"This reminds me of the C5 incident at McGuire AirForce base several years ago where there were multiple pilots in the cockpit and not one of them noticed that they shut down the wrong engine resulting in an inpact about a mile short of the runway.
Does everyone think that someone else is watching the ship and they just tune out?"
Platinum Flyer,
That crash was at Dover and is now part of USAF's CRM course, seen that video every six months for the 5 years I flew flight test and heard the SIB briefed briefed twice. It's not a bad accident to reference since there were a lot of senior guys with lots of time on C-5's and a few with very little time on AMP. Although, in their case they were dealing with an emergency at the time.
As for the cultural stuff ruffling so many feathers, Geert Hofstede is the Dutch researcher who came up with the Cultural Dimensions Theory (Power Distance), which is used by the military and taught in organizational studies. His work is based off of extensive research and does have some rigor behind it. That said, it is a framework and useful as a guide to understand cross-cultural behaviors, studied it in the military and in business school. Folks referencing pier reviewed literature and applying its framework aren't racist so long as they stick to the cultural aspects.
Getting back on topic, there are multiple dimensions of that framework that when combined would interact badly with the dangerous behaviors/attitudes taught in CRM. One could argue these were present in US military aviation in the 50's and 60's and contributed to the high accident rates during those years. Training changed in the late 60's early 70's and began to emphasize the CRM principles and the rates came down. Significant to commercial aviation since a lot of the pilots come with military training/background and the airlines take ques from the military.
Cheers