Yesterday, NASA head honcho Mike Griffin spoke to Congress about the airline safety survey NASA sponsored. This made headlines last week when the report conclusions were basically suppressed by NASA Associate Administrator of Institutions and Management Thomas S. Luedtke, who said that the results — which indicated a lot more safety issues in flying than previously thought — would undermine consumer confidence in the airline industry.
To Griffin’s credit, he repeatedly apologized for that statement, saying it was not true that NASA cares more about industry than citizens. Also to his credit, he said that the survey results would be released as much as possible, given the issues of anonymity and such for the participants. He stressed both of these items.
However, he repeated the one irksome thing he said in an earlier press statement:
I regret the impression that NASA would in any way put commercial interests in front of public safety.
To which I repeat what I said before: it wasn’t an impression. It’s what Luedtke actually said. What Griffin said was basically just spin.
Still, I thought Griffin did pretty well in his testimony, but one thing that troubled me was his repeated hedging on the quality of the survey. Several times he said that the methodology of the survey needed to be checked. Now, this really is something to look after: survey results can be skewed if the questions are slanted, the people answering them aren’t sampled well, and so on. But I’ll note that the contractor doing the survey was Battelle (scroll to the last line of that story), well-known for their experience and excellence in doing just this sort of survey work.
It sounded to my jaundiced ear that Griffin was possibly covering his, um, assets. Did he say that the survey methodology needs to be checked because he was hedging? By saying that, he can deflect blame for the results away from NASA and onto Battelle. Maybe I’m too cynical, but given how many times he repeated that statement, it just simply sounded suspicious.
So I give Griffin both a thumbs-up (for saying the data should be released) and a thumbs-down (for repeating the spin about "impression") and a thumbs-sideways; he’s on probation for the methodology remarks until more data come in.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Ugh. Calling it an “impression” leaves a bad taste in my mouth as well. It deflects blame by implying that a direct action is more subject to perception than it actually is. This is what it looks like in my head, in the form of a short screenplay:
(Thomas Luedtke enters stage right, and drops a brick on the foot of unsuspecting John Q. Public.)
John Q. Public: Ow! You careless oaf, you just dropped that on my foot!
Mike Griffin: I’m sorry you feel that way.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:58 pm
I really haven’t been keeping up with this story as nearly as I should have been.. I know this is just my crazy off the wall wierd way of looking at things, but is it possible that NASA wanted to cover up the findings of that report because they weren’t sure the methodology of the survey didn’t skew the results towards much worse findings then the industry really deserved?
Honestly, once the findings of that survey are out public opinion of the airline industry could be permenantly damaged by it. It won’t matter if the very next week a new survey from the same company comes back with ir-refutable evidence that the first survey was flawed. The damage has already been done and to many people will jump on the bandwagon saying that the government is just trying to cover up the first survey.
If they weren’t 100% sure the survey was done correctly and the findings are in fact damaging to the airline industry I would rather they not release those finding until they know for sure. Granted, the wording of the previous press releases leaves a lot to be desired but sometimes people say one thing and everyone who hears it hears something totally different then what the speaker thought he was saying. I don’t know, only time will tell I guess but I still like to give people the benifit of the doubt on some things.
I’m the type of person who believes that, while the tax payers may have the “right” to know what every penny of thier tax dollars are spent on they really don’t have the “need” to know what every penny of thier tax dollars are spent on. Sometimes the interests of national security really are more important then what a few citizens think thier rights are. Anything that greatly shakes the faith of the people in the airline industry really is a matter of national security. They have enough problems paying the bills as it is.
If a small percentage of the people who fly now started driving everywhere because this report made them not want to fly anymore airlines go bankrupt, airline employees loose jobs, airlines don’t need as many planes so airplane manufactures have lower demand. lower demand means less work which means layoffs. Unemployment goes up so people don’t have as much money to spend. They aren’t spending as much money so every other industry takes a hit in the pocketbook. The effects on the economy snowball and the whole economy ends up taking a huge hit. The world has grown into a big scary crazy place where everything is related. In 2007 if the figurative butterfly flaps his wings in Africa he might just cause a hurricane that wipes out florida.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I can see Mike Griffin honestly regretting the impression Luedtke gave – it made his job a lot harder for no good reason.
I also live less than a mile from Battelle and have toured their bio wing. By all accounts, they do some good work.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:16 pm
I’ve got a question: who is Thomas S. Luedtke, Associate Administrator of Institutions and Management? Does this guy really talk to the press a lot? Maybe he just stuck his bureaucratic foot in his mouth. Relese of the data will obviously have a negative effect on the airline industry although, if I recall correctly, the survey included commercial and private pilots. Was the data withheld because it was damaging, or because it was questionable and, if misinterpreted, would ‘seem’ damaging?
I imagine I could suffer a major brain fart (to say the least) if someone from the NYT started asking questions about something somebody leaked that I really didn’t want to talk about, and, aside from momentary brain-death, I can’t imagine why a competent, qualified administrator would issue such an incredibly self incriminating remark.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Perhaps it was a subtle scheme to draw attention to the findings.
