The following story of my encounter with a UFO has happened to me four times. The effect is so uncanny that it fools me every time. The first time was when I was a little haploid in the back yard with my brother. The next three times it was out in the everglades. After falling for this four times, maybe next time it happens I'll recognize what it is.
But my point is that if a hardened skeptic with years of amateur astronomy experience who grew up outdoors in south Florida and the Everglades can be so easily duped, imagine how much more duped a city-bound ufologist with a pro-UFO bias who couldn't identify the North Star to save his life would be.
I posted the following a few years ago:
I was deep in the Florida Everglades last night photographing nocturnal birds with a new lens I bought for that purpose. As usual, there was a small, friendly crowd of bird watchers there.
It was close to new moon, so it was very dark. Suddenly one of the other bird watchers starts yelling and pointing at something in the sky. We all looked and saw the bizarre object. "UFO! It's an alien ship! No other explanation!", several people exclaimed.
I have to admit that I was completely baffled by the irregular triangle of dim lights traveling slowly in perfect formation. It made no sound even though it seemed to be fairly close. The lights blinked randomly, dimming then getting brighter in no discernible pattern. The edges of the triangle could be seen faintly glowing.
Everyone was convinced it was some kind of alien craft. I was skeptical but at a loss for an explanation. Then someone spotted another one, then a third. A few of the people there were scared enough that they started to leave.
When I suggested that whatever those things were they were far more likely to be something ordinary than an alien ship, I was rebuffed. "What is it, then if you're so smart?" the crowd asked.
I told them that I didn't know, but not knowing doesn't make the most highly-unlikely of all the possible explanations correct. They looked at me as if I was a fool.
To get a better look, I got out a pair of night-vision binoculars. One look told the story: the objects were flocks of geese. In the dark new moon sky, the only light was shining up at them from the city of Miami far to our east. It illuminated the underside of the birds. The flashing lights were the birds occasionally flapping their wings which changed their aspect ratio and the amount of wing surface reflecting the light from Miami.
The glowing triangular outline we all saw did not exist. It was an invention of our brain which has an amazing ability to 'fill in the blanks' when information is missing. There was no glowing triangle when viewed in the night-vision gear. It's only when the flocks were viewed naked eye, that the brain created the optical illusion of a triangular glowing object. I passed the binoculars around so everyone could see the truth.
But the revelation of how easily we gullible humans are fooled isn't what prompted me to write about this. What happened next is what freaked me out.
Instead of being grateful to me for revealing the truth, the crowd became downright angry with me. The atmosphere of camaraderie from a common interest that we'd shared all afternoon and into the night vanished. People clicked their tongue at me and gave me irritated sidelong looks as they handed back the binoculars without so much as a thank you.
Few things in human behavior surprise me any more, but this did. It drove home harder than any other experience I've ever had how people dig into ideas they want to be true and refuse to let go. Imagine if I didn't have the night vision gear with me that night how these people would have formed concrete opinions that they would hold for the rest of their lives as they retold the story of the triangular UFO flying slowly right over their head like a helicopter yet totally silent. They'd insist that this is far beyond human technology and the ONLY explanation is an alien ship. 
Even when True Believers are shown the truth with their own eyes they're loathe to accept it. Being shown the truth with logic and common sense online in text-only is nigh impossible. This experience has shown me why no matter how much logic, plausible explanations, and common sense I write here, some people will never accept the far more likely truth over their wild pet ideas in which they've invested so much of themselves that they can never let go. 
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Republican Values:
1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.
4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
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