Cont: UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[turingtest]

I have now finished the book UFOs by Leslie Kean. Despite the disparaging remarks about her that some people have made I found the book well written and full of facts and details like names and dates of events. The quality of the accounts is high, and comes from respected people like generals and governors and pilots and police officers. What it does not contain is accounts from ordinary people that can be easily dismissed. If it did the book could have been several volumes long because there have been thousands of such reports. Kean only records reliable witnesses. Here is a sample of one such witnesses account.

Setting the record straight by Fife Symington III Governor of Arizona 1991 to 1997

Between 8.00 and 8.30 on the evening of March 13th 1997 during my second term as governor of Arizona, I witnessed something that defied logic and challenged my reality: a massive delta-shaped craft silently navigating over the Squaw Peak in the Phoenix mountain preserve. A solid structure rather than an apparition, it was dramatically large, with a distinctive leading edge embedded with lights as it traveled the Arizona skies. I still don't know what it was. As a pilot and a former air force officer, I can say with certainty that this craft did not resemble any man- made object I had ever seen.

https://www.fifesymington.com/former-arizona-governor-now-admits-seeing-ufo/

Symington saw the Phoenix Lights. (Wikipedia) They were a formation of "five A-10 jets from Operation Snowbird following an assigned air traffic corridor and flying under visual flight rules." It might also be worth noting that Symington didn't make the claim of having seen his UFO until ten years later, in 2007- at the time, in 1997, he treated the whole thing as a joke.

ETA- ninja'd by Pixel42.

ETA2- from the Wikipedia article- "Amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley in Scottsdale, Arizona., also observed the high altitude lights 'flying in formation' through a telescope. According to Stanley, they were quite clearly individual airplanes." A trained observer looking through a telescope at what Symington (and others) were observing naked-eye- which sighting do you think is better evidence, Scorpion?

 

[Scorpion]

Names and dates? Then we have all the facts we need …

Why would that make quality high?

Why can accounts from “ordinary” people be easily dismissed?

What makes this account convincing for you in the light of all the confounding factors that have been mentioned here?

ETA: I see that Pixel42 immediately found a more convincing explanation. How come a trained pilot, and a governor at that, could not recognise flares?

It should be obvious that highly respected people like governors and pilots and policemen are likely reliable sources.
Ordinary people may be easily mistaken.
Symington said of the claim he saw flares, that he was never satisfied with this silly explanation.

 

[Pixel42]

Even "reliable sources" can be honestly mistaken, especially if they have insufficient information.

 

[turingtest]

It should be obvious that highly respected people like governors and pilots and policemen are likely reliable sources.
Ordinary people may be easily mistaken. Symington said of the claim he saw flares, that he was never satisfied with this silly explanation.

Would you consider yourself to be "ordinary people"? I mean, you are (presumably) not a governor, pilot or policeman, so your own personal sighting we can dismiss as "easily mistaken," correct?

As for Symington- he was so "highly respected" that he was later tried for, and convicted of, extortion and bank fraud. It's true that the convictions were then overturned because, IIUC, a juror in his trial was improperly dismissed, and he was pardoned by Clinton before the prosecutors could decide whether to re-try him; but still, he hardly seems like someone I'd describe as "likely reliable." (And even "likely reliable" still doesn't make them more qualified to judge, or less apt to misinterpret, what they are seeing)

 

[theprestige]

Satellites do not stop and hover in the same place for a minute or two before moving off again. The object I saw did do this several times before disappearing from view, and that told me it was not just another star, which is what it appeared to be.

So you believe now, sixty years later. For all we know, you're misremembering a bird. Or a bug. Or a completely manufactured pastiche of several unrelated memories (some of them false).

 

[Scorpion]

Ok skeptics! Here is a video of a swarm of UFOs that surrounded USS Omaha and several other warships and they were detected on radar.

