[caconym_]

If NASA is encoding safety-critical messages in "jargon" that can pass for misleadingly ambiguous plain English, that's a huge safety problem itself. What if it's somebody's first day on the job?

Especially given the sorry state of the presentation in general, I really doubt this is the case, though.

[peteradio]

Have you ever presented inside a collaboration?

[caconym_]

Yes, and my experience doing so only cements the opinion(s) expressed in my previous comment—to which I'm inclined to say your reply is not terribly relevant.

Ambiguous, poorly presented, and technically dense are three different things, though they can all be present in the same place. Only two of them are necessarily bad.

[peteradio]

So what exactly is technically dense/ambiguous in this summary presentation (remember this isn't the only information provided). Perhaps you'd like to review the full deck of slides rather than the single one picked by the asshole author, I'm particularly interested in the one titled "Damage Results From “Crater” Equations Show Significant Tile Damage" . https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/2203main_COL_debris_boeing_030123.p...

[caconym_]

The title, "Review of Test Data Indicates Conservatism for Tile Penetration" is completely ambiguous to the point of being nonsensical. It is impossible to know in which direction the author of the slides thinks we should be conservative.

Ironically the slide you point out ("Damage Results From 'Crater' Equations Show Significant Tile Damage") seems to skew our interpretation of the next slide's title and content in the wrong direction. The former slide states that "'Crater' indicates that multiple tiles would be taken down to densified layer". That sounds bad. However, it also tells us that the "program" (assuming this means the Crater model) that generated this alarming prediction was "designed to be conservative". This would seem to downplay any concern generated by this result. Furthermore we are told that "Crater reports damage for test conditions that show no damage", further casting into doubt the predictions of the model.

And then, on the next slide: "Review of Test Data Indicates Conservatism for Tile Penetration". On the previous slide the word "conservatism" was used to tell us that the results from the "Crater" model may be on the high side, i.e. showing a problem where there is none, and that the test data show a much smaller degree of damage. This slide is about test data ("Review of Test Data"). On both slides we are told that compared to test data, the Crater results are inflated: "Crater reports damage for test conditions that show no damage", and "Crater overpredicted penetration [...] significantly".

Where does this leave us? The context of this additional slide makes the presentation even more misleading than the "asshole author", to use your delightful term, thinks it is. The title is not merely ambiguous; we are explicitly nudged toward the wrong interpretation of it. I have to thank you for bringing this additional context to my attention.

The author may in fact be an asshole (though I think your language is inappropriate in context), and his analysis may lack depth (I think it does to some degree), but in the simple matter of this slide being egregiously awful he's totally right. I don't know why you'd choose this hill to die on.

[rayiner]

This is a great point. The beginning of the disputed slide continues to build up a point—Crater (the prediction software) is overly conservative. The major caveat that the test data is far afield from the actual situation is buried at the bottom of all that.

[TeMPOraL]

Seconding your comment. The presentation isn't ambiguous, it's just written in a detached, conservative style typical to scientific papers.