Cont: UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[Apathia]

God knows what's inside that bubble!
(BS)

It's weaker Sci-Fi than "The Spice."

 

[Scorpion]

I cannot get the history channel, however I can get 'Blaze' freeview channel 64 on British TV. Every day they run very convincing programs on UFO's. Today at 10.15 AM there is a program called. ' UFO's the lost evidence' and at 4PM a program called 'ancient aliens'

I have been watching some episodes in the series and they are very convincing. They show lots of videos from US navy pilots cockpits, of UFO's, and they have a lot of testimony from pilots of air force and private pilots.

I cannot remember all the details but they say many US presidents have had UFO experiences. One I recall is president Regan saying he saw a UFO from his private jet when he was the governor of California, and his pilot confirmed he saw it too. When Regan became president he instigated the star wars program. He said it was to shoot down Russian missiles, but he may have had aliens in mind.

 

[arthwollipot]

Oh boy. Who's up for "Simple UFO Debukage 101"?

 

[Pixel42]

It's very easy to make an argument seem convincing by cherry picking facts and ignoring facts and arguments that contradict yours, thereby making it appear that your preferred interpretation of those facts is not just plausible but the only possible explanation.

Creationists do it. Climate change deniers do it. Conspiracy theorists do it. Ufologists do it. Proponents of every religion do it. You do it in your 'Scorpion's Spiritualism' thread.

 

[Puppycow]

I have been watching some episodes in the series and they are very convincing. They show lots of videos from US navy pilots cockpits, of UFO's, and they have a lot of testimony from pilots of air force and private pilots.

If you'd like a skeptical perspective, I recommend Mick West's YouTube channel.

Almost all of those videos from US navy pilots have been explained.

Jimmy Carter's UFO sighting has also been explained.

His website:

https://mickwest.com/

His YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/MickWest

This video is 4 years old now:



Explained: New Navy UFO Videos (This one is only a few minutes long. In others he explains in more detail.)

 

[Scorpion]

I am now reading the book UFOs by Leslie Kean. It contains many reports of sightings by reliable people from Air force generals and pilots down to ordinary people. Objects have been seen by many people simultaneously. They have also been tracked on radar. Their behavior is beyond the flight capabilities of any known aircraft. The consensus of opinion is that UFOs do exist. But nobody knows what they are, where they came from, where they are going, or why they are here.

They remain unidentified flying objects.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I am now reading the book UFOs by Leslie Kean. It contains many reports of sightings by reliable people from Air force generals and pilots down to ordinary people. Objects have been seen by many people simultaneously. They have also been tracked on radar. Their behavior is beyond the flight capabilities of any known aircraft. The consensus of opinion is that UFOs do exist. But nobody knows what they are, where they came from, where they are going, or why they are here.

They remain unidentified flying objects.

That sounds rather like a book rehashing the various famous UFO stories which have been exhaustively and amusingly debunked here over the years. No matter how often these stories are picked apart and shown to have no worthwhile substance it doesn't prevent some enthusiast from publishing yet another book repeating them all again.

I have a suspicion that if you were to describe any one of the tales from the book we'd be able to find a thread somewhere around here where it was previously considered.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I am now reading the book UFOs by Leslie Kean. It contains many reports of sightings by reliable people from Air force generals and pilots down to ordinary people. Objects have been seen by many people simultaneously. They have also been tracked on radar. Their behavior is beyond the flight capabilities of any known aircraft. The consensus of opinion is that UFOs do exist. But nobody knows what they are, where they came from, where they are going, or why they are here.

They remain unidentified flying objects.

And "many reports of sightings by reliable people from Air force generals and pilots down to ordinary people" have been explained as having quite mundane explanations. The viewers were mistaken. There has yet to be a case where sufficient hard evidence has been provided to prove anything extraordinary occurred.

 

[RoboTimbo]

The consensus of opinion is that UFOs do exist. But nobody knows what they are, where they came from, where they are going, or why they are here.

