UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[Belgian thought]

delurk for a moment.

Its been 293873399 pages since I checked. Please save me the trouble looking. Is there any evidence yet, or is it still anecdote central?

No - none, still anecdotal with splashings of abuse and some CAPITALIZED words.

 

[Akhenaten]

delurk for a moment.

Its been 293873399 pages since I checked. Please save me the trouble looking. Is there any evidence yet, or is it still anecdote central?

It’s quite simple really. We have lots of evidence that suggests ET might be here already...

Yet, after months of posting here, you are unable to present any evidence beyond anecdotes. Seeing shapes in photographs don't count either.

Where is the physical evidence? Since you declare there is lots of evidence, surely some of it is physical and unambiguously extraterrestrial?

I think the answer is down to whom you believe.

Bit of a no-brainer, eh?

 

[tsig]

You don't ever go to their site do you. You do know that you can and they will answer any questions about what they do and what they may expect in the way of signals.

By the way, do you have any idea on how the radio works?

Paul

You might want to start with a light bulb then work your way up.

 

[tsig]

No - none, still anecdotal with splashings of abuse and some CAPITALIZED words.

We've seen some martyrdom moments as well.

 

[Belgian thought]

We've seen some martyrdom moments as well.

Maybe not.

Consider the following train of thought:

There is NO such thing as “proof” or "truth".
The only certain things in life are death, and the tax man.
If I do not work, I avoid the latter (but can't buy books).
And by the way, "ALIENS" are real.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I present objective evidence and you take a “guess” based on … what? …. Your faith-based belief system of course.

Rubbish. You presented a poor quality n-th generation copy of a picture of dubious provenance on a bleever website and called it objective evidence. I call it unsubstantiated, useless junk.

You are obviously no expert on photography (“Texture is more like a watercolour. Or if it was a photograph, then it's been very, very heavily retouched”).

Dazzle us with your brilliance, then mr-expert-on-manual-retouching. Despite the poor quality of the image presented I have rerely seen a more obvious example of heavy use of the retouching pencil. What's your brilliant insight which leads you to think otherwise?

Objectively you cannot even observe the details of the photo correctly (“…searchlight beams appear to be of uniform brightness all the way up while others fade out halfway”)

What on earth are you blethering about now? Are you even looking at the same picture? There are nine searchlight beams. From the left, numbers 1, 2, 3, 7 and 9 appear evenly bright all the way up, while 4, 5, 6 and 8 fade out.
Is anyone else having difficulty seeing that?

 

[Rramjet]

You don't ever go to their site do you. You do know that you can and they will answer any questions about what they do and what they may expect in the way of signals.

By the way, do you have any idea on how the radio works?

Paul

You are completely wrong. If you had been paying attention I quoted the SETI site extensively here: (http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=5550705#post5550705).

Moreover, according to the SETI website, here is what SETI searches for:

”The Targeted Search System looks for signals in the range 1,000 MHz to 3,000 MHz, with a frequency resolution of 1 Hz.​

(http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=558#a3)

Considering that the radio frequency extends from around 3Hz to 3,000 GHz and it would be possible to communicate via any of the frequencies in between, then we can see how limited the search really is. The whole enterprise rests on the assumption that the aliens WANT to signal their presence to us… and in my opinion, that is an unwarranted and unfounded leap of faith.

 

[Rramjet]

Rubbish. You presented a poor quality n-th generation copy of a picture of dubious provenance on a bleever website and called it objective evidence. I call it unsubstantiated, useless junk.

Dazzle us with your brilliance, then mr-expert-on-manual-retouching. Despite the poor quality of the image presented I have rerely seen a more obvious example of heavy use of the retouching pencil. What's your brilliant insight which leads you to think otherwise?

Here is the picture then. This picture is one that is claimed to be “From Original LA Times Negative” (http://www.rense.com/general27/battle.htm). You claimed originally that the picture had been “very, very, heavily retouched” and now above you claim the “heavy use of the retouching pencil”. To support such claims you will of course be able to point out to us exactly where this has occurred.

