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

[Res Ipsa]

From the above retellings, it is clear that Nelson means to convey that:

1. The flight originated in SLC, with ultimate destination SGU
2. By mentioning relief about being on-time to the inauguration, the flight was same-day, ie Nov. 12, 1976
3. It was a twin-engine propeller plane
4. There were 4 other passengers, Nelson on the right side window, and a woman "next to him" was "across the aisle"
5. Some of the other passengers screamed hysterically, including but not limited to the woman seated next to him
6. Nelson remained calm, as his life-flash was comforted by his knowledge of the sealing power
7. The plane's engine literally exploded and there was fire on the fuselage and wing
8. The plane careened in a spiral toward earth
9. The fire went out as the plane descended
10. The pilot took emergency actions and made a safe emergency landing in a field

Do you find the difference between "next to him" and "across the aisle" to be a material difference?

Do we have a quote of Nelson expressing relief about being on time for the inauguration? In which account is that element first introduced?

In which version does he first say he flew from SLC to St. George?

[Gadianton]

Perhaps one could. I think I was out of the church when the whole Dunn debacle went down. And I don't recall being a fan boy of his while I was in the church. So I have to confess that I don't know lots of the details about his stories. My general impression is that he made claims that were clearly contradicted by the evidence. Like, wasn't one of his claims about being a pro or semi-pro baseball player when he never was? I think that's pretty tough to attribute to how memories work. The equivalent evidence in this case would be finding iron-clad proof that Nelson never flew on an airplane.

As an aside, this may be my most memorable experience of church cog-dis as a child. I was a reasonable Dunn fan, I had been given a set of his tapes as a present. I listened to them more than once, and I used the tapes in a sacrament meeting talk I gave as a kid. Scared as hell at the pulpit. Some time after I had those tapes, it could have been a couple of years, baseball cards became a big deal at school, in particular, "flipping" baseball cards where the winner takes the card of the other person. I had a reasonable collection, and I had friends with huge collections, and I always on the lookout for a Cardinal's with Paul H. Dunn on it. I say cog-dis, because I wasn't skeptical in the slightest about anything, just that it came to mind occasionally that it was really odd that I hadn't come across one yet.

[Res Ipsa]

I think this is a fascinating example of how the brain creates personal stories, manufactures meaning for them, and evolves them over time, all with no conscious confabulation or embellishment.

I wouldn't be that specific. First, I have to say you're providing an invaluable service by being skeptical of attempts to reduce this to his own imagination, and you've uncovered some fascinating material here and synthesized it. The journal find is a huge piece of evidence, a piece that makes it more believable that the account really is based in a dramatic plane experience.

HOWEVER:

I look at this as a fascinating example of how mythology or urban legends are created. Nelson's memory is one aspect of that. But I don't think we can assume he's not intending to embellish. Although, I can appreciate the assumption that he isn't trying to embellish, as a way to hold as many variables constant as possible. If it can be explained without the need to assume malicious invention, then all the better.

In my time, I've become personally acquainted with a handful of very odd individuals who are quite capable and successful financially, and yet, can't complete a sentence without lying about something. I'm not going to judge at this time where Nelson falls on the spectrum, and I admit that forward to that family book is a serious piece of evidence in favor of a real and dramatic plane experience as the root to the story. I also am open to the possibility that there was no dramatic fire, nose dive, or field landing, or even the possibility that yet, it's entirely manufactured.

Remember the suggestion that "the point of no return" or other elements could have come from what people had said on the plane? Given all the plane trips he's been on and in challenging parts of the world, there could have been a fellow passenger one-upping everybody's stories -- "The last time I was on one of these buckets of bolts, you'll never guess what happened...!"

I'm not saying that's what I believe happened, I'm really on the fence here about how the story originated.

Thank you, Dean Robbers. I think your reference to myth making and urban legends is spot on. I don't know whether the story can be fairly described as a myth or urban legend at this point, but it may turn out that way. Or it may evolve into a myth or urban legend.

I'm still open to all conclusions other than Nelson's descriptions of the incident are 100% accurate. I doubt I've been clear at this point, but I'm not assuming that Nelson didn't intentionally embellish. I just haven't found evidence that would justify any conclusion on his intent.

I understand your point about reflexive, habitual liars. One might suggest that the last president was an example. And that's certainly a possibility here that I don't think we can justifiably discard at this point.

I do try to apply Hanlon's razor when analyzing facts. I've had to try and figure out lots of cases in which each side is accusing the other of being dishonest liars. One think I always look for is whether there is a plausible set of facts that fits the evidence without concluding that one or the other or both is lying. It's a valuable exercise when having to evaluate someone's credibility.

