>>12054858No, that's a different assumption. If you assume that the objects were detected on radar/IR as the pilots say, then the balloon theory for one is immediately stupid.
What he's actually doing is saying "I'm going to ignore this" (again, this isn't always unjustified) and what he should have said was to give a justification why, but he doesn't even do this part correctly.
The reason he does this is basically because it's the only way to pretend that this is even analysable by the scientific method. It's not. It's a chance encounter, not something reproducible. In order to pretend you're doing science you have to throw away the whole lot, not just the video.
If it were as he claimed, and he's throwing away what is "not testable" then you're now allowed to essentially disregard all other claims, because they're one-off events. So if he says, as he does, "the pilots were confused by X" and the pilots have claimed they experienced this multiple times, then he gets to say "oh that's not testable." When the pilots say "there were many more than one" he again gets to say "well that's not testable, because the video is the only thing I have." This isn't scientific behaviour at all, this is weakening constraints to allow for sloppy theories, because he's well aware that while he may explain one object by his current theory, he doesn't explain a large number being encountered multiple times. Balloons are out, and so are birds.
It's not behaving scientifically to just ignore what people claim once you have these claims being made by more than one person, and repeatedly. What he's done is dress up something equivalent to wilfuly ignoring things which I think to any reasonable person are implausible. By pretending it's a scientifically analysable event, he can ignore plausible or likely other constraints on the theory on the basis that it isn't repeatable, and therefore he throws it out.
This makes it little better than speculation to me.
