[Peetwo]

Brock's search for search probity -

Fresh off (sshh don't tell "K") JW blog watch, I came across yet more excellent posts from self-appointed search auditor Brock McEwen, that IMO nails much of the latest search narrative bollocks... :

Brock McEwen

Posted August 21, 2016 at 2:06 PM

@CTP7622: i support – in general, and on principle – your search for truth. That it takes you outside the Inmarsat data’s straight jacket is something to be applauded, not derided. Please keep asking hard questions.

The irony is that two-plus years of phrenetic analysis of Inmarsat data-based path hypotheses are themselves predicated on the “gut feeling” that the signal data has earned our trust. By any objective measure, it has not earned our trust. It is eminently reasonable to decide not to trust it.

The scientific approach to any investigation requires that our first step be to establish the veracity of data we’re to treat as inputs. This is what I have tried my best to do: “if”, my research postulates, “the Inmarsat data is authentic, then here are some things we should expect to see. Do we see them?”. These studies – and others like them – generally suggest not consistency, but contradictions:

#1: A high-energy impact predicts a detectable sound. By far the two most promising sound recordings came from nowhere near Arc 7.
#2: A high-energy impact anywhere along the portion of Arc 7 bounded by expert fuel and BFO analysis predicts floating debris on Australian shores by the end of 2014. Nothing was found.
#3: Authentic signal data predicts an authentic search, and authentic reasons why other evidence should be dismissed. Neither have been observed.

#4: A high-energy, unpiloted impact anywhere along the portion of Arc 7 bounded by expert fuel and BFO analysis predicts deep sea wreckage within a scant handful of nautical miles of Arc 7. None was found.

The new idea that the plane was actively piloted well beyond the search area and THEN taken into a high energy dive gets past #4, but not #1-3. And it creates new difficulties regarding motive – as well as with the BFO data, which still at least nominally indicates steep descent at the moment of crossing Arc 7. Were there 2 steep dives, then: 1 in the middle of the search zone, to create the signal data, and another several minutes later – beyond the search zone – to create the piece of interior debris?

Recent arguments that the search bounds set by BFO/fuel experts failed to consider all possibilities – and that the actual impact was JUST north of the established northern search boundary – are hard to swallow. Not only do they leave #1 and #2 unaddressed, they make #3 doubly troubling: the ~30°s zone now touted could have been fully searched instead of leaving ships idle while winter storms rolled through the roaring 40’s.

Or instead of widening the 40°s zone to widths emphatically counter-indicated by their own theory. Or heck, while search ships were on their way to and from the 40°s zone. If the latest ~30°s impact zone theory is correct, the search effort has been either persistently and spectacularly incompetent, or not in good faith. The former is not rational, and the latter is not consistent.

Belief in a LOW-energy impact runs aground on the cold, hard science of the piece of interior debris in particular. While this debris could certainly have been planted to make a low-energy impact appear to be high-energy, we now seem to require more elaborate scheming to defend the signal data’s authenticity than to discard it.

A word of caution, CTP7622: if MH370’s fate is inconsistent with the Inmarsat data – as you believe – then we are smack dab in the middle of a cover-up. A strong prediction under such a scenario would be the eventual “finding” of “wreckage” on the deep SIO seabed. Why create an elaborate cover-up theory pointing to a place not supported by any other internal logic, unless end game was to “vindicate” our faith in it, via planted wreckage made to look authentic?

This is why I am trying – with spotty support from this forum’s survivors, it must be said – to unite people from across the wide spectrum of “gut feelings” behind a campaign to force search leadership to throw their models and communications wide open to public scrutiny, so that we can verify beyond all reasonable doubt that this search has been conducted in good faith. It is the only thing which might help us determine MH370’s true fate.

---

&..

Brock McEwen

Posted August 21, 2016 at 6:06 PM
@all

People, if everything that has transpired since March 8, 2014 has passed your own personal sniff test with flying colours, then please be my guest, and trust the Inmarsat data to your heart’s content.

If, on the other hand, you’re like me – and think it’s POSSIBLE something happened that cannot be admitted – and tire of patronizing “don’t worry, be happy” arguments which, upon actual inspection, have yet to slay any tiger not constructed of tissue paper – then please join me in demanding a stiff audit of search leadership.

It’s not (just) that nothing has been found. My earlier post – I’d thought, and hoped – had made that abundantly clear.

It’s the many gaping chasms in the official story itself, and the abject darkness in which the investigation seems (not) to progress.

Some of these gaps are instances in which search leaders have claimed not to know information they ought reasonably to have known. For example: GEMS told me they had notified AMSA/ATSB by late 2014 that their “to Sumatra” model results were fatally flawed – well over half a year before the ATSB admitted this publicly (mere hours after the flaperon’s authenticity was asserted, and only hours before new drift analysis was released which washed the whole story away…). In the meantime, we’re told, Réunion Island debris was being used to kindle bonfires.

