maui
Confirmation of an engine failure and identifying the correct engine is simple. For arguments sake if one was just sitting with their hands and feet off the controls the yaw itself would tell you which engine has failed. Yaw left left engine failed, yaw right right engine failed. Now assuming you have your hands and feet appropriately placed you can use the dead foot dead engine to further confirm which engine has failed. So confirmation is not a problem, in addition just because one pulls back the correct throttle lever, who is to say that you will not pull the wrong pitch or mixture control.
So the next point which I fear is more relevant, are we failing or simulating engine failure with mixture to reduce wear and tear to reduce costs thereby putting maintenance costs ahead of safety?
I was trained using the mixtures cut 30 years ago but then I was young and didn’t know better, fortunately now this is all done in a simulator. I am all for realism but not when safety is an issue. Perhaps if Multi Engine Training incorporated more use of the simulator where procedures could be honed it would be best for all. One thing I did notice at some of the flying schools was the availability of twin simulators which were not around in my GA days.