Yes, I see that both people are willing to entertain that the letter was written by the person it claims to be written by. Even if they are correct - and there is no proof of this - it could still be that Cowgill was making the whole thing up.
Based on the evidence the letter is not a hoax and Cowgill is describing a real incident to the best of his knowledge. There is no evidence to suggest that the event did not occur substantially as told in that letter, while there is evidence to suggest veracity.
The problem we then have is in how to explain the case in mundane terms. On the face of it some form of radiation poisoning is the obvious answer. But radiation poisoning in 1886 in rural Venezuela? Alternatives have been proposed (from normal burns to heavy metal poisoning to lying to cover up some nefarious activity or other) but given the evidence none of those hypotheses can be plausibly supported. Even the radiation poisoning hypothesis has its problems. Yet there is nothing to suggest that the events did not occur substantially as related. It is a true mystery. Nothing quite fits. It simply
defies mundane explanation.
You asked:
” Why not some cryptozoological incident?”
And I replied (not sure you were actually referring to this case – because you repeatedly stated “Argentina”… even though you claimed to have reviewed all the evidence in the case including the posts in this thread…):
” What makes you think that some sort of creature was involved? Perhaps you have another case in mind altogether – one that has not been mentioned in this thread?”
What makes you think that it wasn't? Why go right to UFOs? In fact, nothing "flying" was even mentioned in the letter, nor was an object as such. This is, at best, an unexplaned incident. Saying that UFOs were involved makes a number of assumptions.
Just to be clear, I agree here too. It's a UFO as long as it was unidentified, flying, and an object to the observer at the time of observation. It may later be identified, or determined to have not been flying, or even to not be an object at all - but whatever happens later doesn't change that it was a UFO at the time.
A bright light, a sound, and some smoke? Not a UFO in my book because there was no F or O described or observed.
Actually, if you
had reviewed the posts in this thread you would see that I have
not called it a “UFO”. Rather I contended that it has many of the elements of a UFO case and thus closely resembles a UFO case, yet nowhere in the letter is a UFO mentioned and in fact Cowgill presented it as a “curious” meteorological phenomenon – and Sci Am published it as such. One of the
reasons I presented the case was to demonstrate that such reports were occurring long before UFO reporting became (according to the UFO debunkers) driven by popular culture.
I must also note that it is a typical UFO debunker response to a definition of UFOs that it is a UFO
only if it is unidentified "
to the observer at the time of the observation". The rationale for making this a definitional requirement is of course to preclude subsequent research and to provide a more secure foundation for the "eyewitness error" objection to UFO sightings. This of course reflects a belief that ALL UFO sightings are merely eyewitness misidentifications and works fine when subsequent research provides a mundane explanation - but they run into trouble when subsequent research maintains the status of UFO. But then of course thay simply say that there is not enough information to make a mundane determination. Further trouble arises when there
is enough information to conclude that the characteristics of the sighting simply
defy mundane explanation. Then they twist and turn and generally avoid the question and often simply refuse to discuss the case - or cry "Hoax!" When it is then shown that a hoax is not plausible,
then they have nowhere to go except to retreat into the infinite universe and mere possibility - throwing out plausibility, Occam's razor and the weight of evidence all in one breath (while adding an accusation that the UFO proponant does that very thing - fervently hoping that will put the proponent immediately on the defensive and distract argument away from the case itself).
What if I suggest that instead this was a cryptozoological incident? What if I say it was a psychic backlash? What if I say that it was magic? What if I say that it was some sort of natural but rare event caused by some exotic meteorite? What if I say that it was due to time travel? What if it was aliens of some sort, but they teleported in rather than using a spacecraft? None of these are UFOs, and most don't involve aliens.
You are free to speculate any explanation for the event you like. However, whatever explanation you come up should be plausible and should accord with the evidence we have - and the principle underlying Occam’s razor should also apply.
