Josh: I have old undershirts that are set aside for tearing K’riya. I put one on before checking out Farber’s article. And guess what? One of the tears is a Tefach longer now.
I understand where you’re coming from. It is quite disheartening to see that people with legitimate (if borderline) opinions are castigated as Apikorsim, which seems to happen all too often nowadays. That being said, Farber’s article was Apikorsus. There’s no way around that.