What on earth are you blethering about now? Are you even looking at the same picture? There are nine searchlight beams. From the left, numbers 1, 2, 3, 7 and 9 appear evenly bright all the way up, while 4, 5, 6 and 8 fade out.
Is anyone else having difficulty seeing that?

If you look closely you will note that ALL the searchlight beams show evidence of “fading out”.

 

[Correa Neto]

It’s quite simple really. We have lots of evidence that suggests ET might be here already, but absolutely none on where ET is from and how ET might communicate and especially that ET might actually WANT to communicate with us… it seems the evidence points to the fact that when it comes to communication with us, ET is distinctly indifferent.

Rramjet, do you actually check the material you submit before drawing conclusions from it? Have you actually ever checked it? Or you just post links without reading their contents?
First of all, if you want to take a honest and scientific approach, you must actually say there are lots of evidence and this evidence is, as a whole, anecdotal, unconfirmed, unverifiable, unreliable, debatable, hoaxed and suspected of being hoaxed.

Second, you should really take much more care when deriving conclusions (such as no evidence on how ET might communicate, if ET might actually want to communicate and the indifference of ET regarding humans) based on the very material (UFO cases) you submitted. If one accepts the material you presented, the Villas Boas case, for example, is evidence that ET wants much more than communication...

So, how can you state such things? Where's the scientific methodology you are supposed to master?

Well, these seem to be some of the most discussed photo’s (esp. McMinnville and Trindade) – but you are right, there are many other good photos (clear, independently verified, etc).

You sure there's no evidence for hoaxes in the cases you cited above?

What must a scientist do with data supposed of being hoaxed?

UFO debunkers also seem to insist that evidence somehow deteriorates with age. There is of course no scientific or logical basis for this. I guess it is just a faith-based part of the overall UFO debunker belief system.

Strawman, twisting of statements and unsupported allegations. Very unscientific from your part.

What we are saying is that these old cases can no longer be properly investigated. Original sources are no longer available, etc. I must now remind that you, displaying an amazing lack of understanding of the scientific method for someone who claims to be a scientist, came to the point of claiming that a collection of decades-old UFO cases from mixed (and usually unreliable) sources are similar in quality with the data collected by Galileo and Darwin.

What makes the report so compelling IS the fact that it predates ANY public UFO discussion and thus cannot be considered to be influenced in any way by a public zeitgeist.

Oh, of course you ignored the historic context. The ugly fact that ruins your beautiful theory is that the public was scared of and looking for things in the sky. Don’t you think this could not be the source of misidentifications which triggered the whole event? What would Occam do?

You don’t seem to be acting on a very scientific way.

Interestingly UFO proponents have NEVER claimed eyewitnesses to be 100% reliable, yet to maintain the UFO debunker position, the eyewitnesses MUST be 100% unreliable!

Prove that empty claim of yours.

Interestingly also, to maintain the UFO debunker position and to counter the fact that eyewitness description describe objects that plainly defy mundane explanations...snip...

Stop right here. Before going any further, you must prove the eyewitness reports presented are reliable, faithful representations and descriptions of "objects that plainly defy mundane explanations".

There is no such thing as “proof positive” in science. There will always remain the possibility that a counterfactual will arise to refute any well established hypotheses - history is replete with examples. It is after all an appeal to “possibility” that UFO debunkers often claim for there mundane explanations, however unlikely or implausible the explanation might be, yet here, the debunkers want to exclude “possibility” from the equation.

Backpedalling from you previous claim, eh? And also trying to build another strawman...

Tell me, a platypus specimen is not proof of the species existence?

The McMinnville photos are not “blurry”. Many other UFO photos exist that also are not “blurry”, but in fact are crystal clear. It is simply another myth propagated by the UFO debunkers that all UFO photos are blurry. I simply direct your attention to (http://www.ufocasebook.com/bestufopictures.html). Of course you will be no doubt able to alert us to hoax pictures in the mix, as well as some natural phenomena, but many of the pictures are quite startling.

We must have different standards for blurry...

