NASA chief: Air safety data needs to be scrubbed before release

You might remember that NASA conducted a survey on airline safety and the results were so upsetting that the space agency opted not to make the results public. NASA refused the AP's Freedom of Information Act request for the results, saying:

Release of the requested data, which are sensitive and safety-related, could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey.

After the AP broke that story, the political pressure mounted for NASA to come clean. Administrator Michael Griffin said he would, but he was still promising Wedesday when he appeared before the House Committee on Science and Technology, saying NASA would "soon" release the data. "Soon" it turns out means "the end of the year."

But all is not well on this issue, the Times notes:

But at the hearing, the administrator, Michael Griffin, and the survey’s designers disagreed so deeply about the purpose of the survey and its usefulness that they barely sounded as if they were talking about the same project.

They could not even agree on how many pilots had been interviewed for the project, which has cost NASA more than $11 million. Mr. Griffin said the number was 24,000 airline pilots and 5,000 general-aviation pilots. But Jon O. Krosnick, a professor and survey expert at Stanford University, said the number was much smaller.

And while the survey seems to show that the data is pretty scary, as in twice as many near-misses as estimated by the FAA. But Griffin said that analysis is just wrong. Moreover, he said, much of the data is too sensitive to be released.

Griffin said that a person knowledgeable about aviation could piece together, from the airport names and the equipment types, the identity of the airline involved in some cases. And he said NASA was not allowed to release confidential data that was commercially sensitive.

So, Mr. Griffin said, NASA would eliminate entire categories of data before releasing results and would do so by the end of the year, although that drew skepticism from the committee.

Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN) suggested that Griffin was stonewalling. He said he had asked NASA lawyers for examples of data that couldn't be released and they couldnt' supply any.

Mr. Griffin promised to provide examples.