wsay

This is pretty much a standard model in academic publishing

As someone who has designed and taught those courses, my experience (admittedly only one persons) is that you pick what will work with the least hassle - because you'll have plenty of hassle elsewhere and probably no real time to deal with any of it without making more.

Sounds like you misunderstood the criticisms of that laptops cooling design (which was abysmal to the point where it pretty much had to be deliberate). I would suggest refraining from calling people dumber than yourself, until you're totally sure how dumb you actually are.

I think the inadequate data is the key point, especially as we've only seen two of these types of things so far - the best we can probably hope for now is to go "This object seemed odd in several ways - let's increase our observations for these kinds of objects and see what the majority turn out to be and importantly if we encounter anything which is odd in similar ways which we can identify".

So when the question is posed "What is a responsible scientist to do in this situation?" I think the answer is clearly, accept it as an "out-there" but currently not disprovable hypothesis, and if you feel strongly that it's incorrect, dedicate effort and time to showing with evidence (at least quantifiable empirical evidence) that this is the case, ideally in a published and peer-reviewed paper.

Additionally, it probably doesn't matter how the particular judge is placated, if that occurs - once he's in the states the US Government can essentially do as it pleases because who's going to stop them? A sternly worded letter might be sent, which will be filed, and that'll be the end of it is my guess.

Ten minutes watching YouTube will demonstrate that amateurs are certainly capable of repairing todays devices, even down to something small like an apple watch, so small size and reparability are clearly not mutually exclusive. Why would they be anyway? Certified repair technicians aren't magic, they just have access to training, parts and tools that help.