Cryptozoological? No creatures were mentioned and to imagine one as the cause would require too many unfounded assumptions – compared with for example the author’s and Sci Am’s assumption that it was some sort of meteorological phenomenon. That is we would find it difficult to relate a plausible story where an “unknown” creature causes a brilliant light that awakens the victims and “burns” them – we can however imagine some sort of “plasma ball” as a causal meteorological phenomenon – except for the fact that no such phenomenon has ever been recorded… however, the UFO thing comes back into it because there
have been other cases where such phenomena have been recorded where a UFO
has been noted as the cause and that also resulted in the victims having the same (or very similar) symptomatology (The Cash/Landrum incident for example -
http://www.nicap.org/cashlan.htm).
Even if the letter is an accurate account - and I am by no means prepared to say that - we still shouldn't even be calling it a UFO case.
Perhaps, perhaps not, it’s a value judgement after all – all I am saying is that it has all the elements of a UFO case without ever overtly or even by implication mentioning UFOs - and I presume by “UFO” you actually mean an ET vehicle of some sort – but as Cuddles points out, UFO simply means “unidentified”. That is in response to your “explanations”:
To be fair, I don't think this is really a helpful argument. Yes, UFO technically stands for "unidentified flying object", but that's not how it's actually used. In general, it simply means "unidentified thingy that appeared that it might have been flying, or at least kind of up in the sky somewhere". Planets, stars, reflections in windows, video artefacts, oil wells, and many other non-flying and non-object things have all been identified as the cause of UFOs at one time or another. It's doesn't help the argument on either side to say that they weren't actually UFOs at all, since then we'd just have to invent a new, not generally understood, word to describe exactly the same phenomenon.
The only thing I would add to that is that while many UFO sightings can be plausibly explained in mundane terms as the things Cuddles mentions, a significant proportion simply cannot. Which of course brings us back to the research and precisely
what proportion of sightings cannot be plausibly explained in mundane terms.
Your claim was that at least 20% of ALL reports could not be plausibly attributed to eyewitness error or inexplicable in mundane terms. You can't know that if the reports are not of high quality and a big portion of ALL reports are such.
71 out of ALL 2199 reports is 3%, not at least 20%.
If you are ruling out reports that are of “lower” reliability as unable to be assessed as “unknown”, then they also cannot be assessed as “known” - either the information is present and reliable enough to make an assessment of the report - or it is not. That is, you cannot say the reports were reliable enough to conclude a mundane explanation, yet at the same time not reliable enough to conclude “unknown”.
Seventy one of the 213 reports that were classified as “excellent” reliability were classified as “unknown”. That’s 33% unknown.
No. Just because the researchers don't know what an object is doesn't mean that there was no eyewitness error. That's something that you are projecting on to it, not something the researchers have demonstrated. If they have, then you can quote where they say that themselves.
To counter that the researchers (including psychologists) assessed the reports for reliability:
To clarify:
To categorise a report’s reliability, two scores were assigned - one each for the
observer and the
report drawn from the following scale:
The
considerations taken into account when creating those two reliability scores were:
”Ratings were assigned on the basis of the following factors of information, 'considered in relation to one another:
(1) The experience of the observer, deduced from his occupation, age, and training;
(2) The consistency among the separate portions of the description of the sighting;
(3) The general quality and completeness of the report;
(4) Consideration of the observer' s fact-reporting ability and attitude, as disclosed by his manner of describing the sighting.” (p.11) (
http://www.ufocasebook.com/pdf/specialreport14.pdf)
The overall report reliability categorisation was then assigned in consideration of both the observer and report reliability scores as follows:
”Excellent (Observer 0 or 1 and Report 0 or l)
Good (Observer 0 or 1, Report 2, 3, or 4; Observer 2, 3, or 4, Report 0 or l; Observer
2, Report 2)
Doubtful (Observer 0 or 1, Report 5 or 9; Observer 2, Report 3, 4, 5, or 9; Observer
3 or 4, Report 2, 3, 4, 5, or 9; Observer 5 or 9, Report 0, .1, 2, 3, or 4)
Poor (Observer 5, 9, or Y, Report 5, 9, or Y)” (p.308) (
http://www.ufocasebook.com/pdf/specialreport14.pdf)
I assume you would agree that the more reliable the report, the less likely “eyewitness error” is involved. The interesting statistic then to note in all that is that
the more reliable the report, the greater the percentage of unknowns there was!
