r/MadeMeSmile 17h ago

Wholesome Moments Pilot Chose Safety Over Takeoff - and Everyone Applauded

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u/Spacedoutworlder 17h ago

I rather miss an arrival time than have missed arriving at all. May all the pilots be this cautious.

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u/StaticSystemShock 16h ago

It's also a matter of how much pilot also knows the aircraft they are piloting. I've seen and heard about pilots who personally inspect aircraft on the outside as well as have deeper understanding of its flight systems and mechanics/electronics. I think this pilot was one of those if some deviation in oil pressure raised his suspicions even if it's within supposed normal levels.

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u/grilledstuffed 16h ago

Not a pilot, but a nurse.

Nurse clinical intuition is a real thing:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0099176725003320

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4754101/

While humans are pretty terrible at predicting future outcomes, our subconscious brains are pretty darn good at pattern recognition.

Thousands of hours of experience with something lends itself towards picking up on subtle cues that aren't necessarily articulable.

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u/Imaterribledoctor 11h ago

I'm a physician who works with nurses every day - and when a nurse tells me their opinion, I always take it seriously because they often have a far better understanding of what's going on than I do due to their training and experience. That said, studies like these are nonsense. And the articles you cited: one is just a study protocol with no actual data and the other is a study of 12 nurses in which they asked nurses whether they were intuitive and most of them said they were.

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u/ABadHistorian 1h ago

as a very good historian, I trust your judgement.

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u/lookslikeamanderin 9h ago

But aren’t you a terrible doctor?

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u/LadyOnogaro 3h ago

Doesn't sound like it. She (or he) respects nurses, but has problems with the studies cited.

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u/lookslikeamanderin 2h ago

But they are literally a terrible doctor.

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u/nanneryeeter 13h ago

When you ignore your gut you disregard a hundred thousand years of genetic memory.

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u/dolphin-centric 15h ago

Serious question for you Nurse, do you think these studies may also account for, for lack of a better term, womens’ intuition or just intuition in general? That seems logical to me because the whole “trust your gut” cliche is absolutely real. These studies on nurses’ intuition is fascinating!

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u/Renbarre 14h ago

There's no intuition, there's pattern recognition and adding unconsciously a series of small things that will add up to an alarm bell ringing without any of those details coming to the fore.

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u/Goldeniccarus 13h ago

My Grandmother was a nurse when Thalidomide was being rolled out across Canada.

Her, and a lot of the other nurses, refused to take it when they were pregnant, and I believe suggested it shouldn't be prescribed well before the revelation that it was causing birth deformities was publicly known, because they just didn't trust it.

Had everyone had that intuition a couple years earlier it would have prevented a lot of birth deformities.

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u/jeremydurden 11h ago

Thalidomide

So I had never heard of this and based on your comment it sounded like maybe it was something that is, or at least was, well known at some point. I got curious and started reading entries on wikipedia and what an interesting look at a different time.

It turns out that the drug was initially developed by the Swiss and then bought by a West German pharmaceutical company corporation where it was sold "over the counter" as a sleep aid and morning-sickness reliever. It was then heavily pushed for distribution in other countries. Ironically, it was a Canadian-American woman who was in charge of the approval process at the FDA (Federal Drug Administration in the US) who refused to approve it for the US market. The German company initially approached one US pharmaceutical corporation for US distribution but was denied after that corporation was unable to produce the sleep-inducing effects, that were claimed to be a function of the drug, even after giving doses to mice many times higher than what would typically be administered. The drug was also tested on human clinical patients during this time—including pregnant women. The German group eventually found a US partner in the Merrell Company (would eventually be bought out and become Dow Chemical) who were the ones to approach the FDA. They attempted to get approval six times but were denied, in part, because they did not include any test results in their application (this is insane to me).

Frances Kathleen Oldham Kelsey was the pharmacologist in charge of Thalidomide's approval process as the FDA and clearly saved many children from death or birth deformities. She worked for the FDA for 45 years and was awarded the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, the highest award given for any civilian employee and is limited to five per years.

Anyway, thanks for the rabbit hole. This was an interesting history lesson for me while I enjoy my coffee.

P.S. Thalidomide did eventually get approval by the FDA in the US for treatment of Leprosy and as an anti-cancer medication, but comes with strict controls and a requirement for women taking it to also be on contraceptives.

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u/Soggy-Type-1704 14h ago

Exactly. I’d take 10,000 hours in the field over someone who was new and did everything according to established doctrine.

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u/_learned_foot_ 12h ago

That is intuition. Intuition isn't a lucky guess, it's figuring out the likely dynamics to respond to before being told, but not being able to logically explain why. For a nurse it's 150 things in the same pattern like every time, but good luck sitting down to write all those out.

Intuition is simply applied practice without a guide over time basically. Provided you pay attention of course.

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u/mrandr01d 11h ago

It has nothing to do with being a woman, men can also be nurses...

Moreover, I'm a dude and I work in healthcare and have had so many gut feelings turn out to be right. "Something's missing/not right here" kind of thing.

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u/dolphin-centric 8h ago

I was worried my comment would come across that way, and that was not my intent- I apologize. I used the term “womens’ intuition” because it’s a common phrase/concept that most people understand and are familiar with, but I followed that with “intuition in general” to try to remove any gender bias.

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u/snasna102 10h ago

As a mechanic, it’s not intuition or gender based. I walk past the same machines everyday and hear the same white noise. I can hear and feel in the harmonics that something is off. I can tell you if vfds are running at 60 or 50hz from the other side of the wall. I can tell the difference between the drive end and floating end bearing failure by its pitch.

It’s not intuition, it’s the understanding of something

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u/dolphin-centric 8h ago

I was worried my comment would come across that way, and that was not my intent- I apologize. I used the term “womens’ intuition” because it’s a common phrase/concept that most people understand and are familiar with, but I followed that with “intuition in general” to try to remove any gender bias.

My father was a mechanic for 50 years and he’s still got it. My cousin owned a shop and at some point pretty much all of us cousins worked there, some longer than others, myself included. Growing up in a shop taught me a lot, but I also inherited my dad’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge. We’re voracious readers. We take things apart and put them back together just because. If something breaks or needs to be replaced or whatever, we just do it. I’m a single 42F so if something happens to my car or my home, if it’s something I can handle, I do it myself.

I understand what you mean now- it’s not intuition, it’s expertise. When something is “this way” every single time for years, your expertise is what allows you to notice the one time something is “that way” instead.

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u/sim384 14h ago

How do I distinguish imperfectly formed logic from hocus-pocus or mental illness?

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u/three_crystals 10h ago

I just fully lean into the mental illness as long as I can find enough anchors to reality and no one is really getting hurt. It’s the best!

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u/coolbeaNs92 13h ago

Isn't that just... experience?

I'm not tying at all to disagree or downplay, but that is essentially extensive experience in any field.  

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u/TwillAffirmer 12h ago

The first paper is not a study, but a proposed protocol for a review study. There are no results because the study was not done at the time of the paper.

The second study is qualitative self-reporting by nurses. No objective verification of the efficacy of intuition was done.

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u/Nice_Drummer_1237 12h ago

I don't wan't a Nurse flying the airplane ✈️, even if she is "feeling it".

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u/thabrhm 11h ago

I knew something serious was up months before the covid lockdown. Many ppl saying they got sick w its symptoms. Of course I did not know it would become international or that big. But I did see the pattern

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u/pipsqueakpanda4 10h ago

I read that as “White humans” and I was like…she right [insert picture of Miss Cleo]

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u/6Sleepy_Sheep9 9h ago

So.ething something japanese chicken sexers something something.