With respect, as a journalist AND as an engineer with a PhD, the whole point of data is that everyone can have access to it. Crime statistics, health statistics etc. Hospitals that have bad statistics also get caught out eventually and get shamed.
Do you people really think the 787 Dreamliner battery problems would have been tackled smartly if the press hadn't got behind it? I remind you, the holes in the swiss cheese were possibly some faulty cells, really bad design, self-certification in a company with no chinese walls, benign neglect by the FAA.
The three-leg stool which keeps the industry honest is
- regulation
- verification
- publication.
I have little respect for the Daily Mail or Sun scare stories. But supplying a legal basis for stopping publication of in-depth reports on the industry is to say it mildly suicidal. As pilots, do you think the industry would be better off it the the AF 447 report had been buried?
Edmund