Wal Thornhill is by no means a "plasma physicist". He has a BA in physics, and I don't know what courses he took, but bachelor programs rarely include a specific class in plasma physics; it is usually covered in a very "survey" form, as part of the usual udergrad E&M courses. He has no graduate experience in physics that I am aware of, though he claims to have "sat in" ("audited" in the US) one or two courses while in England. His entire professional career was in computer systems management, or some closely related computer job. He has no publishing credits in physics at all. Don Scott, on the other hand, was on the electrical engineering faculty for the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, from which he retired. If any thing, it's Scott, and not Thornhill, who is the electrical "brains" behind the electric cosmos, though Thornhill is the spiritual leader of the clan. Electrical engineering curricula can include plasm physics to varying degrees, but I don't know what Scott's specific background is in that area. But he also is certainly not a plasma physicist. There are, in fact, no plasma physicists at all associtated with the electric cosmos model, although they like to make themselves look good by association with Anthony Perrat (
The Plasma Universe), a Los Alamos plasma physicist who subscribes to the Alfven plasma cosmology, which is much different, though still quite non main-stream.
There was a "neutrino problem", but it is now essentially gone, and has been for several years. I addressed this directly, as the very first topic in my webpage
On the "Electric Sun" Hypothesis, and also in more detail in another webpage,
Solar Fusion & Neutrinos. The standard model has problems, but than all models always have problems. The real question one should ask is whether or not the problem, whatever it is, rises to the level of an
intolerable conflict with observation, or with another well accepted theory. I think that only an intolerable conflict can justify replacing one hypothesis, or theory, with another. In the standrd model, there are no such intolerable conflicts. But with the electric cosmos, there are.
As you say, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". It's a common line, and I disagree with it. Absence of evidence
can be evidence of absence, but one has to consider each case on its own merits. In the case of the absence of evidence of electrons approaching the sun, this absence is compelling. It's not just one, or even a few spaceraft, in a few choice locations. It's literally dozens of spacecraft, scattered all over the solar system, but concentrated mostly at the equator. That's why Thornhill changed his tune some years ago, pointing to the solar pole as the place where the electron influx would be, since he knows as well as anyone else does, that the absence of electrons in the equatorial plane is too severe to deal with. Granted Ulysses is only one spacecraft, but it has covered both solar poles twice now, and nary an inbound electron in sight. But the magnetic field is streched radially even at the pole, and does not show a polar cusp. There is only one way anyone knows to do that, a steady outbound flow of electrons (an inbound flow would bend the field in the opposite direction). So
all of the evidence, for decades, and both particles & fields, clearly indicates an absence of incoming electrons. But more than that, the configurations of fields & particles that we actually obvserve constitute an
intolerable conflict with the hypothesis that there is an incoming stream. For one thing, an incoming flow of electrons would either rip the solar wind apart, or be ripped apart by the solar wind (the bigger flow wins). The radial magnetic field can only be maintained by an
outward flow of electrons. The electrons cannot have an "undetectable energy" for several, simultaneous spacecraft (you might pull that off for one, but not two or more at once).
From where I sit, the standard model is very strong, and is consistent with everything we know about physics, and with all observations of the solar system, neutrinos very much included. On the other hand, the electric cosmos model is in direct conflict with much of what we know about physics, and with most observations of the solar system. So why choose the weaker model?