Merged Is ufology a pseudoscience?

[Belgian thought]

It's comparatively easy and safe to sit in a vacuum, spinning a bunch of BS stories on the Internet for all your credulous friends to "ooh" and "aah" over, but never to question, as they pretend to "study" as if it were actually going to make any difference at all in the real world.

Ouch! - but good

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

OK, let's not dump everything in to the garbage can. This means we need criteria to decide what will or not be dumped. Objective, unbiased criteria which when used by different people will return similar results. Got some?

Which of the examples below will be dumped or not and why?

Trindade island UFO picture.

Analysis identifies it as a Twin Bonanza

Belgian triangle UFO picture.

Recently revealed as a hoax.

"Alien hair" case.

Has human DNA.

Hills abduction case.

The Hills "lost" no time. It's a long drive in the dark. And they never mention seeing the very bright navigation light visible from multiple location on the route they took.

Villas-Boas abduction case.

Good imagination added to the story in the November 1957 issue of O Cruzeiro.

The "black souless aliens with glowing red eyes" abdution case.

These are real. The church does not recognize non-humans as having a soul.

Zamora's sighting.

Experimental hot air balloon.

VW Beetle-sized glowing light making figures "8" in the sky.

Never heard of this one.

"No less than six" star-like objects flickering like electrons around an atom coming out of a cigar-shaped cloud and merging to form a "big-ass" version of themselves.

Never heard of this one.

Adamsky contacts.

Kook.

"Ashtar Sheran's messages".

Over-active imagination.

Eartsister's contacts.

Has the wrong number of alien races. Hint -- it's not 216.

Phoenix lights

Jet plane formation plus flares dropped from aircraft.

[Add UFO case here]

Wat? No Brentwoods?

 

[Astrophotographer]

Analysis identifies it as a Twin Bonanza

Actually, analysis has shown that this was not correct. Analysis and recent revelations indicate it was a hoax. Is that any surprise for a UFO photgraph?

 

[John Albert]

Ouch! - but good

Never forget the old maxim, "If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough."

 

[ufology]

Wait a minute, since when did credulity equal bravery? At what point did intelligence and mental discipline suddenly become equated with being coddled or sheltered?

Skepticism is merely a tool and all I've seen here are people who sit back chanting "show me the proof" ( speaking of arrognace ), instead of taking the skills they have learned and applying it in a fair minded manner to the wider reality beyond that which is directly under the tunnel vision microscope that they have become conditioned to here.

j.r.

 

[Akhenaten]

VW Beetle-sized glowing light making figures "8" in the sky.

Never heard of this one.

You haven't let your subscription to Squid Fishing Monthly lapse, have you?

Blast off!!

What happened to that rule I used to have about not doing requests?

 

[John Albert]

Skepticism is merely a tool and all I've seen here are people who sit back chanting "show me the proof" ( speaking of arrognace )

It's not arrogant to ask for proof; it's simply honest, good business practice. It's credulous and stupid to believe a crazy story on face value just because you like the sound of it.

You call us arrogant, but you're the guy who's tried to twist, abridge and otherwise distort definitions to suit your arguments; you're the one who's made special pleadings to avoid the rigors of logic and critical thinking; you're the guy who's parroted back the terminology of informal logic and scientific practice with barely a clue as to what they actually mean. You've come here to a community of critical thinkers and scientists and assertively demanded that we change the rules of critical analysis, then made accusations and threats when we refused to allow you any more leeway than we'd allow even ourselves. Now that's arrogance.

instead of taking the skills they have learned and applying it in a fair minded manner to the wider reality beyond that which is directly under the tunnel vision microscope that they have become conditioned to here.

We are being fair-minded. It's just your extreme bias that makes you think otherwise.

The allegation of "tunnel-vision" is a false analogy. Critical thinking is the best tool we've developed to date for separating the "wheat from the chaff" in dealing with the overload of information we are bombarded with every minute of every day, the vast majority of which is total BS.

As for the "wider reality" of which you speak, a large portion of that stuff is not reality at all. It's just nonsense you've come to believe because you never learned the proper techniques to filter fantasy from reality.

 

[Akhenaten]

Skepticism is merely a tool and all I've seen here are people who sit back chanting "show me the proof" ( speaking of arrognace ), instead of taking the skills they have learned and applying it in a fair minded manner to the wider reality beyond that which is directly under the tunnel vision microscope that they have become conditioned to here.

j.r.

