Originally Posted by
Pilot DAR
The NTSB are better, and, can draw on a very broad scope of resource, and skilled people. They will get whomever they need - all skills and disciplines. That said, there are also very knowledgeable posters here, who within their discipline will have great wisdom, which they may contribute. But, the people outside the investigation will not have access to all of the information gathered until a report is issued. Thus, though they might have great knowledge, and could actually hit upon causal factors, cannot be comprehensive compared to the assigned investigators. And, there will be posters here, who simply speculate, based upon whatever they think they know about whatever. It'll be up to the readers here to sift wheat from chaff. Speculation which is way off base, and has no foundation, will usually be removed by one of the moderators, just to keep the baseline up.
In the past, I have been asked by both the NTSB, and the Canadian TSB to contribute to investigations with my specific knowledge in a related discipline. But, what I could offer was just one piece of the puzzle - it takes a team, the NTSB gathers teams really well....
I will second everything in this post and add that the NTSB is the best accident investigators in the world that I know of. They are very professional, never speculate, especially in the early stages of an investigation. Look at flight TWA 800 and the hours of research that went into that conclusion. I know there are conspiracy theories out there, but those were all rebuked in their report.