The American public should be outraged over NASA's apparent intentional scrambling of data stemming from an $11.3 million federal air safety study conducted from 2001 until the end of 2004.

The study results, released Monday, were based on interviews with about 8,000 pilots during each year that the study was under way.

Michael Griffin, NASA administrator, said in the aftermath of the data's release that the survey was poorly managed and that the public shouldn't care about the data.

He's wrong. The public should care — not only about the troubling numbers that the study produced, but also about the possibility that a study that cost so much money might not have been conducted as well as it could have been.

Regardless, NASA should stop hiding whatever it might be trying to hide and produce a clearer picture of what the study really revealed.

A major flaw in NASA's release of the data was that the information was not presented in a way to allow researchers to project survey results to overall safety trends.

Among the information contained in the study is that there were at least 1,266 incidents in which aircraft flew within 500 feet of each other, which usually is considered a near miss.

Another particularly troubling statistic was 166 instances where pilots landed without clearance at an airport with an active control tower.

NASA had previously withheld the study data, fearing it would upset travelers and hurt airline profits. But the public is entitled to be even more upset with the way NASA finally has presented the information.

Griffin should be called in to face a congressional hearing regarding this NASA assault on the public's right to know.