If a pilot states they saw a dragon flying through the air, would you believe him? What if he had tens of thousands of hours flying time? Would you then suggest that he really did see a dragon or, maybe, just maybe, he might be mistaken. Anecdotal claims by themselves are not facts (somethign that can not be refuted). They are stories told about an event that may or may not be accurate.
If a pilot states they saw a MIG, would you believe him? If a pilot states he saw some kind of unidentifiable craft with an unknown silhouette would you believe him?
Your whole statement about dragons and UFOs being in the woo category is what allows you to have contempt prior to investigation. If It’s woo then I won’t even bother because I already it’s fantasy. I don’t because there are reams of expert, skilled and professional testimony pertaining to UFOs. The last I heard, there were none about dragons.
Yet they still make mistakes. The Tornado pilots are a good example. I can give you more if you so desire.
And I can give you way more examples of pilots who routinely don’t make mistakes. Every day there are hundreds and thousands of flights from rookie to the Black Bird spy plane and all points in between, that don’t crash. The vast overwhelming flights don’t crash. Crashes are an exception to the norm.
Do pilots know what a bright fireball looks like? Do they know what an iridium flare is? Do they know the difference between a geosynchronous satellite and a low earth orbit satellite? Pilots are great at flying and I do not doubt their skills at this. However, looking at the past history of pilot error, it does not mean they are great at identifying an unknown. This is what Hynek meant.
Hynek also said this: “My concern is with flying saucers of long lifetime -- those which have not, as yet, been "captured" or demolished by an explanation. Let us further limit them to those that have been observed by two or more people, at least one of whom is practiced in the making of observations of some kind, that is, to pilots, control tower operators, weather observers, scientific workers, etc. Also, let us limit cases to sightings lasting a minute or more, again for obvious reasons.”
Basically, you are saying that every single time a pilot reports something exotic he is mistaken.
There have been too many credible witnesses that have reported seeing very clearly some kind of craft of unknown origins flying next to their aircraft and performing astounding maneuvers. To try to dismiss every single one of those as one of your mundane, 10-15 point cookie cutter templates is absurd. You would have to be Omniscient.
Basically, what’s implied in your reality map is that every
single report of a sighting from the beginning of man up to and including the present, and by extrapolation, every single sighting in the future can be explained away by 10-15 mundane explanations. That’s a pretty bold implied statement. In fact, I would call that an Omniscient Absolute. And I don’t think you are Omniscient.
Actually I do doubt some amateur reports. Especially if they are exotic. Take the SLO that was imaged by "amateur astronomer" Chuck Shramek. He sparked the whole UFO trailing comet Hale-Bopp nonsense. The extraordinary claim was examined by many and doubted. When it was exposed to be just a nearby star distorted by optics, it was rejected. I can say the same about the "Aries flasher". Exotic report doubted and eventually rejected. This one had numerous observations and a photograph! All shown to be satellite reflections and glints.
The fact is that many make mistakes. That is a fact. As a result, the more exotic the report (no matter who is reporting them), the more skeptical one should be of that report until it can be verified.
I agree you should be skeptical about exotics until something can be verified one way or the other. That’s objective skepticism. Unfortunately, that’s not what happens with the James Randi style of skepticism as evidenced by your dragon reference up above. You already have your mind made up that UFOs falls into the woo category and woo is an area where you refuse to investigate objectively. Why? Because it’s woo and any half way intelligent person should know that!! Why bother investigating unicorns, dragons and UFOs when you know they’re not real.
***If you are dealing with "unidentifieds" the silhouette training means nothing. The training the military gives its pilots are to identify enemy aircraft and shoot them down or attack targets. It has nothing to do with all the atmospheric and astronomical phenomena visible to the pilot. I can give you examples of military pilots chasing bright stars for goodness sakes.
I can give you all kinds of examples of all of pilots chasing a lot of things around, so what? Are you suggesting that if a number of pilots chase bright stars, therefore, they’re all bright stars or some other mundane?
***No, it is you who seems to be stuck in the mindset of not recognizing issues associated with these reports. You have made blanket statements without being familiar with the case histories. I have actually looked at some of these case histories. Have you? Have you read about all these mistakes made by military pilots (i.e. chasing stars, swerving to avoid re-entering debris/meteors, confusing the setting moon peaking out of some clouds, etc. etc.)? It is you who have not bothered to even look at these histories and see if they can be explained. You just accept the statement they can not be explained and then assume they are alien spaceships. Why not dragons?
Your "fleshed out Hynek" sounds like a cut and paste from somebody's website. Is this your own work or somebody else's. You should give them credit if you do use their work you know. BTW, Hynek still says you can't trust pilots as infallible observers in his book, "The UFO report". The statistics show this is true.
