"Proper vetting and critical review is necessary even where all the participants are honest and upright, because mistakes get made, and interpretations vary. Having documents isn't enough, understanding them is the key. And without proper vetting, we would have no idea whether TomM had a true understanding of what he had."
I agree with all of that. Having documents isn't enough; understanding them is the key. With that proper vetting I would hope would occur. But the problem in all of this with MacWood and Moriarty, is they for some odd reason to follow Merion's and MCC's process to review and consider those documents and to try to understand them. They have been both told this by Merion and MCC but yet they do not seem to want to follow the same procedure all the rest of us have followed with those two clubs in establishing our research procedures with them.
Moriarty and MacWood will probably just continue to ignore this reality or rationalize it away somehow by just blaming some of us on this website or concocting some scientific and academic procedures or some legal requirement and expecting them to apply to this website and DG which they most certainly do not! They probably will continue to do that and just avoid the reality that if they want these things they really will need to do what those who got them and have had them before them did and also how they go about using their information on here.
This reality is never going to go away no matter how much yammering, caterwaling, complaining and demanding Moriarty and MacWood do on here to the contrary!
I think everyone on this website, including Ran Morrissett, should just tell these two guys in unison that if they really want what they seem to be demanding they pretty much need to follow the proper procedures of the clubs to establish a working research relationship and try to get what they're after, as the rest of us who have research relationships with Merion and MCC have done.
I think everyone on here should just ask them in unison to explain credibly and completely why it is they feel they should be the only exceptions!
Six or seven years ago if they had only come to some of us first perhaps it may've turned out differently but they both refused to do that and the reasons they gave are on here----and they are reasons which are very, very much less than impressive or satisfactory for Merion, MCC and those they have shared research material with and asked to help them over the years with their history presentations.