I went to an Edward Tufte seminar on graphic presentation of data a couple years after the Challenger blew up. He made a good case for poor graphic presentation of the data on the part of the engineers being a cause of the decision to launch. With proper graphics, the danger could have been made too obvious even for managers to ignore.
Richard Feynman was selected by Reagan to study the accident and report on it. At the time, he was dying, but he did it because the country asked him to help. Although the problem was the o-rings, the real problem reported by Feynman was people and their organization. This simple rule, “if everyone is responsible, then no one is responsible” went by the wayside at NASA (and most businesses in the US) about then, and in came “matrix management”.
Today, 30 years later, this is EXACTLY how most US companies run. And, it’s ingenious; if something fails on your watch, it’s incredibly easy to spread the blame, because this capability has already been built into the system for you. It’s the equivalent of all kids playing soccer getting a trophy, even if they stink.
To easily demonstrate how worthless Obama is compared to a great leader like Reagan, when the accident happened, Reagan asked for “the smartest scientist in the country” to investigate it. He didn’t ask about their politics. Feynman was _certainly_ not a Republican or a conservative.
Compare and contrast this to Obama, when the BP oil spill was ongoing; the first thing the “team” looked at were the political leanings and “greenness” of the prospective members of the panel.