UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[ufology]

My problem is that I can't even imagine a hypothetical situation in which a hoax could be ruled out conclusively, so it doesn't matter if we can see the evidence firsthand, or that we're just in this forum, etc.

Can you give me even a hypothetical case in which we can conclusively rule out a hoax?

OK Paul but don't say I didn't ask for parameters. Here are some hypothetical situations:

• Let's say you work at a tactical air traffic control center and one of the radar operators announces that he sees an unidentified object on his scope. Another person at the center says, "it's probably a joke ( hoax )." So you go over to the radar operator's station and sure enough, there's an unidentified object on his scope. In this situation you have just ruled out that radar operator had not perpetrated a hoax because you have personally verified that he sees ( as you do ) an unidentified object on the radar scope.
• We can take the above a bit further ... then the phone rings and another radar station asks if your station also has the same unidentified object on your radar scope, so you confirm that you do, thus doubling the verification that it's not a hoax.
• We can take this even further. Then the phone rings again and it's a civilian who says she sees a strange object in the sky. Maybe that's a hoax you think, so you go over to the window and sure enough there is a strange glowing object in the sky right where the civilian says it is. So again, the civilian was telling the truth because you see the object too, and it just turns out to be in the same place that two radars say the unknown object is. Now you know that neither the radar operator nor the civilian were hoaxing that they saw the object.
• We can take this even further ... So you think maybe someone is perpetrating an even bigger hoax on everyone. So you call in military air support to intercept the object. The jet interceptor pilot also sees the same object that the civilian, yourself and two radar stations has confirmed is there, and the pilot gives chase, only to have the object outrun the jet, doubly confirmed by the two radar stations.
• Now at this point it is no longer reasonable for you to consider any of this incident to be a hoax. Certainly you could personally deny any of it was real, but that would only confirm your irrational denial. Now it is still possible that the object was some foreign technology you know nothing about and isn't a truly alien craft, but then we are no longer dealing with a hoax, but an incursion of airspace by a foreign power.
• To sum up ... in this example I've demonstrated how the radar operator could not have been hoaxing, how the civilian eye witness could not have been hoaxing and how the object itself could not have been a hoax. This example also parallels one of the incidents during the Washington National sightings.

Here's another example:

• A person reports that they see a bright object in the sky at some very specific coordinates. You suspect a hoax, but the object is determined through subsequent investigation to have been the planet Venus. Therefore the person who reported that they saw a bright object was not hoaxing anything, they just saw the planet Venus.
• In another example we could have someone report that they saw a strange object performing wild maneuvers at a particular location. You suspect a hoax but can't prove anything until you uncover that the location is a staging ground for remote controlled aircraft enthusiasts who had been flying at the exact time the sighting was reported. This case also rules out a hoax as well becuase the RC guys never made the claim that something strange was going on. The person who reported the event just didn't know what they had seen were RC models.

So now we have several examples of how hoaxes can be ruled out depending on the information. More scenarios could of course be created, but I believe the point has still been made. Context is everything.

 

[Akhenaten]

Hey Agatha ... if you look back to where I posted the oficial USAF definition of UFO from ARF 200-2 Feb. 05, 1958, you will see that for the definition of UFO, mundane explanations are ruled out.

And if we don't then we'll be just like the millions and millions of people who use the normal, general-purpose, 2011 definition and who have no trouble understanding that no kind of explanations have been ruled out because that's what 'unidentified' actually means.

To be more precise with respect to the point you probably intended to make, it would be more correct to say that; "A more parsimonious explanation is that most pre-screened UFOs reports have mundane explanations." To this statement I would also tend to agree . . .

Of course you agree. It's your strawman after all.

Slipping the bit about pre-screening in there means that it's no longer a parsimonious explanation. You've added a host of new assumptions with that phrase - the direct opposite of parsimony.

. . . but those aren't the reports ufologists are interested in. We're interested in the ones that don't have mundane explanations.

Except that you have no way of knowing which ones have mundane explanations and which ones (if any) have non-mundane explanations. You're back to invoking Rramjet's much-vaunted-but-never-demonstrated infallible process of elimination.

