Compare this with a closed system, such as healthcare and hospitals. That industry takes a very different approach to dealing with errors; not surprisingly, it produces vastly inferior results.
How different? Syed notes the remarkable contrast between air travel and preventable medical errors: After heart disease and cancer, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in America. As many as a half-million fatalities in the US, at a cost estimated at $17 billion a year, are due to errors. Peter Pronovost, a clinician at Johns Hopkins Medical School, wondered how we would respond if two 747 jumbo jets fell out of the sky each day, killing roughly 900 people. That's how many people die daily from medical mistakes.
Why is health care so different from aviation? First, there is little publicly available data and no standardized review process when errors occur. Whatever self-evaluation takes place is private, sealed, and not readily available for public scrutiny. Some people believe doctors are infallible saviors, creating a reluctance to admit error. Insurance costs, litigation, and protecting reputations reduce the industry's desire for public accounting. In short, healthcare is everything that aviation is not.
-Barry Ritholtz, How Not To Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors That Destroy Wealth—And How To Avoid Them
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