In the absence of indisputable evidence there will always be detractors and why, as Chris points out, there is a need to find the smoking gun. Despite the fact that most of the article is dismissive and obviously skewed to one way of thinking, Carol did say this, "After all has been said and done, without TIGHAR a great deal of information about the Earhart disappearance would not have been available... ". How true! Not only that, but the deeper that TIGHAR has dug into the Niku theory, the more compelling the theory has become. The post loss radio messages that triangulate to Niku, the records describing the discovery of the castaway skeleton and the interviews with the earliest colonists who all talk about a plane crash on the reef are all new evidence that has come out as TIGHAR has dug into this theory. In my mind all of this research has pointed towards a validity of the theory rather than disproving it.