Mistaken identity possibly misses the point...

So Ed Whelan did a little research and then a little more. He definitely should not have made an accusation based on his research, and he did the right thing by apologizing to Chris Garrett and removing the posts that suggest Garrett was the culprit. But let's just take the Chris Garrett situation out of consideration for now and focus on the rest of it.

So in order to reconcile the two versions of events, whether there were two or four people in the room, Ford clarified to say (that the therapist was wrong) and that there were only two people in the room at the time of the alleged attack, but four others at the party (which would explain where the therapist came up with four). Now, perhaps your first thought was a little like mine when I wondered out loud how many people refer to five people getting together as a party, but I can let that slide.

But by demanding that the number four represented how many other people were at the house, it narrows the possible locations of where this alleged attack took place. Since it was obviously not "her" house, and since high school kids are not allowed to simply pick random houses to walk into, the alleged attack must have taken place in either Kavanaugh's house, Judge's house, PJ's house, or the house of the other female suggested to be present.

Certainly if it was a normal high school party, where there are dozens of kids running around, not knowing who's house you were at make sense. But in a smaller group setting (five people) it's much less likely that you wouldn't know who's house you were at. Especially considering that Ford makes some very specific statements about where the house was, and how the floor plan worked out.

So what's important with the Whelan research isn't that he found a possible look alike, but that he was able to show that none of the other four people at the alleged get together lived in a house that either matched the location or the floor plan she suggests. Furthermore, we don't know (but will probably find out) if she has ever been to any of these student's houses at other times. If so, we could probably rule those houses out as possible locations (because she would have recognized them)

By all accounts, Ford seems to be describing a house that none of the people she alleges were at the party lived in. That suggests that there had to be at least one other person at the party. Quite obviously the person who lived in the house in question. That would mean that either the number four is incorrect, or she has the wrong four people.

At the very least, Ford's memory of who was actually at the party appears to be factually incorrect. So we can the makeup  of the party goers to the growing list of things that Christine Ford is either unsure of or simply outright wrong about.

This begs the question. How many inconsistencies and downright factually incorrect parts of a 36 year old memory are allowed, before we decide that we cannot "count on" this particular memory to ruin someone's career, reputation, and tarnish his entire family?