If this were a scientific paper, I would gladly place appropriate footnotes and such. However, it is not. I feel it is adequate to tell you where I got the information. Does it really matter since you have not bothered to read any of the sources I have mentioned previously and they are not readily available on the internet for you.
No, I don’t ask for “footnotes”, all I ask is for you to
accurately provide citations for your sources. This is as much to your benefit as anyone else’s, for if you do NOT provide good, accurate citations, then it looks as though you are
hiding something. For example, the very next reference you provide is:
“(Sheehan Planets and Perception 124-6) … I thought Dobbins was co-author but he was not…”. See, you get
yourself into unnecessary trouble by NOT providing accurate citations up front - and you STILL, even after that, do NOT reference it properly! What about the
date of that source? Is it a book, a journal article, what?
I did not lie (see above) and it is you who have performed a very cursory effort in your research. I suggest you go to the library and read something more detailed than a website that gives you one or two paragraphs on the subject. Sheehan devotes a great majority of his book chronicling these events. This is something these web sites omit. They are just giving summaries at best and lack the thorough research performed by Sheehan.
(…)
By the 1890s the canals were generally accepted by professional and amateur astronomers alike, and hardly a map of the planet was produced that did not show them in considerable profusion. (Sheehan Planets and Perception 124-6).
You provide but a single source to support this assertion, I have provided FOUR independent sources (so far) on just a “cursory effort”! Sources that
refute your assertion. Can you provide
another source (or sources) that support you assertions. If you cannot, then the
consensus would seem to be that YOUR source is incorrect.
Anyway, what is the POINT of this argument? It would seem to be that even professional observers using good equipment get it wrong (in this case spectacularly so!) – but so what? I have never denied that witnesses can get things wrong. The point I DO make about this argument is that
more often than not the observers get it RIGHT!
In the type of argument you are making you are trying to take advantage of a base rate fallacy. You provide a spectacular example of where an observation has gone wrong and try and extrapolate that to ALL observations. It is something akin to people’s fear of flying. Many people hesitate to get into an airplane but have no second thought about jumping into their car. The chances of getting killed or injured in a car far outweigh the chances of the same thing happening in an airplane crash by several orders of magnitude. It is just that when airplane crashes occur they are large scale spectacular events involving many people and are brought to the attention of nearly everyone in society. On the other hand, car crashes are relatively small scale events, involving few people, and that very few ever get to hear about. The airplane crash then sticks in people’s mind, car crashes are “out of sight out of mind” and people forget all about the base rates at which these things occur.
In your attempt to assert witness fallibility you bring to people’s mind spectacular failures of observation and
”forget” to mention the comparable rate of getting things RIGHT! For example UFO debunkers like to cite statistics wherein (for example) 95% of all UFO reports have been shown to be misidentified mundane objects. They
forget to mention however that mostly people DO get it right and understand that what they are viewing IS a mundane object
most of the time – and hence do not report it! Sure, of those that DO report, a majority get it wrong (and I dispute the 95% figure but that is a different argument), but that is a
biased sample of ALL observations. If we take ALL observations into account, the percentage of observations that are incorrect becomes very small indeed! Humans are actually
very good at observing and accurately describing what they see, and just because we CAN be fallible observers (under very specific circumstances), that does NOT mean that we ARE wrong ALL the time – as YOU would contend that UFO witnesses are!
But you put great weight on the use of optical aid to see this object. This is what these astronomers did. They used optical instruments but were making errors in observation because they wanted to see canals. I think there is a comparison here.
So in this example you fail to mention the success rate of astronomical observations compared to the failure rate. You provide a single spectacular example, but fail to note that in MOST instances, astronomers DO get it right.
You have also slipped into the “confirmation bias” argument. In the case of the “canals on Mars” it IS apparent that this could have been a factor. However, in the case of Rogue River, you fail to explain HOW confirmation bias might operate under the circumstances. You imply that it IS a factor (and this is where you get your comparative “parallel” between the cases from), yet do not explain HOW or WHY that might be so. To support your case, you must be able to do so.
I thought you were employing the sciences of perception to determine if the witnesses were accurate or not. Apparently, you are not using science but a desire to believe they were accurate. If you can not demonstrate scientifically they were accurate in their descriptions, how can you dismiss they might have misidentified an airplane or blimp? Maybe I am missing something here.
Yes, you ARE missing something here! The majority of human observations about the environment are substantially accurate. Statistically then there is no reason to assume that the observations in the Rogue River case were NOT accurate. IF you contend that the witnesses WERE inaccurate, then you MUST provide an explanation of the circumstances that lead to any inaccuracy.
We have some: the size and distance in a clear blue sky are prone to error (but that does NOT mean that such estimates ARE inaccurate – just the possibility based on the conclusions of research). But what else? Everything else about the circumstances of the sighting tend to
support accuracy of observation. The use of binoculars generally enhances accuracy – not hinders it. A clear day, sun at their backs. Five witnesses. Sure they were in a boat, but there is no reason to assume that the movement of the boat was substantial enough to substantially affect observations. Indeed none of the witnesses mentioned that it did, and the fact that they WERE able to apply the binoculars to “resolve” detail about the object indicates that the boat was not a substantial factor in the observations. The witnesses were reliable, sober minded people, and they never recounted their observations to anyone else other than the security officer of their workplace. Everything about the case tends to point toward a basic, standard, substantially accurate observation of a UFO.
And that is not adequate. You claim to be scientific but ignore the known problems associted with eyewitness testimony. You can not reject the airplane/blimp hypothesis simply based on wanting to believe the witnesses accurately described the shape of the craft.
It is only YOUR
opinion[ that it is “not adequate”. I do NOT “ignore known problems”, in fact I positively account for them! I do not
“want” to believe ANYTHING about the case – although
clearly YOU DO! You WANT the object to be mundane. It is YOU who fail to account for base rate fallacies. It is YOU who are subject to confirmation bias.
No. I am asking for better evidence. This "evidence" you present is suspect the same way Lowell's, Schiaparelli's, Pickering's, etc. etc. observations of canals were suspect. They are subject to human error and the more exotic the observations are, the more they should be questioned. Better evidence is needed to confirm such observations. Since we do not have this better evidence, it is more likely they mistook something airborne (aircraft/blimp) for a disc-shaped craft than actually observing an alien spaceship.
Sure, we would ALL like “better” evidence. But all we have is the evidence as presented in the case. We can only analyse the evidence we do have utilising the conclusions of previous research. Sure , witnesses CAN be fallible, but that does NOT mean they
always ARE. According to research, fallibility occurs under very specific conditions, so we note what research has informed us about those conditions and look to see if they might be applicable in the case. Where they are present we account for them (positively or negatively affecting the observation), where they are NOT present, then we assume the observations to be substantially accurate (in the absence of reasons to assume otherwise). Finally you AGAIN fall victim to a fallacy: You cannot draw the conclusion “more likely” from a lack of “better” evidence and I am NOT contending “alien spaceship”. The observers saw and described an object that has NO mundane explanation. That is ALL (they did not say – or contend - “alien spacecraft” – nor do I).
Who would have thought… in this day and age - and in such a well trodden area as UFO research - that was even possible? UFMO …Unidentified Flying Mundane Object …Funny how the UFO debunkers seem to want to deny the existence of even flying mundane objects though!
