UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[ufology]

UFO = something you do not recognize in the sky and that's it.

Uh ... nope ... The above is not correct. UFOs are alien craft in some contexts and in others they are the subject of UFO reports, and in others they are the conclusions of UFO investigations. Things you don't recognize in the sky might become the subject of a UFO report, but they won't be considered UFOs until they have passed screening and investigation.

UFO: The reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky or upon the land the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one is possible. ( CUFOS )

Then there are all the other definitions including USAF versions, all backed up by examples. I'm not going through all that again now because you prefer to proclaim that what you think is the way it must be.

 

[Akhenaten]

UFO = something you do not recognize in the sky and that's it.

Uh ... nope ... The above is not correct. UFOs are alien craft in some contexts and in others they are the subject of UFO reports, and in others they are the conclusions of UFO investigations. Things you don't recognize in the sky might become the subject of a UFO report, but they won't be considered UFOs until they have passed screening and investigation.

Utter rubbish.

No UFO has ever been shown to be an alien craft. Ever.

Otherwise, instead of this ridiculous campaign to redfine your terms of reference you'd be presenting some evidence.

 

[ufology]

No UFO has ever been shown to be an alien craft. Ever.

Akhenaten:

UFOs have shown themselves to be alien craft, just not to you.

 

[Akhenaten]

Akhenaten:

UFOs have shown themselves to be alien craft, just not to you.

This is why ufailogy is pseudoscience. It draws its conclusions from subjective experiences.

It's hilarious that you would expect to be taken seriously with this nonsense.

 

[Aepervius]

Uh ... nope ... The above is not correct. UFOs are alien craft in some contexts and in others they are the subject of UFO reports, and in others they are the conclusions of UFO investigations. Things you don't recognize in the sky might become the subject of a UFO report, but they won't be considered UFOs until they have passed screening and investigation.

UFO: The reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky or upon the land the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one is possible. ( CUFOS )

Then there are all the other definitions including USAF versions, all backed up by examples. I'm not going through all that again now because you prefer to proclaim that what you think is the way it must be.

Our lovely pharaoh says, there has not been an UFO evidenced to be an alien craft. *EVER*. *paint a raven mask on face* Evermore.

Ho look a black UFO :

You are trying to tergiversate, you are trying to use anecdote. You are trying to appeal to popularity. You are trying a lot of fallacy.

but you cannot stop this incontrovertible fact stands in your way.

 

[23_Tauri]

Akhenaten:

UFOs have shown themselves to be alien craft, just not to you.

Whoooah! Hold the front page! Did I miss something whilst I was asleep last night??!!

Where's the mothership? Can we pay on the door like at the zoo or is it tickets in advance only?

ETA: I've just put on Radio 4, but they're talking about political events in the Middle East. Can anyone help me out here? Where's the breaking news story?

 

[Stray Cat]

Of course not. However when mundane objects can be ruled out, as in the case of the USAF pilot in pursuit of a flying disk at mach 1 during daylight who closed to within 500 yards, or an F-94 pilot who after being vectored by radar to a UFO reports his aircraft was surrounded by glowing spheres of light that then streaked off at phenomenal speed, it's no longer a matter of proving they weren't mundane objects, it was obvious they weren't. Such UFOs are alien to our civilization, plain and simple.

You're restricting it to mundane "objects" here.
There are other mundane explanations other than "objects".

So your sentence; "However when mundane objects can be ruled out" is still nonsense in relation to the context.

There are plenty of mundane possibilities for Ruppelt's 'report' (as has already been pointed out by Astrophotographer, Ruppelt wrote this from his memory of seeing a report a decade or so prior to writing his book and none of the information is verifiable.
As for the Washington pilot story. Again, there is no evidence to back up the story and again there are plenty of mundane explanations that have not been ruled out.

 

[Stray Cat]

Case one was documented by E.J. Ruppelt, former head of USAF Project Blue Book. You can read about it in the book he wrote. Case two was documented by reporters who interviewed one of the F-94 pilots during the 1952 Washington D.C. sightings. You'll have to hunt around to find the clipping. The pilot's name was Lieutenant William Patterson, a veteran of the Koren War. Try Google.