Show us, among the load of blurry and/or hoaxed pictures which exist at that site the crystal clear ones you think are good. You are presenting the claim, you are the one who must clear the dataset from crappy datapoints, you are the one who must present the methodology used to do so.

There are some interesting ones here as well (http://www.ufopicture.org/nasa_ufo_pictures.html). There are also some interesting communications between the astronauts that relate to some of the pictures (http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicphotos.html).

Laughable. Have you ever heard of lens flares?

Rramjet, where's your alleged scientific training?

 

[learner]

No - none, still anecdotal with splashings of abuse and some CAPITALIZED words.

I thought as much. Il be back after another 223761899 and a 1/2 pages for an update.
CAPITALS? Thats nothing, theres multi coloured capitals in a vast range of fonts over on the bigfoot threads. I dont read them I just admire from an art appreciation perspective.

Its Fontastic.

 

[Paulhoff]

and in my opinion, that is an unwarranted and unfounded leap of faith.

Unwarranted, that is funny, seeing that your opinion doesn't make something warranted or not.

They are looking at frequencies that may be used and have been used by us, and they even say and know that they MAY BE USED by aliens. Using something that is being used is more than warranted.

Paul

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Here is the picture then. This picture is one that is claimed to be “From Original LA Times Negative” (http://www.rense.com/general27/battle.htm). You claimed originally that the picture had been “very, very, heavily retouched” and now above you claim the “heavy use of the retouching pencil”. To support such claims you will of course be able to point out to us exactly where this has occurred.

If you look closely you will note that ALL the searchlight beams show evidence of “fading out”.

No problem. Here's Wikipedia's repro of the picture as it appeared in the LA Times: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/32/Battle_of_Los_Angeles_LATimes.jpg

It's even poorer quality than the one you posted, but there's enough to make the point. Consider the degree of fading on the various beams on the two pictures. Do you think they are the same?

Look at the upper edge of the rightmost beam: it looks like two beams superimposed in the Times, but not in the Warren picture. Why do the "shellbursts" appear as featureless circular blobs? How long was the exposure to catch so many shells exploding? Why is there no evidence of camera shake and no movement trails from the shells? Obvious, reasonable answer - they were touched in - faked up to make a dramatic picture for the newspaper report.

(And before you howl in fake outrage that I'd suggest anything so scandalous as that the LA Times might deceive it's readers, how unusual do you imagine extensive photo retouching was in newspapers of the time?

 

[Akhenaten]

Here is the picture then. This picture is one that is claimed to be “From Original LA Times Negative” (http://www.rense.com/general27/battle.htm). You claimed originally that the picture had been “very, very, heavily retouched” and now above you claim the “heavy use of the retouching pencil”. To support such claims you will of course be able to point out to us exactly where this has occurred.

If you look closely you will note that ALL the searchlight beams show evidence of “fading out”.

 

[learner]

No problem. Here's Wikipedia's repro of the picture as it appeared in the LA Times: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/32/Battle_of_Los_Angeles_LATimes.jpg

It's even poorer quality than the one you posted, but there's enough to make the point. Consider the degree of fading on the various beams on the two pictures. Do you think they are the same?

Look at the upper edge of the rightmost beam: it looks like two beams superimposed in the Times, but not in the Warren picture. Why do the "shellbursts" appear as featureless circular blobs? How long was the exposure to catch so many shells exploding? Why is there no evidence of camera shake and no movement trails from the shells? Obvious, reasonable answer - they were touched in - faked up to make a dramatic picture for the newspaper report.

(And before you howl in fake outrage that I'd suggest anything so scandalous as that the LA Times might deceive it's readers, how unusual do you imagine extensive photo retouching was in newspapers of the time?

I have a "space painting" on my kitchen wall created by a freind of mine. to get the effect of stars white paint is flicked and sprayed onto the black background. The paper is gloss photo paper. The bigger of the stars look exactly the same as the shell burts. While im at it, why do the beams of light (some wider than the object) all end at the object? Is there a black hole on board?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Oh, and I forgot to mention - the slight "glow" around the upper half of the rightmost beam looks to me like evidence of "dodging", to try to bring up the brightness of the beam. (Not that that would have been thought of as cheating - it was a basic technique of photography, to get around the limited ability of photographic paper to handle contrast.)

