As usual, Monty, you raise an extremely interesting point.
I'd say "TECTIC" is a very real thing. Look at the hordes who remain transfixed on the probability, if not certainty as they see it, of a singular outcome for Earhart and whom so readily contest others who view it differently.
I'll not exclude myself from some of that, lest anyone take offense - I certainly do have a bias in terms of what I think happened, among other possibilities (well, duh, just follow a few of my posts... "it shows!" - Cap'n Ron). But beyond us armchair weenies is a whole level of kingdoms, each crenelated in its own ways to hold fast to and defend the notion. Add to that some very real property rights, e.g. copyrights, etc. to rather extensive writing in support of this or that 'answer' as to the lost aviatrix and it raises the stakes in a real way. It is an industry, and it's complex alright - and to the point, quite organic.
I may have overlooked something, but so far as I've been able to tell to-date, TIGHAR may be the only one who openly holds her notions as hypothesis, something to not be concluded without further showing per se, but tested. I pray others will point me to the evidence of my error if I have overlooked this approach in other seeking organizations.
To shinny a bit further out onto that limb, I'll add that only one outfit has laid hands on anything that could be sho' 'nuff evidence of an Earhart presence - all others still argue solely on a view of apparent probabilities, as they interpret the knowable (and sometimes speculated) actions of that flight that fateful day. Not that some haven't tried - hats off to Nauticos, and those who dug at Saipan, etc.
Mostly the more common theme seems nested in a visceral conviction: as man gazes out on the scene, it cannot be missed that the Pacific is expansive, and my belief is that the human mind overlooks the focus of a Noonan to find land when in a land plane and the presumption is "so much water, that has to be it." And yet Saipan and the Yellow Peril are irresistible hand-maidens in so many accounts, of course.
Are we all mad? No, not enough to be committed, mostly, but fascinated - and as humans cannot seem to resist the apparently genetically-imprinted urge to encamp and industrialize ourselves in various clusters; and we cannot escape the human leaning that if we only work hard within our tribe we can gather more berries than the next, and therefore survive as the fittest. So blindly in some cases, no doubt, that some will take any eventual smoking gun as a mere temporary set-back to their own pursuit ("...you'll see - we'll prove that thing washed up in a storm, she wasn't there...").
So yes, 'tis something Eisenhower might have been concerned with - "TECTIC" seems to be with us. I guess I prefer to see it as a blow for liberty that it is, however, and not so much a threat. Let the buffalo chips fall where they may, and may the most able tribe gather the most.
One thing about 'chips - they may not taste so great, but they burn well. So here's to seeing Ric come on one night with the great news of "there's plenty of buffalo chips" - it will be an interesting day in TECTIC.