Are airplane pilots more reliable witnesses than others, lending more credibility to UFO sightings?
Rob Britt at Livescience: An interesting argument is playing out in the Space section of MSNBC. It began when veteran space reporter James Oberg questioned the foundation of a new book about UFOs called "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record."
Experienced UFO investigators realize that pilots, who instinctively and quite properly interpret visual phenomena in the most hazardous terms, are not dispassionate observers. For pilots, a split-second diagnosis can be a matter of life or death — and so they're inclined to overestimate the potential threats posed by what they see.
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Hynek found that the best class of witnesses had a 50 percent misperception rate, but that pilots had a much higher rate: 88 percent for military pilots, 89 percent for commercial pilots, the worst of all categories listed. Pilots could be counted on for an accurate identification of familiar objects — such as aircraft and ground structures — but Hynek said "it should come as no surprise that the majority of pilot misidentifications were of astronomical objects."