 

[Rramjet]

Rramjet, do you actually check the material you submit before drawing conclusions from it? Have you actually ever checked it? Or you just post links without reading their contents?

You reference a comment of mine about SETI. I posted a link to SETI and quoted relevant passages to support my contentions. Your merely stating that I do not check my material before posting does NOT make the statement correct. If you supported the assertion with evidence then you might have a point… but of course you do not.

First of all, if you want to take a honest and scientific approach, you must actually say there are lots of evidence and this evidence is, as a whole, anecdotal, unconfirmed, unverifiable, unreliable, debatable, hoaxed and suspected of being hoaxed.

That is your merely opinion of the evidence, many disagree with you on that.

Second, you should really take much more care when deriving conclusions (such as no evidence on how ET might communicate, if ET might actually want to communicate and the indifference of ET regarding humans) based on the very material (UFO cases) you submitted. If one accepts the material you presented, the Villas Boas case, for example, is evidence that ET wants much more than communication...

So, how can you state such things? Where's the scientific methodology you are supposed to master?

No. There is NO evidence on ET communication methodology. There is NO evidence to suggest ET might want to communicate with us as SETI supposes. The evidence we DO have suggests that ET is actually extraordinarily indifferent to our sensibilities. They simply act and we continue to argue over whether they even exist! Yes, ET may “want” something… but communication does NOT seem to be one of those “somethings”.

You sure there's no evidence for hoaxes in the cases you cited above?

There is no evidence for hoaxing in either the McMinnville or the Trindade photos.

What must a scientist do with data supposed of being hoaxed?

Determine if the evidence really does show a hoax or not.

I stated:
”UFO debunkers also seem to insist that evidence somehow deteriorates with age. There is of course no scientific or logical basis for this. I guess it is just a faith-based part of the overall UFO debunker belief system.”

Strawman, twisting of statements and unsupported allegations. Very unscientific from your part.

Jocce stated ” It's a story about something that is supposed to have happened to some family 125 years ago.” and ” Stop posting century old rubbish then…”. The clear implication is that we should discount “old” evidence. Astrophotographer tried more generally to impugn the evidence of the cases I was presenting because they were old cases. I had the same argument then as I do now with Jocce: Evidence is evidence , no matter how old.

What we are saying is that these old cases can no longer be properly investigated. Original sources are no longer available, etc. I must now remind that you, displaying an amazing lack of understanding of the scientific method for someone who claims to be a scientist, came to the point of claiming that a collection of decades-old UFO cases from mixed (and usually unreliable) sources are similar in quality with the data collected by Galileo and Darwin.

You statement is simply untrue. Many of the cases I present were from reliable sources and were thoroughly investigated at the time and some even have the witnesses alive and talking today! Do you throw out Darwin’s observations merely because he is no longer alive?

I stated in reference to the Venezuela case (http://bp0.blogger.com/_-qWvml8_fAg/SGccRWGaJpI/AAAAAAAAAF8/J2QyUR-1d0E/s1600-h/SciAm2.JPG)
”What makes the report so compelling IS the fact that it predates ANY public UFO discussion and thus cannot be considered to be influenced in any way by a public zeitgeist.

Oh, of course you ignored the historic context. The ugly fact that ruins your beautiful theory is that the public was scared of and looking for things in the sky. Don’t you think this could not be the source of misidentifications which triggered the whole event? What would Occam do?

The Venezuelan public (in that particular region of the country) was “scared of and looking for things in the sky”? Evidence?

You don’t seem to be acting on a very scientific way.

Your merely stating so does not make your statement true.

I stated:
“Interestingly UFO proponents have NEVER claimed eyewitnesses to be 100% reliable, yet to maintain the UFO debunker position, the eyewitnesses MUST be 100% unreliable!

Prove that empty claim of yours.

