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

[Lem]

I don't think I have EVER seen such an extreme flip-flop as this.

[honorentheos]

I don't think I have EVER seen such an extreme flip-flop as this.

I doubt there is anything in this thread that would qualify for that, but perhaps you'd extend the courtesy of explaining? I'm curious what you think was a flip flop in the thread.

[Dr Moore]

Whether it was an accident or an incident, it will have data entered in the Accident Type cell in the Table. More information about the event is often included in the narrative as it was for the hard landings.

So then if I get your message, certain events such as one engine failing, landing gear damage, and light damage to the skin were all categorized as accident types before 1978 and then as incident types from 1978 onward?

[honorentheos]

Misposted.

[Gadianton]

Honor,

I'm calling BS on Nelson, the same way I called BS on that guy, as you said you would call BS on that guy, and leave it at that because the ROI from digging into it will be very low. Same for Nelson. But then, some sharp folks here provided information that could put Nelson into the realm of evidence, and given his much higher stature than that guy, the potential ROI has increased.

How plausible is it that he experienced the airplane event that was cited as a motivation for writing his small-print autobiography? Just using basic ranges of 1 - 5 with 1 being the least plausible and 5 the most, I'd land on a 4. I think it's more plausible than not, and enough so to avoid a 3. How plausible is the story presented in the Dew biography? I'd give it a 1. It contradicts his own early tellings and it has all of the appearance of modern myth-making. It's a faith-inspiring myth now.

So, what would you rate the most basic telling's plausibility? Meaning, the short autobiography preface claim not the ones provided in conferences or other gatherings.

So, first of all, the Dew story might be the greatest mythologizing, and it might be a 1, but it's not a 1 for me in a very interesting way. For me, the most primary account is the 1985 account. That account, if not true, has the highest degree of conscientious fabrication in it, which goes along with the highest degree of narrative coherence. My gut is it's a 1-2, and it's premeditated.

You have a natural mythologizing from 1985 on, but not a natural mythologizing from the initial "kernel of a story" in heart-to-heart to the talk in 1985. The 1985 story didn't arise out of forgetting details from an earlier more coherent account, but out of a premeditated, fabrication of a story with attention to detail.

If the 1985 story is also found in h2h or a common source journal, then that would throw me for a loop. I suspect it's not, but that would be as unexpected of a find for me as an incident report validating the Dixie trip.

Assuming the h2h proto-account is all there is from that time period, I give it a 2, because he wouldn't have spared its details for the 481 page book.

If the 1985 story is also in h2h or a related journal, then to me it's anachronistic (the obvious BS such as the pilot dialogue) and I'll have to come back to that tomorrow as I need some sleep. I believe I've noted my ambivalence in such a case upthread also. I guess I haven't done much to sort that out.

[honorentheos]

Here's a blog post reporting the content from Heart-to-Heart. It's not clear if it also gets described in more detail in the book itself.

In the Preface Elder Nelson referred to the frightening experience that jolted him into writing the book: “The final nudge came as I was a passenger in a small airplane plummeting earthward with one of its two engines exploded. I realized then that although both the spiritual and material needs for my family had been provided, I had not left for them a reasonable recapitulation of my life that they could review. The safe emergency landing of that disabled aircraft provided me with the chance I needed.”

Did he fabricate the entire incident? I find that less plausible than the alternative. Does the retelling's shift to being about his feeling calm in the face of death matter? Maybe. It could be he invented and assigned this significance to the story at a later date such as the 1985 telling. If the current project of this thread had a purpose and need statement, how exactly would this difference fall under that statement? I leave the content of the statement open since I'm not sure. I mean, there's argument about how certain one ought to be over if the event is a complete fabrication but that doesn't clarify the goal. If the ROI is high enough to warrant more effort, what is the expected return?

[Res Ipsa]

Dr. Moore,
As far as the transcribed data base records are concerned, it does not matter how it was classified. As Tapirrider and I have explained, any event that substantially affects the airworthiness of an aircraft or its crew must be reported to the NTSB. You can read NTSB 830 upthread again for the details. An engine fire is specifically called out under NTSB 830 as an occurrence requiring immediate notification. (See the NTSB Piper Navajo engine fire report screenshot upthread as an example.)

As I have tried to explain several times, when one searches the data base with NO RESTRICTIONS, the data base returns every record for the time span included. What you found is a data base that was transcribed and from the hardcopy records over several years (looks like 2005 to 2012 perhaps). The records from 1973 to sometime in the early 1980s were transcribed and digitized using a standard format.

The data base format was set up with a single field to categorize the event in question. That field was Accident Type. As I have just described upthread, whether the event was a ground loop, a hard landing, a prop strike, or a total demolition of the aircraft, a notation was made in the Accident Type cell. There is no incident cell in the Table.

If one wants to see what happened in Utah civil aviation in 1976, enter 1976-01-01 to 1977-01-01 for the date span, and UTAH in the State field, and run the query. (Leave every other field in default.) I just ran it again and for 1976 and 54 records came up. Nothing even remotely related to Russell M. Nelson's story in any way came up for 1976. Click the Details on any records of interest to see the information as shown below.

