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Merged Is ufology a pseudoscience?

ufology said:
It could be the profile of an unusual aircraft seen head-on. It could be just lines like contrails that coincidentally form a shape, or maybe the trace of a laser light show, maybe a hot air balloon ... maybe even ... dare I say ... swamp gas.
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OK..if you're not serious about discussing this subject, just say so...
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
There you go out into the Wild Blue Yonder.

Maybe it wasn't included in the sightings reports of the day because the debris found were quickly identified as purely mundane parts of a balloon? It was only later the story grew by confabulation and the stretchers of tall tales.

OK. If you say so. :rolleyes:
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OK fine then ... the UFO reports from the USAF files include balloon sightings.You can search through the bluebook microfilm archives and find them, so if Roswell was just a balloon it would have gone down someplace as a balloon sighting in the statistics along with the date and location, but there is nothing. The USAF UFO investiagtive team wasn't brought in on it. Here is a link to one of the balloon files that shows how they were investigated and tied to sightings and recorded in the files:

http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=MISC-PBB2-741

j.r.
 
R.A.F. said:
OK..if you're not serious about discussing this subject, just say so...
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Lighten up, you did see the profile of the B2 right? Are you denying there is no resemblance, or that it couldn't represent any of those other things? Or do you just want to believe what you want to believe? You see I should know exactly what that shape represents since I'm the one that designed the emblem. Here's that front photo again:


AAC4431.jpg



j.r.
 
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R.A.F. said:
You try and jerk me around with that stupid post, feign ignorance, yet you expect respect...

Guess believing in non-existent alien visitors is not the biggest of your "problems".
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You're dodging, You can't support the accusation that was made so you turn to this kind of rhetoric. Here's what you said again so everyone knows.

R.A.F. said:
Ambiguous??? A flying saucer shaped "outline" is ambiguous??
Sorry, but no...we understand and recognize your bias. There's no reason to hide it.
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My posts on this question are clean and honest and make sense, backed up with illustrations. The one's you've made with respect to our emblem and me are nothing but prejudicial assertions based on your preconceived opinions. Either that or they are designed on purpose to flame the thread. So since you want to add respect into the mix, it's pretty clear who deserves the respect, and right now it's not looking too good for you. Either contribute something constructive or join the hecklers, flamers and trolls.

And here's the B2 again that you don't think bears any resemblance to the ambiguous shape in the USI emblem you insist can only be a flying saucer:


AAC4431.jpg



j.r.
 
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Stray Cat said:
Re: Motherships
Thanks Correa Neto and MG1962, if anyone can give me a link that would be great. :)

Re: Cigar shaped
I've never really understood if this was supposed to represent blimp shaped or simply a disc viewed from the side and below.
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Gimme some time and I'll find 'n send you some links. Made a quick googling and found some "UFO recognition charts", stuff I even forgot they existed... I remember they were built from pictures from the 50's and 60's plus some renderings based on eyewitnesses' reports (some from Blue Book). They were not propperly credited, however, can't remember the original source and all I can remember is that they are old... One shows a cigar-shaped mothership which was later refurbished in an esoteric UFOlogy book here from Brazil. Funny enough, these old tables already showed a large UFO model variety. Explanation? Lots of races from lots of planets are visiting us! Evidence? Simple, just check the many types of UFOnauts described by eyewitnesses! If you reading this, ufology, you must realize whoever follows this line is not doing critical thinking.

I also recall some imagery presented by UFOlogists as really old records from UFOs showing these allegedly huge allegedly crafts. Sometimes I'm sorry for having dumped all that stuff. There were some funny **** there.

As for the "cigar-shape"... OK, typing from memory, decades-old memories, so its anecdotal and must be taken with the propper salt-'n-pepper dosis. The UFOlogists back then used to say cyllindrical shapes dominated on the large UFOs. But since they were very... uh... Carefull researchers, they admitted some could be disk-shaped seen edge-on.
 
ufology said:
<snip> I'm a bit surprised that you would accept such spurious evidence as ship fragments and ray guns as "proof". Humans can build ray guns and space ships. <snip>
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If you are really interested in bringing critical thinking to ufology, I suggest you take a better look why skeptical people will readily accept ship fragments as evidence. It is because we can examine them and determine things like
  • where they could have been produced on earth
  • whether we can identify any technology that is beyond our current capability
  • what the materials are and whether we can use any elements in there to determine if the ratio of isotopes is the same as on earth

