UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[ufology]

ufology, it appears to me that you're looking for rapprochement on a premise that you and others sympathetic to the ETH provide no actual evidence for ...

The above isn't quite the case. Im seeking rapprochement on a premise that those who are interested in UFOs should be offered the opportunity to review all the aspects of the subject matter ( ufology ), and from that make up their own minds. In the effort to facilitate this, I operate a ufology interest website and I want to be able to provide as part of the resources there, constructive evaluations of various cases from fair minded skeptics. I had thought the JREF would make an excellent source in this regard. Unfortunately, even though there is potential, the adversarial atmosphere is self defeating. Can this barrier be overcome? Most people I discuss this with feel my efforts are naive and the idea is unrealistic. Is that true? Should that stop me from trying? I say it's worth a try because there is so much good to be gained if it works. How can we make this work? Any suggestions?

 

[Frying Dutchmen]

The above isn't quite the case. Im seeking rapprochement on a premise that those who are interested in UFOs should be offered the opportunity to review all the aspects of the subject matter ( ufology ), and from that make up their own minds. In the effort to facilitate this, I operate a ufology interest website and I want to be able to provide as part of the resources there, constructive evaluations of various cases from fair minded skeptics. I had thought the JREF would make an excellent source in this regard. Unfortunately, even though there is potential, the adversarial atmosphere is self defeating. Can this barrier be overcome? Most people I discuss this with feel my efforts are naive and the idea is unrealistic. Is that true? Should that stop me from trying? I say it's worth a try because there is so much good to be gained if it works. How can we make this work? Any suggestions?

here's a suggestion if you want people to honestly research UFO cases as ufologist say they do. Don't hide anything from them.

 

[ufology]

therein lies the rub, the second someone believes that a UFO is an alien spaceship without any credible evidence, thats when their minds close

Marduk ...

The above is an exaggeration applied to a whole group of people whom you don't know and such comments only further alienate ( pardon the pun ) the believers, and consequently they are even less likely to benefit from skeptical insights. Also contrary to your assertion that those who believe ( like myself ), have closed minds, many believers minds are anything but closed. Simply because we believe alien craft exist and have been observed by humans doesn't mean we automatically believe every UFO report is an alien craft. Furthermore, the fact that you can't change someones mind about what they know from personal experience to be true, doesn't mean they have a closed mind. It is more closed minded to assume that people are always uninformed or misled or mistaken about their own experiences.

 

[gambling_cruiser]

I have seen David Copperfield float in the air, sawed in to halves and many other things he had done and I don't know how.
But the null hypotheses is "all magicians use tricks to create their illusions".
And there is nothing closed minded about believing that David Copperfield is not a real sorcerer.
Humans expierience about unkown things lead very easily to wrong conclusions, because nobody is easier to fool than oneself.
We don't know if the object you saw have been fireflies, but neither do you -nevertheless you jump to the conclusion your first hand expierience is proof of aliens.
Your mind is complete closed to the possibility that you have been tricked by your own mind (optical illusion is a perfect explantion of your expierience).
You believe that memory is self-correcting but neurology tells us that is nonsense.
And now we are the bad boys who don't want to play at your game.

 

[gambling_cruiser]

We didn't show up at your website and claimed: NaH, Nah, Nah all you believe is stupid!

 

[laca]

Simply because we believe alien craft exist and have been observed by humans doesn't mean we automatically believe every UFO report is an alien craft.

Of course not, but that's a strawman. Nobody claimed that. What it actually means, is that you believe something you have absolutely no evidence for, or worse, you believe it in spite of evidence against it.

Furthermore, the fact that you can't change someones mind about what they know from personal experience to be true, doesn't mean they have a closed mind.

What?! That's the definition of closed mindedness: to not be able to change a belief based on nothing but personal experience in spite of everything. BTW. you cannot know anything from personal experience alone, except your own feelings.

It is more closed minded to assume that people are always uninformed or misled or mistaken about their own experiences.

Umm, no, because the vast majority of people (including myself) are in almost all but the simplest cases indeed uninformed, misled or mistaken.

 

[Stray Cat]

The above isn't quite the case. Im seeking rapprochement on a premise that those who are interested in UFOs should be offered the opportunity to review all the aspects of the subject matter ( ufology ), and from that make up their own minds. In the effort to facilitate this, I operate a ufology interest website and I want to be able to provide as part of the resources there, constructive evaluations of various cases from fair minded skeptics. I had thought the JREF would make an excellent source in this regard. Unfortunately, even though there is potential, the adversarial atmosphere is self defeating. Can this barrier be overcome? Most people I discuss this with feel my efforts are naive and the idea is unrealistic. Is that true? Should that stop me from trying? I say it's worth a try because there is so much good to be gained if it works. How can we make this work? Any suggestions?

