"But he KNEW what ordnance looked like, and described it when the streak ended and after a space without seeing anything, further to the left, a hard explosion, military ordinance."
To which you asked:
"If so, why did Meyer and his crewmates initially speculate that what they had seen was a MIDAIR COLLISION?"
Asmodeus, there is a very simple explanation... these flyers were trying to assess (diagnose) a peculiar event... an event beyond their experience in the area they were flying.
In medicine, an old saying is applicable: "When you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras."
In this instance, they saw a streak of light, followed by an bright flash explosion. Their experience, in this flight area, is that it is filled with airplanes (horses) and that it would not be unreasonable to assume, initially, that what they had seen was a mid-air collision of two airplanes. They DID NOT expect to see a missile (a zebra) flying before their eyes. The first inclination is to fit observed data into expected norms. It is only upon reflection that a rarer diagnosis can be made... that the hoofbeats were from zebras and not horses... when the observations DO NOT FIT the expected normal scenario. In this instance, the streak of light followed by the bright flash of an ordnance explosion DID NOT FIT the mid-air collision scenario expected. To make that conclusion one must shift time and place and situation.
Flying on a warm evening evening off of Long Island, one DOES NOT EXPECT TO SEE an AA missile! One's mind must shift gears and paradigms to realize what actually was seen.
Objective readers are encouraged to compare the following with your wacky "analysis".
Newsday
Brain Often Blurs What Eyes See
By Earl Lane
Washington Bureau
Washington - As investigators have sifted dozens of eyewitness accounts of the destruction of TWA Flight 800, they have had to keep in mind a growing scientific literature on the fallibility of first-hand descriptions.
In the immediate aftermath of the July 17 disaster, FBI agents interviewed several hundred people who had claimed to see the breakup of the airliner.
Some of them also described streaks of light, suggesting the possibility of a missile attack on the doomed plane.
But specialists say eyewitness accounts - no matter how credible those giving them - can be distressingly unreliable, particularly those gathered days after the fact.
"In general, memory researchers recommend that the most fruitful interview is the first interview,'' said Stephen Ceci, a Cornell University psychologist.
"And that's if the person hasn't been tainted or biased in some way by being given a theory or expectancy by the media or the interviewer or a friend.''
In highly publicized incidents such as the TWA crash, investigators must be especially wary, Ceci said, since there is so much information - and misinformation - available from media reports and word-of-mouth.
A law enforcement source familar with the TWA investigation said FBI agents use interview methods intended to assess the consistency and reliability of witness accounts. They look for any signs that the witnesses may be repeating news accounts or seeking to give interviewers what they believe they want to hear.
"There is a science to interviewing people,'' the source said.
But even witnesses who have been carefully interviewed and are reporting what they sincerely believe they saw can make mistakes, Ceci said.
"There is not a snapshot in the brain of that fireball in the sky or a streak of light prior to the explosion,'' he said.
Memories are stored in neurons distributed throughout the brain, he said, and the information stored in those brain cells "must be rounded up and put back together to tell a story . . . many things can go wrong in reconstructing it.''
Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who has written extensively about eyewitness testimony, said people tend to fill in gaps in their recollection with information they get from other sources.
"I don't mean to belittle the crash witnesses,'' Loftus said. But in some cases, particularly traumatic events, the perceived memories can be both vivid and incorrect. "People have claimed to see things a lot more bizarre than flashes of light,'' Loftus said.
Loftus has studied accounts of serious auto accidents. "You have cases where a witness says the blue car was traveling south and the yellow car was traveling north,'' Loftus said, and the witness will stick to that account even after it has been proved that just the opposite was the case.
There are ways to improve the reliability of accounts, Loftus said. "Some banks train tellers in anticipation of a bank robbery,'' she said. "You are to sit down, don't talk to anybody else and write out your own version of the event.'' Loftus said that professional training or expertise can affect the reliability of eyewitness accounts. She has done experiments in which she shows arson investigators a video of a fire scene, with fire officials giving orders to their personnel on how to fight the blaze. The arson investigators remember how many hose teams the chief is ordering into the building and other details that untrained viewers disregard, Loftus said.
But experts caution that trained professionals also can make mistakes. Howard Egeth, head of the psychology department at Johns Hopkins University, said studies have found that police officers often do no better than lay persons when trying to identify suspects.
And even when witness testimony is carefully couched, it can be misinterpreted by others.
Investigators in the TWA case have been interested in the accounts of National Guard air crews who were doing search-and-rescue training on the night of the disaster. One pilot reported seeing a "streak of light'' on the same trajectory as a shooting star. His remark was viewed by some as supporting the missile scenario.
But the pilot, a Vietnam veteran who has seen missiles fired in combat, dismissed that notion. He said the orange-red streak was descending across the sky and, as he followed it, eventually erupted into the large fireball described by other witnesses.
Experts also say it is understandable why some witnesses hold strongly to their accounts even as contradictory information comes to light.
As Loftus and a co-author have written, "We want to believe . . . that our minds work in an orderly, efficient way, taking in information, sorting it, filing it, and calling it back later in full and vivid detail. In a chaotic world, where so much is out of control, we need to believe that our minds, at least, are under our command.''
Al Baker contributed to this story.
[emphasis added]
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