I'm sure people can think of more things we can test for, but if we can not trace the fragments' origin, find some technology that we cannot explain AND there are isotope ratio anomalies, I would be willing to consider that ship fragment's origin might be alien. An anecdote can never do this.
 
ufology said:
OK fine then ... the UFO reports from the USAF files include balloon sightings.You can search through the bluebook microfilm archives and find them, so if Roswell was just a balloon it would have gone down someplace as a balloon sighting in the statistics along with the date and location, but there is nothing. The USAF UFO investiagtive team wasn't brought in on it. Here is a link to one of the balloon files that shows how they were investigated and tied to sightings and recorded in the files:

http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=MISC-PBB2-741.
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I don't ever recall a mention or Roswell in the bluebook files. Project Sign did not start until 6 months later and they focused on UFO sightings. There was no sighting associated with Roswell (until people tried to link a few reports from the media reports of the time period in the 1970s). It was just another case of somebody claiming to have recovered a crashed disc that was later identified. However, there are a lot of documents from the time period mentioning they wanted to recover a crashed disc or that no crashed discs had been recovered. .......Once again we move away from the point of this thread. Take this to the UFO research thread if you want to discuss it. However, I warn you that I have already written a lengthy discussion about this event.

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/Roswellmain.htm
 
Stray Cat said:
Indeed, during the early days of the modern era in UFO sightings, the objects were thought to be cold war spy or weapon tech. ET only came into the picture later.

In the really early days of UFO sightings, they were thought to be gods, angels and witches on broomsticks.

Nowadays, although the aliens (you choose little green men or greys) is still popular but there is a large percentage of people who believe that some are 'orbs' which are supposedly plasma forces 'known' to make crop circles, however, when anyone catches these 'orbs' on photographs or film, they appear to be nothing more than specks of out of focus dust close to the camera and illuminated by the handily placed flash unit. Or in the case of the 1996 Oliver's Castle video footage of orbs creating a crop circle, hoaxed by a guy who worked in a video editing studio in Swindon.
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And don't forget the airship panic of 1896-7, as real experimentation with aircraft was in the public eye.
There was even a Roswell equivalent on 17APR1897 in Aurora, Texas; complete with "strange metal" debris, "papers in unknown hieroglyphics" and a dead pilot described as "not an inhabitant of this world".
 
ufology said:
Either that or they are designed on purpose to flame the thread.
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The only argument I have with you is your "ambiguous" statement. when I questioned you on it, instead of being truthful and admitting that it was indeed a SAUCER SHAPE as anyone can see...NO, you had to start posting cutesy little assine remarks...

Your only intention here is to jerk people around, and I just don't put up with that kind of juvenile crap.


Bubye...
 
Correa Neto said:
Gimme some time and I'll find 'n send you some links
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Thanks :)

I'd like to point out to other readers that this is connected to the thread topic and not just some side issue.

I've done some digging myself tonight and still can't find any reports of Motherships that pre-date Close Encounters. When I say Motherships I mean giant flying cities. I already know that any piggybacked plane or space rocket was attached to what was always referred to as the mothership and I suspect that references to motherships that pre-date Close Encounters are using a similar terminology, unlike today when mothership is most often used to describe a giant alien space city type craft. This example only one year before Close Encounters shows the term Mothership used with an illustration of a simple flying disc.

Correa Neto said:
As for the "cigar-shape"... OK, typing from memory, decades-old memories, so its anecdotal and must be taken with the propper salt-'n-pepper dosis. The UFOlogists back then used to say cyllindrical shapes dominated on the large UFOs. But since they were very... uh... Carefull researchers, they admitted some could be disk-shaped seen edge-on.
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Again the ambiguous language of the UFOlogists causes more confusion than clarity.
 
ufology said:
OK fine then ... the UFO reports from the USAF files include balloon sightings.You can search through the bluebook microfilm archives and find them, so if Roswell was just a balloon it would have gone down someplace as a balloon sighting in the statistics along with the date and location, but there is nothing. The USAF UFO investiagtive team wasn't brought in on it.
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So it was such a minor incident that it did not show up in any reports?

