emphasis mine

"Do you deny that the evidence is, indeed, crummy?"

That would depend greatly on what 'evidence' you are refering to. It's a very wide statement, don't you think?

__________________
"Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent" -Adolf Hitler

I do. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Not really.
I'm referring to all of it, BTW.

Wonderful, A. DIM. Tell us specificaly what your evidence is to the contrary. Please include the appropriate citation to the scientific journal in which it was published so we can all evaluate it for ourselves. Thanks a million!

Tim, can you tell us what evidence in particular you are keen on?

I think that the argument that "so many have been seen, there must be at least ONE that is true" is a pretty awful fallacy. What if we said this about psychics who talked to the dead and predicted the future? There are so many of them, at least ONE must be genuine! That's ridiculous. They are ALL fakes as far as I'm concerned. Likewise, with the UFOs, there has been no evidence put forward EVER that these are extraterrestrial intelligence phenomena. Ever.

"Not really.
I'm referring to all of it, BTW."

If this is your honest opinion I'd be wasting my breath, or in this case my fingers! Evidence is always debatable, if it was not so, it would not be evidence, it would be proof.

Sorry, but I'm not that e-literate, what is BTW?

__________________
"Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent" -Adolf Hitler

C'mon, Tim. Don't keep it to yourself. Share it with the rest of the community!

Do you really hold these claims to be on higher ground of credibility than say, psychics' claims? How are you evaluating the evidence? That's all I want to know.

By the way, BTW=by the way.

"Tim, can you tell us what evidence in particular you are keen on?"

This is the second time you have asked me about evidence, or 'pet' evidence, or what have you. I have answered one question already and followed it with a question or two of my own back to you.

You seem to have a habit of asking me questions, questioning the reasoning of others and looking for answers. I respect this, I truly do. But you should have the courtesy to answer questions others have put to you, also. If you recall:

"I assume you read both sides of the debate before coming to a conclusion. Have you researched the archives of a good skeptical debunking resource for your "evidences"? Perhaps you'd like to show us some of your pet evidence and have us at it?"

Then my reply:

First of all, my conclusions on this issue are few and far inbetween! What kind of evidence do you want? I have no "pet" evidence as a matter of fact I've been labeled a debunker by some. Like on Roswell, I think it's a bit out there.

What I have done is interview people claiming to be abducties. And you know what, I did not find them to be credible.

Now perhaps you would like to share with us what you have done on this subject? What 'pet' evidence do you have to prove or disprove the issue? What evidence have you seen or read? What has ever made you think this subject is even worth the debate?

Now, to answer your new question, perhaps this will help:

As for aliens coming to Earth, UFO sightings and evidence of these events being real or not real, well, there are somethings/people who make me wonder just enough to keep my interest in the field.

For instance, would Dr. Derrel Sims, ( http://www.alienhunter.org ), lecture to members of the American Medical ***. on "The Medical Complications of Alleged Human/Alien Contact," if there was not some kind of evidence to this issue?

Would respected military officers, (Maj. Jesse Marcel, Lt.Col. Phil Corso, Col. Gordon Cooper and others), come forward with claims of UFO/Alien visitations, crashs, etc., if this was a complete and total fabrication?

Would retired Airline Pilots talk about the "bad things" that happen to pilots who report sightings of unexplained flying objects? If such things were not indeed happening?

Would former CIA agents like Karl Pflock, talk openly about "credible abduction cases" or evidence that is "hard to dispute" if there were no such cases or evidence? Or more importantly, if these cases were easily disproved?

Look, I'll be the first person to stand up and say ufology is full of loonies, skull farmers and gullable week minded fools! I'll even say here that many sightings are explainable, but I will also defend the legitimacy of the phenomena. No one is going to simply explain this all away as mass hystiara, sleep paralysis, experimental aircraft, stupidity or what have you!
-------------------------------------------

If your wondering just what I meen here it's really rather simple. The evidence, great or small, week or strong, the abundance of it is what keeps me wondering about aliens, ufo's, etc., etc.!

Of course there are some aledged cases, sightings, what have you, that seem more credable then others. Like the Hill Abduction. I'm more inclined to believe something happened there then I am to believe in a crash at Roswell.

On the other hand, there is a great deal of disinformation, some by our government on Roswell. Enough to keep me thinking about it.

