UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[Akhenaten]

Worth a try....

Made of Win.

 

[Stray Cat]

UFO through the trees

Regarding being able to see the glow of light through the trees supposedly leading to an accurate estimation of size/position.

Luckily this road is one which Google have driven their magic camera van along, so we have street view photos of the density of the trees in the area.

This is the stretch of road we are talking about:

And this the exact spot looking towards the reported landing site:

Exactly how "see through" are those trees?

 

[Sideroxylon]

Pines are fast growing. The sighting was a long time ago.

 

[Stray Cat]

Pines are fast growing. The sighting was a long time ago.

Pines are very fast growing.
40 years ago the mountains would be full of different pines, since cut down and used for pine stuff.

Unless the mountains were almost devoid of pines until 1974.

 

[ufology]

What's this crap with Halley's Comet coming over the hill all about then?

I don't have anything made with the exact landscape. That illustration is for the general entry on Glowing Orbs on my website.

 

[Akhenaten]

Robo,

First of all you are presuming my position relates to an unfalsifiable null hypothesis. I've done nothing of the sort. I don't use the null hypothesis because it is ill suited to the study of ufology. I merely entertain your use of the null hypothesis for the sake of discussion.

Olog,

You choose to ignore the null hypothesis because it shows up all of your blustering nonsense for what it actually is - your own version of Roswell, except with less evidence.

Secondly, the rest of your illustration is fine up to the point where you ask the questions. However the question of belief implies a conclusion for the null hypothesis, something the null hypothesis does not allow.

Apart from the fact that this is gibberish . . .

On second thoughts, there is no "apart from". It's just gibberish.

To use your analogy, in the absence of sufficient evidence for a fairy living in your Garden, you would neither believe there is nor believe there isn't a fairy living in your garden, and simply tend your garden as usual.

That's not RoboTimbo's analogy at all - it's a near perfect demonstration of your own abject failure to understand the null hypothesis. And analogies. And just about everything else.

This analogy corresponds exactly to the usual outcome of blind tests for medicine in which no significant statistical result is found. Where there is no certainty that the medication works or doesn't work, there is no point in changing the existing regimen.

That you think this is analagous to not having a belief one way or the other as to the existence of fairies is ludicrous. Which is to say, just like all of your arguments.

Where you and the others here are going off the rails is assuming that because your null hypothesis has not been proven false, it is therefore true ( agument from ignorance ).

Ogy, people who believe that UFOs are alien craft and that the aliens in question come not from outer space but from other earthbound civilisations are in no position to claim that their opponents are going off the rails (argument from hallucination).

As applied to UFOs, simply because there is insifficient evidence to prove UFOs ( alien craft ) have been observed is not proof that they have not been observed.

Your continued insistence that UFO = alien craft and the special pleading in which you engage based upon that delusion is sifficient evidence to demonstrate that you're unlikely to ever understand that the claim that your opponents are saying "absence of evidence = evidence of absence" is a strawman.

Also to be noted are your continued misunderstanding of what constitutes proof and the sheer bloody-mindedness of your refusal to use a spell checker.

Without being biased, the best you can do in the absence of sufficient evidence to falsify your null hypothesis is reserve judgment pending falsification and go about your day as usual.

Acknowledging reality is quite a bit different to being biased, folo.

All UFOs are of mundane origin. Get used to it.

 

[Akhenaten]

What's this crap with Halley's Comet coming over the hill all about then?

I don't have anything made with the exact landscape. That illustration is for the general entry on Glowing Orbs on my website.

You presented it here in support of your UFO fantasy. If it's meant to represent something completely different to what you're attempting to describe then you've nobody to blame but yourself when people point out its obvious bogosity in relation to the Non-Event at Windermere Lake™.

Did you post this or not, olog?

Illustration similar to the way the object appeared and moved:

my bolding​

Time for you to yelp some more about being misrepresented?

 

[ufology]

Regarding being able to see the glow of light through the trees supposedly leading to an accurate estimation of size/position.

