No, I anticipated your point. It doesn't matter now if the first photo ever published is small and in B&W. That was in 1996. There's nothing in the big color picture inconsistent with a ridge of feathers. Especially if one does what you and Feduccia don't do and takes the blinders off TO CONSIDER ALL THE OTHER EVIDENCE. There are non-ambiguous fossils. That is why Sinosauropteryx has not been reinterpreted, not because the first impression was from a crappy picture but it was never revisited.
There are multiple finds of this species now. Here's another one.
That specimen reveals what appears to be a tuft of feathers on the end of the tail. Given the blinders the antitheropod guys wear, you have to wonder if Feduccia even looked at that one. If he looked at that one, did he look at the first one?
Pictures of this level of detail have existed for years. Anyone who cares has been looking at THEM.
Most people see feathers because they look like feathers and we have other fossil dinosaur feathers that look even more so. All the naysayers can do is screech that looking like feathers isn't proof of feathers.
By the way, at the April 24, 1997 press conference (at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science) about the discovery of this fossil, the team (Brush, Wellnhofer, Martin and Ostrom...no creationist boogey-men here), which had studied the fossil for three days, did not conclude that Sinosauropteryx had feathers. They said that, "More research, including cross-section and chemical analysis, could determine whether they are protofeathers, feathers, or something totally unrelated."
They concluded one fossil specimen of one species they examined in 1997 was an ambiguous data point. I showed you unambiguous feathers on dinosaurs. You want to see another unambiguous case of feathers on a dinosaur skeleton? Look at Archaeopteryx. Yes, it's historically classed as a bird, but it's got a dinosaur skeleton. It was called a bird precisely because it had enough unambiguous feathers to fly. Its closest identified relatives are dromeosaurs including Sinornithosaurus.
This being the case, why did so many in the scientific community jump on the feathered dinosaur bandwagon related to this fossil?
Because of the then-existing preponderance of evidence, which has only increased. You should be asking Feduccia and Olson why they put blinders on and only look at the murkier data points like the tiny ridge on Sinosauropteryx.
And, despite the scientific evidence that demonstrates that protofeathers are unrelated to feathers...
There is no such evidence. All Olsen and Feduccia can mumble is that some of the "protofeather" fossils are not clearly and conclusively modern feathers. So what?
These are feathers.
They're on a dinosaur.
Here's a specimen with no feathers.
It looks like a dinosaur, but it has some wavy irregular outlines that might the the result of the decomposition of feathers. Do we call it a dinosaur? Or do we look at the filename, see that it's a species called Archaeopteryx, recall that other specimens of Archaeopteryx had exquisite preservation of FEATHERS and conclude that this one had feathers too but feathers are hard to preserve well?
I mean, how many points do you score by being dumb as a rock? I'm going to do you a favor and summarize your side because I'm getting tired of repeating mine.
You've got about five non-cretins worldwide saying useful idiot things for you. They wouldn't have anything to do with you on a bet, but you can spin their stuff because their "enemy" is your enemy. You've got some fossil specimens that have something most people think are feathers but can be interpreted as something else if you're militantly determined they can't be feathers. (Never mind that they fit neatly into the pattern of the fossils with clear feathers if so interpreted.) You've got the usual tu quoque rants about evolutionist preconceptions and religiosity.
Ping me when you have something new.