You have the sides wrong. It isn't a 2-sides argument, it is a 1-sided argument. The advocates of the alien spacecraft hypothesis have to convince everyone else (James, me, etc.) they are right. So far, you've failed very badly.
No..there is no burden to prove the eyewitnesses saw what they said they saw. That we know based on the clarity and uniformity of the descriptions. People who have not collaborated do NOT make up the same details about the same sighting that is called in within hours of that event. The strange underwater quality of the lights. The size of the craft's wings. It's utter silence. The trajectory of its path. So the burden lies on you to prove they are lying or are mistaken, if that is what you are claiming. So far no one has done that.
That's the quantity=quality fallacy. Crap cannot ever become gold, no matter how much of it you have.
Eyewitness accounts ARE gold. We send criminals to prison based on it. Only in the paranoid little world of skeptics does it become dubious and inadequate. "Hey! They're all lying douchebags! Case closed." What a pathetically weak argument...
Here's ANOTHER summary of the events of that night:
"One of the more famous appearances of these craft was during the event known as the "Phoenix Lights", where multiple unidentified objects, many of them black triangles, were spotted by the residents of
Phoenix, Arizona and videotaped by both the local media and residents with camcorders across multiple evenings beginning on Thursday, March 13, 1997. Some lights drifted as low as 1000 feet and moved far too slowly for conventional aircraft and too silently for helicopters. Some of the lights appeared to group up in a giant "V" formation that lingered above the city for several minutes. Many residents reported one triangle to be over a mile wide that drifted slowly over their houses blocking out the stars of the night sky. Other reports indicated the craft were spotted flying away from Phoenix as far away as
Las Vegas, Nevada and
Los Angeles, California.
An official report made by the Air Force about the incident concluded that the military had been testing flares launched from conventional aircraft during that time. Eyewitnesses confirmed military jets were scrambled from nearby
Luke Air Force Base, but instead of launching flares, they were seen chasing after some of the objects.
The next few nights, in an attempt to recreate the incident, local pilots flew prop-planes over the city in a "V" formation, but the sounds of their engines were easily heard. The original lights made no sound. Flares were also deployed above Phoenix."====
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_triangle_(UFO)