 

[Scorpion]

So you believe now, sixty years later. For all we know, you're misremembering a bird. Or a bug. Or a completely manufactured pastiche of several unrelated memories (some of them false).

No I ain't ! The memory is clear to me, as it made an impression on me because it was so inexplicable. It looked like another star until I saw it move in relation to the surrounding stars. It took somewhere between ten and twenty minutes to go out of sight as it was moving very slowly and it stopped moving for up to two minutes at a time.
By the way, I don't think there were any satellites in space in the first days of sputnik one, which is when I saw it.

 

[Scorpion]

Would you consider yourself to be "ordinary people"? I mean, you are (presumably) not a governor, pilot or policeman, so your own personal sighting we can dismiss as "easily mistaken," correct?

As for Symington- he was so "highly respected" that he was later tried for, and convicted of, extortion and bank fraud. It's true that the convictions were then overturned because, IIUC, a juror in his trial was improperly dismissed, and he was pardoned by Clinton before the prosecutors could decide whether to re-try him; but still, he hardly seems like someone I'd describe as "likely reliable." (And even "likely reliable" still doesn't make them more qualified to judge, or less apt to misinterpret, what they are seeing)

Yes I am ordinary people but I do not believe I am mistaken. I saw an unidentified object that I am sure was not a helicopter let alone a bird. It seemed to me it was an object in space and it was not a star because it moved. So I think it was reflecting the light of the sun as did the sputnik. When it arrived the sputnik was brighter than the other thing I saw, and the sputnik moved smoothly across the sky and was out of sight in a couple of minutes.

 

[Scorpion]

Another sighting by many people in Hudson Valley.

https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/history/article/ufo-sightings-westchester-pine-bush-mystery-19363246.php

 

[JayUtah]

It should be obvious that highly respected people like governors and pilots and policemen are likely reliable sources.
Ordinary people may be easily mistaken.

No, that's not how it works. But that's how Kean (and her ultimate source, Stephen Greer) desperately want you to think it works.

 

[JayUtah]

Yes I am ordinary people but I do not believe I am mistaken.

Literally everyone thinks they are an exception. Literally everyone believes they are immune to the normal human limitations on observation and identification. That's part of the UFO mythos that all these grifters rely upon.

 

[JayUtah]

How come a trained pilot, and a governor at that, could not recognise flares?

Most governors have never seen flares. Flares are not part of pilot training (except for some military pilots). Most people have never seen aerial flares. What most people think they know about flares from television and movies is wrong.

Nevertheless, Greer—and later, Kean—insist on the "reliable observer" premise and play on the sympathy of readers to get past healthy skepticism of it. And people are all too eager to swallow it because they really want to believe that they (or others) have seen something that defies all ordinary explanation.

 

[Pixel42]

Yes I am ordinary people but I do not believe I am mistaken. I saw an unidentified object that I am sure was not a helicopter let alone a bird. It seemed to me it was an object in space and it was not a star because it moved. So I think it was reflecting the light of the sun as did the sputnik. When it arrived the sputnik was brighter than the other thing I saw, and the sputnik moved smoothly across the sky and was out of sight in a couple of minutes.

It was a small silver party balloon a few metres up, reflecting whatever lights were in the vicinity, moving with the wind and stopping when the wind dropped and/or it got temporarily caught on something.

It was a sky lantern.

It was a large weather balloon a long way up, again reflecting lights below and moving with wind.

It was something which would never occur to me in a million years, but which would be immediately obvious to someone who possessed a vital piece of information which I don't.

There is no way to know what it was, Scorpion. If you'd had a lot more knowledge and experience than you did - if you'd even known how to do a little basic research - it might have been possible for you to gather enough information at the time to identify it. But that narrow window of opportunity was decades in the past. All you have now is a worthless anecdote.

 

[Scorpion]

It was a small silver party balloon a few metres up, reflecting whatever lights were in the vicinity, moving with the wind and stopping when the wind dropped and/or it got temporarily caught on something.

It was a sky lantern.

