A pilot study carried out for houghton mifflin harcourt , a textbook publisher based in boston , compared the performance of two groups of children over the course of a year at the amelia earhart middle school in riverside , california .
Their findings , along with historical reconstructions of earhart 's disappearance and the futile massive search that followed , are detailed in " finding amelia , " a discovery channel documentary that airs saturday at 8 p.m. et / pt on the discovery channel .
" After 22 years of rigorous research and 10 grueling expeditions , we can say that all of the evidence we have found on nikumaroro is consistent with the hypothesis that earhart and her navigator fred noonan landed and eventually died there as castaways , " gillespie said .