I still don't really get this "two sides" business?
Is there two sides to physics?
Is there two sides to curing illness?
Is there two sides to evolution?

If you are a serious researcher into any subject, you won't give any credence or endorsement to nonsense written about that subject. And yet, here you are advocating that nonsense should be available to your audience and then some of the nonsense could be countered by the views of fair minded sceptics...

This is where the null hypothesis "all UFO's are mundane in origin" saves a lot of time (we really don't want to be looking into every single silly claim made by people who constantly over the past 60 odd years have shown a complete inability to adhere to scientific methodology). It would be more beneficial to the wider audience to teach them this null hypothesis and explain to them how, by falsifying it (showing just one single UFO report to be conclusively alien in origin), they would be using the most efficient method. Also they would be using a method that has worked extremely well for many centuries in allowing the human race to discover and exploit countless things that otherwise would still be attributed to the beardy bloke who lives in the clouds.

 

[23_Tauri]

......
This didn't mean that further investigation might not still reveal it to be a mundane object, but it is at that point when we look at the definition and compare it to the null hypothesis proposed earlier ( All UFO sightings are of mundane origin ) they don't match up. That is why I proposed the revised null hypothesis for those who prefer to see the issue in those terms ... again:

The objects in pre-screened UFO reports ( those reports that had not been screened prior to being passed onto the ATIC investigators ) are mundane objects.
.....

No ufology, correct me if I'm wrong, but you still don't appear to understand the concept of a null hypothesis. Please go back to basics and learn this. It will really help with the discussion at hand.

Wiki is your friend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis

Fact: Not a single UFO sighting has ever been positively identified as being of non-mundane origin.

This is why RoboTimbo's null hypothesis is correct. Classifying a UFO sighting as 'unknown' is not the same thing as falsifying the null hypothesis that all UFO sightings are of mundane origin.

You yourself say (above) that "This didn't mean that further investigation might not still reveal it to be a mundane object,...", which rather indicates that you agree that the null hypothesis (that's RoboTimbo's correct one) is yet to be falsified.

ETA:

Timbo ...

I think we need a few hard-liners out there like yourself, and I conceed that it could be true that no UFOs reported so far were alien craft. However let me ask you this: Although you default to your null hypothesis, do you also acknowledge that some UFO reports could have been alien craft and there simply isn't enough evidence to prove it to your satisfaction?

"Could" does not falsify the null hypothesis.

 

[John Albert]

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.

I have a hoax scenario for you. Try and rule this one out:

• At the behest of several woo-minded Air Force generals, a certain decorated USAF captain with an engineering degree is tasked with heading up a team of generally UFO-positive investigators and eggheads, with purpose of assessing the possibility that the numerous sightings reported by the public might represent a clear and present threat to national security.

• Although he has no background in sociology, psychology, scientific research methods, interrogative or investigative techniques, he spends the last few years of his military career wading through thousands of pages of unverifiable stories and countless blurry, indefinite photographs and film reels.

• Throughout these investigations, his team uncovers lots of cool stories, bro! But unfortunately, no substantial, material evidence whatsoever.

• With no real legal powers and only anecdotal claims to go on, they nevertheless seek to fulfill the duty that their superiors charged them with. So they develop an exceedingly complicated, arbitrary method of interpretation, speculation, and categorization of the stories.

• Whether deliberately or accidentally, this system of "research" serves to actively present the appearance that the impotent investigation is bearing fruit. Convoluted, statistical razzle-dazzle makes the data appear to support the view that some UFOs are really mysterious craft of unearthly origin, and hoaxes, lies and popular folklore can be generally ruled out as significant factors.

• Sometime during this period, the captain begins to actually believe that some of the cases he cannot explain must therefore be the result of extraterrestrials or some other unearthly beings.

• The USAF brass, not entirely impressed with the team's shoddy, convoluted statistical results, drastically cuts their funding. The incensed captain pushes for more resources to pursue UFOlogy, but is generally ignored.

• Then comes the big UFO flap of 1952. The nation is gripped by flying saucery, and hundreds of sighting reports come in from all over the country.

• The captain makes the mistake of talking with newspaper reporters about a popular UFO story.

