rgbrock1, according to Bombardier, the Dash 8 does not have a problem with tail stall. The tail stall theory appears to be a red herring. What PTH is getting at is that the pilot may have believed he was experiencing a tail stall (due to experience with a previous aircraft type or something) and may have then applied a tail stall recovery technique when he should've been recovering from a stick shaker activation (it wasn't even a wing stall until he pulled back and induced one, the stick shaker had activated early because the increase Vref switch was on.).
PTH, I don't know what to make of the flap retraction. I haven't read the CVR recently but I seem to remember that she didn't ask if she should retract the flaps, she advised that she had already done it. My gut feeling is that it wasn't a thought out action but rather a desperate attempt to undo whatever had been done to make them lose control. Perhaps if she'd sat on her hands and done nothing for a few seconds she might have twigged to what was going on and been able to provide better support for the PF, but who knows? I really don't think either of them were thinking clearly at the time and being fatigued and ill probably didn't help much.
As I think Ive mentioned in this thread before, I've been in a similar situation in the simulator. Icing gear on but not in icing conditions any more and PF allowed the speed to decay until the stick shaker activated. I said "airspeed" he said "oops" and gave it enough power to recover the speed, we were 20 knots above the stall speed at the time and it was a non-event (we were also circling to land at night on one engine with no flight director or autopilot.) If he'd reefed back on the control column instead, we might have been in for some remedial training! Instead it was a debrief point.