Colour me surprised.

Here is a link to one of the balloon files that shows how they were investigated and tied to sightings and recorded in the files:

http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=MISC-PBB2-741

j.r.
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Exactly how am I supposed to search those pages? Why should I bother?

The Roswell "incident" was a crashed Mogul balloon. The original reports match perfectly. The rest of the stupid multiple crash sites, dead-and-alive tiny aliens, nurses with no history, baby-body-bags, threats from military officials, etc, etc, was all made up afterwards.

(Posted in memory of Twitch who is still missed by his on-line Usenet friends)

:th:
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
So it was such a minor incident that it did not show up in any reports?
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As AstroPhotographer has pointed out, those files linked are specifically for sightings. No one sighted the balloon, well some people sighted bits of it after it had landed obviously, but that's not seeing something in the air and reporting it, which is what the other linked reports are.

Bringing this back to critical thinking: This is another example of how people who really want to push an agenda that is counter to the evidence will try and shoehorn bits of stuff into a warped running order to fit their belief, instead of looking at the bits and genuinely seeing where they lead.
 
Stray Cat said:
That's great thanks... I wonder what on Earth the "winged cigar shape 1952" could possibly have been? :D
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Well, if we apply critical thinking to that particular piece of UFO evidence...

Check the roundels. If they are not from your country, then its an alien craft.
 
John Albert said:
I have an idea. Before we can begin discussing the application of critical thinking to the study of UFOs, wouldn't it make sense to first establish exactly what we mean by the term "critical thinking?"

Instead of just bickering over this anecdote or that report, or whether anecdotal evidence even ought to be allowed as proof of the paranormal, why don't we first address head-on the concept of critical thinking as it relates to the study of physical (real-world) phenomena?

Reading this thread might be a good place to start. Though a few years old, it's relatively short at this point in time (only 3 pages) and there's some good discussion in there regarding what constitutes the "critical" part of critical thinking.

As I see it, there are at least 3 criteria that must be established before this discussion can proceed:

  • The role of informal logic as agreeable rules for regulating discussion

  • The role of scientifically-verified information as an established baseline for judging the relative plausibility of hypotheses

  • The relative merits, shortcomings, and effectiveness of various kinds of evidence

What do you all think?

Should we try this logical, reasonable approach, or just keep on quarreling back and forth?
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I say we proceed with this. I'm afraid anecdotes aren't going to fare very well but that's probably a good thing. This thread and the UFOlogy is Pseudoscience thread are wreaking havoc on Rramjet's anecdotes.
 
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ufology said:
Yes it's more than curious why the Roswell incident isn't mentioned in the sighting reports of the day. There was this "silence from topside" and a conspicuous lack of any mention or involvement by the UFO project, even though they had to have known about it. None of it makes any sense unless there was something that was recovered that they didn't want the UFO project to know about. But that still isn't enough information to base a belief in a crashed alien ship on.

I know what you mean ( don't get me started on Roswell ) ... that would be for the evidence thread anyway.

j.r.
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Great example of why this thread will head around the S bend in double quick time
 
Astrophotographer said:
I don't ever recall a mention or Roswell in the bluebook files. Project Sign did not start until 6 months later and they focused on UFO sightings ...
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Clarification:

The files I'm referring to are generically called the Blue Book Archive and are loacted at: http://www.bluebookarchive.org/

There are files there and references in the Blue Book to files that go back before Project Sign. Here is the link to a July 1947 Sightings Index page:

http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=MAXW-PBB2-921

In the July 1947 Sightings index page there is no mention of Roswell nor any clippings even though the base had issued a press release stating they had recovered a flying disk. There is a reference to the July 8 sightings at MUROC AFB.

Project 1947 Brief here: http://www.nuforc.org/Muroc.html

There are newspaper clippings from June:

Clipping June 30 1947: http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=MAXW-PBB2-758

There is a review of the Kenneth Arnold Sighting on June 24 1947 here:

http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=MAXW-PBB2-762


A brief prehistory of Project Sign can be found here:

http://ufopages.com/Reference/BD/Sign-01a.htm

The USAF were interested in UFOs before Project Sign officially existed. They had looked into the so-called ghost rockets in 1946.

j.r.
 
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