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When, on Wednesday, a reporter asked National Transportation Safety Board chairman Deborah Hersman about the role of pilot "deference" in the Asiana 214 plane crash, the conversation turned to a media speculation meme that's been bubbling about the deadly incident for about 24 hours: could the fact that the pilots were Korean have anything to do with their behavior leading up to the crash?

Hersman, as you might expect, refused to throw any weight behind that speculation today. For one thing, that leap assumes that the pilots are at fault, and the NTSB is still on-site, conducting an investigation to determine probable cause that won't be finished for months. But there's a reason the theory came to mind so quickly for many: it's based on an essay by Malcolm Gladwell, which itself is based on data from Korean Air crashes in the '80s and '90s. Here's Gladwell, summarizing his theory from Outliers with Fortune:

F: You share a fascinating story about culture and airline safety. G: Korean Air had more plane crashes than almost any other airline in the world for a period at the end of the 1990s. When we think of airline crashes, we think, Oh, they must have had old planes. They must have had badly trained pilots. No. What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical. You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the U.S. But Boeing and Airbus design modern, complex airplanes to be flown by two equals. That works beautifully in low-power-distance cultures [like the U.S., where hierarchies aren't as relevant]. But in cultures that have high power distance, it's very difficult.

We asked Malcolm Gladwell for his thoughts on the use of his essay in the particular context of the Asiana crash. "I can understand why my Outliers chapter has been of interest, given how central cockpit communication issues are in plane crashes," Gladwell told The Atlantic Wire in an email, adding, "My sense is that we should wait for the full report on the crash before drawing any conclusions about its cause." As for the applicability of his work to the recent Asiana crash, Gladwell noted that his essay was specific to the problems (and solutions) of one airline — Korean Air, "which I think did an extraordinary job of addressing the cultural issues involved in pilot communication. This was a crash involving a completely different airline," he said.