We physicists call them Thought Experiments, the most well known one is Einstein's "Twin Paradox"
Thought experiments, by definition, can be conducted by anybody in the laboratory of their own mind.
They draw out implications of what is known by forcing a reorganization of what is accepted as true.
Einstein published four papers in the
Miracle Year of 1905 while working as a clerk in a patent office.
His thought experiments had definite results on the field of physics. They were not just daydreams. His thought experiments led to real observations and experiments that have confirmed his insights.
Even if the proposal to place a Lockheed Electra 10-E Special duplicate on the reef in duplicate weather conditions is a "thought experiment," it isn't in the same ballpark as Einstein's re-thinking of physics. I ran the experiment in my mind (the only laboratory available for "thought experiments," of course) and concluded that it leads to a dead end.
NASCAR teams claim that there is no such thing as identical chassis, even though all have been produced by the same blueprints by the same workers using the same materials, jigs, blueprints, and templates. Even if someone invested the millions of dollars necessary to build a duplicate of the Electra using period materials and techniques, we could not be sure that that airframe would have the same elastic characteristics of the original airframe, which had been stressed both by flight and by the crash at Luke field, followed by repairs for which we have no adequate account. Which pieces of the plane were from the original? Which from the repairs? What additional material was used to strengthen stressed parts (if any)? How many rivets were stressed by the crash but not replaced? What G-forces acted on the main structural members in the crash? How much did those forces affect the strength of the materials?
Sometimes small differences make no difference; other times, little things add up and make a big difference.
Real physicists routinely receive bucketloads of thought experiments from cranks. It is something they laugh about among themselves over drinks late at night, if they pay any attention to the new Einsteins at all. The cranks, meanwhile, detail their rough treatment at the hands of professionals and console themselves with the thought that the professional physicists of 1905 also rejected Einstein's theories when they first heard them.
I completed the
first full-length biography of a physical chemist whose theory of adsorption of gases was rejected by Einstein but rehabilitated by London. Polanyi's key insight into adsorption came from mulling over data collected by others. It was, on a small scale, something like Einstein's meditation on the physics of his day. Polanyi's third-power law for adsorptive forces could not be explained until until quantum theory developed, which was a few years after Einstein had rejected it on the non-quantum view of electron mobility that prevailed in the early 1920s.
I don't foresee any change in materials science or engineering or weather prediction that would allow this thought about an experiment to bear fruit. YMMV.