Gaunty,
We have similar opinions.
Many years ago, I flew Nomads for the NT Aero Medical Service, effectively the Flying Doctor in the NT.
Nomads were an ideal aircraft for the types of fields to which we operated most of the time in Arnhem land; short, unsealed, big trees surrounding, and not vast distances between base and most ports.
In the aircraft's favour were short field performance, high wing, not bad to fly (N24 here only).
A king Air was available for evacuations from ports like TNK etc.
There was a local GP who gave them a bucketing. Not a doctor who worked for the RFDS or NTAMS, but a local GP.
Who do you reckon the public listened to? The doctor! Not the pilots who flew them, but a doctor who didn't fly them or in them.
The message here of course, as I've said it elsewhere, is you are who you tell people you are. The pilots didn't have the ear of the press, so didn't get a hearing. He, being a doctor, was seen as an authority on everything from ingrown toenails to internatioal aviation.
Very sad.