When discussing something rationally what matters is the merits of the arguments, not the background of the speaker. Mick West's background as a video game developer don't detract from his arguments. Furthermore, Navy pilot are not assured against dishonesty or error; even US Navy pilots are humans. Spare me this "support the troops" style of rhetoric; you can't use patriotism to shame me into uncritically taking military personnel at their word.

I agree we should avoid appeals to authority, but Mick West's argument is essentially saying all the secondary evidence, including witness testimony corresponding to the video he is trying to disprove is false (or ignores it altogether), so he unfortunately turns it into a he-said-she-said (where his credibility becomes relevant, since he doesn't have any, and the pilots have at least a little).

Mick West always starts with a conclusion and works backwards from there. He had a satisfying explanation re: parallax on the "GoFast" video, and developed a cult following from there, but the Gimbal one is really grasping at straws.

I've read about enough anomalies and see enough statistical patterns to develop an intuition that some percentage of them represent something really interesting, even without a smoking gun. We've had a lot of time to experiment with implanting experiences and studying mass hallucinations and they are no better understood than when people first tried using them to wish away inconvenient data. It just seems like a deus ex machina to ignore something frightening observed by someone credible (where frightening == worldview-changing).

Have you ever honestly considered, if you were a casual naturalist in Galileo's time, whether you with your present personality would side with the church or with Galileo?