Who is the author of VM?

[Mark Knowles]

And if you are a person cautious about stating hypotheses then when you do choose to state a hypothesis about the manuscript one would expect it to be a good one.

You seemed to be speaking of the kind of theory that would get its owner "criticised".

If I understand your point I would say that criticism should not be considered a bad thing, theories need to be challenged. Criticism for criticisms sake is not necessarily a good thing. There has to be a basis for criticism and an underlying argument to any criticism.

In this context a bad theory seems to be one which has not been thought through with due time or seriousness and explored to a wide extent. I think a theory can be a good theory, but turn out to be incorrect on the basis of further evidence. Obviously some theories are much broader in their implications than others.