 

[John Albert]

In the USAF studies, misperceptions were determined through investigation, and those that could not be determined were thrown in the "insufficient information" pile, therefore ( again ), the group of unknowns didn't include objects for which a misperception was a possibility. Consequently the misperceptions that couldn't be resolved were irrelevant to the number of unknowns.

That entire methodology doesn't make sense. How can anyone know for sure that all possible misperceptions were accounted for and ruled out? How is it possible to definitively discount misperceptions, lies, and other confabulations when you have no real evidence to determine if the story is true or not?

It's this kind of obvious faulty reasoning that leads me to believe these supposedly infallible, supremely credible and scientific USAF "researchers" were really little more than rank bureaucrats sitting in a quonset hut, trying to appear busy by mindlessly shoving paperwork around for a government salary.

It's true that in 1952 radar was not nearly as sophisticated as modern radar, but experienced radar operators could tell craft from inversions and other noise. So when a hard return is tracked coming into range at about 700 MPH and slowing to about 100 MPH and watched for several minutes, it's not likely we are dealing with malfunctions or noise. Then we add to the mix that jets were scrambled and a pilot saw an object and gave chase ... and fired on the object.

You've already demonstrated your lack of expertise on military training and protocols, as well as your lack of knowledge about radar and related technologies. Now, despite your well-evidenced ignorance of those areas, you expect us to just accept these claims on your own misplaced authority?

Just how gullible do you think we are?

The liklihood of the whole incident being based completely on errors is pretty small ... specifically, mistaken radar returns over several minutes resulted in mistaken orders to scramble jets, one of which mistakenly saw an object and mistakenly fired on it. Sorry, but I'm not buying into that.

This coming from the guy who's trying to sell us on the idea that outer space aliens played "chicken" with USAF fighter jets over Washington DC, with no evidence but third-party hearsay originating from one man's memory of a "lost" document he'd allegedly read 3-4 years prior to writing a popular book?

I'll say it again: Just how gullible do you think we are?


And by the way, are you ever going to answer these questions?

Snad refers to anecdotal evidence, lots of it. And film. And photographs. So do you. But you say that there’s as much evidence for Snardert’s skyfishes as there are for Pegasus and unicorns, unlike your metallic, saucer-shaped craft, for which there is apparently plenty of reliable evidence.

So, my question to J Randall Murphy remains: Why the double standard, ufology?

Are high quality cases the ones where we actually have an alien raygun to study? Alien bodies to disect?

As the above clearly indicates it is yet another claim that something happened. It's not a signed statement from the pilots, it's not a transcript of an interview or debriefing with the person(s) directly involved. It is once again someone who is recapitulating, without detail, what someone else claims to have experienced. This time it appears to be from an official source but still, it's not evidence. It's a claim that evidence exists. See the difference?

How then do you tell the difference between the ones that are [UFOs by your chosen definition] and the ones which are misperceptions, hoaxes, misidentification, etc?

What evidence do you have that the UFOs at Washington were glowing spheres?

Then just replace the word "pseudoaliens" with the paranormal intelligence of your choice, and answer the question, please:

In other words, it's just your opinion. You make no claims to being able to justify your beliefs in <non-human intelligent beings> beyond taking for granted some stuff you saw written in a book. Correct?

If you don't know what it is, then how does that prove it was made by a non-human civilization?

Air Force pilots have already been trained and tested and the invetigators have already interrogated them and evaluated the facts. Just because skeptics don't accept that doesn't mean there is no value to it. The probability that the USAF jet pilot who chased a UFO for several minutes during the day in plain view and closed with 500 yards, close enough to determine it to be a disk shaped craft travelling at the speed of sound ... was actually hallucinating the entire event or mistook it as a canopy reflection or some other mundane thing is almost zero. The margin of error is small enough for the report to be considered reliable and true.

Which bit of all that guff are you claiming as the testable evidence?

Ufology please tell me how the Air Force trains it's pilots to identify ufos.

My question remains, what is the difference between this 'evidence' for intelligent/intelligently controlled craft/entities/UFOs, which is the sort of thing that Snad was alluding to, and your intelligently controlled UFOs, ufology?

Snad has anecdotal and photographic "evidence" just like you do. What makes his "evidence" any less verifiable than yours?

So you're really claiming that the saucer-shaped object in your logo isn't meant to represent this object in the image that's right next to it on your website?

