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Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Ow!
Wait...what...where? Who? When? Sauce?
Ehh...I don't quite remember this. Can you pealse quote a page for that?
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23_Tauri
Illuminator
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*rolls up her copy of Eye of Squid Fishing Monthly and proceeds to hit Mr P over the head with it.*
ufology
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The statisic you wanted the reference for I pulled from a Wikipedia article located here:
"In all six studied sighting characteristics, the unknowns were different from the knowns at a highly statistically significant level: in five of the six measures the odds of knowns differing from unknowns by chance was only 1% or less. When all six characteristics were considered together, the probability of a match between knowns and unknowns was less than 1 in a billion."
I didn't have time to read the whole thread, so pardon me if I am repeating a thought. When I was a kid (to early teens) I soaked up books about UFO's and Bigfoot, and ghosts, etc. I'd go outside, stare at the sky, and hope to see a strange alien craft hover above.
As time has gone by though I have noticed that UFO sightings and Bigfoot sightings follow the same parameters. Blurry photos, plenty of hoaxes (though believers will swear the photos are real until proven fake), and absolutely no physical evidence that such craft exist. Sure---they can "claim" there is physical evidence (Area 51), but there is nothing concrete after 60+ years of scrutiny.
I am now convinced that Bigfoot does not exist, and I am 90% sure UFO's don't exist either. The only thing that has ever caught my attention, though it sounds silly also, is the 10% chance that the "craft" are actually time machines from the future, that elude radar detection and come and go quickly as they move from one dimension to another. This cannot be proved either, so even that 10% is extremely unlikely.
Think about the fact that one man--D.B. Cooper, "disappeared", in the midst of a huge forested area, yet they found some of his money there years later. Think about it, just one man, yet he leaves evidence that what he did was real! Yet years and years later there is still no physical evidence that either UFO's, or Bigfoot exist. You may say I am quite cynical--but I simply call it "facing the facts".
As time has gone by though I have noticed that UFO sightings and Bigfoot sightings follow the same parameters. Blurry photos, plenty of hoaxes (though believers will swear the photos are real until proven fake), and absolutely no physical evidence that such craft exist. Sure---they can "claim" there is physical evidence (Area 51), but there is nothing concrete after 60+ years of scrutiny.
I am now convinced that Bigfoot does not exist, and I am 90% sure UFO's don't exist either. The only thing that has ever caught my attention, though it sounds silly also, is the 10% chance that the "craft" are actually time machines from the future, that elude radar detection and come and go quickly as they move from one dimension to another. This cannot be proved either, so even that 10% is extremely unlikely.
Think about the fact that one man--D.B. Cooper, "disappeared", in the midst of a huge forested area, yet they found some of his money there years later. Think about it, just one man, yet he leaves evidence that what he did was real! Yet years and years later there is still no physical evidence that either UFO's, or Bigfoot exist. You may say I am quite cynical--but I simply call it "facing the facts".
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Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
It all boils down to people filling in the vacuum created by mystery with their preferred myth. If you have something like a blurry photo, it gives plenty of room for the mind to run unconstrained by pesky facts. A lot of researchers, book authors and TV producers don't try very hard to find alternative mundane explanations. They ignore or play down facts suggestive of mundane explanations. I also used to read these kinds of books as a kid but I now feel short changed by writers who today I see as being lazy or deliberately deceptive. That's why I enjoy skeptical literature and places like this where pertinent facts get an airing.
Oh, I see. You didn't read the actual report. That explains some misconceptions you seem to have.
Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
It strikes me odd that a long-time researcher would be citing Wiki.
ufology
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Please explain. And if you could use specific and relevant examples rather than generalizations.
23_Tauri
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Floggy, is this your evidence to falsify the null hypothesis of "all UFOs are of mundane origin"?
ufology
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Since you soaked up so many UFO books you also know that bigfoot sightings and UFO sightings have some significant differences. Sure they both share the blurry picture syndrome, but UFOs have also been tracked on radar. There are also a big difference in the quality and number of witnesses and the depth of investigation. For example trained and on duty pilots, police, armed forces personnel have observed them and officially reported them, not simply backpackers, hillbillies or weekend campers. They were also the subject of official study by the USAF for over 20 years, and have also been the subject of investigation by the Air Forces of other countries.
