Here's the thing. Just because more than one person has a similar view about the cause of a disaster, be it Estonia or 9/11, it doesn't make them a granfalloon.
Straw man. Again, the argument is not that you share all your authorities' views. The argument is that you clearly have to share
some of them -- contrary to your protest -- otherwise your citation of them has no force in your argument. You propose to deftly sever the parts you need from the parts on which they are clearly in error, and declare those needed parts to be sound. Except in the cases of Bollyn and Björkman they are not severable.
Bjorkman's physical assessment of the seaworthiness of Estonia and the mechanics and physics of how she could sink are perfectly sound.
They are not. And you frankly have no way of knowing that for yourself. You simply believe him when he says he is a highly experienced marine engineer, and therefore insist to us that his declarations must have merit. You believe him because he's telling you want you want to hear and making you think there is a sound scientific basis for it, not because you can know for yourself whether he's right.
It doesn't mean I share his views on Hiroshima or 9/11 because I obviously do not.
That's not the argument. You're asking us to accept his
MS Estonia conclusions on the strength of his purported credentials and expertise. Except we know from our own experience that his credentials are overstated. We know that his expertise is worthless because he spews nonsense on the subjects his expertise is supposed to be about. You accept that he's a crackpot on all the other subjects that specifically require engineering and scientific expertise, but somehow on the one subject of
MS Estonia he's a perfectly reliable scientific source.
No. That's not how expertise works.
I knew nothing about Bollyn, except that he quoted Aner, whose investigative journalism into the Estonia, I was already aware of and familiar with. There was nothing in his article that mentioned his radical right views on other topics.
And you still seem to think it's not your duty to ensure that your authorities really are trustworthy by looking into their credentials, experience, and other work. Again, on the subject of "disappearing" the Egyptians, your source is simply false on its face. The facts have been examined, and they do not support the accusation that Sweden violated the Rome Statute as it applies to forced disappearance. We could reject Bollyn's authority on that basis alone.
But you want us to accept the claim anyway on the strength of the authority. Well then that requires us to examine the strength of the authority, and we find that Bollyn is not a strong authority. He is not a trustworthy reporter of fact, therefore the proper conclusion is that the independent facts are correct and that Bollyn is misrepresenting them.
