I'm not sure I understand your complaint. The "expected result" is either of the last two images (depending on your preference), and one of the main points of the post is to challenge the notion of "ground truth" in the first place.
Not a complaint, but both the final images have poor contrast, lighting, saturation and colour balance, making them a disappointing target for an explanation of how these elements are produced from raw sensor data.
Not a complaint, but both the final images have poor contrast, lighting, saturation and colour balance, making them a disappointing target for an explanation of how these elements are produced from raw sensor data.
But anyway, I enjoyed the article.