I've noticed there is a bias, sometimes spoken aloud, that a pilot who made some sort of a mistake and had an accident was either not terribly bright, lacked basic skills or just plain didn't have the magical "right stuff." As an instrument instructor, I've certainly seen pilots with poor skills or who weren't terribly bright or had lousy judgment, and some of them crashed an airplane. I've also seen some extraordinarily good pilots who were possessed of all the right stuff imaginable, who also made mistakes and crashed.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/why-smart-pilots-crash