UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[23_Tauri]

The Modern Era in ufology began during 1947 and is generally held to coincide with the UFO flap of that year, the most famous sightings of which were the Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 24th and the Roswell Incident in early July. The Early Modern Era refers to the first 25 years during which time the words UFO and ufology were coined, jet aviation matured, the space race culminated with the Moon landings, and the first significant investigations into the UFO phenomenon were undertaken by both private and governmental agencies.

Fair enough, because when I google 'Modern Era Ufology' I get some hits, so you haven't just made it up on the spot now to cover yourself. But, when I google 'Early Modern Era Ufology' I get zero hits. This raises my suspicions that you are trying to cover your earlier error, that error being that when I referred to the Early Modern Period of history in my post, you thought I was referring to ufology's 'Modern Era'. Otherwise why would you have brought up the subject of ufology's 'Modern Era' at this juncture? Pure coincidence?

Could you have just held up your hands and admitted you didn't know? It would have been ok, because most people don't study history pre-1800s at school anyway.

A small point, maybe, but your wriggling is discernible from here, fol.

 

[Akhenaten]

Fair enough, because when I google 'Modern Era Ufology' I get some hits, so you haven't just made it up on the spot now to cover yourself.

Heh heh. Did you read any of them?

The first result I got contained this gem:

Over the fifty or so years since the ‘modern era’ of UFOlogy began, an astonishing variety of aliens has been encountered. Contrary to popular assumptions, the Greys, while they have come to be regarded as the quintessential alien being, are merely one species out of many that have been seen, met and communicated with by puzzled or terrified humans.

http://uforesearch.wikia.com/wiki/Aliens​

No wonder folo didn't provide a link for his 'definition'.

 

[Resume]

Alien abduction isn't a topic I'm confident endorsing as fact. But at the same time sleep paralysis doesn't adequately explain all the missing time cases.

I would say that attention-whoring and an anything-for-a-buck mentality explains quite a few of these "cases."

 

[23_Tauri]

You don't think there's any other explanation for that?

It's a classic case of sorcery. Witches love messing with people far away from home. Haven't you read your Malleus Maleficarum lately?

 

[GeeMack]

As for the witch video, there is no reason to believe the video isn't anything other than another hoax or low budget movie production. Like I said before, show me bona fide reports from military pilots backed by radar, or a real case where jets have been scrambled to intercept a witch, and I'll start to take the witch comparison seriously.

Show us bona fide reports from military pilots backed by radar, or a real case where jets have been scrambled to intercept an alien craft, and we'll start to take the "ufologists'" claims seriously.

Unless, of course, that pseudoscience you engage in has a different set of standards than real life, standards that allow for lying, deflection of the burden of proof, cowardly avoidance of simple direct questions, arguments from ignorance, dishonestly redefining terms, and wholesale abandonment of critical thinking and rational analysis.

 

[RoboTimbo]

I mean get serious, they're talking about people being persecuted because music, dancing, celebration of holidays such as Christmas and Easter, were absolutely forbidden compared to objects seen in the sky by radar operators, pilots, police, and other people in modern times.

But those and others are activities of UFOs ( witches ). Are you saying that people misinterpreted what they saw?

 

[GeeMack]

The Early Modern Era refers to the first 25 years during which time the words UFO and ufology were coined, jet aviation matured, the space race culminated with the Moon landings, and the first significant investigations into the UFO phenomenon were undertaken by both private and governmental agencies.

Yes or no, have any of those "significant investigations into the UFO phenomenon" which were undertaken by private or governmental agencies resulted, objectively, in the determination that some UFOs are alien craft?

 

[Paul2]

Paul,

The reliability issue was addressed when I asked for an example where a witch was tracked on radar and pursued by military jets. We no longer live in the age of witch trials. Ufology requires no superstitious belief in the supernatural. Radar operators, pilots and people in general are far more educated and capable of discerning. Compare the education, training and scientific knowledge of an Air Force pilot to anyone in the 1600s ( when most witch trials were going on ). Even the average high school student knows more about the world, and there is no scientific reason alien craft cannot exist.

