Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part III

[MarkCorrigan]

Why on earth do you think it frightens him?

Answer the questions posed to you Vixen, stop attempting to weasel out of it.

 

[Vixen]

Vixen! Vixen! Tell us more about Braidwood "famously defusing the Greenpeace bomb"!!

I'm all ears to hear every detail of this man's fantastic heroism and derring-do on this mission! What a guy!

OK, so he went to Rainbow Warrior after the bomb went off. However, it doesn't detract from the fact he was an elite Royal Navy military explosives expert, who did defuse bombs and who knows one when he sees one.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Why does this frighten you? People are quite capable of assessing propositions for themselves.

Frighten? LOL.

Are you capable of assessing Björkman's reliability as an engineering expert for yourself? (I mean aside from finding he says stuff you find appealing.)

 

[Jack by the hedge]

OK, so he went to Rainbow Warrior after the bomb went off. However, it doesn't detract from the fact ...

It detracts even further from your credibility as a reliable reporter of basic facts.

 

[Vixen]

I did wonder what that "Greenpeace bomb" reference was. Obviously it couldn't have been the Rainbow Warrior bombing by the French secret service because, as people tend to remember, that detonated. Hey, maybe Braidwood found a wet cardboard box wrapped in tape in the Rainbow Warrior after the event and defused that.

So, because Braidwood came to the tentative conclusion that Estonia's bow could have been subjected to explosives - and he sent samples to three independent metallurgy laboratories, one in the US and another used by German forensic police themselves - and I respect this man and his sheer weight of expertise.

Of course, Braidwood is a figure of ridicule here because people are absolutely terrified of what will happen if they dare to be sceptical a wave could knock off a bow visor and even then that the ship will sink in 35 minutes to the bottom of the sea.

 

[carlitos]

Raise your hand if you're terrified. I'll start:

 

[Vixen]

Why on earth do you think it frightens him?

Answer the questions posed to you Vixen, stop attempting to weasel out of it.

Look. I and my work colleagues often had a good laugh at Ian Wright's pontifications but that didn't detract from Wright being more of a football expert than us.

If he said there were 23 players in a team, I would just laugh as I normally do at his utterings.

It is not the end of the world if someone gets something wrong.

 

[JayUtah]

Why does this frighten you?

I'm not "frightened." I'm not "very very angry." Why do you insist on trying to reframe my rebuttals in made-up emotional terms?

People are quite capable of assessing propositions for themselves.

Most people are neither capable of nor interested in assessing propositions founded upon specialized knowledge that they do not possess. Someone purporting to be an expert can generally make up whatever "facts" he wants, or misrepresent specialized knowledge however he wants. Lay listeners have little ability to challenge the proposition on the proffered grounds. You are notorious for this in the case of buoyancy; you have little understanding of the principle yourself, and so you are incapable of assessing Bjorkman's claims.

You are the one claiming he should be regarded as an expert in marine engineering, and that his opinions generated from that expertise should have authority because they are based on sound understanding of the underlying principles that most others do not possess. The rebuttal is on the grounds that does not actually display proper understanding of the relevant principles, and that others in his field have acted upon that by disregarding him as a practitioner in the field.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Stop deflecting. Deal with the question. It's YOUR hypothetical remember?

If Ian Wright said on MOTD that football was a 23-a-side game would he still be a credible expert on football, yes or no?

Stop trying to weasel out of this. I'm not going to let you off the hook you put yourself on.

 

[JayUtah]

If he said there were 23 players in a team, I would just laugh as I normally do at his utterings.

Would you cite him as an authority that there were 23 players on a team? If he mentioned something else ambiguously incorrect about football, would the fact that he has previously made incorrect statements stand in the way of his authority on the ambiguous claim?

It is not the end of the world if someone gets something wrong.

In my profession it pretty much is.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Would you cite him as an authority that there were 23 players on a team? If he mentioned something else ambiguously incorrect about football, would the fact that he has previously made incorrect statements stand in the way of his authority on the ambiguous claim?



In my profession it pretty much is.

I imagine it would be in accounting as well.

Vixen if you incorrectly audited a client and cost them a large amount of money, would that count as "the end of the world" in your profession? I imagine it probably would.

 

[LondonJohn]

OK, so he went to Rainbow Warrior after the bomb went off. However, it doesn't detract from the fact he was an elite Royal Navy military explosives expert, who did defuse bombs and who knows one when he sees one.

LOLOL So he didn't "famously" do anything, then.

Your credibility is lower than zero at this point.

