I'm guessing those readers were confused, not by the evidence per se, but by the split between the evidence and their prior assumptions--and they went with their assumptions. That's why I'm indicting their assumptions here. If they'd been really on the button, they'd have questioned Spock's statement themselves when he made it.

Okay, that makes sense somewhat. I've been talking about my reading of Fraser with Mal and a couple of other people, and see the same thing happening there--that when faced with a disconnect between the fanon reading and the canon characteristics that I want to point out, readers are going to pick fanon because it 'feels right' to them. Again, though, I would assume that it would be a smaller subset of readers, not everyone.

(Let me know if you find it--I'd like to read the whole thing, if you don't find!)