GAAAAHHHH....and round we go again.
Malcolm, "probability" is more than enough for a hypothesis. Once again: No one is saying the hypothesis is proven. You originally said TIGHAR has uncovered "scant" evidence. Bunk. They've uncovered a ton of evidence. Some of it is more compelling than others. You may choose to accept it or not. But it exists. The evidentiary standard in law is also irrelevant. We're talking about what evidence is by definition. Any piece of information that bears on a hypothesis is evidence. They are facts to be considered and weighed. My background is in music and journalism but I do know enough about science to know that the bedrock of scientific inquiry is having an objective means of evaluating the evidence. It doesn't mean rejecting any piece of evidence that isn't conclusive. It means having a standard of weighting and evaluating the evidence other than "I like this fact and I choose to ignore this other fact." TIGHAR has played by these rules. It's the reason I respect their work so much.
"I think you would rather be told what you want to know rather than what you need to know." Bunk. I simply ask that people with strong opinions be able to defend them without resorting to circular logic and subjective assumptions. I welcome being proven wrong when people can play by the rules and defend their opinions. I don't mind being shown my logic is faulty. I like it. I learn something. When people just make up their own rules, reach their own conclusions, and then imply intellectual superiority, it grates on me just a bit. Particularly since I've now had to explain this same, to me fairly simple, concept five times.
I think we agree that it is an interesting hypothesis and more work needs to be done. I never said, nor implied, that it is a proven hypothesis -- simply that you seem to ignore or discard a large part of the supporting evidence without much basis or other explanation, and that your skepticism is selective (e.g. Hoodless). You keep responding to my posts as if I am insisting that TIGHAR is right and that I'm beating you up for not being a "true believer". That's a convenient moving of the goalposts, because that's never what I said, and I ain't that guy. I said your comments about the progress of the investigation betrayed to me a subjective, and thus unscientific, reading and measuring of the available facts. And I told you why. Specifically and repeatedly. Put another way: the logical basis for your skepticism of TIGHAR's hypothesis is much less convincing to me than that for the hypothesis itself. TIGHAR's means of sorting through this stuff makes objective sense to me; there's no inconsistency in terms of their methodology; it's totally transparent to me why they weight this fact heavily and this one not so much, and why certain sources are trusted and others less so. With yours, not so much. That's all I'm sayin'.
If you choose to continue to pretend that I'm berating you for not accepting the hypothesis hook, line and sinker, and that I've been asserting that TIGHAR has proven their case, I have to conclude you're being wilfully intellectually dishonest, since I never said anything of the kind. And was, I think, quite clear in that regard.
So we can perhaps move on: how about you just say "I now understand that you feel that my evaluation of the evidence is purely subjective, and I disagree." Simple, and refreshingly on point.