A Disproportion of Theory to Knowledge Means Speculation and Guessing
Thinking of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, it certainly is true. Much speculation but few facts. I waited more than two weeks to make this post, first hoping that there would be a happy conclusion to the disappearance, and then hoping simply for some closure. It finally seems to have come to some resolution. Data analysis by Inmarsat shows that the flight “ended” in the Southern Indian ocean.
No, I don’t know anyone on the flight. However, having traveled frequently for business during much of my career, I feel as one with the missing. It might have been me. It might have been you. Tomorrow, It might be any one of us.
As of Saturday, March 22, this quote from the New York Times seemed to capture the situation best. I added the bold emphasis.
More than two weeks after Flight 370 disappeared, unbridled speculation surrounds the unfolding global drama. So much is uncertain about what happened on the plane, and so much of what has been disclosed by Malaysian authorities has been contradicted, that hardly any theory of its fate can be easily dismissed.
By PHILIP P. PAN and KIRK SEMPLE
However, as of today, 3/24, data analysis finally tells us another story. Including the starting and ending dates, 17 days passed between the recognition of the aircraft’s disappearance and the data analysis that seems to have ended the disproportion of theory to knowledge.
Many Theories but Few Facts
I adapted the famous Gartner Research Hype Cycle to this story, as it seems to fit.Between the few hard facts that this tragedy admitted, there was much theorizing and speculating about what happened, and where the airplane went. Can a huge aircraft really disappear?
As a young boy, I read about Amelia Earhart and how she disappeared on her globe-circling 1937 flight. I asked my father about whether he remembered the incident. Of course he did, but he assured me that an airplane could never disappear with today’s technology. That “today” was more than 50 years ago.
In the table following, I’ve entered one news story about MH370 per day, chosen from a leading news source. You can see where fact-based reasoning began, ended, and began again. What is the lesson here? Make your decisions based on facts, not guesses, hopes, or idle speculation.
News Posts About MH370 over 17 Days
Date |
Link to Article |
Headline |
Essential “Facts” |
3/8 | CNN | Search intensifies for Malaysian airliner and 239 people, rescue ships head to sea |
|
3/9 | The Guardian | Malaysia Airlines: object found by Vietnam navy thought to be part of missing plane |
|
3/10 | The Guardian | Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: officials widen search area |
|
3/11 | Wired | How It’s Possible to Lose an Airplane in 2014 |
|
3/12 | AOL | Last words from missing plane were routine |
|
3/13 | CNN | Search for missing Malaysia Airlines plane expands to Indian Ocean |
|
3/14 | Huffington Post | Malaysia Airlines Missing Plane: Radar Data Suggests Jet Flew Deliberately Toward Andaman Islands, Sources Say |
|
3/15 | New York Times | Malaysia Officials Open Criminal Inquiry Into Missing Jet |
|
3/16 | India Today | Final words from Malaysian jet came after systems shutdown |
|
3/17 | Reuters | Malaysian airplane investigators look at suicide as possible motive |
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3/18 | CNN | New evidence in Flight 370 search explains plane’s path |
|
3/19 | New York Times | Newly Detected Objects Draw Searchers for Malaysian Plane |
|
3/20 | CBS News | Possible Debris Near Australia Is ‘Best Lead’ Yet In Search For Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 |
|
3/21 | New York Times | Nations Start to Collaborate in the Search |
|
3/22 | CNN | China has new images showing object in southern Indian Ocean |
|
3/23 | New York Times | A Routine Flight, Till Both Routine and Flight Vanish |
|
3/24 | NPR | Analysis Shows Flight 370 ‘Ended’ In Indian Ocean, Malaysia Says |
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What is next for MH370?
Now the search for wreckage and black boxes will ensue. These missing pieces of the puzzle must be found.The US Navy has already dispatched a “ping detector” to help locate the black boxes. Without those, and the cockpit voice recorder, we may never know what really happened. Without finding the wreckage, grieving relatives and friends of the crash victims will always hold onto some thread of hope, and their wounds will not heal. Let’s hope that fact-based reasoning takes the lead, and we soon learn what happened, so it does not happen again.
What is next for you and your decision-making?
I have written frequently about the miserable data quality situation revealed by our Poor Data Quality – Negative Business Outcomes survey. Respondents have told us that, in a big way, they lose money and suffer business challenges due to poor data quality. Decision-making suffers, customers are unhappy, opportunities are lost, and managers and executives have no confidence in the information on which they depend.
Principal Consulting and The Robert Frances Group can help you move to a happier state of data quality affairs. It all begins with an understanding of where your organization is today, and goes forward to help you address and implement sustainable data quality improvements. Contact us today to find out how we can help. Until then, Happy Landings!
Stu,
I applaud your masterful feat of documentation on what proved essentially to be a very elusive sequence of events. On the debate which ensued respecting coverage of what might have been, I supported the camp of sustained coverage, primarily for the sake of closure. {http://asumenacumen.blogspot.com/2014/03/adrift-in-tides-of-timerandom-notes-2.html?spref=fb}
Contemporary reportage is at the mercy of round the clock demand for updates. Lest the mantra “no news is good news” be misconstrued as a trajectory to closure, speculative theorizing did definitely filled the news void, attendant to the paucity of factual data. The tendency assumed the aura of the proverbial “slippery slope” inevitability.
For your initiative to emphasize that speculation does undermine the quality and integrity of knowledge may I submit that I feel proud and privileged that at one point in my career I was associated with you as my employer.