PBL;
with the Challenger report including exemplary contributions by a certain R. Feynman, who I understand wrote a set of intro physics textbooks which people like
His, "
What Do You Care What Other People Think?" is very readable as is his "
The Character of Physical Law".
In support of the "interested amateur" and to elaborate on a point being made, let us unpack the notions of "amateur" and "professional", notions of the expertocracy, which, though not the spawning ground, the Internet has certainly fed and created new cults of "plastic language". Ivan Illich espoused the domain of the amateur and is worth reading.
Such terms are of recent origin and come from the preceding notion of guilds where the need for specialist knowledge gave rise to "specialist education" which gave rise to exclusionary groups which "had" the royal jelly, so to speak, the intention of which was to leave out others despite what increasingly came to be known as "amateur" contributions. The two notions have more to do with social control and power than they do with describing how various people who are so described may (or may not) contribute. Conferring the title of "professional" infers, but does not
confer knowledge while the notion of "amateur" provides a way for professionals (those of the guild), to marginalize "untrained" commentary as intrusive or otherwise plain wrong and thus illegitimate.
Regarding the "trained specialists pronouncing" argument, there is of course merit to the point but it is not, as is assumed by so many here and elsewhere, not, by virtue of titles and letters-after-names, an exclusionary process from which one pronounces, it is partly from education and training but it is also from the ability to think and see critically and to be keenly aware of the reversal of that popular phrase, which goes, "I'll see it when I believe it".
After all, intelligent inquiry can do some very good work as has been observed on the Turkish MD82 accident thread, to which this entire contribution addresses itself albeit in a round-about way.
I am in full support of releasing as much information as possible and this is from a flight safety specialist's point of view. There is a natural winnowing process in such an open discussion which is, after all, seeking truth not blame. Such a view is idealistic because, as has been correctly stated, appointments to positions of authority do have political aspects to them.
Notwithstanding Feynman's example of "amateur sleuthing", the best example of a non-specialist doing superb investigative aviation work is the Moshansky Commission and it's Report in the accident at Dryden, the recommendations of which were largely though not wholly adopted by Transport Canada, (which was heavily criticized in the Report, and to which strong criticisms have since been directed regarding SMS (which I have called "the de-regulation of flight safety"), by the same man). Here was a man who knew nothing about aviation yet had tremendous access to wide-ranging information, all with good results.
I wouldn't begin to compare the work done on PPRuNe with the Moshansky Report of course because the means, the goals and discussion levels are vastly different as one expects on a public forum with contributors of varying backgrounds but informed speculation along with the ecology of ideas can bring about interesting and correct conclusions even though they may be "unofficial".