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Many pilots reading of these events would be surprised at how susceptible they themselves might be to these pressures even had they'd not felt themselves guilty of any rash or imprudent actions during the flight planning stage.
No doubt, but "many" pilots certainly aren't "all" pilots. Any military or professional pilot has occasionally been subject to pressures to do something which was close to being sketchy or, in some cases, downright dangerous/illegal/stupid. Furthermore, it's not always clear just how close you might be to doing something imprudent.
In those cases I always asked myself how comfortable I would feel when I was either on a judicial witness stand or appearing before a board of inquiry where you are seated at one end of a long table with a group of your superiors are seated at the other end and all the ash trays are on their end.
If my hypothetical story was going to cause me me squirm, lie, be embarrassed, or otherwise feel uncomfortable while I was trying to explain myself, then I was pretty sure the proposed course of action was unwise; go to plan B. This worked for me for over 40 years of professional flying.
Perhaps the captain in this instance should have asked himself how comfortable he would be explaining that his en-route fuel burn was the same as his fuel on board at take off............. oops.