How is memory self-correcting? Are you saying that memory, all by itself, when it makes a mistake, somehow is able to correct that mistake? Can you give some details here?

And yet you have failed to demonstrate the logic that differentiates your belief that *some* UFOs are alien craft from the logic that:

assumes Gods

or

assumes intra-spacial fish and insects.

I can't see the difference. Others here can't see the difference. Why not help us out and just take us through it logically?

The falsifiable null hypothesis is:
"All UFO sightings are mundane in origin"
What do you have to falsify it?

What we're really after here is evidence. Do you possess any?

The unanswered questions are piling up. You must not be doing a very good job of "studying" UFOs, if you can't even answer a few straightforward questions.

I'm beginning to see why you pseudoscientists tend to cultivate mysteries instead of solving them.

 

[ufology]

That entire methodology doesn't make sense. How can anyone know for sure that all possible misperceptions were accounted for and ruled out?

... bla bla bla

• The definition I posted doesn't say it rules out "all misperceptions".
• The process put misperceptions that can't be ruled out into the insufficient information pile, leaving only the the reports for which misperceptions could be ruled out for further consideration. Misperceptions can be ruled out via the quality of information and comparisons of known objects in the list provided in the definition.

 

[ufology]

A More Accurate "Null Hypothesis"

The null hypothesis which is:

"All UFO sightings are of mundane origin"


bla bla bla ...

True: All pre-screened UFO sighting reports are of mundane origin.
False: All UFOs are of mundane origin.

I've already outlined the official screening process in which the definition of a UFO precludes most natural and manmade phenomena. Whether the skeptics like it or not, the fact is that the USAF definition was created by the same agency that created the word itself and it therefore takes precedence. UFOs are by their very definition, not mundane objects.

However the so called, "null hypothesis" is suggestive of the screening process, wherein mundane objects are ruled out through a process of logical elimination based on the content of the information in the report. Therefore to apply this process to the formulation of the null hypothesis perhaps one could say:

A more accurate "Null Hypothesis"

All unidentified objects referred to in pre-screened UFO reports are of mundane origin.

 

[Akhenaten]

Excellent. Will you be posting any of these which don't have mundane explanations?

<anecdote>

There are several other cases in Ruppelt's classic book that were classed as unknown. However I'm sure you are familiar with the the general take of skeptics, these reports prove nothing other than than someone wrote a book about some alledged events that may or may not have taken place.

Remarkably perceptive of you. Sadly, however, having had this perception you'll completely ignore it and blather on about how all these old stories are actually high quality evidence that the mean old skeptics refuse to acknowledge as such.

So if your follow up question is to ask for physical scientific evidence, I've already conceded that there is none that I know of that proves anything empirically. The only science that has been done by the USAF that we are aware of are some astronomical evaluations that were used to confirm or rule out celestial phenomena ( stars, planets etc. ), and statistical evaluations that establish probabilities based on multiple reports that we are in fact actually dealing with real objects of unknown origin. The results of those studies were posted way back in this thread someplace.

Balderdash. As I alluded to in an earlier (ignored by you) post, the same "statistical evaluations" could be used to establish a near certainty that some of the pictures of Jesus' mum in pieces of toast are genuine divine manifestations.

Still, even with the probability being a virtual certainty that we are dealing with real objects for which no known manmade or natural phenomena provides an adequate explanation, that isn't the same as material scientific proof of extraterrestrial visitation.

Complete pseudoscientific fantasy.

There is no way to provide that short of being granted a cruise on a mother ship.

Piffle.

Even videos by so called "reputable sources", as suggested by one of the other skeptics here, would not in my view constitute scientific proof that extraterrestrials exist. However it might provide reasonable grounds for some skeptics to seriously consider it, and if the video were transmitted from a Mars rover, that would be even better.

It's not much good pretending to adopt what appears to be reasonable position with respect to extraterrestrials when one has already indicated a belief in alien flying saucers that aren't extraterrestrial.

So what we are left with is to determine for ourselves, given the information we do have, whether or not we need scientific evidence to hold a reasonable view that alien craft probably exist, and for that, I think there is enough information ... even if I hadn't seen one myself.