The consensus of opinion is also that they aren't representative of the same phenomena and yet the rehashed books continue to want to lump them together, insinuating that there is one explanation for all, conveniently not a mundane one.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

I cannot get the history channel, however I can get 'Blaze' freeview channel 64 on British TV. Every day they run very convincing programs on UFO's. Today at 10.15 AM there is a program called. ' UFO's the lost evidence' and at 4PM a program called 'ancient aliens'

I have been watching some episodes in the series and they are very convincing.

Ancient Aliens is 'very convincing'.

 

[Pixel42]

Ancient Aliens is very convincing to ignorant people who lack basic critical thinking skills.

 

[Puppycow]

To say that "UFOs do exist" means almost nothing. Of course they exist.

But most of them can actually be identified if they are caught on video. Most of them that can be identified turn out to be nothing more than known objects. An eyewitness report without any video is hardly evidence at all because we know that it is easy for people to misunderstand what they are seeing. Nor have we seen examples of "behavior beyond the flight capabilities of any known aircraft" that cannot be explained by things like zoom lenses and geometry.

 

[Scorpion]

That sounds rather like a book rehashing the various famous UFO stories which have been exhaustively and amusingly debunked here over the years. No matter how often these stories are picked apart and shown to have no worthwhile substance it doesn't prevent some enthusiast from publishing yet another book repeating them all again.

I have a suspicion that if you were to describe any one of the tales from the book we'd be able to find a thread somewhere around here where it was previously considered.

There are lots of very detailed sightings in the book from all over the world. Here are a few.
There was a wave of 143 sightings in Eupen Belgium in 1989
Captain Julio Miguel Guerra says he was circled by a UFO in 1982
In 2006 a disc shaped object was seen by many people at Chicago's O' Hare airport
Gigantic UFOs over the English channel on April 23rd 2007 seen by Captain Ray Bower
September 1976 an Iranian air force General, Parviz Jafari engaged a UFO over Tehran
April 11th 1980 Comandante Oscar Huertas of the Peruvian air force engaged a UFO.

To name but a few encounters. Many of which were seen by lots of people, and were tracked on Radar.

Here is Leslie Kean's web site. https://www.lesliekean.com/

A PDF introduction to the book on UFOs https://www.shortform.com/pdf/ufos-pdf-leslie-kean

 

[Pixel42]

Have you actually bothered to research any of these sightings yourself, Scorpion?

For example when I googled this one:

There was a wave of 143 sightings in Eupen Belgium in 1989

... the first link was to a wiki article:

Belgian UFO wave - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In "The Belgian UAP Wave" Skeptoid podcast episode, Brian Dunning discussed the F-16 chase and reported that

The pilots also got intermittent contact with objects, but they appeared and disappeared and moved up and down too fast, including going underground. The pilots never saw anything at all. SOBEPS reported that they obtained radar lock on targets nine times; but the Belgian military only reported three such locks, and upon analyzing the data, all three radar locks were on each other. The other contacts were all found to be the result of a well-known atmospheric interference called Bragg scattering.

Regarding the "wave" of eye-witness reports and lack of photographic evidence, Dunning concludes

You read a story in the paper that a UFO was seen flying over your town a night or two ago. You remember that you saw something you took for a bright star or an airplane, thought nothing of it at the time, but this amazing new story makes you realize that what you saw must have been this UFO. You and I might not necessarily make that connection, but it's perfectly reasonable that a lot of people will; and so they follow the instructions in the newspaper article and send a report to SOBEPS. With so many articles over a period of years in a small country, it's no great surprise that SOBEPS reported they eventually received as many as 2,600 in all. The 143 reports Meessen claims for the original 29 November incident were indeed received, but only after more than a week of aggressive and repeated solicitation in the mass media. It is only much later retellings of the story that wrongly assume all 2,600 were reported as people were watching the F-16s chase the UFOs, or that all 143 initial reports came independently on that first night. All the reports were after the fact, and were only made after prompting and solicitation by SOBEPS and the media. It was simply a psycho-social phenomenon, which is why there is no evidence and only the one questionable photograph. If 13,500 people did all actually see something that they took for a UFO at the time, I guarantee you that more than just a single photograph would have resulted.

I'm not going to bother to google the others until you have done the minimum amount of research that could reasonably be expected before posting such a list on a sceptics site.

