My point was that those who do serious (as supposed to superficial) research into the Watchtower's history are given more opportunities to see what is wrong than would otherwise be the case. Ray Franz and Ed Dunlap were well-respected as "scholars" and look what happened to them, while Karl (braindead from birth) Klein remained braindead, er "faithful" to death!
Ray Franz did his main research many years before he left the Witnesses. I don't think his defection can be directly attributed to his research. His research on Bible chronology for instance did not prompt him to leave bethel, on the contrary it prompted him to write the chronology section of the Aid book! My reading of CofC is that basically Franz was calling for certain liberal reforms in the organization so that it conformed more closely to his view of what Christianity should be like. His peers did not agree with him, saw him as a threat and conspired to remove him first from bethel, then from the organization altogether.
From Barbara Anderson's story it does not seem that it was any of the historical research that she did into Russell or Rutherford caused her to defect. Rather it was a difference of opinion over the current handling of abuse cases that prompted her departure. In fact I am sure she wrote somewhere that none of the historical research she did on the Watchtower's early history caused her to doubt. I am sure she wrote something like 'I simply put it down to the light getting brigher whenever I came across questionable things in the early literature'.
This confirms to me what I have often suspected: that it is more often than not personal differences that lead to defections from the Witnesses, even at a high level, rather than 'pure' doctrinal issues.
