Rather than petrol fumes I probably smelled a rat in this study courtesy my aviation background.
Gross error checks can save your life.
For example on the B747 if the flight time was say 13 hours, you expected the fuel burn to be about 130 ton.
If the flight plan (which was usually accurate within kilograms) showed say 60 tons you knew there was a serious error.
No one did a gross error check on that Monash Study.
