I find the counterargument unpersuasive. The situation is:
1) Someone flew the plane south
2) The senior pilot had the ability to do so
3) His marriage had failed and he was possibly depressed, which is a possible reason.
4) Nobody else had the ability to do so with the possible exception of the junior pilot, who seemingly had much less reason.
This countergument, such as it is, seems to be that we don't have a lot of data to support point 3 above, which is quite true, and indeed, one of the main points of the article: That the official report did not dig into point 3 in detail, and in fact seems to have omitted some key details.
But what of it? At most this is an argument that we shouldn't rule out the junior pilot, but no evidence is advanced, however weak to suggest he was to blame. And the author does themselves no favours with trivial logic errors like this:
> this flap could only be activated for takeoff or landing by command of the pilot. It could not be independently moved by the autopilot. After several weeks of detailed scrutiny, investigators concluded that the flap had not been deployed, and therefore the jet had plunged into the ocean once its fuel was exhausted without any human intervention. Langewiesche, suggesting the opposite...
If the flap had been deployed, we would know that the pilot was alive at the end. Since it had not been deployed, we don't know if the pilot was alive at the end. Langewiesche explicity gets this right; Irving gets backwards.
If you can't even construct an internally consistent argument, your attempt to debunk others will come across as lacking.
1) Someone flew the plane south
2) The senior pilot had the ability to do so
3) His marriage had failed and he was possibly depressed, which is a possible reason.
4) Nobody else had the ability to do so with the possible exception of the junior pilot, who seemingly had much less reason.
This countergument, such as it is, seems to be that we don't have a lot of data to support point 3 above, which is quite true, and indeed, one of the main points of the article: That the official report did not dig into point 3 in detail, and in fact seems to have omitted some key details.
But what of it? At most this is an argument that we shouldn't rule out the junior pilot, but no evidence is advanced, however weak to suggest he was to blame. And the author does themselves no favours with trivial logic errors like this:
> this flap could only be activated for takeoff or landing by command of the pilot. It could not be independently moved by the autopilot. After several weeks of detailed scrutiny, investigators concluded that the flap had not been deployed, and therefore the jet had plunged into the ocean once its fuel was exhausted without any human intervention. Langewiesche, suggesting the opposite...
If the flap had been deployed, we would know that the pilot was alive at the end. Since it had not been deployed, we don't know if the pilot was alive at the end. Langewiesche explicity gets this right; Irving gets backwards.
If you can't even construct an internally consistent argument, your attempt to debunk others will come across as lacking.