The flare forecasting fiasco: Is everybody looking at the same sun?

The passionate dream of the oppressed solar flare forecaster is the scientific discovery of the cause, the energy source, and the observable antecedent conditions for the solar flare. This tunnel vision has had a profound and deleterious effect on the state-of-the-art. It has diverted attention from many promising approaches and relegated them to limbo. More importantly, it has actually inhibited the scientific search for the underlying physical mechanisms. Examples of neglected aspects of the problem cover the entire range from observing techniques and equipment to the availability and accuracy of the archived scientific data. A cursory inspection of this data leads to an obvious conclusion: there are at least two suns up there.