If a scout is finished with all requirements and is filling out the Eagle Rank Application, but finds out that his Committee Chair is out of the country, and the scout will turn 18 within days of the CC's expected to return to the US, is there anyone else who can sign the application in the CC's absence?  Does the scout need to wait for the CC?  What happens if there are flight delays, or something else unforeseen happens? 

I am an editor by trade -- or at least by one of them. For many years, I edited peer reviewed medical journals in a variety of fields. It was part of my job, with the help of medical review boards composed of national and international experts in their fields, to assess the validity of research in articles, or the citations used to support a recommended standard of care. With sometimes millions or even billions of dollars at stake, major pharmaceutical companies often employ strategies similar to what BSA did to produce or highlight favorable research or recommendations. These strategies are obvious to anyone working in the field.  There is a gray area where reputable researchers, reviewers, and publications often operate as part of the medical publishing system and each person, publication and review board, and sometimes the medical board organization it might represent, has to assess for itself what is acceptable. In this case, though, maybe the best way to describe what happened to BSA and its paid consultant is to say that they veered out of grey areas and stepped directly into fudge. I think it's relevant that BSA doesn't seem to mention this episode itself much post 2019. I believe some future transparency and data reporting is eventually supposed to result as part of the bankruptcy settlement with survivors, and that probably will be the first useful information to emerge from BSA if it ever does see light of day. 

We have enough backpacks and tents in circulation from alumni scouts, that we now encourage first-years to borrow from our “gear library” until they figure out exactly what they want. I think that is a metaphor for what remains BSA’s strength. Here are a series of parts, practices, and techniques that can be passed from generation to generation.

Without doubt. For all the rest, one word: "Tufte."