The maniacal use of “issues” (4)

In earlier posts (1, 2, 3), I explained that the vague word issues had become a mania word. Many writers and speakers abuse this handy word in order to avoid speaking clearly or committing themselves; in short, they use it as a weasel word.

Here’s another example of the abuse of issues.

An article in Spiegel Online, titled “The Last Four Minutes of Air France Flight 447: Reconstruction of 447’s Final Minutes Reveal Continuing Safety Problems in Civil Aviation” (February 26, 2010), contained these paragraphs:

Flying through thunderclouds over the Atlantic, more and more ice was hurled at the aircraft. In the process, it knocked out other, far more important, sensors: the pencil-shaped airspeed gauges known as pitot tubes.

One alarm after another lit up the cockpit monitors. One after another, the autopilot, the automatic engine control system, and the flight computers shut themselves off. “It was like the plane was having a stroke,” says Gérard Arnoux, the head of the French pilots union SPAF.

The final minutes of flight AF 447 had begun. Four minutes after the airspeed indicator failed, the plane plunged into the ocean, killing all 228 people on board.

…

Pitot tubes sometimes also fail on Boeing aircraft. When SPIEGEL contacted the American Federal Aviation Administration, the body which oversees civilian flight in the US, the FAA confirmed that there had been eight such incidents on a Boeing 777, three on a 767, and one each on a 757 and a Jumbo. Boeing is currently conducting a study on the safety effects of “high-altitude pitot icing on all models in its product line,” says FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette. The FAA did not, however, identify “any safety issues arising” during these incidents.

What did the FAA spokeswoman (or, if the reporter paraphrased her words, the reporter) mean by the vague phrase “safety issues”?

She (or he) may have meant to say that, during the 13 incidents studied by Boeing, the pitot tubes had not iced up;

Or the pitot tubes had iced up, but not enough to have affected the airspeed readings;

Or the pitot tubes had iced up and had affected the airspeed readings, but not by enough to shut down the autopilot;

Or the pitot tubes had iced up and had affected the airspeed readings and had shut down the autopilot, but not the automatic engine control system or the flight computers;

Or the pitot tubes had iced up and had affected the airspeed readings and had shut down the autopilot and automatic engine control system, but not the flight computers;

Or, the pitot tubes had iced up and had affected the airspeed readings and had shut down the autopilot, automatic engine control system and flight computers, as on the doomed Air France Flight 447, but the crews had overcome these problems and had landed safely.

Or one of many other possible meanings.

The Takeaway: Let others be maniacal; you be sober. Before you reach for the handy, vague word issues, ask yourself, “What is a clear way to make my point?” Don’t make your readers guess what you mean; if you do it frequently, your readers may become suspicious of your intentions.

See disclaimer.