Arrognace is fronting up to a sceptical forum spouting flying saucery and other pseudoscience and telling the sceptics that if they don't believe your fairy stories then they're doing their scepticism wrong.


Or maybe that's arrogance. I always get those two mixed up.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Skepticism is merely a tool and all I've seen here are people who sit back chanting "show me the proof" ( speaking of arrognace ),

Speaking of dishonest mischaracterisation. Have you not read the replies? You are the only one who talks about "proof".

Evidence. We're asking not for proof, but for evidence.

I've mentioned this before. You should read the posts which aren't yours and Rramjet's.

instead of taking the skills they have learned and applying it in a fair minded manner to the wider reality

Which "wider reality" do you believe to exist?

beyond that which is directly under the tunnel vision microscope that they have become conditioned to here.

j.r.

Pseudoscientific piffle. Next time you should use the word "quantum".

Instead of your pseudoscientific null hypothesis of this "wider reality" wouldn't it be better to start with one which is falsifiable, such as: "All UFO sightings are the result of mundane explanations"?

Why would you not want to do that?

 

[ufology]

Maybe you should take that evidence to the UFO evidence thread. However, it would be nice for you to tell us where you got this anecdote/report. Oh yeah....this is from Ruppelt's book....Are we into the rinse,lather, repeat mode?

Yup ... but there's not much point in going beyond this if the word of the first head of the USAF project investigating UFOs ... the guy who came up with the word UFO, is simply going to be dismissed again.

j.r.

 

[Akhenaten]

And then of course there will be the chanters on the sidelines with their tired "show me the proof" routine.

Any chance of you posting some evidence to back up this oft-repeated accusation of yours?

 

[Akhenaten]

Yup ... but there's not much point in going beyond this if the word of the first head of the USAF project investigating UFOs ... the guy who came up with the word UFO, is simply going to be dismissed again.

j.r.

And yet the ufailogists keep presenting the same stories, over and over, hoping for a different result.

There's a name for that sort of behaviour.

 

[GeeMack]

Yup ... but there's not much point in going beyond this if the word of the first head of the USAF project investigating UFOs ... the guy who came up with the word UFO, is simply going to be dismissed again.

You answered your own concern...

There is no empirical scientific evidence that can be presented here.

Without objective evidence (not "objective", the bastardized version of the term "ufologists" use that allows for any old fantasy to be real) your alleged witness's account should be dismissed, and is by all but the pseudoscientists.

And from a standpoint of being a helpful cooperative skeptic, your witness didn't know what he saw. Nobody knew what he saw. So to argue that it was any particular thing would be an argument from ignorance, a mainstay in the toolbox of credulous "ufologists". Your argument from ignorance (you didn't look it up yet, did you?) is both dishonest and virtually certain to fail.

 

[John Albert]

There is no empirical scientific evidence that can be presented here.

No ****, Sherlock.

There is indeed no empirical scientific evidence, yet you continue to use non-empirical, unscientific evidence to support some categorical statements about the nature of the Universe. There's a word for that. Can you guess what it is? (Hint: it begins with a "p," but is pronounced as if it begins with an "s"...)

As for the assumption that objective, unbiased criteria means different people will return similar results, the assumption doesn't take into account that different people can always interpret the criteria based on their personal bias.

This is true. That's why science relies on such techniques as measurement against objective scales, the application of mathematics and logic, specific rules for predicting outcomes (including the use of a null hypothesis), the consultation of specialists with regard to questions outside one's own field of expertise, the process of peer review, etc. Science is conducted within a community of rigorous critical thinkers whose work involves constantly checking each other's work.

That's also why, in science, it's generally considered a "dick move" to run to the mainstream or alternative press with one's findings before they've been actually confirmed by sufficient independent experimentation or analysis by other trained scientists.

As for a particular case...

Oh brother, here we go again with the flying saucer stories...

Isn't there already another thread for that?

Yup ... but there's not much point in going beyond this if the word of the first head of the USAF project investigating UFOs ... the guy who came up with the word UFO, is simply going to be dismissed again.

So what you're saying is, this guy is practically a god among men in ufology circles, therefore his word is beyond question, correct?

