Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing and FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system | The Seattle Times

The discrepancy over this number is magnified by another element in the System Safety Analysis: The limit of the system’s authority to move the tail applies each time MCAS is triggered. And it can be triggered multiple times, as it was on the Lion Air flight.One current FAA safety engineer said that every time the pilots on the Lion Air flight reset the switches on their control columns to pull the nose back up, MCAS would have kicked in again and “allowed new increments of 2.5 degrees.”“So once they pushed a couple of times, they were at full stop,” meaning at the full extent of the tail swivel, he said.

Source: Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing and FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system | The Seattle Times

 

Highly recommend reading this – a case study of how many errors and mistakes that may individually seem small cascade into a catastrophe: A single point of failure (little/no redundancy) with a faulty sensor, a shockingly poorly designed automatic control algorithm that accumulates errors and overrides human intervention, lack of visibility and training for pilots, criminally poor documentation, a desire to go to market fast by avoiding bringing attention to the novelties of the system that would need extra certification … this reminds me of the Challenger disaster which was caused by a similar litany of missteps.

We live in a complex world of machines and artificial intelligence. We trust our lives on a daily basis to these systems –  in planes, in cars, even in our homes. Complex systems have complex paths to failure, and have the very real problem that small errors can add up to disasters without coming to notice individually.

Knee-jerk reactions like blaming all artificial intelligent control or automation is not the right answer. We cannot become Luddites. But we do need to become much more cognizant of what it takes to build safe and reliable complex systems. This is not like shipping a social networking or photo sharing app. These are mission critical systems and people’s lives depend on them! Our education system, regulatory system, and work ethics all need to held to a much higher standard, or unfortunately we are going to see many more of these types of disasters.

 

An Unvaccinated Boy Got Tetanus. His Oregon Hospital Stay: 57 Days and $800,000. – The New York Times

Still, the experience did not change the position of the boy’s parents.When the time came for his second round of DTaP, doctors talked with the family about the need for vaccinations. Surviving tetanus, unlike some other diseases, does not offer immunity in the future.But despite an “extensive review” of the risks, and the benefits of vaccination, the article said, the family declined the second vaccination — or any other recommended immunization.