Perhaps if there were hundreds of reports from police and forest rangers who say they saw a bigfoot, some of them in the daytime while chasing them, then there might be some level of comparison. Air Force bases don't scramble fighter jets without a good reason. Yet the skeptics here would have you believe they would scramble them if someone merely phoned in and said they saw witches on broomsticks over Washington DC ... UFOs are way different than bigfoot and witches.
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ufology
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The BME study is one statistical study that if applied to the principle by which the null hypothesis is tested, does suggest that the null hypothesis is probably false.
NOTE: "It is important to understand that the null hypothesis can never be proven." ( Wikipedia )
So remember that any suggestion here that the null hypothesis needs to be proven false before is can be concluded that it is probably false is a faulty application of the null hypothesis.
From Wikipedia:
"Hypothesis testing works by collecting data and measuring how likely the particular set of data is, assuming the null hypothesis is true. If the data-set is very unlikely, defined as belonging to a set of data that only rarely will be observed (usually in less than either 5% of the time or 1% of the time), the experimenter rejects the null hypothesis concluding it (probably) is false."
So as you can see, the skeptic's application of the null hypothesis here has no real value in determining the absolute truth, existence, or nature of UFOs. It's a pointless excercise that isn't suited to and wasn't designed for the study of ufology. It's main place is in the testing of medical treatments and other biological experiments where the effects are too complex to measure with absolute certainty. I've mentioned this before, even provided links to the statistician who developed the null hypothesis in the first place, yet it has continued to be ignored by the skeptics here who have continued to misrepresent me on the issue with statements suggesting I came up with it or that it's "my hypothesis". It is no such thing. I address it here only for the sake of discussion.
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Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
You've underestimated by 10%.
UFOs most definitely exist. Alien flying saucers, not so much.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
And despite all this there's not the slightest hint of evidence for anything out of the ordinary going on.
Just like bigfoot.
You're confusing UFOs with "OMG . . . aliens!" again.
Will you never learn?
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Drivel.
A similar statistical study applied to bigfeets (they have two, right?) would suggest that the null hypothesis - "there's no such thing as bigfeets" - is also probably false. Does that magically make bigfeets pop into existence?
I'd be willing to bet that a statistical analysis of witch reports would demonstrate some degree of likelihood that witches exist, and yet . . .
Face reality, Mr Fology. There might well be thousands of UFO reports for people to analyse, but there aren't any "OMG . . . aliens!" reports at all.
Not one.
Stray Cat
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Piffle!
No one scrambled the airforce because Aliens in flying saucers were spotted. They scrambled the airforce because some unidentified objects were apparently flying around. It is just as likely that those objects were witches on broom sticks or a migrating herd of pegasusses.
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Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
The vast majority of UFO stories do not have radar support, do they. And even when they do, this element does not provide conclusive evidence of flying saucers. Those cases may be just as much a mystery as the blurry photograph allegedly of big foot. The Big Footers also cite their own expert observers who would never tell a lie. They would tell you as much if you tried to poo-poo their witnesses in such a way. The fact is that we all have the same fallible perception and even pillars of communities lie, sometimes for apparently inexplicable reasons.
Air forces don't believe in the existence of flying saucers any more than governmental wildlife bodies do about Big Foot. I doubt I could get the local air force to scramble with a phoned report of anything, be it saucers or witches. Claims of air forces scrambling to investigate potential saucers sounds impressive but it reminds me of psychics claiming to help law enforcement agencies. When you examine individual cases they come up wanting. This is an example of the kind of laziness or dishonesty by proponents of various myths that disappointed me as a kid.
It is interesting to hear you apply skepticism to Big Foot claims because there really is little different in terms of the kinds of evidence claimed.
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