If you want to find out about Samatographic illusions, go and talk to any military fighter pilot that has been involved in low-level intercepts at night or in a cloud over the sea.
A routine part of military instrument training and civilian (I hope) is to stress that the instruments do not lie. In addition, the Military's Aviation Medicine specialists brief their pilots about the effects of Samatographic Illusions. By the time you reach the front-line, you have seen the video and got the tee-shirt. If you follow the wise words you will be ok.
Teaching egg-sucking, illusions do happen, so you fly attitude and then check the performance instruments to make certain that you are flying the required profile whilst monitoring the radar. On a typical intercept profile the aircraft could be descending from 8 or 9000' to 1000', whilst in a 70 Degree banked turn, pulling around 3-4g and accelerating from 300 to 550+ knots in full reheat. Trust me, from personal experience, the pitch up sensation is immense, far worse than you could ever experience in a commercial aircraft. Therefore, you believe the instruments as you were taught to do.
When you can't crack it, you roll off the bank and recover the aircraft, aborting the intercept (or approach?), because you are smart enough to realise that it is your little pink body that is at stake if you screw up.
Do not get me wrong, I have full sympathy for all of those involved in the Bahrain tragedy. However, a samatographic illusion is just that. Yes, it could occur off Bahrain in the blackhole over the Gulf but not if the crew are flying a sensible safe commercial profile. And even then, if the pilot has been correctly trained and carries out an effective instrument scan it is not an issue.
From what I have said above, it would be easy to assume that Aviation Medicine training (or lack of) might be a root cause of this incident. It might be a contributary factor but perhaps it would be more pertinent to look at the decision making of the Captain. I know of few commercial pilots (yes I am one now) that when they have screwed up the approach would then try to visually reposition for another go rather than taking ATC vectors downwind and setting up again. We are all human, we all make mistakes but the key is to trap the errors and to have the humility to take corrective action before the snowball gets rolling.
I hate all the speculation that surrounds the cause of the accidents before the board releases its findings. Lets let the men with the facts come up with their report and then feel free to dispute them. You never know, they might actually admit what really happened...
May they all rest in peace.