Luckily this road is one which Google have driven their magic camera van along, so we have street view photos of the density of the trees in the area.

This is the stretch of road we are talking about:

And this the exact spot looking towards the reported landing site:

Exactly how "see through" are those trees?

Stray Cat,

Thank you for posting the photos. Have a look along the treetops. Even in these small pictures yo can look into the distance and tell where individual trees are. As for the density, the clump you posted has plenty of holes for light to get through, let alone when it's pitch black and backlit by a huge ball of light. Lastly, don't forget we're talking over 35 years ago and forests change. Trees a few feet tall back then would be over 40 ft. tall today.

 

[Tomtomkent]

I dont see any holes big enough to allow a vw to fly through with out causing damage. And certainly none low enough to see the landing sight. Hmmm.

 

[23_Tauri]

Nice, but I bet yours don't have Ionized Air Glow^TM like wot my mine do.

 

[Toke]

This is resembling a collaborative novel, can we have a summary of the version so far?

 

[Akhenaten]



 

[Toke]

Thank you my Pharaoh.
I must be further behind on the tales progress than I thought, because that does not look the least like a firefly to me.
(It does look like a more interesting tale though.)

 

[23_Tauri]

folio, now that I am wearing my space-boppers, please could you address my question I posed regarding the possibility that the two objects you saw on that fateful night, first at midnight and again at 2am, could be two completely different things.

I've put forward a scenario in which Bright Shiny Thing #1 is a mechanic conveyance of Earthly origin (could be a VW Beetle, could be truck,) coming down the highway, it headlights lighting up the pine forest with a spooky glow, giving that impression of arcs.*

*Note: the night was clear, so there's the possibility of mist or fog in the pine forest. This was exacerbate any strangeness in respect of the way light from the headlights would behave.

from your website:

Just after midnight a glowing blue-white orb sprung up from behind the mountain range across the lake and bounced down the side of the mountain in three big arcs.

Then, two hours or so later, you witness something completely different, BST #2 doing figure of eights and then whizzing off, possibly in the manner of flying insect. I quote once more from your website:

Then it lit up, ascended straight up to about 300 meters, stopped instantly for about two seconds, then traced a graceful infinity symbol about 300 meters wide at a 30 degree angle to the right ( south ) of its starting point. It traced the symbol precisely in the same place four times in about 7 seconds, leaving a glowing trail of light behind, not unlike the effect of waving a glow-stick in a dark room

Now to me, these look like two completely different things. What is it about the events of that night that make you so sure that they were the same thing?

 

[dafydd]



[qimg]http://www.yvonneclaireadams.com/HostedStuff/LakeWindermere.jpg[/qimg]​

If that is the Windermere in England, then it is not a Lake. Windermere is a Water.

 

[Akhenaten]

Nup, this one is in British Columbia, Canadiastan.

Given that they're both ribbon lakes formed during the last ice age and that they're very similar in appearance I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Canadian one was named after the one in Cumbria.

 

[Garrison]

I don't have anything made with the exact landscape. That illustration is for the general entry on Glowing Orbs on my website.

And of course you aren't in any going to imply this something you actually saw right?

 

[John Albert]

I've just finished reading through the last few pages that had been posted yesterday while I was out. I have to say I'm still perplexed about this null hypothesis issue. How can it still be so difficult to comprehend, even after all the exhaustive explanations we've given?


Please allow me the courtesy of taking one more whack at explaining it. OK?

The concept of a null hypothesis is not complicated, but it requires a grasp of the concept of falsification. Falsification means the disproving or nullification of an idea or concept. It is a very important concept to science.


First of all, the main points:

• A null hypothesis is not a normal kind of hypothesis. That is, it is not created with the intent of proving it, nor is it assumed to be a proven fact.

• The null hypothesis is basically the default assumption that the researcher's hypothesis is not true.

• It is merely assumed as a default position (due to lack of evidence), until such evidence is confirmed to falsify (disprove) it.

