Fact Checking Nelson's "Doors Of Death" light aircraft near death experience

[Dr Moore]

The available proof data may be missing, but this isn't a legal case for which "absence of evidence" falls utterly short. There's no criminal burden like "beyond a reasonable doubt." That's a nice goal, but not the only goal.

Pilot training, regulatory filing requirements, actual existence of *some* contemporary relevant/related record types, timing and facts surrounding Nelson's accounts, likelihood of local and corroborating accounts from others, and what made newspaper coverage back then, are all factors to consider. Absence of evidence, given the unique circumstances, does move us further to the left hand on the BS>>truth scale.

[Res Ipsa]

The available proof data may be missing, but this isn't a legal case for which "absence of evidence" falls utterly short. There's no criminal burden like "beyond a reasonable doubt." That's a nice goal, but not the only goal.

Pilot training, regulatory filing requirements, actual existence of *some* contemporary relevant/related record types, timing and facts surrounding Nelson's accounts, likelihood of local and corroborating accounts from others, and what made newspaper coverage back then, are all factors to consider. Absence of evidence, given the unique circumstances, does move us further to the left hand on the B.S.>>truth scale.

I don’t think I was applying legal standards when answering Doc’s question. My practice involves only one situation in which my clients have to prove a negative. And the Court that imposed that burden acknowledged that meeting that burden of proof is practically impossible. And it is, even though the events are recent and my clients are required to document the hell out of everything. And my actual burden is only preponderance of evidence. Doc’s was conclusive evidence the story was made up.

Sure, I agree that lots of paper work would have been generated at the time. But before you can conclude anything based on the absence of evidence, you have to have a basis for believing that the record should exist. So, pilot records. Are the records from 1976 available in a database we can access? If not, whose records were they? What was the records retention policy? If the retention policy says the paper records should exist, where are they? Can we get them through FOIA or equivalent State law? Have we asked?

Do that for every type of records that you think should exist today. And only if you can find a complete set of records for time period you are you interested in, can you draw a conclusion from the absence of that record. I think we are so used to drawing conclusions from the presence of evidence that we don’t recognize what we need to do to draw reliable conclusions from the absence of evidence. And that isn’t based on any special legal requirements. It’s just plain old reasoning from evidence.

Even the newspaper evidence is problematic. If you are talking about drawing conclusions from the absence of evidence, it’s a logical fallacy to draw any conclusion based solely on what you found. It’s just like the database problem I’ve been harping on. You can’t just look at what’s there. You have to look at what’s not there.

Go back to the Bureau database from yesterday. Assume that’s the only evidence we have. Also assume the most exaggerated version of the story Mellon has ever told actually happened in 1976 in Utah. If we conclude based on the information in DrW’s post that Nelson made the whole thing up, what are the odds that were wrong? Around 98%. Only 2% of the events in the NTSB database for the US in 1976 are in the Bureau database.

In fact, yesterday’s search didn’t move the needle at all. But we wouldn’t know that unless we looked for what wasn’t in the database.

Back to the papers. People are drawing conclusions from what they’ve found in papers. But no one has looked at what’s not in the papers. Until somebody does that, we’re can’t tell whether what we’ve found moves the needle at all.

I have to consciously think about this step with every piece of evidence because it’s not intuitive, at least for me. But if I don’t do it, then my odds of drawing a false conclusion are pretty ugly.

[DrW]

The available proof data may be missing, but this isn't a legal case for which "absence of evidence" falls utterly short. There's no criminal burden like "beyond a reasonable doubt." That's a nice goal, but not the only goal.

Pilot training, regulatory filing requirements, actual existence of *some* contemporary relevant/related record types, timing and facts surrounding Nelson's accounts, likelihood of local and corroborating accounts from others, and what made newspaper coverage back then, are all factors to consider. Absence of evidence, given the unique circumstances, does move us further to the left hand on the B.S.>>truth scale.

Thank you.

The events described by Russell M. Nelson, including:
- right engine "explosion",
- right engine fire,
- failure of operable left engine in an engine out event,
- improper operation of an aircraft by a professional pilot (death spiral),
- significant deviation from ATC clearances by a professional pilot culminating in,
- professional pilot's decision to land in a farmer's field instead of the perfectly good alternate runway to which the pilot was cleared,
- no contemporary media reports of a downed aircraft,
- no faith promoting stories until many years later, and then from a single source only,
- no media reports of a commercial aircraft in a farmer's field, and to top it off -
- no records of the several required NTSB notifications resulting from the described events,
are individually improbable or highly improbable.

Taken as a dependent series of events, their aggregate probability is so vanishingly small as to warrant no further consideration.

[Dr Moore]

Taken as a dependent series of events, their aggregate probability is so vanishingly small as to warrant no further consideration.

I see the lack of corroborating evidence here in mostly the same way.

There are so many reasons that some evidence should exist, even if we exclude FAA "incident" records.

The fact that NOTHING besides Nelson corroborates Nelson's story, makes this indistinguishable from a fabrication. The fact that direct commercial flights from SLC to SGU were not flown in those days, makes me even more suspicious.

