NASA and its Issues

It is often said that the Columbia disaster was caused by groupthink from those that were in charge of inspecting  the craft before takeoff. In this article, "The Nation: NASA's Curse?" is about how even though NASA has some of the world's most brilliant people working for them does not mean that they are always making the best decisions because the data needed is not always available. Here's a link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/weekinreview/the-nation-nasa-s-curse-groupthink-is-30-years-old-and-still-going-strong.html

This report says that because information was not passed up the proper chain of command, the people at the top were making decisions without all of the facts, which could lead to deadly consequences.

In Chapter 11, there is a section about faulty decision-making. First, I believe this relates to the overconfidence bias. The people at NASA know that they have the brains to do this job, but are they relying too much on their knowledge and not all of the facts that they need to make a well-rounded decision?
The article also points out how this situation could have been framing bias, the decision being influenced by the way it was presented. The engineers in charge did not believe that it the falling foam was a problem, so they did not report all of the possible risks, just took the best case scenario.

How should NASA reframe their decision-making process to make sure that there are checkpoints to prevent this kind of thinking? Should there be other people outside of NASA that will hold the rocket scientists accountable for their decision-making before a problem happens again?

Casey Zimmerman