Blogger forces NASA to Admit Global Warming Error and Other Trust Missteps (Jarvis Cromwell)

Today on the Trustwatch List:

It's reported that all three big auto CEOs took the fancy private jet to the government panel meeting where they planned to ask for a taxpayer bailout.

General Motors takes out a full page ad in The New York Times on why they deserve a bailout. It was all about them with nary a peep about their intentions for customers. Reputation myopia apparently remains epidemic in Detroit.

AARP investigates marketing practices of partners who were not truthful in how they sold health insurance plans. See HERE.

And finally there’s NASA. Last year NASA officials admitted that for the past seven years they had used the wrong temperature statistics to assess global warming trends. The mistake was spotted by a blogger, who forced NASA to declare the error.

Well, my friend Paul Walsh who is guru of all gurus on the weather’s impact on the global economy posted this morning that NASA has made another mistake along these lines – overestimating climate change numbers. See HERE.

And this may be shameless self-promotion, but the trustmeisters here at the Reputation Garage were happy to hear him note the following:

“The NASA PR engine should review the website (The Reputation Garage) of my friend, colleague and "trustmeister" Jarvis Cromwell. Reputation and trust capital is a key metric for a scientific agency like NASA -- making the case for an issue as critical as climate change (or going to the moon, mars, etc.) is only viable if the public can trust the information that they put out.”

Thanks Paul. Trust and reputation are not merely communications issues, they are performance issues and every one of these organizations needed more process in analyzing the downstream impacts of their actions on stakeholders.