• The Washington Post breaks a sensational, front page story about flying saucers. The paper alleges that unnamed pilots actually saw and chased after UFOs, firing their machine guns at low altitude over the DC Mall. The article names the captain as a official source, and sells an imperial ****-ton of papers.

• All this negative publicity for the USAF gets the captain in all kinds of hot water with his superiors, who don't particularly like being made to look like a bunch of crazed loose cannons in the mainstream press.

• The top brass decide to take a look into exactly what this captain has been doing with Air Force money and resources. They launch an official investigation into the captain's activities over the past 3 years.

• To justify their existence, the captain and his top researchers compile together all their shoddy evidence, crazy stories, and hyperbolic warnings, and make their best case for "OMG aliens!!!".

• Unfortunately, it's all for naught. The USAF decides that this nonsense has gone on long enough, and removed him from his post as the USAF's chief UFOlogist.

• After retiring, the captain realizes that his entire military career is basically defined by his UFOlogy work. He decides to try and clear his name once and for all with a tell-all book about being the Air Force's primary UFOlogist.

• Understandably butthurt about the way his career ended, he decides the USAF top command must be engaged in a conspiratorial cover-up to prevent the public from learning the truth abut UFOs.

• He considers the Washington Post story about USAF pilots shooting at UFOs over D.C. to be a turning point in his UFO work. He needs a reasonable explanation for why he contributed to the spread of that story, even to the detriment of his own career. So he fabricates an anecdote about an official report detailing that incident, including specific details about the supernatural appearance and behavior of the UFOs. Then he alleges that the USAF brass had the report destroyed to prevent it being leaked to the public.

• For over 50 years, credulous UFO buffs have cited the captain's book as conclusive proof of a conspiracy of deception, bravely recounted from an actual USAF insider.

[The account you just read is hypothetical. All characters were fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.]​

...in the early days of the investigations, the USAF enlisted the FBI to assist with such things as background checks.

Got any proof to back up that claim?

I don't have an example of the above readily available, but in my reviews of the way they screened reports, it was apparent that the bias was against improbabble and fantastic explanations. This is evidenced by the screening process and the definition provided in which mere causal factors such as contrails and lights and other things indicative of aircraft meant that the report was to be classed as an aircraft ... even if there was no other information to verify the object itself was actually an aircraft. Similarly I would think that factors indicative of a hoax, even without having proved it was a hoax, would have led them to class the report as a hoax or insufficient information.

But there's still no way they could possibly know if some report was the result of a successful hoax, or how many of the reports they classified as "unknown causes" were actually the result of hoaxes, lies or confabulations. They also have no way of knowing how many of those "unknowns" actually resulted from mundane causes that they were unable to identify.

 

[edge]

critical thinking skills, the facts, Evidence of their existence ??

None of them have a dog

I was thinking more like you are too ugly!

 

[23_Tauri]

The post requesting an opinion is here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7538922&postcount=11509

Astro who posted the response a couple of posts later, and his info was very helpful, but the slight was the comment, "My goodness. You are gullible aren't you?" and that was uncalled for. I hadn't made any claim about the video one way or another. I simply asked politely for a skeptical opinion about the video. The other recent attacks aginst me and what I do were by other posters. A couple of them have thankfully been moved off the thread.

I believe that with the constructive help of the people here, I can be a positive agent for change regarding the way that people in general who are interested in the topic of UFOs can conduct their personal research ( informal ) to include a skeptical point of view. But I'm going to have a hard time advocating the JREF given what I've been experiencing. If we can't figure out how to peacefully and constructively coexist, the "valuable service" you offer isn't going to reach anyone but other skeptics with same opinions, and those who are already leaning away from where you want them to be are only going to be further polarized.

I know there must be others besides yourself out there who are reading this and understand what I'm trying to say. Your suggestions and those of anyone else who has an idea to make this happen would be welcomed.

I don't want to get all personal about this, ufology, but seeing as you've brought up the subject of what you consider to be other posters' lack of "constructive help" in the face of no evidence, may I politely remind you that you hand waved away Snadert's one and only post on UFOs with:

Snad's stuff is associated with cryptozoology, which is of peripheral interst to ufologists. At the present time in ufology, it falls under the general area of UFO studies right next to mythology and is given about as much weight ( in terms of reality ) as Pegasus or unicorns.

Is that how you constructively help and be a "positive agent for change" in the face of people who hold different religious beliefs to your own?

I'm not attacking you with an ad hom, but just want to know (I have asked several times now) why "Snad's stuff" deserves to be given as much weight as Pegasus and unicorns but "your stuff" doesn't.