 

[JayUtah]

So, because Braidwood came to the tentative conclusion that Estonia's bow could have been subjected to explosives - and he sent samples to three independent metallurgy laboratories, one in the US and another used by German forensic police themselves - and I respect this man and his sheer weight of expertise.

His "sheer weight of expertise" is still light on what else might cause the metallurgical evidence he discovered. We discussed this at some length, whereupon you too admitted you were not an expert in metallurgy and could not evaluate the claims independently.

You claim he is an expert in explosives and that upon the strength of that expertise he identified an object in a photograph -- which mysteriously later disappeared -- as a bomb. Experts in bombs can identify bombs because they know what bombs look like. They know what bombs look like because they've seen a lot of prior bombs. What demonstrates expertise is not so much, "I think this is a bomb," as it is, "This is a bomb because it looks like this other thing that I know from experience to be a bomb -- here let me show you." Funny how Braidwood can't seem to make that claim.

Of course, Braidwood is a figure of ridicule here...

No, your invocation of Braidwood is subject to ridicule, for the reasons given.

...because people are absolutely terrified of what will happen if they dare to be sceptical a wave could knock off a bow visor and even then that the ship will sink in 35 minutes to the bottom of the sea.

No, your critics are not wallowing in the throes of melodramatic terror at the prospect that you might be right. They're wallowing in amusement at your antics when you're shown to be wrong.

 

[JayUtah]

I imagine it would be in accounting as well.

Possibly, but in my case I fulfilled contracts for the U.S. National Nuclear Safety Administration, specifically in the area of stewardship over the U.S. nuclear warhead stockpile. I intended my statement to be a little bit more literal than you've taken it.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Yes I suppose that would remove the statement completely from any accusations of hyperbole.

 

[LondonJohn]

His "sheer weight of expertise" is still light on what else might cause the metallurgical evidence he discovered. We discussed this at some length, whereupon you too admitted you were not an expert in metallurgy and could not evaluate the claims independently.

You claim he is an expert in explosives and that upon the strength of that expertise he identified an object in a photograph -- which mysteriously later disappeared -- as a bomb. Experts in bombs can identify bombs because they know what bombs look like. They know what bombs look like because they've seen a lot of prior bombs. What demonstrates expertise is not so much, "I think this is a bomb," as it is, "This is a bomb because it looks like this other thing that I know from experience to be a bomb -- here let me show you." Funny how Braidwood can't seem to make that claim.



No, your invocation of Braidwood is subject to ridicule, for the reasons given.



No, your critics are not wallowing in the throes of melodramatic terror at the prospect that you might be right. They're wallowing in amusement at your antics when you're shown to be wrong.

Perhaps Braidwood "famously defused" the bombs attached to the Estonia's bow visor as well.....

***switches to Microphone #2, to talk with Controller #2***

Dammit, they're on to us! Give me some more of your secret instructions ASAP!

 

[Andy_Ross]

So, because Braidwood came to the tentative conclusion that Estonia's bow could have been subjected to explosives - and he sent samples to three independent metallurgy laboratories, one in the US and another used by German forensic police themselves - and I respect this man and his sheer weight of expertise.

Of course, Braidwood is a figure of ridicule here because people are absolutely terrified of what will happen if they dare to be sceptical a wave could knock off a bow visor and even then that the ship will sink in 35 minutes to the bottom of the sea.

He is not being ridiculed, your interpretation of his words are being ridiculed.

 

[JayUtah]

Yes I suppose that would remove the statement completely from any accusations of hyperbole.

There's still room. Not everyone in my profession works on projects with such dire consequences for failure. But we are held legally liable for the correctness of our work because it so often has the potential to threaten life and limb. Contrary to Vixen's claim, there very often are serious consequences to even seemingly minor errors. Someone claiming to be an expert, but who makes lots of them, will eventually lose credibility in the claim.

 

[Matthew Best]

It is not the end of the world if someone gets something wrong.

Fortunately for everybody reading your posts.

 

[JesseCuster]

Originally Posted by JesseCuster View Post
Why would you suspect that?

Your own source is quite clear that the bolt was taken out of the water and on to the dive support vessel where it was examined.

Why would you think that anyone would need a "tape measure hanging around his neck" when they would have all sorts of equipment on the support vessel for this kind of thing?

How can you with a straight face castigate everyone else for supposedly using assumptions, hypotheses, etc. when you're just making stuff like this up off the top of your head with absolutely no justification, other than if fits your preconception that the inquiry into the Estonia was a whitewash.

I'd love to see your justification for why you think whoever measured the bolt on the support vessel did it "by eye".

The reference to a tape measure was a quip.

And what about the rest of my post that you ignored?

Why do you suspect that the bolt was only measured "by eye"?