NASA boss promises to reveal safety poll results

NASA’s former head of the research project, Robert Dodd, told lawmakers the survey was based on “outstanding science,” extensively tested and ready for meaningful analysis. Dodd said NASA’s earlier explanations for withholding the information were “without merit.”

“I don’t believe that the ... data contained any information that could compare with the image of a crashed air carrier airplane or would increase passengers’ fear of flying,” Dodd said.

On Tuesday, Griffin bowed to a request from the lawmakers and sent copies to Capitol Hill of the raw data contained on four CDs. At the hearing, Gordon held the discs aloft and asked Griffin to identify where in NASA’s data could pilots be identified based on what they told researchers anonymously.

“We couldn’t find it,” Gordon said, adding that NASA’s lawyers also were unable to identify any such examples.

“When we looked at the data, we do not believe at this point the data has been scrubbed sufficiently,” Griffin said.

Krosnick said the identities of pilots could be derived only in a “very small number of cases” and said this identifying information could easily be removed.

Officials who have worked on the survey have said it contains no pilot names or airline names. The questionnaire asked pilots to state how many times in the previous 60 days they had encountered a wide range of problems with equipment, weather, tower communication and other safety issues.

MSNBC video   NASA changes course on safety survey Oct. 31: NASA's administrator said he will indeed release safety results after all, days after saying the data would not be made public. NBC News' Tom Costello reports. MSNBC

NASA’s efforts to withhold the safety research earlier sparked tough talk on Capitol Hill and in the editorial pages of dozens of leading newspapers — including USA Today, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune — which urged the agency to release its research. The Times described NASA’s reasons for withholding the information as “lame excuses.”

Griffin also has sought to assure lawmakers that NASA will not destroy the research. Earlier this month, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to return any project information, then purge all related data from its computers. Griffin said he has rescinded those instructions.

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Although to most people NASA is associated with spaceflight, the agency has a long history of aviation safety research. Its experts study atmospheric science and airplane materials and design, among other areas.

The survey project, called the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service, was launched after a White House commission in the late 1990s called for government efforts to significantly reduce fatal aircraft accidents.

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