I agree. Just observing with your eyes, camera, military ground radar and nose radar a huge yellow-ish glowing object with the diameter of two aircraft carriers, in front of your Boing 747, tracking you as you go, over a long distance, and even following you around in a 360 degree turn is not evidence of little green men. But where do we go from there? There are a limited amount of possible explanations, all which is eliminated as plausible by any one involved (air traffic control personnel, the pilots, military radar stations, meteorologists). It would be a leap of faith to conclude "aliens", but would it be a bigger step than concluding any hypothesis' already deemed implausible? (eg. weather balloons).
Using your curiosity, investigate these cases and decide what hypothesis will provide the smallest leap of faith. You can start by reading the wikipedia-article on the incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_flight_1628_incident but there are many many more cases:
"An Air Force major is ordered to approach a brilliant UFO in his Phantom jet over Tehran. He repeatedly attempts to engage and fire on unusual objects heading right toward his aircraft, but his missile control is locked and disabled. Witnessed from the ground, this dogfight becomes the subject of a secret report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
In Belgium, an Air Force colonel investigates a series of widespread sightings of unidentified triangular objects, and he sends F-16s to attempt a closer look. Many hundreds of eyewitnesses, including on-duty police officers, file reports, and a spectacular photograph of an unidentifiable craft is retrieved and analyzed.
Here at home, a retired chief of the FAA’s Accidents and Investigations Division reveals the agency’s response to a thirty-minute encounter between an aircraft and a gigantic UFO over Alaska, which occurred during his watch and is documented on radar." from: http://www.amazon.co.uk/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Officials/dp/0307717089
Also there are cases directly involving little green men (actually, grey) emerging from crafts.
There are a limited amount of possible explanations, all which is eliminated as plausible by any one involved (air traffic control personnel, the pilots, military radar stations, meteorologists). It would be a leap of faith to conclude "aliens", but would it be a bigger step than concluding any hypothesis' already deemed implausible? (eg. weather balloons).
How about concluding "I don't know"?
Recently I've been struck with a belief in Aliens being present on this Earth. It happened after I watched this documenary (and subsequently several others). My feeling of belief is not particular interesting in itself - I could be lunatic or otherwise psychological dysfunctional. What I'm interested in knowing is to what extend other people, who consider themselves rationalists, feel belief in the existence of aliens on this earth, after watching this documentary. Is anyone willing to try and watch it and then report back?
Another question arising in this matter is how to treat evidence of extraordinary things. Should one require 'extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims'? I somehow feel that this notion is misguided - it discriminates evidence prior to observation. That is not the right time to start discriminating. At most we should ascribe a prior probability of zero and then do some Bayesian updating to get a posterior. Hmm, if no one has seen a black swan and some bayesian thinking person then sees a black swan a) in the distance or b) up front, what will his a posterior probability of the existence of black swans then be?