 

[Paul2]

BTW. you cannot know anything from personal experience alone, except your own feelings.

With perhaps some minor modification, this need to be shouted from the highest rooftop for many religionists, woos, and the like. Not like it hasn't before, but I thought it was very pertinent here, it needs repeating.

 

[Paul2]

I have a hoax scenario for you. Try and rule this one out:
. . . .

That could never happen, though. Could it?

 

[carlitos]

With perhaps some minor modification, this need to be shouted from the highest rooftop for many religionists, woos, and the like. Not like it hasn't before, but I thought it was very pertinent here, it needs repeating.

Great point. Every one of the credulous people that know what they saw (aliens / Virgin of Guadalupe / space insects / Men in Black / bigfoot) should be reminded of this.

BTW. you cannot know anything from personal experience alone, except your own feelings.

I'm pretty sure that this faith-based belief system is the reason that ufology (the pseudoscientific poster here, not the study of 50's flying saucer movies and Air Force fanboys) ignores questions like these:

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?

 

[23_Tauri]

...... In the effort to facilitate this, I operate a ufology interest website and I want to be able to provide as part of the resources there, constructive evaluations of various cases from fair minded skeptics. I had thought the JREF would make an excellent source in this regard. Unfortunately, even though there is potential, the adversarial atmosphere is self defeating. Can this barrier be overcome? Most people I discuss this with feel my efforts are naive and the idea is unrealistic. Is that true? Should that stop me from trying? I say it's worth a try because there is so much good to be gained if it works. How can we make this work? Any suggestions?

What is not fair-minded about asking you to provide evidence to falsify the null hypothesis "all UFO sightings are of mundane origin"?

Or:

"Unidentified" (as in Unidentified Flying Object) doesn't rule aliens out.

However, 'Evidence' makes it very unlikely.

Seems pretty fair minded to me. Where is the adversarial atmosphere? We've asked you so many questions that you've chosen to ignore, it is because you didn't like these questions that you felt we were being adversarial? Or is it because no one believes you saw an alien spaceship that night in the mountains in 1973?

If I came to you with a story of meeting a unicorn in a wood when I was 15 years old, and that I knew it was real because I had touched it's horn, would you believe me?

Furthermore, the fact that you can't change someones mind about what they know from personal experience to be true, doesn't mean they have a closed mind.

I know it was a unicorn. I know it to be true from my personal experience of touching its unicorn's horn. You cannot change my mind about this. But according to your logic, I do not have a closed mind. Can you see what is wrong with this?

 

[carlitos]

Paulhoff posted this in another thread. I think it adds value here.

The Dragon in the Garage.



Paul

 

[Resume]

Great point. Every one of the credulous people that know what they saw (aliens / Virgin of Guadalupe / space insects / Men in Black / bigfoot) should be reminded of this.

The thing of it is that we know of certain phenomena like hypnagogia that can explain many of theses sightings but the enthusiasts refuse to acknowledge them.

 

[Astrophotographer]

Astro who posted the response a couple of posts later, and his info was very helpful, but the slight was the comment, "My goodness. You are gullible aren't you?" and that was uncalled for. I hadn't made any claim about the video one way or another. I simply asked politely for a skeptical opinion about the video.

My comment was directed at you posting it without even trying to research it yourself. There were obvious clues as to why it was a hoax and one can find them in various discussion groups on the web. It appeared you were just throwing it against the wall, hoping it might stick. Had you looked at the video skeptically in the first place, you would never have brought it up.

 

[Astrophotographer]

Paulhoff posted this in another thread. I think it adds value here.

I love it. I mentioned this in the latest issue of SUNlite (which has an article showing the wonderful artwork of certain forum members here). In that article, I mention UFOlogy's (not the forum member here) belief in eyewitness reports that can not be verified. If somebody claims to see a huge UFO and nobody else sees it, how can it be considered a worthwhile UFO report at all? If you can substitute the word dragon with the word UFO, would it be so readily accepted? Since it is a single person report, which can't be verified, it is essentially the same thing. This can apply to the pilot story of shooting at a UFO. Can't be verified by anybody. At the time of the shooting, he was alone and there was no radar contact showing him chasing the UFO. He might as well have been shooting at a dragon, a witch, a fairy or some other mythological object. However, because he claimed it was a UFO/craft (for which there is no evidence existing just like a dragon), it suddenly becomes credible.

 

[Marduk]

I was thinking more like you are too ugly!

Yes, thats probably true for anyone not displaying a picture