UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[jhunter1163]

I too am a UFO eyewitness. I've seen an object in the sky that I could not identify. It was late at night, and the object, whatever it was, passed within 50 feet or so of me. It was metallic and very shiny, like stainless steel. It had one very bright white light on it. It passed over my parents' house (I was about 17 at the time) and moved down the hill and out of sight.

To this day, I don't know what it was. I'm quite sure, though, that the answer doesn't involve extraterrestrials.

 

[Doubt]

The UFO debunker’s beliefs rest wholly on one single premise:

The eyewitnesses are wrong 100% of the time.

That is, to maintain their position, the UFO debunkers MUST uphold the truth of that statement. That is, in 100% of UFO cases the eyewitnesses have misperceived a mundane object.

All this time. All these posts. And you still rely on strawman arguments. That is so weak a 12 year old who just started to grasp abstract concepts could spot the problem.

Skeptics understand from evidence that eyewitnesses are unreliable. Not 100% wrong. If you were, say, a psychologist, you would be familiar with the studies that show just how unreliable eyewitnesses are.

Without other evidence, eyewitness accounts of anything are useless. Not wrong. Just useless. In the case of UFO's mundane is the normal. To be credited as something else, you need a lot more than what somebody thought they saw.

 

[Sledge]

The UFO debunker’s beliefs rest wholly on one single premise:

Good thing there are no UFO debunkers here. Rest assured that if any turn up, we'll point out how silly they are not to believe in UFOs.

Now, do you have any of that evidence of aliens you promised?

 

[wollery]

The UFO debunker’s beliefs rest wholly on one single premise:

The eyewitnesses are wrong 100% of the time.

That is, to maintain their position, the UFO debunkers MUST uphold the truth of that statement. That is, in 100% of UFO cases the eyewitnesses have misperceived a mundane object.

Pathetic Rramjet, really just pathetic.

All this time, all the ways it has been explained to you, and you still don't get it.

And you still haven't responded to my previous post. Why is that I wonder?

 

[W.D.Clinger]

A question for the Moderators: Could you please tell me what the topic of this thread is so that I may stay on it when I post?

If the mods wanted us to know what this thread is about, they wouldn't have moved so many informative illustrations to AAH. I'll state the topic myself:

The topic of this thread is blimps, hubcaps, oil well fires, shrimp boats, porn magazines, rear-view mirrors, stars, Chinese lanterns, lunar landers, hoaxes, anomalous radar returns, flares, stealth aircraft, fuzzy photographic prints, and lots of other stuff, some of which have not been identified to this day, and how a determined person who has identified himself as a scientist of some undetermined variety can use those things to create a very long thread that may or may not support some as-yet-undetermined hypothesis possibly involving aliens, Mothra, gods, or goddesses. Preferably goddesses.

 

[Sledge]

A question for the Moderators: Could you please tell me what the topic of this thread is so that I may stay on it when I post?
Thank you.

Honestly? It's impossible to say. If you go from the opening post, it would be to prove that aliens are responsible for UFOs. Somewhere along the line, Rramjet has abandoned this in favour of complaining about "UFO debunkers," a phrase that apparently means something different to him than it does to the rest of the English-speaking world. Personally, I'm on the verge of trawling through Rramjet's last few posts with the aim of showing he's violated the majority of the rules governing forum behaviour in the hope this thread will be put out of it's misery. Or moved to a more appropriate location where it can be given the beautifully-illustrated treatment it deserves.

 

[Czarcasm]

Honestly? It's impossible to say. If you go from the opening post, it would be to prove that aliens are responsible for UFOs. Somewhere along the line, Rramjet has abandoned this in favour of complaining about "UFO debunkers," a phrase that apparently means something different to him than it does to the rest of the English-speaking world. Personally, I'm on the verge of trawling through Rramjet's last few posts with the aim of showing he's violated the majority of the rules governing forum behaviour in the hope this thread will be put out of it's misery. Or moved to a more appropriate location where it can be given the beautifully-illustrated treatment it deserves.

Don't feel bad, but W.D.Clinger's answer actually made more sense.

 

[Sledge]

Damn that Mothra!
*shakes fist*

 

[Akhenaten]

Yeah. But you and I are UFO eyewitnesses. We have an advantage - we know that at least one eyewitness is right.

How many of the participants in this thread do you estimate are not UFO witnesses, Limbo?

 

[RoboTimbo]

So along come the debunkers and say “Oh but eyewitnesses are 100% fallible, so they simply could NOT have described accurately what they saw.” I simply say to that proposition: Bunk! They (and we) saw and described the object and events accurately - of course they (and we) did! To suppose otherwise is simply to unreasonably deny the evidence.

So what was it at Campeche?

 

[Access Denied]

Let me relate a personal story to illustrate further.

Considering the way you’ve repeatedly lied and deliberately misrepresented everyone’s position here, why should anyone believe you?

I don’t.

I’ve seen a UFO.

Would you be less inclined to believe my account because of my position on the cases you’ve presented here as evidence of “aliens”?

 

[Patricio Elicer]

How many of the participants in this thread do you estimate are not UFO witnesses, Limbo?

I'm a UFO witness. My brother is a UFO witness, he said he saw a luminous ring in the night sky steadly moving, until he lost it behind a mountain. Now, man-made aircraft are not ring-shaped, right?. But neither of us have proclaimed a close encounter of the second kind, or whatever kind. Why?, because in both cases there wasn't enough information for us to assess the sighting, there weren't enough elements to see the whole picture. We both saw just bits of the movie. That's it, end of story.