You want to assign higher reliability of testimony based on who the person is (credentials, track record, etc.) instead of requiring objective confirmation of the testimony.

Carry your approach to its logical conclusion: why not establish some Standards Board who judge people as to whether they are reliable, and once they've passed some level, they are stamped "Passed" and from then on what they say is reliable. Does that sound like any way to conduct an investigation?

Furthermore, *any* one is subject to mistakes, optical illusions, etc. This makes the decisions of the Standards Board meaningless.

There's no reason why this approach is necessary. Objective verification is what's needed.

 

[ufology]

"He said"...

All you have is his story, without any evidence? Did you not even bother to follow up on this (very easily-checked) claim, or do you always just take crap like that at face value?

I never take stories at face value and I don't have any definitive explanation for this case. However what you call crap, I find very interesting. We interviewed him 3 times and had him see one of our psychotherapists. He seemed sincere enough and the interviews didn't reveal any sort of deception, but like other people who have experienced missing time, he had no proof. We asked if he would help us follow up on the log records but he was nervous about it because it involved his livelihood and didn't really want to make things any worse for himself. So we concluded that there wasn't anything else to be done unless his gaps in time started recurring and we could investigate them right away.

 

[Toke]

I guess that from your point of view it is perfectly sensible to stop at the alien story instead of digging in and risk coming up with something mundane.
Like a driver habitually falling asleep/dozing at the wheel.

The problem is that the approach gets you laughed out outside flyingsaucerology circles.

 

[John Albert]

I never take stories at face value, and I don't have any definitive explanation for this case.

You're presenting this one at face value, with nothing to back it up, even though it would have been so easy to verify the truck driver's claim that his company's equipment indicated his vehicle had "jumped" through space/time. What is your excuse for not checking up on this rather obvious extraordinary claim?

...However what you call crap, I find very interesting.

"Very interesting," but not interesting enough for you to bother verifying his claims by checking the logs of the mechanical equipment on board his rig that would have provided objective evidence to support his claim? In other words, you deemed it "interesting" enough to posit as evidence, but not interesting enough to warrant any further research into its veracity. So yeah, you took him at his word, and took his story at face value.

Then again, as a researcher in the pseudoscience of UFOlogy, why would you bother to honestly verify any claims at all? Fact checking just stands in the way of your inevitable conclusion of "OMG aliens!!!" A claim like this is just too good to risk checking up and maybe discovering it's just a lie, so you simply mark it down as "evidence" without any further ado. You have nothing to gain but everything to lose by employing honest research practices, so you just take the easier, dishonest route. It's not like anybody in your insular little space aliens believers club is going to challenge your claims using critical thinking. So you simply forego the due diligence and present claims as "anecdotal evidence" on your own claimed abilities to "judge peoples' character."

That's why I'm calling it "crap."

Is this the kind of piss-poor investigation methods that regularly pass for "research" in the pseudoscience of UFOlogy?

He seemed sincere enough and the interviews didn't reveal any sort of deception, but like other people who have experienced missing time, he had no proof.

But the proof to either verify or debunk his claim was there, and you just didn't bother to investigate it.

"He seemed sincere enough" just doesn't cut it, I'm afraid. Once again, your extraordinary powers of judging peoples' character results in an extraordinary failure for you and the pseudoscience of UFOlogy.

We asked if he would help us follow up on the log records but he was nervous about it because it involved his livelihood and didn't really want to make things any worse for himself. So we concluded that there wasn't anything else to be done unless his gaps in time started recurring and we could investigate them right away.

So instead of fact-checking his extraordinary claims, you asked his permission and then just took his word for it when he declined to offer any evidence?

As a UFOlogist, is this one of the cases you would file under "insufficient evidence," "hoax/lie/confabulation," or the oh-so-tantalizing, "unknown" (a.k.a. "OMG aliens!!!")?

 

[Jocce]

I never take stories at face value and I don't have any definitive explanation for this case. However what you call crap, I find very interesting. We interviewed him 3 times and had him see one of our psychotherapists. He seemed sincere enough and the interviews didn't reveal any sort of deception, but like other people who have experienced missing time, he had no proof. We asked if he would help us follow up on the log records but he was nervous about it because it involved his livelihood and didn't really want to make things any worse for himself. So we concluded that there wasn't anything else to be done unless his gaps in time started recurring and we could investigate them right away.