• The researcher does not have to believe the null hypothesis is true; in fact the entire point of the research is to falsify it.

• The null hypothesis is to be stated in the simplest and broadest possible terms, in order to make it easy to falsify in an unambiguous way.

• The only reason it is there is to eliminate confirmation bias from the research.

• The null hypothesis is applicable to any field of research that studies the objective, material Universe.

Note that at no point is the null hypothesis intended or assumed to be proven, it is merely assumed true on the basis that no evidence exists to refute it. Critical thinking posits that without evidence, a claim is not to be assumed true. Of course that does not mean it is assumed to be false either, but there is simply no good reason to believe it.


Here's a hypothetical example:

Let's assume for the purpose of this example that an ornithologist has received unconfirmed reports that white crows have been sighted in his local area. He personally has never seen an albino crow, but he suspects that such a thing might exist, so he decides to investigate the matter.

So the hypothesis he seeks to prove in his research is:

"Some crows are white."

Now the prevailing science dictates that all crows have black feathers. In the absence of evidence, there's simply no basis to assume otherwise, right?

Of course it would be wrong for him to just assume the white crows exist on hearsay without any material evidence, so he must posit a "null" hypothesis as a baseline goal for himself to falsify.

The null hypothesis essentially negates his own hypothesis. It states:

"All crows are black."

The null hypothesis is unproven. In fact, it's unprovable (there's no possible way for the ornithologist to have examined every single crow in the world).

But the null hypothesis is not an argument from ignorance, either. The null hypothesis is not a claim per se, and therefore does not need to be proven; it exists only for the purpose of being falsified, to prove a point. The researcher doesn't even believe it to be true (he's trying to prove it wrong, remember). But he must assume it's true, because the burden of proof is on him as the claimant to prove evidence to the contrary. To prove his hypothesis, he must falsify the null hypothesis.

This process may seem backward and counter-intuitive, but it is a very important step to ensure the researcher's own bias does not influence the outcome of the research. The researcher might feel 100% certain that his hypothesis is correct, but he must nevertheless assume it is wrong (for the purpose of research) until he can produce evidence to support it. If he cannot produce evidence, then he must concede that his hypothesis has not been proven and is probably wrong.

For the ornithologist to falsify the null hypothesis, all he has to do is capture a single white crow. Just one, and the null hypothesis will be falsified. He could then perform DNA testing on the animal to determine its origin, and publish his results in an ornithological journal. With every independent DNA test that confirms his findings, his hypothesis becomes stronger until the whole world must accept the fact that white crows exist in the world. This is how science is done, and now human knowledge is advanced.

See how that works? Do you have any questions?

 

[Stray Cat]

Stray Cat,

Thank you for posting the photos. Have a look along the treetops. Even in these small pictures yo can look into the distance and tell where individual trees are.

From 3km away?
I strongly doubt it.
If you would like me to post some pictures from the other side of the lake I can, there are quite a lot on the interweb.

As for the density, the clump you posted has plenty of holes for light to get through, let alone when it's pitch black and backlit by a huge ball of light.

I think you "estimated" that the point of light landed about 150 meters from the highway. In those photos (and you can check yourself on Google Earth Street View), there is no point along that road where you could see 150 meters into the pine trees. And that's from the road, which doesn't include all the other trees between you and the road. Remembering of course that your viewing position was below that of the claimed landing zone.

Lastly, don't forget we're talking over 35 years ago and forests change. Trees a few feet tall back then would be over 40 ft. tall today.

As I already said, pine tree density doesn't change much. Forestry practice means that there are either closely packed dense trees, or no trees. So even if there were closely packed young trees, your claim still doesn't add up. There would be no gaps for you to see a point of light through considering your position in relation to the claimed landing zone.

All this plus the strange phenomenon that most people can't even gauge the angular size of the Moon from memory (something people see all the time) all points towards the details of this story being nothing more than your mind filling in the gaps.

 

[23_Tauri]

John, i admire your patience and helpful ways.