Whether it was an accident or an incident, it will have data entered in the Accident Type cell in the Table. More information about the event is often included in the narrative as it was for the hard landings.

In the sample below from 1976, the PA32 (single engine Piper Cherokee 6) collided with another aircraft after landing in Logan Utah in, or soon after, a snowstorm on March 9, 1976, and sustained substantial damage.

Cool story, bro. Except for the fact that you are completely misrepresenting the database you are searching and contradicting what the NTSB says about the data you are looking at.

As far as the transcribed data base records are concerned, it does not matter how it was classified. As Tapirrider and I have explained, any event that substantially affects the airworthiness of an aircraft or its crew must be reported to the NTSB. You can read NTSB 830 upthread again for the details. An engine fire is specifically called out under NTSB 830 as an occurrence requiring immediate notification. (See the NTSB Piper Navajo engine fire report screenshot upthread as an example.)

The reporting regulations have zero to do with how the occurrences are reported in the database. All accidents and a subset of incidents required immediate notification. But the databases use the term "accidents" and "incidents." Upthread, I searched the decade of the 1980s for incidents involving engine fires or explosions. Every single engine fire requires immediate notification. But in the 1980s, about 250 engine fire occurrences were categorized by the experts as "incidents." That's because an engine fire that doesn't spread beyond the engine itself falls within an exception to the definition of "substantial damage." In talking about what is and what is not in the databases, the reporting requirements are a red herring.

As I have tried to explain several times, when one searches the data base with NO RESTRICTIONS, the data base returns every record for the time span included. What you found is a data base that was transcribed and from the hardcopy records over several years (looks like 2005 to 2012 perhaps). The records from 1973 to sometime in the early 1980s were transcribed and digitized using a standard format.

Yes, a search with no restrictions turns up every record in the database. But it can't return incidents if they were never put into the database in the first place. And we don't have to guess at the Aviation DB's sources, because it tells us, right on the website.

Accident NTSB http://app.ntsb.gov/avdata/Access/
Accident/Incidents FAA http://av-information.faa.gov/dd_sublevel.asp?Folder=%5CAID

The Aviation DB that you've been using says it's scraping data from the NTSB and FAA databases. Now, Aviation DB may organize the information differently on its pages, but that's a far cry from handcoding paper reports.

The data base format was set up with a single field to categorize the event in question. That field was Accident Type. As I have just described upthread, whether the event was a ground loop, a hard landing, a prop strike, or a total demolition of the aircraft, a notation was made in the Accident Type cell. There is no incident cell in the Table.

That's not an accurate description. You left out the fact that there are two relevant fields. The one you left out was "Event Type," which clearly differentiates between "accident" and "incident." "Accident Type" cell simply describes the various types of things that can happen to an aircraft -- it does not imply that the database codes both incidents and accidents as "accidents." You can prove that by running a search in 1978, the first year that includes incidents.

Not only that, the record provides us with the information on which the classification is based. It classifies the damage and the extent of injuries. The record from 1976 that you posted clearly states that the damage is "substantial." By definition, if the aircraft sustains "substantial damage," it's an accident, not an incident. So, there is no evidence whatsoever that the government agencies that had been distinguishing between accidents and incidents for decades just decided for the hell of it to drop the distinction and code everything as accidents. That's as fantastic as anything in Russell's story.

If one wants to see what happened in Utah civil aviation in 1976, enter 1976-01-01 to 1977-01-01 for the date span, and UTAH in the State field, and run the query. (Leave every other field in default.) I just ran it again and for 1976 and 54 records came up. Nothing even remotely related to Russell M. Nelson's story in any way came up for 1976. Click the Details on any records of interest to see the information as shown below.

Yes, 54 records come up. All accidents. No incidents. Each one describes the damage to the aircraft as substantial. So, it's not true that your search shows everything happening in civil aviation in 1976. It shows only the occurrences that the NTSB coded as "accidents." It does not show any incidents. You can tell by looking at how the damage was coded.

Whether it was an accident or an incident, it will have data entered in the Accident Type cell in the Table. More information about the event is often included in the narrative as it was for the hard landings.

Yes, and it will also have data entered in the Event Type field, which will tell us whether the occurrence was classified by the relevant government agency as an "accident" or an "incident." And, on top of that, it will also tell us how the damage and injuries were classified, so we can turn to the definition section of the regulations and figure it out for ourselves.

In the sample below from 1976, the PA32 (single engine Piper Cherokee 6) collided with another aircraft after landing in Logan Utah in, or soon after, a snowstorm on March 9, 1976, and sustained substantial damage.

Why, yes, that's why it says. And by definition, that's an accident. Which is exactly what the record itself says in the Event Type field.

But where did the Aviation DB scrape that information from? It an't be the FAA, because the FAA's database says that it contains only incidents, not accidents, and the records start only in 1978. The only other source listed by the Aviation DB is the NTSB Accident Database & Synopses. So, let's look in the NTSB database for your 1976 record. Ah, here it is:



The NTSB tells us right on the data query page that the database contains data from reports of all accidents and selected incidents. So we already know it doesn't contain all incidents.