I tried Google. It takes me to your own website where you simply blindly quote from Ruppelt's book... Along with another 145 results of other similar websites blindly quoting exactly the same paragraph. Apparently the book's copyright was not renewed and therefore it is available freely online.
This of course doesn't get us any closer to the source for this story.

Perhaps you could point us to another source with which to verify that it was written accurately in Ruppelt's book, maybe one of the FoI released files or even an official Blue Book file?

 

[Resume]

Akhenaten:

UFOs have shown themselves to be alien craft, just not to you.

No, they haven't.

Unless alien craft is another term you wish to redefine.

Alien craft = **** I just made up.

Alien craft = fireflies.

Alien craft = waking dream.

Alien craft = hallucination.

Alien craft = high-beam headlights.

Alien craft = fireworks.

Alien craft = etc.

 

[carlitos]

Ufology has failed to illustrate how his logic and pRrocess of elimination eliminated religious icons or intraspacial fishes.

 

[RoboTimbo]

I think you are confusing the idea of a reasonable probability with a foregone conclusion. During any single investigation, there is no foregone conclusion "OMG Pseudoaliens" ( whatever that is supposed to mean ).

So no single investigation has ever come to the conclusion of OMG PseudoAliens? Good to know.

The bias during analysis or investigation is toward a natural or manmade terrestrial explanation ( what you would call mundane ). So unless there is high confidence that no natural or manmade object explains the sighting, then we conclude the sighting was probably natural or manmade. When the reverse is true, we conclude the opposite.

No, you are incorrect. You are confusing the terms "object" and "explanation". It's called "bait & switch". You seem to be admitting here that you have no way of ruling out mundane explanations. I would agree with that.

As for what constitutes evidence. We consider information to be evidence and we give it whatever weight we think it deserves based on factors that indicate reliability. Scientific information ranks very high. Below that is a heirarchy of information based on reports. Ultimately a single case of genuine scientific proof would take precedence over the rest. But in the absence of that, there is more evidence in favor than against, and it is not reasonable to dismiss it.

In the absence of extraordinary evidence for your extraordinary claims, there is no confidence in anecdotal claims being evidence for themselves. Why would you think they were? It simply isn't reasonable to have a religious like belief in aliens in the absence of evidence of aliens.

 

[RoboTimbo]

TJW:

The word UFO has different meanings in different contexts. A UFO report does not assume the object in the report is a UFO, it's simply a title used to identify the kind of report it is.

So that would be a report about a UFO. Why do you dishonestly try to redefine terms?

So the object in an unscreened UFO report has not been determined to be a UFO, and could very well be a mundane object.

In fact, all of them to date have been.

The object in a screened UFO report references a suspected UFO.

As noted above, yes.

The object in an unsolved fully investigated UFO report is a confirmed UFO, and is often assumed to be alien,

Only by pseudoscientific creduloid believers. Normal humans assume it is Unidentified. Who in their right mind would say something is Unidentified and then say they know what it is?

but has not been scientifically proven to be extraterrestrial.

Or proven any other way either. Good that you can recognize that.

There are gray areas between all these contexts. There are no known scientific investigations that physically prove UFOs are alien.

Only pseudoscientific ones which start with their conclusion pretend they have done that.

In common language, the word UFO is a reference to alien craft as an identifier of what we mean to convey, as something we have seen ourselves, somone claims to have seen, or simply wants to talk about.

Hahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahha! <Gasp> Hahahahahahahahahhahahahah!

No.

Other words are similarly confusing. For example the word "universe", has four basic contexts, ( religious, philosophical, astronomical, cosmological ) and a bunch of sub-contexts, plus generalized contexts, as in, "a child's universe is not bounded by preconceptions". I'm not going to detail all that here, but you get the idea.

Yes, I get the idea you want to redefine words to make your alien flying saucers be real. It isn't working.