So, just another unconfirmed anecdote then?

 

[GeeMack]

Is this the kind of piss-poor investigation methods that regularly pass for "research" in the pseudoscience of UFOlogy?

Of course it is. You have to ask?

 

[John Albert]

Of course it is. You have to ask?

I know it is!

But I'm still asking him the question that he's obviously going to either ignore or handwave away. His response (or lack thereof) is actually more important to my case than me asking in the first place.

It's just another item of proof that anecdotal claims are useless as evidence for themselves.

 

[GeeMack]

I know it is!

But I'm still asking him the question that he's obviously going to either ignore or handwave away. His response (or lack thereof) is actually more important to my case than me asking in the first place.

It's just another item of proof that anecdotal claims are useless as evidence for themselves.

Agreed. It would be interesting to keep a running list of the simple questions the "ufologists" won't answer, the logical fallacies, the double standards, the dishonest responses, the blaming others for their own failure, the feigned persecution, and the complete nonsense that even they would consider ridiculous if it was about anything other than their very own faith. But I'm afraid the list would get mighty long mighty quick.

The whole subject of "ufology", and the people who pretend to have some valid evidence to support the claim that some UFOs are alien craft, remind me of the typical pseudoscience crackpots I've encountered in other forums (and other areas of the JREF forum). It really does seem like the whole objective is to talk kind of sciency and toss around buzzwords in order to convince themselves that there's some legitimacy to their fantasy. The sane ones must know, somewhere in the recesses of their consciousness, that their arguments amount to nothing.

 

[Sideroxylon]

John Albert, you nailed it there. It's this kind of pretense at research that drives the market in books, seminars and documentaries for every baloney idea from saucers to Big Foot and ghosts.

 

[23_Tauri]

We asked if he would help us follow up on the log records but he was nervous about it because it involved his livelihood and didn't really want to make things any worse for himself.

Ooh how very predictable, I wonder why this might be....

And yet you insist there's a difference between the level of evidence required in ufology compared to identifying witches.

 

[ufology]

You want to assign higher reliability of testimony based on who the person is (credentials, track record, etc.) instead of requiring objective confirmation of the testimony.

Carry your approach to its logical conclusion: why not establish some Standards Board who judge people as to whether they are reliable, and once they've passed some level, they are stamped "Passed" and from then on what they say is reliable. Does that sound like any way to conduct an investigation?

Furthermore, *any* one is subject to mistakes, optical illusions, etc. This makes the decisions of the Standards Board meaningless.

There's no reason why this approach is necessary. Objective verification is what's needed.

I don't have any argument with the concept of acquiring so-called objective information such as a scientific report, but I don't think scientific reports represent the absolute truth the skeptics here seem to think they do. Scientific reports are basically anecdotes from scientists, usually backed by some corroboration and machine generated data. Those scientists are people the same as firsthand witnesses and are susceptible to all the problems you have assigned to UFO witnesses. The instruments they use are also prone to faults and failures and move the observer one more level away from the firsthand experience of the objective reality.

So in actually, the closest anyone can get to objective evidence is to have an alien craft right in front of them to study, and in that respect firsthand witnesses have been the closest to that situation and a few have have also had scientific training, like Paul Hill, who was a proponent of the ETH. Lastly the transient nature of UFOs doesn't make their study any less legitimate. For example weather has rare transient phenomena associated with it, but we don't consider the study of it to be pseudoscience and we don't equate it to witch hunting.

 

[ufology]

Ooh how very predictable, I wonder why this might be....

And yet you insist there's a difference between the level of evidence required in ufology compared to identifying witches.

I have not "insisted" on any such thing. I've constantly advocated subjecting what available evidence there is to the process of critical thinking. The issue is that the skeptics here don't consider reports from witnesses to be evidence while I do.

 

[Tomtomkent]

Probably because metreology is based on repeatable experiments and solid data, with well established and provable science powering our understanding of transient weather.

Where as ufology is based on stories about what people claim aliens might be capable of.