I didn't click any of your links, just read your comment with attention, because you have the same perspective I would. I'd like to ask your opinion about one thing in particular.

Why do you think this editor and writer would conceivably mention "claims of seemingly impossible transmutations being conducted by a fringe experimenter in his apartment, using high-voltage electricity"?

While you don't specify what it is, let's take it literally, a transmutation, so, whatever, iron goes in, electricity is applied, aluminum comes out (two different elements). Some non sequitur. That just so happens to be done in his apartment???

What I mean is if this impossible transmutation is done in a field unrelated to aviation, the area of his expertise, why would he even report? I mean if he was very, very sure, he might refer the person via an anonymous letter to a chemistry professor or something, but to report it in his book?

If I (or I would think anyone else) were in his position and literally saw someone transmute aluminum to gold, then short of letting me take the machine (in a faraday cage) whereever I want in any undisclosed city (bringing cash and no electronic devices whatsoever, trying to lose any tails via taxis and hitchiking ) and verify his claim by renting an apartment there for cash, buying aluminum foil in a random corner store (along with reasonable generic stuff that can be used for baking), then transmuting it myself within the faraday cage and selling the resulting gold at some appraiser, repeating this at different local stores and different baskets of goods, until I had more gold than the total weight of the machine involved... then I would wait for the electricity bill at the apartment and compare with the value of the gold I generated. Short of all that I literally wouldn't even report literally seeing someone transmute aluminum to gold. I just wouldn't report it. It's absurd. It's totally non-credible. By the way against state actors even the above process would fail, since the machine could generate electricity usage that's very easy for a central location to notice, just spikes at certain times for example (certain tenths of seconds on highly synchronized clocks), even above all of the noise of households. I guess I need a diesel power generator too. You get the idea.

What I'm saying is that the chances of the CIA getting a magician to come to my apartment and trick me is, I would say, oh, a hundred trillion? a quadrillion? times higher than the chances that someone will show me a machine that does an impossible transmutation. I am not exaggerating. A hundred trillion is fourteen orders of magnitude, and a quadrillion is fifteen. (For comparison, a hundred trillion bytes is just 100 terabytes, or thirteen of these - http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Archive-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp... -- yeah we are talking about 1 byte compared to all that storage.) It's absolutely absurd.

It shows a total lack of any grounding or objectivity for someone to report that.

Why would an aviation expert do it? What does he get out of tarnishing his credibility with that kind of gobbledegook, even if he saw it in front of his own eyes? Seeing something with your own eyes is not very convincing when your prior is one in a hundred trillion.