For me the bottom line is there is no good reason to believe the facts of this story happened as he's recounted on numerous occasions. He may have been scared on a flight. I'll give him that. A woman may have screamed on a flight. Sure. But the rest of the fact base doesn't add up. No better for historical accuracy than any one of a million possible fantasy stories embellished for audience effect.

[Dr Moore]

In fact, yesterday’s search didn’t move the needle at all. But we wouldn’t know that unless we looked for what wasn’t in the database.

I disagree. But I'm not trying to prove a case beyond reasonable doubts.

I'm looking at how the evidence we do have sets Nelson's story up in context of other similar events that did happen and were recorded. Therefore, any time we find records of twin engine planes landing in fields, or newspaper coverage of oddball flight incidents, we have less reason to believe Nelson's story as told. Because there is LITERALLY ZERO corroborating evidence that anything Nelson says happened actually might have happened.

Your approach is fine, RI, but your approach also supports a case to continue believing in Nephites and Lamanites. Fantastical claims require some evidence when the claims ask people to dedicate their lives to a cause. It's on Nelson, not on me, if his story doesn't add up.

[Res Ipsa]

The available proof data may be missing, but this isn't a legal case for which "absence of evidence" falls utterly short. There's no criminal burden like "beyond a reasonable doubt." That's a nice goal, but not the only goal.

Pilot training, regulatory filing requirements, actual existence of *some* contemporary relevant/related record types, timing and facts surrounding Nelson's accounts, likelihood of local and corroborating accounts from others, and what made newspaper coverage back then, are all factors to consider. Absence of evidence, given the unique circumstances, does move us further to the left hand on the B.S.>>truth scale.

Thank you.

The events described by Russell M. Nelson, including:
- right engine "explosion",
- right engine fire,
- failure of operable left engine in an engine out event,
- improper operation of an aircraft by a professional pilot (death spiral),
- significant deviation from ATC clearances by a professional pilot culminating in,
- professional pilot's decision to land in a farmer's field instead of the perfectly good alternate runway to which the pilot was cleared,
- no contemporary media reports of a downed aircraft,
- no faith promoting stories until many years later, and then from a single source only,
- no media reports of a commercial aircraft in a farmer's field, and to top it off -
- no records of the several required NTSB notifications resulting from the described events,
are individually improbable or highly improbable.

Taken as a dependent series of events, their aggregate probability is so vanishingly small as to warrant no further consideration.

Yes, but, only because you are cherry picking the events you want to consider. And you are assuming that Nelson’s perception and memory are 100% accurate for your Cherry picked set of events. That’s confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. All you’ve done is constructed straw man and knocked it down.

The instances of absence of evidence you cite are just out and out fallacies. The reason nobody has an NTSB “notice” for this specific event is that the NTSB told us they were destroyed. So how is the fact that you can’t find something that was destroyed evidence of anything but poor reasoning?

You seem to find something significant in the fact that the DN reported on a fatal aircraft crash in Ireland, but never bothered to check how many non-fatal aircraft events happened in Ireland that weren’t reported in the DN. Without that, the Ireland crash isn’t evidence at all.

You keep avoiding the question you have to ask to draw a conclusion from the absence of evidence: how reasonable is it to expect to find the evidence that I am looking for in the place I am looking? If your don’t do that, you don’t have evidence — you have crap. And it doesn’t matter how much crap you collect, it doesn’t magically transmute into evidence.

[Dr Moore]

Yes, but, only because you are cherry picking the events you want to consider. And you are assuming that Nelson’s perception and memory are 100% accurate for your Cherry picked set of events. That’s confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. All you’ve done is constructed straw man and knocked it down.

Hold on. I could not disagree more with this statement. Taking Nelson at his word and his facts is cherry picking? Testing Nelson's stated facts and finding them lacking is confirmation bias? Come on...

Based on what Nelson said, whether in 1981 or 2021, it should not be hard to find some evidence that the story he tells happened. It is reasonable to expect some corroborating evidence. None exists. None. That's a problem.

[Res Ipsa]

In fact, yesterday’s search didn’t move the needle at all. But we wouldn’t know that unless we looked for what wasn’t in the database.

I disagree. But I'm not trying to prove a case beyond reasonable doubts.

I'm looking at how the evidence we do have sets Nelson's story up in context of other similar events that did happen and were recorded. Therefore, any time we find records of twin engine planes landing in fields, or newspaper coverage of oddball flight incidents, we have less reason to believe Nelson's story as told. Because there is LITERALLY ZERO corroborating evidence that anything Nelson says happened actually might have happened.

Your approach is fine, RI, but your approach also supports a case to continue believing in Nephites and Lamanites. Fantastical claims require some evidence when the claims ask people to dedicate their lives to a cause. It's on Nelson, not on me, if his story doesn't add up.

No, please don’t straw man me like that. My approach is not the problem. The task you’ve taken on is the problem. If you care about getting as close to the truth as you can, you have to do the extra work it takes to take to draw conclusions from the absence of evidence. That has nothing to do with burden of proof or Lamanites and Nephites. It’s just logic.