[Res Ipsa]

Perhaps one could. I think I was out of the church when the whole Dunn debacle went down. And I don't recall being a fan boy of his while I was in the church. So I have to confess that I don't know lots of the details about his stories. My general impression is that he made claims that were clearly contradicted by the evidence. Like, wasn't one of his claims about being a pro or semi-pro baseball player when he never was? I think that's pretty tough to attribute to how memories work. The equivalent evidence in this case would be finding iron-clad proof that Nelson never flew on an airplane.

As an aside, this may be my most memorable experience of church cog-dis as a child. I was a reasonable Dunn fan, I had been given a set of his tapes as a present. I listened to them more than once, and I used the tapes in a sacrament meeting talk I gave as a kid. Scared as hell at the pulpit. Some time after I had those tapes, it could have been a couple of years, baseball cards became a big deal at school, in particular, "flipping" baseball cards where the winner takes the card of the other person. I had a reasonable collection, and I had friends with huge collections, and I always on the lookout for a Cardinal's with Paul H. Dunn on it. I say cog-dis, because I wasn't skeptical in the slightest about anything, just that it came to mind occasionally that it was really odd that I hadn't come across one yet.

I'll bet you weren't the only one who experienced this. It must have been difficult for those who lionized the guy.

[Res Ipsa]

Nelson doesn't present the incident as if it were a miracle. He attributes the survival of the passengers to the actions of an experienced pilot.

Nelson “Miraculously the dive extinguished the fire.”

Would you please link me to the source of the quote?

[DrW]

You're a scientist. If you did an experiment that showed particles traveling at speeds faster than light, would you jump to the conclusion that you'd disproved the theory of Special Relativity? Or would you go back through your experiment step by step to make sure you hadn't made a mistake along the way? Why skip that step here?

Apologies in advance, but your science analogy in no way applies to the situation at hand. I performed no experiment. I obtained no data that are to be evaluated. Why not just start with the idea that a scientist should be a skeptic? The job here is to evaluate the assertions of others, presented without evidence, that are nonetheless intended to be taken as fact.

Rather than attempting to "--congratulate ourselves that we proved what we knew all along -- that Nelson is lying SOB who makes Crap up--", as you put it, like Robert Ritner requested of Bill Hamblin regarding the Book of Mormon, I'm looking for one shred of corroborating evidence to back the story up.

As a former owner of two aircraft and holder of a commercial pilot's license with twin multi-engine and instrument ratings, and working on my second million miles with Delta, I have more aviation experience than most. With others, I have disassembled, repaired, painted, reassembled and test flown aircraft. Over the years I have lost four colleagues in two light aircraft accidents, one from my flying club and three from work.

I understand that an inflight engine fire on a passenger-carrying aircraft in commercial service resulting in a forced landing not at an airport is not something that happens without leaving a trace in the public record, or at least in contemporary memory of others involved. Yet when I enter the search string <Russell Nelson LDS aircraft accident > all that comes up are different versions of the same story as told by Nelson or his biographers. Others here have tried to corroborate the story and have spent a long time looking for supporting evidence. What has been found, especially SkyWest route map from the mid-1970s, casts serious doubt on the story.

As time goes different versions of the Rusty story seem to proliferate: turbulence to an engine fire, to an aircraft engulfed in flames, to landing in a field, to landing at an airport. In its retelling and embellishment, it has taken on the status of folklore.

This is a problem. Few will ever forget the first time they heard, and then saw, a rattlesnake. It is well understood that the sudden shot of adrenaline that activates the fight or flight response also helps potentiate long term memory. There is an evolutionary benefit to remembering what a rattlesnake sounds like and where they are found. It is unlikely that one would misremember the rattlesnake encountered on a mountain trail as being in their back yard, or that the rattlesnake was really a cobra.

The skeptic would ask why such life changing event - one of sufficient impact to motivate the writing of a book, was it not mentioned in public before two years after it happened. Indeed one would expect the miraculous deliverance of one of gods chosen from near certain death in a flaming airplane would have been front page news in Southern Utah, at least, especially in 1976.

A skeptic would ask why there is no contemporary record of this event to be found, even in the history of an airline that discloses operational details, down to the purchase of new aircraft, or that Robert Redford once flew with them?

A skeptic would why such a dramatic and miraculous deliverance of a Mormon leader was not be big news at the time in the land of the Mormons?

A skeptic would ask why a story that is asserted to be fact is, so far, unfalsifiable.

