>But to explain most of these hardest cases mainly in terms of practical jokes seems just a bridge too far. Really, thousands of disconnected people all around

>But to explain most of these hardest cases mainly in terms of practical jokes seems just a bridge too far. Really, thousands of disconnected people all around the world playing the same big scary jokes for decades, and then almost never breaking down and laughing and crowing about their jokes even decades later? This is the justification for that. However, they don't "almost never break down and laugh and crow about their jokes". They do this all the time. It's just that when they do this, it moves from the category of "hardest-to-explain UFO cases" to the category of "known hoaxes". It's an obvious selection effect, not something that requires deeper explanation.