 

[TjW]

TJW:

The word UFO has different meanings in different contexts. A UFO report does not assume the object in the report is a UFO, it's simply a title used to identify the kind of report it is. So the object in an unscreened UFO report has not been determined to be a UFO, and could very well be a mundane object. The object in a screened UFO report references a suspected UFO. The object in an unsolved fully investigated UFO report is a confirmed UFO, and is often assumed to be alien, but has not been scientifically proven to be extraterrestrial. There are gray areas between all these contexts. There are no known scientific investigations that physically prove UFOs are alien. In common language, the word UFO is a reference to alien craft as an identifier of what we mean to convey, as something we have seen ourselves, somone claims to have seen, or simply wants to talk about.

Other words are similarly confusing. For example the word "universe", has four basic contexts, ( religious, philosophical, astronomical, cosmological ) and a bunch of sub-contexts, plus generalized contexts, as in, "a child's universe is not bounded by preconceptions". I'm not going to detail all that here, but you get the idea.

This is obviously some usage of the word "confirmed" with which I was previously unfamiliar. I suppose it's contexts all the way down?

 

[RoboTimbo]

Case one was documented by E.J. Ruppelt, former head of USAF Project Blue Book. You can read about it in the book he wrote. Case two was documented by reporters who interviewed one of the F-94 pilots during the 1952 Washington D.C. sightings. You'll have to hunt around to find the clipping. The pilot's name was Lieutenant William Patterson, a veteran of the Koren War. Try Google.

You missed where he asked for details about where it was proven to be non-mundane. When will you be able to provide those details?

 

[RoboTimbo]

Aepervius;

We've been through several official definitions, and they all go beyond merely "unidentified" by making an effort to screen out mundane objects.

Why only objects? Why not mundane explanations? Why do you restrict yourself like that?

As mentioned several times already, the word UFO was created by the USAF to replace the phrase "flying saucers" which were presumed to be alien craft.

So they replaced the word because there never were any alien craft?

So in reality the word UFO is simply a bureaucratic euphemism for flying saucer anyway.

Do you have details where any were proven to be flying saucers? Which lab examined the hardware, where any bodies are that we can inspect, things like that?

Then there are the various contexts of usage. So for the sake of this discussion I will use the word UFO in the context that is most appropriate and will not restrict myself to usage that may not be appropriate. I suggest that you try to do the same rather than limiting yourself. It will serve you better once you get used to it.

You'd be better served if you didn't restrict your context to "objects" when you should be saying "explanations". Did you think your dishonest bait and switch tactics or your dishonest redefintion fallacies would get by here?

 

[RoboTimbo]

Akhenaten:

UFOs have shown themselves to be alien craft, just not to you.

No, you are incorrect. Unless you have extraordinary evidence for your extraordinary claims? No?

 

[ufology]

No, you are incorrect. Unless you have extraordinary evidence for your extraordinary claims? No?

Timbo:

It is not logical to claim I am incorrect. It is only reasonable of you to doubt it based on your own lack of firsthand experience or other proof that meets your standards of belief.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Timbo:

It is not logical to claim I am incorrect. It is only reasonable of you to doubt it based on your own lack of firsthand experience or other proof that meets your standards of belief.

No, it is illogical for you to believe that UFOs are alien spaceships when there is no evidence for that. Therefore, you are incorrect. It is simply pseudoscientific starting with your conclusion and then looking for "evidence" that you can shoehorn in.

 

[Resume]

Timbo:

It is not logical to claim I am incorrect. It is only reasonable of you to doubt it based on your own lack of firsthand experience or other proof that meets your standards of belief.

Firsthand experience is the most unreliable of all evidence. As has been demonstrated to you countless times. You can hold your breath until you're purple, stand on your head and piss orange juice, but anecdotes are claims, and without corroboration nothing more.

 

[ufology]

No, it is illogical for you to believe that UFOs are alien spaceships when there is no evidence for that. Therefore, you are incorrect. It is simply pseudoscientific starting with your conclusion and then looking for "evidence" that you can shoehorn in.

Robo

The above isn't what I'm doing and you have not made any logical argument as to how you have determined conclusively that UFOs have not shown themselves to be alien craft.

Again, simply because you haven't seen one and there is no evidence that meets your standards, does not equal proof that it has never happened.