all the time. There's multiple cities in the US where the city officials hid the fact their water was contaminated.

[llamaimperative]

Yeah people dictator-sympathizers seem to think the problem with strongman asshole leaders is that they're meanie heads (something Real Patriots can look past!). But no, it's that they actually yield failure in a society's most basic functions and at every level.

[lazide]

It often takes a degree of pain unimaginable to people to realize the true consequences of going down this road. Sometimes, that pain is so extreme people can never do it.

See post WW2 Germany, and all the folks who got caught with nazi memorabilia in their attics for decades afterwards.

[Ozzie_osman]

> In most dictatorships, the concern is usually "What does the country's leadership want the official story to be" rather than "What actually happened".

This also occasionally happens in non-dictatorships, unless you considered George W a dictator when he was deciding to invade Iraq.

[Moru]

Whataboutism isn't really the answer here. When the population knows this is the way it works and bends themselves like a pretsel to make their government not kill them, it's not good. You can't compare that to a western country, not even the US is that bad.

[Dalewyn]

>One must not bend the facts to draw a desired conclusion. One must review the data without bias, or else recuse oneself.

There are essentially two ways to solve a mystery:

A) Consider the evidence and draw a conclusion from them.

B) Consider the conclusion and draw the evidences for it.

Neither is the correct methodology, especially when politics, power dynamics, and social justice are involved.

[ngneer]

With all due respect, (B) is logically unsound in my mind. You may have meant considering the hypotheses, and then using available data and only available data to rule in or rule out certain scenarios. In my mind, based on decades of studying engineering defects and failures, starting with a conclusion is not a way to solve a mystery at all. Rather, it is only a way to convince oneself of a falsehood. To give an example that is familiar to the HN audience, how many times have you had to debug a bug or problem in a complex system that you initially thought was caused by one thing only to discover it was caused by something completely different?

[Dalewyn]

>With all due respect, (B) is logically unsound in my mind.

That's because you're concerned about finding out what happened. Not everyone thinks like that, namely some (many) are concerned about creating what happened.

[ngneer]

Very interesting. Thank you for making the distinction explicit and for helping me to understand the other mindset. You are totally right, in that my mindset is closer to a forensics mindset in such instances, trying to get as close as possible to the "truth", so as to avoid future similar defects and improve system reliability. I do agree that some people prefer to manufacture truth. Any advice on how to get along with these?

[Dalewyn]

Much like how you can't convince a businessman to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it, it's next to impossible to "find out" a mystery if the powers-that-be do not want that and/or want a more desirable-for-them conclusion.

[ngneer]

I was afraid you were going to say that ;). Thanks for the sage advice. I think that "safety inspector" would not be a good career choice for people like myself, then. Methinks Boeing and OceanGate had been in the news recently with similar safety attitudes. Oh, well. Live and learn.

[synecdoche]

Could someone explain when A) it’s not the correct methodology, unless B) is preferable?

B) appears preferable only under duress and then only to the benefit of saving one’s own skin temporarily, however long that may be.

[Hilift]

Egypt doesn't have an equivalent to the NTSB. There simply isn't enough depth. They established their own agency in 2002, but it is basically a placeholder.