It was a large weather balloon a long way up, again reflecting lights below and moving with wind.

It was something which would never occur to me in a million years, but which would be immediately obvious to someone who possessed a vital piece of information which I don't.

There is no way to know what it was, Scorpion. If you'd had a lot more knowledge and experience than you did - if you'd even known how to do a little basic research - it might have been possible for you to gather enough information at the time to identify it. But that narrow window of opportunity was decades in the past. All you have now is a worthless anecdote.

It moved and stopped in a regular amount of time. It stopped for a minute or more then moved slowly again, then stopped for another minute or so. It could not have been a balloon in the wind.

 

[Pixel42]

And once again the point whooshes right over Scorpion's head.

 

[JayUtah]

It moved and stopped in a regular amount of time. It stopped for a minute or more then moved slowly again, then stopped for another minute or so. It could not have been a balloon in the wind.

Your proof is missing some steps.

You're adamantly rejecting mundane possibilities for stupid reasons. "It can't be a helicopter." Why not? Because you couldn't hear anything? The premise that you will be able to hear a helicopter under all flight and meteorological conditions is bogus. Most people are surprised at how close a helicopter can be and you don't hear anything. Ditto airliners. As I said, I've seen airliners emerge from fog less than three miles away at low altitude and I can't hear a thing—most of the noise from jet engines is behind it.

"It can't be a balloon in the wind?" Why not? Because you know what balloons look like under all conditions? Because wind always blows in the same direction? You don't tell us why, but you can somehow be absolutely sure.

Now Pixel42 is right: there is no way for you or anyone else to determine exactly what it was. We would need information that's simply impossible to obtain today. And for those of us occasionally called upon to explain happenstance events, "I don't know" remains a big, looming possibility every time we accept the assignment.

But what's so very telling is the reasons you're citing for rejecting quite plausible explanations. All your rejections boil down to, "Because I say so." That's not a good reason. But it's the reason all the UFO fanatics give, because they're really, really married to the notion that what people are seeing must mean something fantastic and hidden. And because they know and believe it in their hearts, they're somehow special. We know that's what happens. The neuroscience is in—there's a notable neurological payoff in believing that you have discovered or been given hidden knowledge, whether it's true or not.

And that's what people like Kean prey on. When Kean was shopping David Grusch around, note how the rhetoric was not, "Here's the evidence," or "How can we test this claim." It was instead all the testimonials to Grusch's "reliability." Gosh, he's just such a great guy that you should just believe what he says even though it's all unsupported hearsay.

 

[turingtest]

Yes I am ordinary people but I do not believe I am mistaken. I saw an unidentified object that I am sure was not a helicopter let alone a bird. It seemed to me it was an object in space and it was not a star because it moved. So I think it was reflecting the light of the sun as did the sputnik. When it arrived the sputnik was brighter than the other thing I saw, and the sputnik moved smoothly across the sky and was out of sight in a couple of minutes.

Bless you, Scorpion, it doesn't matter what you believe- if you're ordinary people, then, by your own standards, you can be easily mistaken. I don't make the rules, mate. I mean, neither do you, but you shouldn't pretend to if you're not gonna play by them.

 

[Scorpion]

And once again the point whooshes right over Scorpion's head.

Did you watch the U Tube video in post 1726 which is of a swarm of UFOs seen by several American warships, and seen on their radar?

 

[JayUtah]

Did you watch the U Tube video in post 1726 which is of a swarm of UFOs seen by several American warships, and seen on their radar?

...all misleadingly framed by UFO enthusiast George Knapp, who made his fortune peddling UFO stories and unfounded claims.

 

[Ryan O'Dine]

It moved and stopped in a regular amount of time. It stopped for a minute or more then moved slowly again, then stopped for another minute or so. It could not have been a balloon in the wind.

Can you rule out it was a plane moving directly toward or away from you (so appearing still), then veering a little to one side (so appearing to move slowly), then going toward/away from you again?