 

[JayUtah]

There are lots of very detailed sightings in the book from all over the world. Here are a few.

Yes, and they're all just rehashes of Stephen Greer's "Disclosure Project," which were debunked long ago. The book also seems to replay the same faulty logic that Greer attempted—that we have to believe a certain interpretation of these accounts because the reporters are assumed to be more reliable and better observers owing to having some particular training or to working for the government.

The myth of the "trained observer" in these situations has been thoroughly studied and dismissed. That someone is a pilot or a general or a high-ranking government official does not create a situation in which that person's inability to identify or explain something means it must necessarily lie outside terrestrial experience. But hyping up the purported skills, reliability, and/or honesty of the reporter is a well-worn way of distracting from the fact that the claimants have no actual evidence for their interpretation of what's being reported. And what's being reported often irresponsibly mixes observation with interpretation. When you tell me these sightings defied the capabilities of Earth-built vehicles, there is a whole list of hidden assumptions that lead to that interpretation.

Your author claims to be UFO agnostic, but the book simply isn't. It's trying to hand-wave up a sensational explanation for curious occurrences based on nothing more than vigorously begging the question that certain claims must be taken uncritically at face value.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

I have several photos of the Rendlesham Forest UFO...

 

[ahhell]

I cannot get the history channel, however I can get 'Blaze' freeview channel 64 on British TV. Every day they run very convincing programs on UFO's. Today at 10.15 AM there is a program called. ' UFO's the lost evidence' and at 4PM a program called 'ancient aliens'

I have been watching some episodes in the series and they are very convincing. They show lots of videos from US navy pilots cockpits, of UFO's, and they have a lot of testimony from pilots of air force and private pilots.

I cannot remember all the details but they say many US presidents have had UFO experiences. One I recall is president Regan saying he saw a UFO from his private jet when he was the governor of California, and his pilot confirmed he saw it too. When Regan became president he instigated the star wars program. He said it was to shoot down Russian missiles, but he may have had aliens in mind.

I think Carter was likely the most well know case of presidential UFO sightings UFO sightings are super common, mostly because folks just can't quite figure out what they are looking at.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I have several photos of the Rendlesham Forest UFO...

And so has Ian Ridpath at http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/lighthouse_visibility.htm

It was, in part, the Orfordness lighthouse.

For a full explanation read his page on Rendlesham here:

The Rendlesham Forest UFO case – Ian Ridpath

Rendlesham Forest Incident, Rendlesham Forest UFO, Rendlesham Forest case, Rendlesham Forest UFO case, British Roswell, Rendlesham Forest explained

www.ianridpath.com

PS. I'd love to see your photos. Care to post a couple?

 

[Scorpion]

Have you actually bothered to research any of these sightings yourself, Scorpion?

For example when I googled this one:



... the first link was to a wiki article:

Belgian UFO wave - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I'm not going to bother to google the others until you have done the minimum amount of research that could reasonably be expected before posting such a list on a sceptics site.

The Wiki article brushes aside claims that observers of the flying objects said they hovered without sound. One quote is that some airmen heard a low hum. Helicopters do not make a low hum they make one hell of a noise. The wiki article says the sound may have just been blown away by the wind. It seems to me it is that article which is trying to discredit the UFO claims with ill considered disinformation. The first thing investigators of UAPs do is check if there were any planes or helicopters or dirigibles or weather balloons in the area.
Colonel Andre Amond sent in a report. which said. He ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized ultra light, or any other known aerial vehicle.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

The Wiki article brushes aside claims that observers of the flying objects said they hovered without sound. One quote is that some airmen heard a low hum. Helicopters do not make a low hum they make one hell of a noise. The wiki article says the sound may have just been blown away by the wind. It seems to me it is that article which is trying to discredit the UFO claims with ill considered disinformation. The first thing investigators of UAPs do is check if there were any planes or helicopters or dirigibles or weather balloons in the area.
Colonel Andre Amond sent in a report. which said. He ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized ultra light, or any other known aerial vehicle.

So your answer to Pixal42's questions is 'no', then. You haven't done even a basic level of checking on these claims before swallowing them whole.
You really, really need to learn some critical thinking skills.