[Mithalwen]

While I think there is something flat earth about ignoring the existance of HoME, I did have a lot of sympathy for the Oxonmoot speaker who was pounced on and told here theory was WRONG because an essay in HOME contradicted it even though it was A valid interpretation of the event as recounted in the published Silmarillion.

It is hard to generalise when HOME contains different materials from definitively superceded drafts to notes that may have been a passing idea. We can't necessarily know if a last word on a subject was the final word with the unfinished posthumous works however I have to admit to being annoyed when I saw a discarded draft being claimed as a development of the material in the LOTR appendices as published because it suited the poster's hobbyhorse.