It looks like the Aviation DB changed some formatting and derived its categories for accidents and incidents from the damage and injury fields, but this is the source of the Aviation DB record. You can tell by looking at the text description. Note that we don't need the NTSB to tell us whether this was classified as an accident or incident. We can tell from the damage and injury fields and the definitions in the regulation. If the damage is none or minor and the injuries are none or minor, it's an incident. If the damages is at least susbstantial or the injuries are at least serious, it's an accident. That's what the regulations say.

So, even though this claim of yours that the NTSB for some reason abandoned regulatory distinction between accident and incident is based on nothing other than your misunderstanding of the difference between the name of a field and the contents of a field, let's test your claim anyway. If you are right, I shouldn't be able to find any incidents in this database before 1978 because they were all disguised as accidents. Be right back.

Oops.



Here's an incident from 1970 in Utah. We can tell, because the NTSB noted it in the record: "CLASSIFIED AS INCIDENT." And we can tell because the damage was classified as "minor" and there were no injuries. This falsifies your claim of how the records were being classified.

Bottom line: We know the accidents that occurred in the 1970s. We know next to nothing about the incidents. Why? Because the NTSB's selection of incidents to include was pretty picky. In fact, there's only this one from 1970 through 1977.

If the NTSB classified whatever happened on Nelson's plane as an "incident, we won't find it because we know there was only one selected to be in the database for the relevant period of time.

That's why we need to try and find the paper records of incidents.

[Res Ipsa]

What am I missing here that makes this worthy of being the latest big dig effort? I was totally into undercutting the Greatest Guesser claims because it was making specific claims including both procedures and data assumptions. And the authors of it were engaging criticisms of their work. The latter was really the part that made it worth while to me. Maybe that's what I don't get about this. I don't think there's an argument to engage with the Dew Biography. There's no payoff in shifting the burden of evidence from, "Nelson misrepresents the facts in self-aggrandizing ways" to "Nelson fabricated a story beginning with citing it as the motivation to write a faith-inspiring biography 40 years ago that was small print and intended only for members of his family before he was even a GA."

The latter's description in the autobiography of an airplane fire that inspired him to leave his family a record of faith-promoting events from his life up to that point is baseline plausible to me. The Dew biography is clearly an excessively embellished, practically mythologized retelling. The space between those ends? Uh, not more than the thirty minutes I just spent verifying how engine fires might be reported as incidents and not automatically accidents.

For me, it's an interest in how stories originate and evolve over time. I generally don't pay any attention to Nelson himself. He could be the equivalent of Mother Teresa or Jack the Ripper for all I know. It's also an interesting exercise for me in trying to reconstruct events from evidence. Some people do crossword puzzles...

[IHAQ]

As I see it, the chances of finding corroboration for the "Doors Of Death" flight are dwindling.

A report of it is not in the official database, and there could be a number of reasons why not. One of which is that the flight did not experience the events Nelson describes and so no report was ever made. The last chance saloon for turning up a report is in the paper files that Res wants to interrogate (but wants to get the right search parameters before submitting the enquiry to avoid missing the location the report would be in should a report exist).

It's a shame we can't track down the other people on the flight, or the flight departure/arrival records themselves but I don't see how that would be possible.

[Physics Guy]

I'll be amazed if it's even possible to find hard information about a scary but ultimately minor small plane event in the 1970s. There's some impressive expertise about flying here in this thread but it seems to me that the tough part is not flying but 1970's bureaucracy. What should have been recorded is one thing but what actually was recorded back then, and preserved in accessible form until now, is apparently a quite different question. I'm not sure anyone here is really an expert on that, or should be. So I don't think anyone has any face to lose here as an expert on anything meaningful. We seem to be up against the bureaucratic vagaries of the era when computers filled rooms.

I've been following this thread because isn't this Nelson fellow supposed to be the Mormon prophet? I guess I'm just naïve but for all my skepticism about Mormon claims for Joseph Smith and his Book, I've still been assuming that serious Mormons are pretty serious about virtues like honesty. I'd have expected someone like Nelson to stick rigorously close to the truth even when there was no chance of being found out.

If the top Mormon dog of our day can be caught in a bald-faced faith-promoting self-aggrandising lie, to me that seems like big news. Maybe I just haven't been paying close enough attention for long enough, but so far I haven't just been taking it for granted that someone like Nelson would do something like that.

It's a small thing but damning. A person who can completely make up a story like that just because it sounds good cannot be trusted at all to tell you anything important about anything. A person who can lie so brazenly cannot be constantly thinking about their own responsibility before an all-seeing God to uphold the terrifyingly sacred office they hold. This small damning story could tell us whether those fifteen ageing men are just some deluded but decent old guys or whether they are a cabal of cynical scammers carrying on the true tradition of their con-artist founder.

So I don't think it's weird that this thread is closing in on sixty pages. This could be a big deal. I just think we could maybe all relax and cut each other some slack in the face of the bizarre archeological task involved in finding the data.