From the Wiktionary:
Noun[edit]
clusterfuck (plural clusterfucks)
- (slang, vulgar) A chaotic situation where everything seems to go wrong. It is often caused by incompetence, communication failure, or a complex environment.
Google defintion:
..and so it goes with the search for MH370.
History has taught us, or as Duncan Steel might say - should have taught us, that any product resulting from a group effort is subject to far more flaws than the output from a single well-qualified contributor or a small group of such contributors. This fact is especially true in an age where rapid electronic communication produces a segregation of ideas (lots of papers on this subject) and a polarization of thought (lots more papers) far more rapidly than a weekly or monthly face to face meeting. The current US political situation is a good metaphor. According to Pew Research, America has never been more polarized except perhaps (data not available) in the period preceding the US Civil War.
Among my favorite books is a relatively obscure effort by Dr. Frederick Brooks (Harvard PhD), "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering". Basically Brooks chronicles his experiences and failures as manager of a large software project (Operating System for the IBM360) while employed at IBM. One of my favorite quotes from the book describes the evolution of a complex software system (and is applicable to any system or undertaking, IMO):
Does the above sound applicable to the current state of affairs in the quest for the terminus of MH370 - "Worn out as a base for progress."? The recent book draft, "Bayesian Methods in the Search for MH370", represents the high water mark in the evolution of the ATSB official search strategy. BTW, the authors claim that Springer-Verlag, which no longer exists (now simply Springer), will be the publisher. Springer has gone far down hill from their once respectable publisher position, and has been forced to retract a number of recent offerings due to flawed peer review and faked source material. Not trying to imply the DSTG effort is anything but sincere, it is simply based on the same tired assumptions that have not yielded any positive results, and are contradicted by lack of debris (surface or subsurface), drift models, and plausible causality.
Let's look at the starting definition above a little more closely to see how the terms fit.
Incompetence
Certainly a lot of that to go around. The principal contributors being the journalists supplying the conduit for disseminating information to the public. It is difficult to find an article in a mainstream channel that is not burdened by errors, misrepresentations, and attention grabbing tabloid style headlines. It is truly a pathetic reflection on the state of the journalistic profession today.
Communication Failure
The whole MH370 undertaking has been severely hampered by the refusal of virtually every party involved to release pertinent source information - be it radar data, flaperon forensics, cargo manifests, unredacted Inmarsat data,... The list goes on and on. I don't think anyone would dispute this point.
Complex Environment
No doubt. There is little to guide us, and it is a big ocean. The interpretation of the meager data we do have is subject to a lot of guess work and assumptions in order to derive a terminus. I could write a very long treatise on this aspect alone.
So, we have all the ingredients for a monumental clusterfuck. Is it any wonder we have reached the point where progress has halted (for some time now), and a restart (or serious consideration of alternatives) is both necessary and warranted as Brooks concludes above? What have we learned, and what could we have done better? My own opinion is that the search effort was "corrupted" by unfortunate timing. Had the flaperon been found before substantial expense was incurred searching what is now called the high priority area, events may well have evolved very differently. Sunk cost, both real and intellectual, is notoriously difficult to abandon. People will fabricate all sorts of reasons to continue down a path they have invested in long after it has become obvious that things are not working out according to plan.
No matter. Changes will not be made. The search will continue "in good faith" until people tire of tossing money into the ocean, and the whole affair quietly loses public interest. My own belief is that the aircraft will never be found. Blogs and tweets will go on in perpetuity, of course.
