Rusty wrote:

"And what if Dan happens to be correct? I've read nearly every thread on this. Both sides have seemingly logical points..."

No, Anyone who is at all familiar with the work thats been done on comets knows that Apteds theory is nonsense. Here is a short proof

If, as he claims, the material is uniformly distributed about the comet then spectroscopic analysis would show uniform emission of excited atoms and molecule all around the comet- NOT just in the tail. Remember what he claims is the tail is an optical illusion due to reflected light... The emission and absorption lines of the atoms is a totally different phenomena... The strength of these emissions will be proportional to density of the material emitting.
So do we see uniform emission lines about the comet as he would predict? NO! They are coming from the coma and tail... BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE THE MAJORITY OF THE MATTER IS! Apted has had his argument refuted by facts about a dozen times in this thread and he just ignored it!

Rusty continued:
" but when the rubber meets the road, do we truly know .1% about everything there is to know? "

No, but we know enough to rule out a lot of insane nonsense- Apted's rants fall into this category

Rusty continued sadly:
"Bravo to you Dan for your dissention, and ultimately I'll look forward (as will we all) to the day a comet's tail may be sampled to better resolve this. "

It was studied scientifically well enough to rule out such nonsense 70 yrs ago....
There is a difference between dissention and insane ranting...