 

[Toke]

I have seen a radar contact move across the screen at several hundred km/h somewhere off Japan. In the bay of Aden I have seen a flashing light in the sky cross our wake in the night.

Since I have no proof that it was helicopters or other mundane stuff I must conclude that it was smurfs on the run/fly from Gargamel's latest nefarious plot.

 

[Jocce]

The UFO debunker’s beliefs rest wholly on one single premise:

The eyewitnesses are wrong 100% of the time.

1. I haven't seen any UFO debunkers around here. Everyone seems to agree that UFO's exist.

2. You are lying about the premise of 100% again. Myself and others are claiming that eyewitnesses CAN be mistaken, not that they always are. You on the other hand claim that we can know exactly under what conditions eyewitnesses can be mistaken and account for that in evaluating a report. You offer no proof for this assertion though.

That is, to maintain their position, the UFO debunkers MUST uphold the truth of that statement. That is, in 100% of UFO cases the eyewitnesses have misperceived a mundane object.

As I said, no.

This, to me, is just pure nonsense. It beggars belief. It defies rationality. For example in the Rogue River case, under near perfect viewing conditions, five witnesses (two using binoculars) observe and describe a circular (analogous to a coin), silent object moving across the sky at the speed of a jet plane. They were able to observe the object for over 1 ½ minutes, so had ample time to “test” their own hypotheses about what it might have been (as in “is it a bird, a plane, a blimp…”) and they arrived at the conclusion that it represented nothing mundane that they knew of.

1. Perfect viewing conditions
On a warm may day there is heat haze which makes detailed observations of objects in the distance very hard. Everyone knows this.

2. Five witnesses
They were all in the same boat and had ampel time to discuss the sighting among themselves. How could that affect their statements?

3. Using binoculars
All 5 witnesses were in the same boat, on a river. That's not a stable observation platform and any movement will be amplified by the binoculars as will the heat haze problems. I can also add that the quality of optics then was not the same as it is today. It's 60 years ago remember?

4. A circular object
The witnesses saw, and described, an oval sillouette. They INTERPRETED it as being a circular object seen from an angle. That interpretation can be wrong. They draw pictures that looks a lot like a blimp.

5. Speed
Witnesses does not agree on speed and you can't really estimate that well if you don't know how far away an object is.

Two of the witnesses were able to obtain a good enough view of the object to draw fairly detailed pictures of it, showing a finlike structure of top and a “wrinkled” edge around the circle (almost like the knurl on a coin).

The picture looks like a blimp. Anyone post them in this thread yet?

Simply, the witnesses saw and described, with a fair degree of accuracy, what was there in front of them.

In that case, judging from the drawings, they likely saw a blimp.

Let me relate a personal story to illustrate further.

Anecdotes without evidence are not what we look for here. I thought you knew that by now?

So along come the debunkers and say “Oh but eyewitnesses are 100% fallible

It has been pointed out to you before that this is wrong. You are deliberately lying now Roger.

 

[Sparhawk]

I saw a UFO last month. A star sized light moved across the night sky at significant speed. It was just on dusk so it could have been an aeroplane reflecting light, but it may also have been a satellite.

 

[Jocce]

Let me relate a personal story to illustrate further.

One evening I was sitting inside watching TV. It was a warm, still evening. My wife was outside talking to our the next door neighbour. Next thing I hear my name being called with the exhortation to “come out here. Quickly!” I went out. The two girls were pointing at a large white light (the size of a full moon and as bright as a car headlight) sitting very still in the air toward the North. (1) It looked about 100 meters off the ground and about 500 metres away. It was just hanging there, doing nothing in particular. (2) There was no sound at all from it and it was perfectly still.

No details could be seen in or around the light (for example (3) there were none of the usual coloured navigation strobe lights one might expect if it were a helicopter). Together we commented quietly but excitedly on its size, its brightness, its seeming closeness to us, on the lack of sound, (4) the absolute lack of movement (it did not move one millimetre from its position) and (5) the lack of any other lights or distinguishing features. It was, inexplicably, a large, bright, white light just “hanging” in the sky not very far way from us!

(6) Suddenly the light winked out, reappeared some short distance horizontally to the right
<snip>

1. Then comes the sceptic question. WAS it 100m off ground and 500m away or did it just LOOK LIKE it was.

2. Another sceptic question. Was it silent or too far away to be heard?

3. Sceptic: Was there NO colored lights or could you not see them? Two different things.

4. Did it not move 1mm or did it just seem like that to you because it was far away f ex?

5. That you could not see any detail doesn't mean it was featureless.

6. You didn't see the light move, yet you claim it "reappeared". It could have been another light.

etc...

My point is that everyones perception is fallable. I think that you desribe what you saw but that doesn't mean you gave an accurate description of the "thing" you saw. That is not an objective description, it's a subjective interpretation of what was seen.

 

[amb]

So, after 164 pages and hundreds of posts, we are back to square one?

 

[wollery]

So, after 164 pages and hundreds of posts, we are back to square one?

We left square one?

 

[Sledge]

Only if it's possible to go backwards from square one.

 

[EHocking]

The UFO debunker’s beliefs rest wholly on one single premise:

The eyewitnesses are wrong 100% of the time.

That is, to maintain their position, the UFO debunkers MUST uphold the truth of that statement. That is, in 100% of UFO cases the eyewitnesses have misperceived a mundane object.

Strawman. The rest of the wall of text has been ignored, since the opening statement is totally incorrect.

For the record, I have seen two UFOs in my life and at least one of the sightings was reported by hundreds of others as well as making a national newspaper. First was three green lights in the sky in the classic triangle formation, the most recent an unexplained fireball in broad daylight.