Bossavit's book comes after McConnell's reply, and goes into more depth than the essay McConnell is replying to. Personally, I found the book more convincing. And having read what Bossavit had to go through to verify McConnell's references, I'm not convinced Greg Wilson did the same.
Rather than try to defend someone else's words, though, I'll just direct you to the book. You're going into a lot of detail critiquing quotes from an end-of-chapter summary, which isn't fair to Bossavit's work. I hope you'll read the book, because I'd like to hear your critique of the full work.
I would rather not. As it turns out, I haven't even finished reading "Making Software", not for lack of the quality of the essays but because my interest in this area isn't as high as I thought it would be.
I can be convinced otherwise for this one case. Could you elaborate for me on why my critique on these points is unjustified? Why is sufficient scientific evidence for to Bossavit? Why does the Internet necessarily discard older studies, and how does Bossavit establish that that's the case?
Rather than try to defend someone else's words, though, I'll just direct you to the book. You're going into a lot of detail critiquing quotes from an end-of-chapter summary, which isn't fair to Bossavit's work. I hope you'll read the book, because I'd like to hear your critique of the full work.