The author did more research than the common layman. From my perspective, the author fully assessed the situation. Do you have reason to believe the author hasn't done enough research?

Does doing more than "the common layman" make the conclusions reliable?

I don't have any conclusions, mostly because I'm not confident in a layman's random few searches / ability read them in the appropriate contex could provide much in the way of conclusions.

> Does doing more than "the common layman" make the conclusions reliable?

Yeah, by definition. Someone who has more knowledge in a subject is more reliable than someone who doesn't.

Does that make the conclusions reliable?

I'm not sure why you want to use layman as a measuring stick.

> Does that make the conclusions reliable?

Not totally but more then other posters on HN that were making claims without research. The NERC report will be totally reliable but that will take 6+ months. And if my conclusions are wrong, they're wrong and I'll update my blog.

> I'm not sure why you want to use layman as a measuring stick.

I made this post as a direct response to previous HN and Reddit posts where the layman were forming conclusions. I did not see a single person quoting or referencing a single standard to back up their claims. I went out looking for something to back up claims and this is what I found. I formed conclusions off this and included them.

If an expert was to tell me I'm wrong and show me what I missed I would be happy to update my blog.

I included the first paragraph just to show that the post was not an expert opinion and was what I found after some research.

Well to be clear, I was asking someone else why they would want to use layman as a measuring stick.

I don't know who you personally talked to or their knowledge level either.

I'm highly skeptical the internet sleuth method of "I did some searches, I have a handful of links, now someone has to prove me wrong." How many times have we seen that come up short?