If the job description exists only inside your head and is not available for empirical observation by people other than yourself, I'm afraid it has to be categorized as a figment of your imagination.
Sorry Marty I am not going into one of those non sequitur discussions of yours.
Just trying to objective, Malcolm.
If you have something outside your head that other interested parties may observe with their senses, then you have some data to back up your opinion.
If you don't have anything outside your head that others can examine empirically, then you have a belief.
With empirical evidence, others can check your results.
Without empirical evidence, all that your peers can do is to read your mind instead of observing the artifact or reading the primary source.
I suggest that you do a little reading on the role of lookouts and observers in the pre-radar and other electronic location device days prior to 1939.
I'm not the man who made the unsupported act of faith about how the six men from the Colorado were educated. The person who makes the claim has the burden of proof. All I have to do, following your lead, is ask questions about whether you've met the burden of proof that you have taken on.
I've shown you the links to the reading I've done on the history of S.A.R., which is the relevant educational tradition in question.
Now while you may have strong doubts about the sharp eyes of naval observers ...
No, I have no doubts about the quality of their eyesight.
But you yourself provided an anecdote which, for the sake of argument, I will assume to be true, about how you were trained to
use your eyesight in the field and subsequently
taught others the same skill. Both before and after acquiring the skill of recognizing what was sought, your eyesight was the same. What changed was not the quality of your eyesight but your ability to use it properly in the search you were doing.
That shows that education can improve the use of one's natural talents. So the specific issue is about
what kind of training was given to the six men who searched Niku.
whether on board a ship or in the air they were there to serve a very express purpose.
So far as I know, the express purpose of the spotter planes on a destroyer was to find targets and direct gun fire. Looking for a ship or plotting the fall of rounds is on a different scale than searching for people on the ground or in the water.
Naval observation aircraft were the eyes of the fleet beyond the visual limit imposed by the horizon and part of that work which did include monitoring the fall of shells was looking out for all sorts of things that might pose a threat to the fleet e.g. small vessels, submarine periscopes etc. Now while I happily accept that you adamantly disagree with me concerning the observational skills of the aviators searching for Earhart (it is a discussion forum after all) I, after considering the issue, do not so there we must leave it.
No, I do not disagree with you about the "observational skills of the aviators." I disagree with you about your objectivity in making the claim that the kind of education they were given equipped them for the kind of search that was needed over Niku. I'm will to change my mind if and when you provide something that comes from outside your own mind--something objective--that shows that the training they received was the kind of training needed to find AE and FN.
But the fact that the navy fliers did not see Earhart or Noonan has in a perverse way come to be used as evidence that they were on the island but were either too weak or incapable of signalling the aircraft.
Some may use it that way. I don't, and I don't think you will find that proposition in TIGHAR's own publications. In the absence of evidence either way, we cannot be sure what their physical was (assuming, of course, for the sake of argument, that they were on the island in the first place).
If they were on the island, and
if they were incapacitated, that
might explain why the searchers did not see them. This is pure logic. It is unassailable. It is not an assertion that they were on the the island nor that they were injured; it is a connection between two ideas (present, but hurt) and another idea (not able to get the attention of the searchers).
That is because the people who are convinced they were there have to find a reason why the navy pilots didn't see them and therefore have to provide an explanation for this.
True.
If AE and FN were on the island, then there must be some reason why they were not found by the Navy. That, too, is a logical argument, and is unassailable.
1. The navy pilots and observers were only trained to see very very large shell splashes so anything less than 70 or 80 feet in height, white and wet was outside their skill set which clearly excludes Earhart and Noonan ...
Yes. Your claim is that anyone trained in any form of observation becomes omnicompetent in all kinds of observation; your anecdote about being trained to see things differently contradicts your first claim. The kind of education given can affect the kind of observations that are made.
Therefore those reasons despite being pure guesswork ...
When I question your guesswork, you accuse me of
non sequitur arguments. I guess you value your guesswork more highly than I do.
, and all based on the assumption that the US Navy observers were utterly unskilled
Straw man. I haven't said that they were "utterly unskilled." The position I've taken is more nuanced than than.
, are used to advance the argument that Earhart and Noonan were there.
False. I do not reason that the failure of the search to see them is evidence of their presence on the island. What I claim is that the failure of the search to find them is not evidence that they were
not on the island. That is a different position from the one that you are rejecting.
Call me difficult (go ahead, I don't mind, I have a broad back) but I find it amusing that it can be argued that the undeniable fact that Earhart and Noonan were not seen is undeniable proof that they were there to be seen. It has chutzpah I admit.
If anyone were making that argument, it would be absurd.
What is peculiar is your perception that someone
has made that argument. Now in addition to your fact-free speculation about the nature of the airmen's education, you've started seeing things that aren't there in this thread.