Assuming that by 'scientific' you mean something like 'empirical', then of course we need scientific evidence before we can conclude "OMG . . .aliens!" That ufailogists continually refuse to acknowledge this no-brainer is the reason they're called out as pseudoscientists.

Having seen one myself however, combined with all the other reports, I am personally certain that alien craft ( not necessarily extraterrestrial ) have been operating near the Earth.

Always the bottom line, isn't it? You're a believer because you've had your own "OMG . . . aliens!" moment and come hell or high water you're determined to invent some science to imbue your belief with an aura of credibilty.

 

[Toke]

True: All pre-screened UFO sighting reports are of mundane origin.
False: All UFOs are of mundane origin.

I've already outlined the official screening process in which the definition of a UFO precludes most natural and manmade phenomena. Whether the skeptics like it or not, the fact is that the USAF definition was created by the same agency that created the word itself and it therefore takes precedence. UFOs are by their very definition, not mundane objects.

However the so called, "null hypothesis" is suggestive of the screening process, wherein mundane objects are ruled out through a process of logical elimination based on the content of the information in the report. Therefore to apply this process to the formulation of the null hypothesis perhaps one could say:

A more accurate "Null Hypothesis"

All unidentified objects referred to in pre-screened UFO reports are of mundane origin.

You mean "All unidentified objects referred to that have been identified as of mundane origin in pre-screened UFO reports are of mundane origin."
No **** Sherlock.

And the ones with insufficient information for identification must therefore be aliens/Antarctic nazis/unicorns etc?

Are you really selling books based on this?

 

[Akhenaten]

:words

A more accurate "Null Hypothesis"

All unidentified objects referred to in pre-screened UFO reports are of mundane origin.

Now we're supposed to accept your self-serving, glaringly-subjective, pseudoscientific redefinition of "null hypothesis", are we?

 

[Akhenaten]

Hey Astro, certainly your opinion is valid. I suppose that it's possible that the pilot was just joy riding and decided to risk serious consequences by firing his guns for the fun of it and then fabricate a story to tick off hi CO ... but, I unlike you, I doubt that such was the case.

What you doubt or not is worse than irrelevant. As someone with a vested interest in the reality of alien interlopers everything you offer takes on the attributes of a claim, not those of evidence or explanation.

There were also the initial radar returns. That's why the jets were scrambled in the first place. So saying, "We have no evidence there ever was a craft at all." isn't entirely accurate either ( other than in the context of here and now in this forum ) and for that matter, this forum can't provide proof of anything material. We can only discuss things.

Try separating your thoughts into proper sentences or paragraphs or something will you? And stop using 'proof' all the time as though it was interchangeable with evidence.

 

[Akhenaten]

My goodness. You are gullible aren't you? I debunked this in SUNlite 3-2 (page 5).

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite3_2.pdf

And what a great read it was. Thank you.

Although I have to say that Volume 3, Number 5 is even better.

 

[Akhenaten]

Please refrain from presumptions. I didn't say I believed anything about the video. I simply asked for opinions on it. Thank you for the references, I'll add them to my files.

Plausible deniability, eh? The scilons use that technique a lot.

Probably just a coincidence.

 

[Akhenaten]

OK Paul but don't say I didn't ask for parameters. Here are some hypothetical situations:

• Let's say you work at a tactical air traffic control center and one of the radar operators announces that he sees an unidentified object on his scope. Another person at the center says, "it's probably a joke ( hoax )." So you go over to the radar operator's station and sure enough, there's an unidentified object on his scope. In this situation you have just ruled out that radar operator had not perpetrated a hoax because you have personally verified that he sees ( as you do ) an unidentified object on the radar scope.
• We can take the above a bit further ... then the phone rings and another radar station asks if your station also has the same unidentified object on your radar scope, so you confirm that you do, thus doubling the verification that it's not a hoax.
• We can take this even further. Then the phone rings again and it's a civilian who says she sees a strange object in the sky. Maybe that's a hoax you think, so you go over to the window and sure enough there is a strange glowing object in the sky right where the civilian says it is. So again, the civilian was telling the truth because you see the object too, and it just turns out to be in the same place that two radars say the unknown object is. Now you know that neither the radar operator nor the civilian were hoaxing that they saw the object.

So far you could easily be describing a kite with a ball of tinfoil and a Cyalume® light stick attached to it.