Imagine if science worked like that. "Who the hell does this minimum-wage patent clerk think he is, dismissing the word of the great Sir Isaac Newton? I think we already know all we need to know about the relationship of mass to energy and momentum."

 

[ufology]

You may want to look up the definition of the word "objective" in a different dictionary than the pseudoscientist's one.

What are you suggesting exactly? That the report isn't objective because it was written by an actual UFO investigator? That means geology reports aren't objective because they are written by geologists, and physics reports aren't objective because they're written by physicists and so on. Of course the specialists in the field aren't objective, but they're still the best sources of information.

j.r.

 

[RoboTimbo]

What are you suggesting exactly? That the report isn't objective because it was written by an actual UFO investigator? That means geology reports aren't objective because they are written by geologists, and physics reports aren't objective because they're written by physicists and so on. Of course the specialists in the field aren't objective, but they're still the best sources of information.

j.r.

I'm not suggesting anything. I'm outright saying that the report is not objective. Go back and read about the case and then come back here and let me know what you find that is objective about it. I'll be happy to let you know if you are being pseudoscientific about it.

 

[John Albert]

What are you suggesting exactly? That the report isn't objective because it was written by an actual UFO investigator?

It's not objective because it's based entirely on anecdotal evidence, which is 100% subjective.

That means geology reports aren't objective because they are written by geologists, and physics reports aren't objective because they're written by physicists and so on. Of course the specialists in the field aren't objective, but they're still the best sources of information.

I'm sorry, but this is wrong.

The reports of geologists and physicists are based on objective, quantifiable, falsifiable evidence from the material universe, whereas ufology reports are based on anecdotes. Geology and physics reports can be reliably checked for accuracy, whereas ufology reports cannot. That is because geology and physics are science, and ufology is pseudoscience.


Science relies on such techniques as measurement against objective scales, the application of mathematics and logic, specific rules for predicting outcomes (including the use of a null hypothesis), the consultation of specialists with regard to questions outside one's own field of expertise, the process of peer review, etc. Science is conducted within a community of rigorous critical thinkers whose work involves constant checking and evaluation of each other's work.

Ufology has no such controls to assure objectivity, because it's a pseudoscience practiced within a community of credulous believers whose work does not involve critically challenging one another's work, but instead serves to reinforce each other's suppositions and beliefs in the paranormal.

 

[GeeMack]

What are you suggesting exactly? That the report isn't objective because it was written by an actual UFO investigator? That means geology reports aren't objective because they are written by geologists, and physics reports aren't objective because they're written by physicists and so on. Of course the specialists in the field aren't objective, but they're still the best sources of information.

Even with your misunderstanding of the term "objective" and your admitted unwillingness to differentiate objective reality from a fantasy you've nicknamed "truth", there is no objective evidence that anything which is unidentified is aliens. The report, however objectively provided, does not reach an objective conclusion that it was aliens. To attempt to use it to support the aliens-exist fantasy while bragging up its objectivity is dishonest and a quintessential example of pseudoscience.

 

[ufology]

It's not objective because it's based entirely on anecdotal evidence, which is 100% subjective.

Ufology has no such controls to assure objectivity, because it's a pseudoscience practiced within a community of credulous believers whose work does not involve critical thinking, but serves to reinforce each other's suppositions and beliefs in the paranormal.

So the report I posted was investigated by a USAF specialist, so you're implying there were no controls or protocols in the USAF for investigating UFO sightings or launching jet interceptors to chase them. Typical narrow minded thinking. There were plenty of protocols and controls. If our pilots only took action during war based on scientifically proven empirical evidence, they would all be shot down first. Wake up! These are highly trained pros and their experiences are considered extremely valuable.

j.r.

 

[RoboTimbo]

So the report I posted was investigated by a USAF specialist, so you're implying there were no controls or protocols in the USAF for investigating UFO sightings or launching jet interceptors to chase them. Typical narrow minded thinking. If our pilots only took action during war based on scientifically proven empirical evidence, they would have all been shot down first. Wake up! These are highly trained pros and their direct experiences are considered extremely valuable.

j.r.

It's sloppy thinking like this that makes me suggest you abandon your pseudoscientific unfalsifiable null hypothesis and adopt one that is falsifiable such as:

"All UFO sightings are the result of mundane explanations"

Simple and easily falsifiable. You just need only one verifiable ET. Why would you not want to do that?