DozyW: If Capt Collins was a cautious and meticulous pilot, he and 230 others would not have died that day. The comments you refer to were the result of a natural tendancy to not speak ill of the dead.
The inadequacies of the briefing had nothing to do with it. The issue is the state of the captain's knowledge when he made the decision to descend. That knowledge included nearly 30 years as a fulltime professional pilot, nearly 20 of them as PIC. He was expected to (and was very well paid to) exercise all of that accumated experience and skill.
The MSA was not revoked at the briefing. The briefing did not cause Ross Island to sink into the ocean. The reason for not going below 16000 feet was not because of a rule. It was because there was 13000 foot mountain in the vicinity. If there was any rule, it was one created by plain old common sense.
As to the "to the letter" point, that can't be correct, given the conflicting information about the waypoint that he took from the briefing. It's logically impossible to follow conflicting instructions to the letter.