In an investigation intended to determine training needs of flight crews published in this journal issue, Bowers and colleagues report two studies showing that the patterning of communication is a better discriminator of good and poor crews than is the content of communication. Bowers and colleagues characterize their studies as intended to generate hypotheses for training needs and draw connections with exploratory sequential data analysis (ESDA). Although applauding the intentions of Bowers and colleagues, this paper points out some concerns with their characterization and implementation of ESDA. The principal concern is that the Bowers and colleagues exploration of the data does not convincingly lead them back to a better fundamental understanding of the original phenomena they are investigating.
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