A genuine scientist amongst them would have said, "It may not be likely, but I cannot make any assumptions at this stage. I must see for myself."
Not necessarily. You are assuming that a genuine scientist would be interested in what
you think he or she should be interesting in. But it is not necessarily so.
As I mentioned, not all astronomers work in areas where UFOs would necessarily be of interest. Also, every person there has to balance up the importance of what they have really come to see versus what might (or might not) be happening outside. So there are entirely valid reasons why the astronomer might not have rushed out to see what you just happen to think is important.
Indeed, having an open mind does not mean that one automatically has to drop everything to go and investigate something that someone else (you in this instance) happens to think is important. Not going to look at the putative UFOs is not necessarily evidence of a closed mind.
If any of them were genuine, in that sense, however, they might immediately have qualified this with, "Oh dear, nobody else is moving, I had better stay here." In other words, a certain amount of courage is required to go counter to the group thinking. But what does this really have to do with science? It is more a description of a tribe member who wants to conform to the norms of his group.
Sure, this is a human foible. But that is largely why the scientific process was created: To cope with human foibles and to work around them. The existence of a human foible like this cannot be meaningfully extrapolated to mean that the scientific method is worthless.
The account you give of scientific method is accurate, and I too, decades ago, was convinced of its validity. However, a number of experiences over the years informed me differently. Yes, open discussion and dissemination of findings are all vital. Nobody disputes that.
This is interesting. May I ask what happened?
But as someone on the Forteana site you must surely be aware that there are many thousands of events that happen every day, and that all potentially have the ability to blow huge holes in our current scientific world view.
Quite so. But these anomalous events very rarely succeed in blowing huge holes in current scientific world view. And there's a good reason for this, and it's not scientific closed mindedness (although I readily agree that scientific closed mindedness exists). The real problem, or problems, are:
(1) As I observed in an earlier message in this thread, these anomalous events are often hard to repeat and hard to observe consistently, and this makes them difficult to study with current scientific and technological knowledge.
(2) Many of them, when studied as objectively as possible, unfortunately fail to show anything genuinely world view-changing at all. They are often, as far as currently be ascertained, prosaic events that fit within the world as we know it.
As far as the first problem is concerned, where events are repeatable, there often
is scientific study of them. E.g. Hessdalen Lights. Other phenomena that are (currently) harder to study scientifically due to lack of reliable repeatability are not, however, beyond science in any absolute or fundamental sense. It just requires both technology to improeve and scientific knowledge to expand, as happens every day. There will come a point when technology (particular multi-spectral sensor technology) becomes even more ubiquitous than is currently the case, for example, perhaps allowing for better recording of otherwise unpredictable events and thus more consistent scientific study.
But wouldn't it be better to examine these foibles within ourselves and attempt to neutralise them inwardly first?
In principle, if you can, but (a) I can well believe it is very, very difficult, and (b) you'd be sitting around wasting a lot of time when there are observable, testable, repeatable phenomena happening every day that could be examined.
Let's just get on with it. Oh look, we are getting on with it.
None of this means that we cannot also try to improve ourselves as well. But if we do want to improve ourselves then, as I have observed a couple of time in this thread, science surely must help us do this as it is the best tool we have to inform us about the real state of the universe that we wish to be a better part of.
Applying arbitrary rules and procedures after the fact, as it were, is really only a makeshift solution.
You could see it that way, but it's been very successful. If it's a makeshift solution, and I do see what you mean, then it's one that has worked very well and continues to do so. Indeed, we do not as things stand in reality right now, seem to have a better tool for understanding the true nature of reality. And, for me, spirituality comes from truth, knowing as much as is feasible about the true nature of reality.