Originally Posted by Old Carthusian
Given the captain's possible befuddled state on entering the cockpit he could have possibly overlooked the yoke being pulled back or misinterpreted the angle so discounting the evidence.
Or he could have possibly realized how the picture was wrong with a yoke in the stomach at FL350.
A responsible captain would first of all look at the instruments not the position of a yoke - to do so would be otherwise unprofessional.
If I had to enter that flight deck at that time, the first obvious clue would have been that full back yoke at 350 ... now call me unprofessional.