I didn't propose any "gold standard". I was asked for one. I expressed my opinion on the dubious nature of alien abduction, and for the sake of the discussion proposed the Valentich sighting.
Edited by Gaspode:
Removed breach of rule 12.
His commentary is not irrelevant. Your statement of opinion that alien abduction is "dubious" is backpedaling from earlier statements you made earlier in this thread.
You revived this thread (which had been untouched since February), among other long-dead threads, apparently to proliferate the ongoing argument from the "Critical Thinking in Ufology" thread after that thread got locked.
When the majority of skeptics naturally expressed utter disbelief in alleged "alien abduction" scenarios, you came out with this:
I think what was suggested is that there is no mundane explanation for them all that is reasonable. Certainly we can't take all abductions stories at face value. But it would be equally as irresponsible to dismiss all of them as it would be to dismiss all the explanations.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7394136&postcount=187
After you expressed serious curiosity about the "alien hair DNA" story, we all enjoyed a good, hearty laugh about the guy who claimed he had a strand of hair from a hot, blonde, alien dominatrix wrapped around his dick.
Then, after a couple pages of off-topic waffling about the applicability of null hypotheses and an accusation of "polarized skeptics,"
Akhenaten called you on your derailment of this thread:
Why did you resurrect this dormant thread?
The topic is "Recent developments in UFO 'Abductology'" and the closest you've come to addressing that topic in any way has been to post a single YouTube of a case from 33 years ago. Apart from that all you've done is attempt to lecture people with your misunderstood concept of the null hypothesis.
Why?
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7400628&postcount=273
That's why you were asked to provide the very best-case scenario in support of alien abductions. You'd already stated (in
your post quoted above) that some alleged abduction cases had no "reasonable" mundane explanation, therefore the "aliens" explanation is "reasonable" by default (that's an
argument from ignorance, BTW), so of course you were challenged (by
Agatha,
Akhenaten and
23_Tauri) to provide such an "open and shut" case of alien abduction, your "gold standard" as
23_Tauri put it.
I don't think he lost his heading because he knew where he was going, had experience, and the weather was good. But he did report engine trouble in the presence of the object. So it is possible that he simply went down and his plane sank never to be found. Although I tend to agree that this is the most likely explanation, it is odd that since he was on his radio, he would not have signaled that he was actually going down.
There's that argument from incredulity and ignorance thing again. You get a chance to look them up and see why you fail when you use them?
He very well could have lost his heading, due to instrument failure or other problems. He might have had some other form of mechanical failure and crashed into the ocean. He might have suffered a stroke or other brain malfunction right there in the cockpit. He was flying alone, so nobody would have been there to take the controls and save his life in the case of a medical emergency. It's entirely possible, and far more plausible than the idea that ETs (which have never, ever been proven to exist at all) came down and whisked him and his aircraft away in a flying saucer.
Plus the search was underway within minutes and the aircraft had lifejackets and should have stayed afloat for at least several minutes.
The search may have been underway within minutes, but if the airplane crashed headlong into the drink, Valentich probably would have been killed on impact without a chance to put on his lifejacket and the airplane might have sunk very quickly. How long do you estimate it took for the rescuers to respond to the call, get all geared up, get airborne, locate his last known position and travel there?
Sounds to me like you're willfully trying to exclude plausible explanations in your mad rush to get to the unexplainable/ET hypothesis.
The last report he made was that some large unknown craft ( not an aircraft ) with a green light was "orbiting" above him.
People suffering a stroke sometimes become disoriented, and can even hallucinate things that aren't there.
In ufology there are reports from radar showing "merging" between UFOs and between UFOs and aircraft.
In "ufology"? What is this supposed to mean? Are we supposed to accept this "ufology" rumor as evidence of something? After all, as you claim,
ufology is not a science and has never made any claim to be.
And since your best case fails right out of the gate, imagine how poorly you'd fare if you tried to use a lesser quality anecdote as support.
GeeMack is 100% correct about this.
As a cooperative, helpful skeptic, here's a reality based possibility: What's going on is a bunch of people have let their sci-fi imaginations get the best of them. They perpetuate silly stories without any objective support. Something about that little kid monster under the bed nonsense is exciting or interesting. Probably more interesting and exciting to people who dishonesty refuse to acknowledge that it's got exactly as much support as any other piece of fiction and that many common mundane explanations could apply.
This is another completely reasonable, realistic conclusion based on the relative plausibility of some human beings letting their imagination run away with them (something well-known and conclusively proven to happen quite frequently) over the plausibility of space aliens coming down to Earth, flying around and abducting people (something which has never, ever been proven to have ever happened at any time in the entire history of the world).
I'm second in line! No butting in... (well)