I hope you realise what that actually means. The more “eyewitness error” is removed from the equation, the less likely the sighting can be explained in mundane terms! Or: The more eyewitness error assumed, the more likely a mundane explanation will be found. The data is then telling us something important. Assume eyewitness error and mundane explanations are likely to be found. Take eyewitness error out of the equation and mundane explanations are less likely to be found.
I think you also may have a somewhat confused concept of what “eyewitness error” actually means? Have a careful read through the “reliability” parameters the scientists assessed (above). You will find (among other things) that observer experience, training and fact-reporting ability and report consistency, completeness and quality were assessed. These are generally things that mitigate eyewitness error.
Of course the old UFO debunker standby is “eyewitness error”, but here is a research report that accounts for such error and finds that the less error, the greater the proportion of unknowns. That is
not my “projection” – those are the
research findings.
Returning to some questions I asked SOdhner:
” So tell me then: Do you believe there are any UFO cases that defy mundane explanation?”
I don't know what the word "mundane" really adds to that sentence. I would say that some Unidentified Flying Objects remain Unidentified. Of the ones that are positively identified, all have been mundane objects but that's to be expected - if something was not mundane it would of course be harder to identify because we would be less familiar with it. That being said, something being hard to identify does not mean that it is not mundane.
No, I asked if you believed if there were any UFO cases that
defied mundane explanation. Clearly, based on your answer you believe that ALL UFO cases can be explained in mundane terms – just that for some we simply don’t have the information to determine that mundane explanation as yet.
If “something was not mundane” we could still describe its characteristics (size, shape, manoeuvrability, other distinctive features, etc) and then make a determination of whether those characteristics fitted with any known mundane cause. Often in UFO cases we have a great deal of descriptive characteristic detail and yet are
still unable to fit a plausible mundane explanation to it. That is what I mean by a sighting
defying mundane explanation. We have the descriptive information, but that information simply does not fit with any plausible mundane cause. That’s why I asked:
What do you make of the following case then?
The Delphos Kansas UFO Landing (11 Feb 1971)
(
http://www.ufocasebook.com/Kansas.html)
(
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case192.htm)
The following site contains some photos of the UFO landing ring, taken 10minutes, 16 hours and 3.5 years after the event.
(
http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/201...ding-ring.html)
There is also a link to a subsequent soil analysis conducted in 1999
(
http://documents.theblackvault.com/d...nger/UT001.pdf).
…and of course you refuse to answer:
Not until you can tell me how you can rule out a hoax as the explanation for the Venezuela case.
I have stated my case. The evidence is in. It is not plausible to propose a hoax. I can lead the horse to water... but obviously you have your own opinion - and it seems not even the evidence is going to change that now.
I also asked:
” Do you believe ET exists?”
I think it seems logical to say that there are life forms on other planets. It further seems logical to suppose that some life that is fairly intelligent would have arisen elsewhere at some point, although that wouldn't mean that they did so near to us or at the same time, or that there has been any interaction.
It also does not mean that there has
not been interaction.
”Do you believe the ETH may represent a potential explanation for some UFO sightings?”
In theory, yes. That being said, I've never seen any evidence that has been compelling.
Is that because you refuse to explore the evidence? I only ask because you seem to be taking that line in the Delphos case (above). Not that that case represents evidence for ETs, just noting your ostensible refusal to examine actual evidence.
It seems like, from the OP, you are saying that the explanation for these UFOs is "aliens".
You have simply failed to understand my OP then.
I must make one caveat on my meaning of “alien”. By “alien” I DO NOT mean “Extraterrestrial”. The term as I use it simply means something outside our common understanding of reality. “They” could be from “out there”, they could be from “precisely here”, they could be extra- or intra-dimensional, they could be, well, anything at all…we just do not know and without a concerted research effort, perhaps we will never truly “know”.
