TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

NASA Is Doing Exactly What It Said It Would

ADVERTISEMENT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 9, 2008

Your Jan. 4 editorial titled "NASA Insults Pilots, Press and Public" is misleading on several points. Allow me to correct the record.

I told Congress we would release, by the end of 2007, an initial set of responses to an aircraft pilot survey conducted by NASA. I said the responses would be redacted to protect voluntarily furnished commercial confidential information - a legal requirement - as well as the anonymity promised to survey respondents.

This was a challenging task involving some 29,000 survey responses; nonetheless, the deadline was met. The release date of Dec. 31 was not chosen, as some have said, because it was a "slow news day." It was the earliest date we could achieve.

Concerns have been expressed that the necessary response redaction was overly conservative, that more data could have been released.

Again, I promised the Congress that a more refined effort would be undertaken, but that a careful examination of the data to ensure no inappropriate release of information occurs will require many months. We will make every effort to expedite the effort.

In our initial denial of a reporter's request for the survey responses, we gave the unfortunate impression that NASA was putting airline commercial interests ahead of public safety. I regret that impression. When the matter was brought to my attention, I corrected the situation immediately.

We have expressed concerns about the utility of the survey results because the survey methodology and results have not been validated by peer review. To address such concerns, we will seek an independent assessment of the methodology and the potential utility of the survey responses.

Michael D. Griffin is NASA administrator.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT