The papers you referred to are of the "arm-waving" vagueness that Stepinski has lifted above.

Simple statements that drainages "look similar" are subjective and not rigorous. What Stepinski has done is to find numerical measures for terrains to classify similar ones together.

Importantly, much of Stepinski's arguments for Mars are in favour of groundwater sapping (or subsurface fluids, anyway). He draws parallels with the Atacama sapping channels which were the focus of that latter (Hoke) paper. If he had detailed data over the Hawaiian channels, he could comment on the similarity or not in an objective numerical way.

Anyway, the point I've been trying to make is that we need to use more precise and objective methods to measure things, rather than simply asserting a visual similarity.