The royal road to clarifying subtle differences in language, however, is etymology, and there the difference is plain. Hetero = different, dox = opinion, ortho = correct. So the distinction here is something like "diverse opinion" vs. "incorrect opinion", which to me seems clearly meaningful.

No, it's not. Etymology tells you where a word came from, not what it means (either in denotation or connotation) in current usage. It will often be completely misleading in trying to unpack subtle differences in meaning.

http://tcpc.blogs.com/musings/2010/05/homodoxuals-and-hetero...

Is it? (to either of those things). In current English usage, 'unorthodox' doesn't mean 'incorrect' and doesn't connote 'incorrect'.

An Austrian school economist, or an Arianist in the early Christian church, would be called "heterodox" but probably not "unorthodox". It has the connotation of following a definite tradition that is not the main tradition in the field. "Unorthodox" means something more like "doing your own thing", so Steven Levitt (the Freakonomics guy) might be called an "unorthodox economist" because he studies unusual topics like drug dealers, but not a "heterodox economist" because he studies these strange topics using mainstream theories.

I think "heterodox" fits reasonably well in this article, it suggests that these engineers are following a distinct tradition, not just "doing their own thing".

"...defining a heterogeneous orthodoxy for the coming Information Age..." [1]

Presumably Victor's research group is working in opposition to this conventional thinking, making them... unheterorthodox?

1. 'THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY' - http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/the-californian-i...