Thank you, SeenItAll. I wasn't intending to suggest that I am especially gifted - one of the problems with doing the enjoyable things in life (such as reading PPRuNE) late in the evening is that posts are inadequately proofed. I'm actually surprised that the mods let the post through - I visited at this time to try and post the same ideas in a better way!
My point was that I am an intelligent person with what I consider to be a good grasp of risk:benefit. I sit on a research ethics committee, which means I have to consider whether the actions of others would adversely affect the lives of other people. If someone came to my REC with a proposal that involved a repeating problem that no-one fully understood and claimed that there solution involved what I consider to be a bodge of Series LandRover enthusiast proportions ("put the battery in a box: the same thing might happen again, but at least we'll keep going"), without any extra information as to the root-cause, it wouldn't get passed by me or anyone else on the committee. The risk to the passengers and crew is too high for the benefit (which isn't to the passengers - they can fly on anything) to the share-holders.
Throughout my life I have looked to the airline principle of "zero harm" (now being touted by the NHS leadership) to help guide my decisions. I do not consider that the decisions regarding the 787 meet these criteria. My point about experts was that they can only be expert with full information. This cannot be the case here since they cannot point to a root-cause, i.e. they don't have the information to be make any reliable action. They cannot, therefore, credibly say "Trust me". There is a poster on other threads here (a chap called "amicus"), who makes a very compelling case that the Dreamliner is an accident waiting to happen - I choose to believe him, who has no obvious axe to grind, than those who stand to benefit financially.
Of course, I accept that others may do a different cost:benefit analysis, and choose to believe other people, though I could wish they wouldn't - the fewer people that express reservations about the 787, the more all manufacturers are going to regard us SLF as accepting of anything. Since the regulatory authorities seem to be failing (as I said, a REC wouldn't pass this, so why are they) it is up to passenger-power to try to get some balance here.
I hope that is a better posting