Your assertion that the goal here is to prove "what we knew all along -- that Nelson is lying SOB who makes Crap up--" , appears to be biased and is a bit over the top.

Until there is a shred of credible independent third party corroborating evidence, or contemporary published verification of some kind, I will remain a non-believer. And it appears than many others will as well.

[IHAQ]

Nelson “Miraculously the dive extinguished the fire.”

Would you please link me to the source of the quote?

General Conference 1992
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... h?lang=eng

I remember vividly an experience I had as a passenger in a small two-propeller airplane. One of its engines suddenly burst open and caught on fire. The propeller of the flaming engine was starkly stilled. As we plummeted in a steep spiral dive toward the earth, I expected to die. Some of the passengers screamed in hysterical panic. Miraculously, the precipitous dive extinguished the flames.

[IHAQ]

Apologies in advance, but your science analogy in no way applies to the situation at hand. I performed no experiment. I obtained no data that are to be evaluated. Why not just start with the idea that a scientist should be a skeptic? The job here is to evaluate the assertions of others, presented without evidence, that are nonetheless intended to be taken as fact.

Rather than attempting to "--congratulate ourselves that we proved what we knew all along -- that Nelson is lying SOB who makes Crap up--", as you put it, like Robert Ritner requested of Bill Hamblin regarding the Book of Mormon, I'm looking for one shred of corroborating evidence to back the story up.

As a former owner of two aircraft and holder of a commercial pilot's license with twin engine and instrument ratings, and working on my second million miles with Delta, I have more aviation experience than most. With others, I have disassembled, repaired, painted, reassembled and test flown aircraft. Over the years I have lost four colleagues in two light aircraft accidents, one from my flying club and three from work.

I understand that an inflight engine fire on a passenger-carrying aircraft in commercial service resulting in a forced landing not at an airport is not something that happens without leaving a trace in the public record, or at least in contemporary memory of others involved. Yet when I enter the search string <Russell Nelson LDS aircraft accident > all that comes up are different versions of the same story as told by Nelson or his biographers. Others here have tried to corroborate the story and have spent a long time looking for supporting evidence. What has been found, especially SkyWest route map from the mid-1970s, casts serious doubt on the story.

As time goes different versions of the Rusty story seem to proliferate: turbulence to an engine fire, to an aircraft engulfed in flames, to landing in a field, to landing at an airport. In its retelling and embellishment, it has taken on the status of folklore.

This is a problem. Few will ever forget the first time they heard, and then saw, a rattlesnake. It is well understood that the sudden shot of adrenaline that activates the fight or flight response also helps potentiate long term memory. There is an evolutionary benefit to remembering what a rattlesnake sounds like and where they are found. It is unlikely that one would misremember the rattlesnake encountered on a mountain trail as being in their back yard, or that the rattlesnake was really a cobra.

The skeptic would ask why such life changing event - one of sufficient impact to motivate the writing of a book, was it not mentioned in public before two years after it happened. Indeed one would expect the miraculous deliverance of one of gods chosen from near certain death in a flaming airplane would have been front page news in Southern Utah, at least, especially in 1976.

A skeptic would ask why there is no contemporary record of this event to be found, even in the history of an airline that discloses operational details, down to the purchase of new aircraft, or that Robert Redford once flew with them?

A skeptic would why such a dramatic and miraculous deliverance of a Mormon leader was not be big news at the time in the land of the Mormons?

A skeptic would ask why a story that is asserted to be fact is, so far, unfalsifiable.

Your assertion that the goal here is to prove "what we knew all along -- that Nelson is lying SOB who makes Crap up--" , appears to be biased and is a bit over the top.

Until there is a shred of credible independent third party corroborating evidence, or contemporary published verification of some kind, I will remain a non-believer. And it appears than many others will as well.

My issue with stories like the one we are talking about on this thread is that they aren’t harmless anecdotes. They are stories that, ultimately, help to part members from their cash. Maybe not nefariously, maybe with the best of intentions, but the bottom line is still the same. They deserve to be fact checked and, if found to be less than completely honest, deserve to be shown for what they are.

So far, we have drawn a blank on finding corroboration for something that, it seems to me, shouldn’t be this difficult to corroborate.

[Dr Moore]

I think this is a fascinating example of how the brain creates personal stories, manufactures meaning for them, and evolves them over time, all with no conscious confabulation or embellishment.

Maybe so. But then, he does use the word "miraculously" when recounting how the airflow of the rapid descent put the fires out.

[Dr Moore]

How many times has Nelson told and retold this story? It seems to have been a life-changer for him, no? So why wouldn't he do some digging to validate his recounting of the specific technical details he seems to recall so vividly.