If so, it worked.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I listened to the entire congressional hearing on C-Span but would love to get my hands on a transcript. Griffin admitted to never having met the other panelists, namely Robert Dodd, NASA’s aviation safety expert and Dr. Krosnick the survey methodology expert who ran the study, yet he made some damaging and inaccurate insinuations about the quality of the data. How can he go in front of congressional committee members not having met with all the integral members of the NAOMS team?? Does anyone know if transcripts are made available to the public?
November 1st, 2007 at 9:16 pm
I flew military then commercial for over thitty five years. There is a segement of the pilot profession, a very small segement, that has a tendency to make mountains out of mole hills. They are alarmists. In any survey of day to day operations, their responses would be the most dramatic. To most experienced pilots, thr day to day flying is quite routine. I agree that such a survey should be withheld from the public as misconceptions and misunderstandings would serve no useful purpose
November 1st, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Routine near-disasters are the kind of thing that pilots would be accustomed to but that desperately need to be reduced. People who have acclimated to the conditions in the field aren’t necessarily the best ones to talk to when trying to identify and resolve problems in that field.
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:13 am
The methodology question is probably because reporting was voluntary and relied on the pilot’s initiative.
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:36 am
It’s just the standard spin you get when people screw up and have to make things right. It is not the most honest thing to say, but I wouldn’t spend too much energy on this either.
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:37 am
BTW, I just noticed: what’s the little smiley doing in the lower (lowest!) left corner?
November 2nd, 2007 at 7:47 am
[...] Mike Griffin’s testimony to Congress no Bad Astronomy [...]
November 2nd, 2007 at 8:13 am
You’ve been nominated for best science blog. Funny to see who wasn’t nominated.
http://ncwatch.typepad.com/media/
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:01 am
Whatever the damage the results might do to the public perception of air travel, they’re unlikely to be as bad as the damage done by being told “there’s a problem, and it’s so bad we’re not going to tell you because we don’t want to scare you.” The cat is out of the bag and well and truly among the pigeons – NASA has to get this report out ASAP if only to reassure the public that their worst nightmares about air travel aren’t (entirely) true. The long they sit on it, the worse people will believe it must be.
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:02 am
I’ve been letting this rumble around in my.. um.. brain since I first heard it. Now I’ve heard a bit more, and maybe I have some relevant comments..
1) Methodology. From all accounts Battelle is very good at what they do. However, on the face of it, all that really promises is the honesty of what THEY report. Who devised the survey? Was it a true random sampling, or was it voluntary response (as suggested above). How were the questions worded? Was any evidence (date/time/location) gathered as part of the survey? Is there any coroboration of these incidents?
If voluntary response, the whole survey is essentially meaningless.
*IF* (and at this point in time, I rather doubt this) Mr Griffin is unaware of the details of the methodology, then he is right to .. um.. waffle.
Yes, personally, I think by the time he got in front of Congress he should have known *exactly* what was done and by whom. But, of course, I have no proof.
2) I have decided that his comment that he regrets the “impression” actually makes sense. He’s talking about the perception the public has of NASA, not what, specifically, Luedtke said. It’s a rather diplomatic (overly diplomatic) way of saying “Look, Luedtke is a jerk. NASA does NOT put the interest of this industry over the safety of the public”. He’s not saying that Luedtke didn’t give us that impression – he did. He’s saying he’s sorry Luedkte opened his yap and GAVE us that impression. (this is using a couple definitions of impression: 1) effect producted by agency or influence 2) notion or belief )
I just wish he’d not been so politcally correct and just said flatly that Luedtke was wrong.
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:42 pm
My first reaction to this was that Luedtke was a WH political appointee, fresh out of school, appointed to do just this sort of thing. We heard about a number of items just like that a few years back. It appears I was wrong. Luedtke has been with NASA since 1989, in procurement until 2003 at least. Im not clear when after that he moved from procurement to Institutions and Management. Now, Im left wondering what someone from Procurement and now Institutions and Management, is doing making decisions on what research is to be released. That seems a departure from his stated job description of “oversees the management of the institutional functional offices.”
That said, personally, Im going to cut Griffin a break. As the head of a large organization, he identifies with the organization. As a result, I imagine that the public perception of NASA is a significant issue in his mind, and he regrets that the public has gotten an impression that does not reflect well on the organization. Thats not to say that the public should not have gotten that impression from Luedtke’s comments. But Griffin doesnt believe that it is an accurate picture of NASA, so he regrets that the public has been given that “impression.”
Finally, hes being diplomatic because you dont say in public of your employee of 20 years, “Hes being an ass and is dead wrong.”
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
You’re wrong about the word “impression” here.
While the statement by the bureaucrat Luedtke was pretty direct, he isn’t NASA. When employees of NASA make statements, they only give an impression of what NASA itself endorses.
It’s perfectly correct to say that the impression that NASA places corporations above citizens is not desired. It says nothing about the nature of the statement made by one NASA employee, only that said statement should not be used in constructing an impression of what attitude NASA as a whole supports.
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:46 pm
[...] Georgia Real Estate – Jessica Horton (RE/MAX Standard ) wrote an interesting post today on Mike Griffin’s testimony to CongressHere’s a quick [...]