We can take this even further ... So you think maybe someone is perpetrating an even bigger hoax on everyone. So you call in military air support to intercept the object. The jet interceptor pilot also sees the same object that the civilian, yourself and two radar stations has confirmed is there, and the pilot gives chase, only to have the object outrun the jet, doubly confirmed by the two radar stations.

This would be where a combination of expectation and misperception comes into play.

A pilot is closing at 500 kt on an object that he reasonably expects to be within the normal range of sizes that might be expected for an aerospace vehicle, except that it's actually a 15 cm light stick. He has no way of knowing that rather than being 5000 metres away when he first spots it, its actually only 100 metres away. There's no doubt that the object is going disappear from his field of view in an unexpected way, or display what appear to be quite amazing flight characteristics.

It's exactly what small objects close by do when the observer believes that he's looking at a larger object further away.

Just like when someone believes a firefly a few metres away is something the size of a Volkswagen 3 km away.

Now at this point it is no longer reasonable for you to consider any of this incident to be a hoax. Certainly you could personally deny any of it was real, but that would only confirm your irrational denial. Now it is still possible that the object was some foreign technology you know nothing about and isn't a truly alien craft, but then we are no longer dealing with a hoax, but an incursion of airspace by a foreign power.

I'm very glad you aren't the one with your finger on the trigger.

To sum up ... in this example I've demonstrated how the radar operator could not have been hoaxing, how the civilian eye witness could not have been hoaxing and how the object itself could not have been a hoax. This example also parallels one of the incidents during the Washington National sightings.

You're looking at the wrong perps, ufology.

Here's another example:

• A person reports that they see a bright object in the sky at some very specific coordinates. You suspect a hoax, but the object is determined through subsequent investigation to have been the planet Venus. Therefore the person who reported that they saw a bright object was not hoaxing anything, they just saw the planet Venus.
• In another example we could have someone report that they saw a strange object performing wild maneuvers at a particular location. You suspect a hoax but can't prove anything until you uncover that the location is a staging ground for remote controlled aircraft enthusiasts who had been flying at the exact time the sighting was reported. This case also rules out a hoax as well becuase the RC guys never made the claim that something strange was going on. The person who reported the event just didn't know what they had seen were RC models.

Those are examples of IFOs, which makes them irrelevant to this discussion.

So now we have several examples of how hoaxes can be ruled out depending on the information.

You wish.

More scenarios could of course be created, but I believe the point has still been made.

Yes, but not the one you were hoping for.

Context is everything.

Especially the context of the null hypothesis that all UFO sightings are of mundane origin.

 

[Jocce]

the definition of a UFO precludes most natural and manmade phenomena. Whether the skeptics like it or not, the fact is that the USAF definition was created by the same agency that created the word itself and it therefore takes precedence. UFOs are by their very definition, not mundane objects.

I'm confused. How do you conclude "alien" from excluding only most natural or manmade phenomena.

mundane objects are ruled out through a process of logical elimination based on the content of the information in the report.

Others have said it but it's worth repeating. You can never be sure that you have ruled out all mundane explanations. In most cases you can't even begin to examine a case yourself because you don't have access to the data that lead someone else to a certain conclusion. You're just taking their word for it. Scientists (and I too) do not.

 

[John Albert]

• The definition I posted doesn't say it rules out "all misperceptions".
• The process put misperceptions that can't be ruled out into the insufficient information pile, leaving only the the reports for which misperceptions could be ruled out for further consideration.

That also makes no sense. In fact, it's totally ass-backwards.

The "insufficient information pile" should be the place where all UFO reports start out, pending some positive identifying information.

"Insufficient information" is the only reason why anything remains unidentified. Once we have sufficient information to know what it is, then the object is longer unidentified. In that case, the UFO becomes an IFO and the case can go into the "solved" file.

Misperceptions can be ruled out via the quality of information and comparisons of known objects in the list provided in the definition.

All misperceptions, plus lies, confabulations and successful hoaxes? That's a pretty good trick. I'd like to see how they'd pull that one off, considering all they have to go on is stories and maybe (if they're lucky) a location that might provide a few geographical clues. But with nothing physical or testable to go on, there's no possible way to conclusively rule out all misperceptions, confabulations, lies, etc.