The eyewitnesses must be 100% unreliable because the debunker position maintains that what is seen are misperceptions, delusions or hoaxes.

Stop right here. Before going any further, you must prove the eyewitness reports presented are reliable, faithful representations and descriptions of "objects that plainly defy mundane explanations".

That is why I am presenting the cases I do – to demonstrate those very things.

Backpedalling from you previous claim, eh? And also trying to build another strawman...

Tell me, a platypus specimen is not proof of the species existence?

No, a physical specimen demonstrates that platypus clearly exist. However, “platypus” is not a scientific concept and “species” is a debatable concept in itself.

We must have different standards for blurry...

Obviously.

Show us, among the load of blurry and/or hoaxed pictures which exist at that site the crystal clear ones you think are good. You are presenting the claim, you are the one who must clear the dataset from crappy datapoints, you are the one who must present the methodology used to do so.

Currently we are discussing the McMinnville and the Trindade photos (and Los Angeles). I merely invited you to explore the site and the photos represented there. I will take your request on notice.

Laughable. Have you ever heard of lens flares?

And which photos demonstrate that then? (http://www.ufopicture.org/nasa_ufo_pictures.html)

Rramjet, where's your alleged scientific training?

I am not about to divulge my identity in this forum.

 

[Rramjet]

No problem. Here's Wikipedia's repro of the picture as it appeared in the LA Times: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/32/Battle_of_Los_Angeles_LATimes.jpg

It's even poorer quality than the one you posted, but there's enough to make the point. Consider the degree of fading on the various beams on the two pictures. Do you think they are the same?

Look at the upper edge of the rightmost beam: it looks like two beams superimposed in the Times, but not in the Warren picture. Why do the "shellbursts" appear as featureless circular blobs? How long was the exposure to catch so many shells exploding? Why is there no evidence of camera shake and no movement trails from the shells? Obvious, reasonable answer - they were touched in - faked up to make a dramatic picture for the newspaper report.

(And before you howl in fake outrage that I'd suggest anything so scandalous as that the LA Times might deceive it's readers, how unusual do you imagine extensive photo retouching was in newspapers of the time?

You're kidding right? The newspaper reproduction is just that, a newspaper print reproduction! Anomalies, fading, washing out, and much more all occur in such a process. How do you know the shellbursts were not all at the same time?

BUT -There IS evidence of some retouching, but you just haven't seen it yet!

 

[RoboTimbo]

That is your merely opinion of the evidence, many disagree with you on that.

As they say:

Evidence?

I am not about to divulge my identity in this forum.

I sincerely don't blame you but we will have to assume based on the evidence that you don't have even a passing acquaintenceship with the scientific method.

 

[Astrophotographer]

And which photos demonstrate that then? (http://www.ufopicture.org/nasa_ufo_pictures.html)

Without a doubt this is really stretching your credibility here. Some of these are obvious lens flares produced by the sun and you can see the sun's glare in the images. The Apollo 12 UFO is a lens flare. The Apollo 14 (second image) is a lens flare. The Apollo 14 (first image) looks like an internal light reflection. The first Apollo 15 is a lens flare. The other two don't show anything abnormal. Maybe they are lookin at one of the background hills as a UFO (feel free to identify the UFO in those pics). The bottom three apollo 16 pics are lens flares. The top one is a floodlight boom that is part of the service module and was debunked long ago
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/travelinginspace/no_ufo.html. If you did some ACTUAL RESEARCH, you would have known this.

The shuttle ufos could be just about anthing. I vaguely recall that one of them was identified long ago as a glove from the astronaut and it is visible in the actual clip if you watch it. These low resolution images do not help.

 

[Astrophotographer]

You're kidding right? The newspaper reproduction is just that, a newspaper print reproduction! Anomalies, fading, washing out, and much more all occur in such a process. How do you know the shellbursts were not all at the same time?

The film speeds at the time and camera equipment would probably not allow for anything but a long time exposure on a tripod to record this image. I seriously doubt that this is a short exposure of any kind and I doubt that the AA bursts would all occur simultaneously in a fraction of a second.