Sorry I'm back late, I was out with a sick 8 year old and didn't have a computer, and I know you were anxiously awaiting my reply.
If all anyone could say about a bent piece of metal is that something at some point acted, possibly/probably forcefully, upon it to deform it from its assumed original shape there would be no science of aircraft accident investigation. Metallurgical analysis metal debris a specialized skill.
...
This is the "it could be anything" argument.
Ultimately it is the argument. You weren't there to see what happened, I wasn't there, Korsgaard wasn't there, and that piece of metal can't talk to tell us exactly what happened and how. To say "the failure was almost certainly caused by..." sure tries hard to give a definitive certainty to the scenario that's being put forth. Quite a leap beyond, seems to me, an informed opinion as to what could have happened. That's why I asked the question earlier if anything better that "consistent with" could be hoped for. And you gave a compelling answer.
We wanted to know if anyone could tell us how the sheet of aluminum got bowed out. Did somebody hammer on it? Was there an explosion? So we took the artifact to the best expert we could find. Walter Korsgaard was the lead FAA investigator on the 1988 PanAM 103 Lockerbie crash. In 2004 he was recently retired so he was able to give us his opinion without bureaucratic concerns. We showed him the artifact in his suburban Washington, DC home. After examining the piece closely he said that it was part of an airplane skin that had been struck on the interior surface by a fluid (i.e. air or water) force sufficient to blow the heads off the rivets but not focused enough to punch a hole in the metal - a big blunt push. We asked if it could have been caused by an explosion. After looking at it with a magnifying glass he said, "No. There is none of the telltale pitting from pinpoint pyrotechnic projectiles." We asked him what kind of accident might cause such damage. He said, "In flight breakup of an aircraft at very high speed, but these materials are not consistent with an aircraft capable of those speeds, or an airplane that was broken apart by moving water."
So how does this reconcile with the 1995 TIGHAR TRACKS (11/4) article which states:
"And the research continues. Recently retired FAA explosives expert Walter Korsgaard, whose successful investigations include the Pan Am 103 bombing, has determined that the type of damage sustained by the section of aircraft skin recovered on Nikumaroro in 1991 (TIGHAR Artifact 2-2-V-1) is not consistent with the detonation of an explosive device (i.e. World War II ordnance) but was more likely caused by a fuel/air explosion (as we have suspected)."
Your argument isn't with me, it's with Walter Korsgaard. Unfortunately he died in 2011. He was not a TIGHAR member and he was not particularly interested in Amelia Earhart. He didn't write a scholarly paper on 2-2-V-1. He was just a retired gentlemen who had been a top-notch aviation accident investigator who was kind enough welcome us into his home and give us his opinion. I don't think he was grasping at straws or projecting any fantasies.
My interest is not to have an argument with anyone. I just think that if this whole endeavor is going to be conducted above board, clinically, and according the rigors of the scientific method, then one shouldn’t pick and choose where and how it is applied. Words mean things and how they’re used mean even more. Say only what you mean and mean only what you say. I have no cause to doubt your characterization of Korsgaard and based on that I trust and applaud your reasoning to approach him on this matter. Would that his opinion (as professionally informed as it was) on the piece had been written up, even more so that his assessment of it had been done in less informal conditions than his home with a magnifying glass.
Sorry for the digression, as moot as it really is to the more important issue at hand - that of identifying the item’s source and, hopefully, incontrovertibly associating it with AE.