The appears to be an argument about semantics, enabled by Sagan's failure to precisely define "extraordinary". For the sake of argument, I'll define it here as

The appears to be an argument about semantics, enabled by Sagan's failure to precisely define "extraordinary". For the sake of argument, I'll define it here as "breaking the laws of thermodynamics". A reactionless thruster, which is one of the "scifi" technologies alluded to by the article, breaks the first law of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is so fundamental to physics that it is "extraordinary" that anything violating it is correct, i.e. the prior probability of the supposed violation being correct is extremely low, and low enough that we have to consider unlikely alternative explanations, e.g. failures of the research process itself. For non-extraordinary claims, we can assume that the scientists are not lying or insane, but when the prior probability is low enough, these possibilities are no longer ignorable.