Other gaps are instances in which evidence held out to us as definitive is, in fact, highly dubious. For example, claims that Maldivian Airlines Flight DQA149 was what Kudahuvadhoo islanders actually saw, upon actual scrutiny, do not appear credible.
This how a good faith search for truth is run, is it?

And if the entire search is not in good faith, why on earth should we trust the Inmarsat data? All it would take is the alteration of a couple of records and fields before printing to PDF – and a stern hand hovering over any who might blab – and voila! A long trip to the deep SIO.

I’m not endorsing this theory. Indeed, I truly believe I am pursuing the only path that could possibly rule such a theory OUT. A stiff audit of all data which ever drove search strategy would surely reveal the Inmarsat data to be authentic, and shut the conspiracy theorists up once and for all.

Finding seabed wreckage surely won’t rule it out: planting evidence on a seabed is even easier than planting evidence in a PDF.

However it would appear the owner of the blog site is not so enamoured with Brock's search for search probity and bizarrely comes out swinging in support of the ATSB - err what drugs is he on??

Jeff Wise

Posted August 21, 2016 at 9:58 PM

@Brock, I think it’s really pretty crappy of you to pester the ATSB as relentlessly as you have, running them ragged with requests for arcane information, and then turn around and imply that there is something nefarious about their failure to find the plane. The fact is that the ATSB has been incredibly forthcoming and open about their data and their methodology. They clearly believe that the Inmarsat data must be authentic and untampered with, and given that, they have conducted the search in an entirely reasonable (I daresay heroic) way.

Yes, there is a contradiction between the high-speed descent implications of the 00:19 value and the fact that the plane hasn’t been found in the current search box. It’s a condundrum, one that the ATSB has yet to fully grapple with yet. It’s one that the IG has yet to grapple with, too.

BTW It’s pretty hilarious that you would criticize the ATSB for staging a cover-up when our own independent investigation colleagues are covering up data too. It seems like it’s awfully easy to get righteous and indignant when someone else is withholding data, but as soon as you have data to withhold, all of a sudden there are very serious and weighty reasons why it can’t be shared with the public.

Not a word of complaint from gadfly @Brock, though.

Err...'puke' ...no comment - I'll leave that to Brock...

Brock McEwen

Posted August 22, 2016 at 3:26 AM

@Jeff: good grief – for which data’s release am I not complaining loudly enough? I join you in calling for all data to be placed on the table, for the obvious reasons you articulate in the article heading these comments.

That includes this alleged police report (is that what you mean? I honestly don’t know) – though I hope I can be forgiven for putting it a bit lower down on the priority list – again, for reasons you yourself articulate. You’ve said that highly educated and keenly interested observers who’ve read it in full have already come to radically different conclusions regarding whether it is or isn’t damning. I’m going to go out on a limb, here, and guess that a priori opinions and a posteriori opinions were fairly highly correlated. Call it a hunch.

If these experts haven’t had their own needles moved by this report, I don’t expect it to matter a whole lot to us mere “gadflies”. I’m far more interested in data which could actually help us distinguish between “pilot practiced” and “pilot is being set up to appear to have practiced” such an utterly nonsensical path – I don’t expect those thousand pages to help us much, there.

Re: ATSB: thanks for the opportunity to clarify: as I’ve said many times before, the rank and file members of Fugro – and of the alphabet soup of agencies with jurisdiction over this mess – are indeed true heroes: doing difficult and thankless work in a constantly charged, often hostile, and sometimes dangerous environment. It is indeed hard to look at a detailed map of the search zone and not be humbled by the achievement. I thank them all profusely and publicly for their outstanding service. I would do the same for ANY soldiers ordered into a war – whether I thought those doing the ordering were clean or dirty.

But where this feeling of admiration apparently compels you to keep your reservations about signal data authenticity to yourself, it compels me to shout mine from the mountain tops: those heroes deserve to know beyond any doubt that their mission is worthy of their noble efforts.

If MH370’s true fate IS being covered up, then;

1) the deception would almost certainly be known only to a very few at the very top, and
2) we will never root it out unless and until we hold this alphabet soup accountable – I mean straight up, honest to God accountable – for the execution of its mission.

You can call this “pestering”, or any pejorative you please; it will not drain this task of a gram of value, nor drain my own attempt to help carry it out of a gram of determination.

If anyone thinks I’m in any way personally responsible for growing suspicions of official misconduct, I’ve got news for them: the general public was suspicious long before I started asking hard questions, and – absent full disclosure – will remain suspicious long after I’ve stopped. I very much doubt the general public has ever needed my help to smell a rat.

It is possible you know personally some of the officials involved, and perceive they are frustrated by my audits. (It is hard to imagine any other reason why your attacks seem to be increasingly personal.) If so, please pass on to them my gratitude for their efforts, my assurances that my suspicions concentrate well above their pay grade, and my apologies for any confusion on either point.

It’s just time to tell the truth. That’s all.

....well said that man


MTF...P2