On yesterday’s database search. Assume I have two databases. One includes every “accident” in Utah in 1976. I search it, and I don’t find a report that matches the profile of an “accident” I’m trying to find. That’s evidence, because I know I’m looking at a database that contains all the accidents. I have an evidence-based reason to expect that, if the profile I’m looking for is of an actual accident, it will be in the database. I can reasonably conclude that no “accident” that matches the profile I searched for actually existed.

After I’ve finished that search, I run the same search in second database, and find no hits. Have I moved the needle? The answer is “I don’t know. I have to take another step.” Why? Because there are a few possible explanations for why the evidence I’m looking for is absent. (1) The event I’m looking for didn’t happen; or (2) The database doesn’t include the type of records I’m looking for or (3) The second database doesn’t contain any information that isn’t in the first database. (1) moves the needle. (2) and (3) do not. We can’t tell if we’ve moved the needle until we know what information is or is not in the database.

What if we look and discover that, to our embarrassment, we’re looking in a database of dog breeds. We haven’t moved the needle, because we have no reason to expect to find aircraft accidents in a database of dog breeds.

That’s an extreme example to illustrate the principle.

What if we find out that the database doesn’t begin until 1978? We didn’t move the needle. Why? Because we have no reason to expect that a database with records that start in 1978 would contain records from 1976. That’s a mistake that happened in this thread with the FAA database. It simply isn’t evidence, and it doesn’t matter how many searches we do, it will never be evidence.

What if we find out that the second database simply scraped data from the first database? We haven’t moved the needle. Why? Because the second database doesn’t give us any new information that we didn’t already have. We can run a thousand searches on the same data, but only the first search moves the needle. This is also a mistake that was made in this thread with the non-government database that I think you found. Searching that database didn’t move the needle, because we already searched the same collection of data in the NTSB database. The needle doesn’t move unless a search gives us information we didn’t already have.

What if we find out that we can’t find out how the information was collected, but we can verify that the second database contains only 2% of the accidents listed in the first? We haven’t moved the needle. Why? Because the second database is less complete than the first. (Caveat, if that 2% is a complete set of some other kind of record for 1976 that gives us information we didn’t have before, we would have new information that would move the needle.)
That’s yesterday’s Bureau database. I spot checked a couple of examples, and the detail screens were just the NTSB summary reports that we already have in the NTSB database.

What if we rely on our intuition and common sense to decide what’s in the database? Well, it could be dog breeds, so we need to look.

The absence of evidence in the NTSB database moves the needle. After that, none of the other searches moved the needle. So, we searched four databases, but only one gave us actual evidence that moves the needle.

Here’s the hard part: every time we look in a set of information like newspapers, it’s exactly like searching a database. It’s just paper instead of electronic. We can’t draw any conclusion from finding no hits until we have some evidence based reason to believe that the type of information we are looking for is included in the database. If we don’t, it could be dog breeds.

So, saying there must be records is not enough. If you haven’t looked, it could be dog breeds. This extra step isn’t necessary when we’re reasoning from the existence of evidence. If we look in a photo album and find a picture of Nelson standing in a farmers field beside a twin engine aircraft, we don’t need to know what else is in the album. And since the vast majority of our everyday reasoning is from the existence of evidence, our brains aren’t used to doing this extra step. I have to remind myself every time someone in the thread makes an inference from the absence of evidence to look for evidence based reasons to expect to find what I’m looking for in the data set I’m searching.

This extra step is necessary regardless of the burden of proof. You can set the burden of proof anywhere from possible to slam dunk, but if you don’t have evidence, it doesn’t matter.

About Nephites and Lamanites — we have plenty of evidence based reasons to expect to find certain types of evidence if the civilizations described in the Book of Mormon actually existed. That’s why the Mopologists are forced to reinterpret the Book of Mormon text try and take that reasonable expectation of finding evidence away. What I’m doing is the step that archeologists and geneticists have already done for us with respect to the Book of Mormon. Yay! Somebody else did the heavy lifting for us.

On this project, we have to do the heavy lifting. If we want to be right. Otherwise, it’s dog breeds all the way down.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Hey, I got a NTSB hit for 11/12/1976 in Utah!! <- Did someone already post this? I’m sure I would’ve noticed it since I’m paying relatively close attention to the thread.

https://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.avia ... 1778&key=0

I searched both incidents and accidents, by the way. Landed off runway, hit ditch, damage was ‘substantial’. No Mormon apostles were hurt in the incident/accident.

- Doc

[Tom]

Hey, I got a NTSB hit for 11/12/1976 in Utah!! <- Did someone already post this? I’m sure I would’ve noticed it since I’m paying relatively close attention to the thread.

https://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.avia ... 1778&key=0

I searched both incidents and accidents, by the way. Landed off runway, hit ditch, damage was ‘substantial’. No Mormon apostles were hurt in the incident/accident.

- Doc

It’s been cited a few times. See here for instance: viewtopic.php?p=17169#p17169