As I said before, all they really need is two desk trays labeled "Insufficient evidence" and "Solved." (Of course, the "solved" cases could later be subcategorized however they wish; after all, the causes of those are known).

It sounds to me like they made an essentially simple task far more complicated than it needs to be, in typical bureaucratic fashion. Every bureaucrat knows that failing to look busy will result in his office being shut down, so they must always justify their own existence with the impression of productivity, organization, and above all, purpose. For a military bureaucracy dedicated to assessing reports of UFOs, it's in their own best interest to present the appearance that at least some of these reports represent a valid, potential threat to national security. Failure to show progress on that front would result in the project being defunded and shut down, as it ultimately was.

With rarely more than eyewitness accounts to go on, the entire operation is largely an exercise in futility. There's simply no conclusive way to rule out all misperceptions, confabulations, lies, and successful hoaxes. There's also no reliable way to account for what percentage of cases those factors are responsible. If you really believe they're able to have done that, then you've been bamboozled just like the higher-ups in the chain of command who ordered this impossible task, the politicians who earmarked it, and the taxpayers who paid for it.

During the Cold War, the US military and intelligence agencies squandered a lot of money on pseudoscience. MK-ULTRA, the "remote viewing" trials, and the "First Earth Battalion" are all examples of this. The military UFO studies of the 1950s and '60s represent pretty much the same thing.

 

[Drs_Res]

Why should they?
Aliens are vulnerable to loud rock music, there is plenty of that available.

No, the people "in the know" know it's Slim Whitman.

Top sekret USG video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MhgnMX73Pw

 

[John Albert]

Oh how interesting. That is actually a strategy they talk about in some of this literature. So your intuition there is good.

I have never heard of a case where an unconscionable prick was told by the discussion group that until he answers question X or concedes to using a common definition instead of his own that nobody will interact with them. But the one terminal threat to a case like this is ignoring him.

ha ha Akhenaten so right! The funny thing is that every one of the cats can shred the mouse on his own, if the mouse can be boxed in. But if you need to herd the cats to get them to work together...

forget it.

Let him keep on digging the grave for his own professional reputation.

The JREF Forums are not going away any time soon. The record will be here for years to come, for all to see how dishonest and weaselly Mr. J. Randall Murphy of Ufology Society International behaves when it comes to promoting his obsession. There's no dishonest tactic he won't stoop to, to try and present the appearance that he has the upper hand in this.

It's a small consolation that the variety of woo he's peddling is relatively benign, but that's still no excuse for his appalling debate etiquette.

 

[Sideroxylon]

I'm confused. How do you conclude "alien" from excluding only most natural or manmade phenomena.

ETs of the gaps.

 

[ufology]

Let him keep on digging the grave for his own professional reputation.

The JREF Forums are not going away any time soon. The record will be here for years to come, for all to see how dishonest and weaselly Mr. J. Randall Murphy of Ufology Society International behaves when it comes to promoting his obsession. There's no dishonest tactic he won't stoop to, to try and present the appearance that he has the upper hand in this.

It's a small consolation that the variety of woo he's peddling is relatively benign, but that's still no excuse for his appalling debate etiquette.

It is comments like the above that make me feel very apprehensive about continuing to post here on the JREF. I did not come here to make enemies with people, and now for the second time, I've seen personal ridicule and character attacks against me advocated as acceptable forms of discussion.

Also, as one of the few participants here who try to portray ufology as a wothwhile activity, I am usually far outnumbered by those who oppose it. Consequently I can't always respond to everyone, even though I would often like to. Also, there are instances when people mistakenly think I've not replied to a question. Neither of these circumstances represent intentional acts of disrespect.

Lastly, I have no problem with history judging my actions here. I don't hide behind false names and anyone who doubts my honesty and integrity is free to contact me via email and I'd be happy to answer any questions they may have about what I do. If the future is to judge the JREF by the way it treats the people who take time to participate, I am confident that is is not I who will be found wanting.

 

[Akhenaten]

It is comments like the above that make me feel very apprehensive about continuing to post here on the JREF.

Yeah, good.

Now, about all those questions in Post #11523 . . .

 

[Agatha]

Did you expect unquestioning acceptance of unevidenced ideas on a sceptics site? That may have been just a teensy error.