For the record, I agree that poking holes in the bottom of the maxillary sinuses would be a terrible fix because there would be no way route to the mucus to the nasopharynx down there. However, the point I am trying to make still stands: if the drainage could be reworked from the bottom, it would be much preferred. So I do not accept that this “story has been debunked.” Also, another item for the record is that this is not in Egnor’s expertise anymore than it is mine. He’s a neurosurgeon and all of this would be in the purview of an ENT or a plastic surgeon specializing in the facial reconstruction.
If this would get us past the impasse, I’m willing to admit, as I always have been, that there is probably no amount of surgical tinkering we could that would improve on this arrangement. My point is in the evolutionary trajectory that got us here, not in what would be the best design given the other constraints of the face. We can disagree on how our face got this way, while also agreeing that the sinuses do as well as can be expected given the constraints that they have.