[QUOTE=alcor;59212]Industry, has always welcomed the considered view of new thought and consideration provided by the universities and their great scholars. Much of this study is produced from the midst of various classrooms where brilliant minds gather to highlight what may have gone wrong on the Macondo well based on their understanding of events, purely theoretical, and yet, a fool dismisses their considered approach. I have only read the first two sections of their report but feel immediately that there are many observations which we on this site alone have already concluded. Nevertheless, fresh thought and input is always welcome, especially with the emphasis being on safety system engineering.[/QUOTE]
Er, permit to clarify some things about such studies. First, full disclosure: I have worked with the National Academy of Sciences for 20 years as a member of 10 studies and a reviewer for many more. This effort has earned me the honor of National Associate, which in turn grants me a free cup of coffee and restroom privileges whenever I’m in DC 
So count me as a supporter. In any case, I think I’m qualified to tell the group how such studies are done.
The National Academy is not a University, although its committees, like this one, are often heavily populated by academics. The NAS was chartered (as they are fond of reminding people) by the US Congress during the administration of Abraham Lincoln. Its job is to provide technical and scientific advice to Congress. It consists of three parts: the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Research Council. This report was done by the NAE.
The process whereby a report is produced is extremely painstaking (and slow). A committee of volunteers is assembled with the emphasis on expertise and countervailing bias. So if there is someone who has advocated less regulation of industry the NAE staff will recruit someone who advocates more, and let them thrash it out in the meetings (which happens, believe you me). After collecting information, which usually includes lots of briefings by interested parties and possibly field trips, the committee hammers out the findings and recommendations. The report then goes to a completely independent review process, led by a volunteer coordinator who has not been involved at all in the deliberations. The committee members do not know who the reviewers are until after the report is released. Each comment by each reviewer must be explicitly addressed, either by a change to the report or by producing an argument to the coordinator that the reviewer has it wrong. The review coordinator reports to a completely independent staff organization within NAS. There is also a formal process whereby a committee member can submit a dissent to the conclusions of a report, and that dissent cannot be suppressed by the committee or the NAS staff.
The report then goes up through the chain of command of the NAE, in this case the various boards listed in the front matter of the report, and they often have something to say. So any NAS report is the product of many more people than just the committee, and you need to consider the backgrounds of the reviewers and the boards as well. I think that if you do that you’ll see that this thing was subjected to scrutiny by a lot more than a bunch of college professors.
Cheers,
Earl