The transcript (https://tmsnrt.rs/2OZl4Ic) shows them specifically talking about MCAS doing weird stuff in simulators and they they didn't know what was going on, or what the expected behaviour was. Interesting that it happened in a simulator where I presume that sensors don't sporadically break or deliberately give duff readings in what is probably a lot of highly controlled tests... perhaps a pure software error?
Did this problem just get lost somewhere in the noise of development? Was it "unreproducible" (in the bug sense)? Was it willfully ignored by "the management"? Who knows - but we now do know that some people at Boeing involved in development were aware of problems before the crashes.
Pretty sad really.
It is not clear what they were testing - perhaps they were indeed testing the MCAS system with sensor failures, but if so I probably wouldn't have expected such a surprised resction from them. It seemed like it was totally unexpected and unexplained, which is not a reaction I would expect if they were testing this.
You could suggest that the trim system is defective regardless of MCAS. That the pilot should always be able to counteract automatic trim in any flight mode.
Or the problem is solely in the max modifications and you can safely ignore issues with the original design.
This sorta worked as long as Boing built consumer aircraft that worked exceedingly well. But alas...