Now does that mean I am ready to through in the towel on my skeptisism on the aledged crash and say, 'hey, look over here, it really happened!'

Hell no!

BUT! Why would our government wait 50 years to reveal the deep dark truth about the aledged aliens at the aledged crash site? That deep dark truth being they were crash test dummies that resemble aliens? At a full 6 feet tall, mind you! If they were dummies, and lets keep an open mind here, maybe they were, why wait 50 years to tell us? Why not disclose this 'fact' in 1947, or in the 70's when the issue again became popular?

The question for you would be, do you consider this evidence, perhaps circumscancial, of some kind of disinformation scheme? I do, simply because it makes no sence if I look at it as anything else. What could that else be? 'Oh we forgot this part for 50 years, sorry, please believe us.'

This is just one little turn that makes me say, hummm! One little quirk, among many, some weeker, some more solid. But what does it matter, your mind is made up, right? And you will no doubt take the above to meen mine is, too.

Do you remember this?
FYI: When someone asks me if I believe in UFO's I always answer with; "Are you asking me if I believe in Unidentified Flying Objects, or are you asking me if I believe that crafts from another world or dimention or time are visiting Earth?"

The reason I ask this is to try and see if I can tell if a person is bias to believe in little grey men, or open to other explanations for such a sighting/experiance. I hope that makes sence to you, because it sure does from where I'm sitting.
---------------------------------------------
Once again:

Now perhaps you would like to share with us what you have done on this subject? What 'pet' evidence do you have to prove or disprove the issue? What evidence have you seen or read? What has ever made you think this subject is even worth the debate?

quid-pro-quo, Agent Starling.

__________________
"Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent" -Adolf Hitler

To date, I have read reports on UFO-sightings and alien encounters as primary source documents on the World Wide Web. I have yet to see one credible case.

You mention Dr. Sims, a confirmed psychologically unstable individual who claims to have been abducted by aliens but can show no evidence to such an effect. You also mention "unexplained" sightings by members of the military and by airline pilots.

Every one of the accounts you mention are debunked by CSIPOC and others with relative ease? How? Because there is no evidence available. All there is is hearsay and human testimony which has been proven in the past to be problematic and misleading. You didn't answer me as to whether you believed psychic claims. I believe this is because you don't have a decent answer to this. How can you? Without a skeptical mind, the gullible individual is left to their own devices for determining veracity.

You are giving the UFOlogy movement WAY too much credit. Why hasn't there been a single peer-reviewed paper on the subject? Do you think all the scientific journals are being controlled by the government. And as you continue to preach your paranoia about the government coverups, you are no better than the Planet Xers who preach their paranoia about Sitchin: it is the same class of argumentation of all Bad Astronomers, Tim, from Lunar Hoaxers, to Sitchininites, to Geocentrists. I point to evidence and you balk at it without providing evidence of your own.

And by evidence, I am very clear. I want an observation. I want physical evidence or some verifiable observation on the part of a scientifc group or amateur astronomer or an air traffic controller. It needs to be systematic and it needs to be reviewed. This is to prevent the loonies who dominate, no, not just dominate, permeate in entirety the UFOlogy movement from simply preaching nonsense. This is what I require. As I have not seen any of this, the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that there is no evidence for an extraterrestial intelligence source for UFOs.

You need to point SPECIFICALLLY to evidence for the extraterestrial intelligence source. I'm not arguing that people don't experience strange sightings, I'm arguing that there is no evidence AT ALL that these things are of extraterrestrial intelligence origins. That is all I am saying.

By the way, Tim, there's a reason crankdotnet includes Dr. Sims in its compilation:

http://www.crank.net/ufo.html

What, Tim, do you think needs to be the threshhold for investigation? What evidence qualifies? If I tell you that I have had an encounter with the invisible pink unicorn, does that qualify as evidence? In my mind, no. It qualifies as unfalsifiable testimony. I'm not going to even entertain that as being remotely close to something like scientific evidence.

I will repeat: there is no, ABSOLUTELY NO scientific evidence for extraterrestrial space craft here on Earth. None.

You can pipe up about 50-year-old reexplanations as much as you want. Do you honestly think that anybody at the Airforce cared enough until the 90s hit with the hysteria of UFOs to offer the proof? Saying that it took 50 years and therefore it must be a disinformation campaign is like saying that humans must not have gone to the moon because there are new things that are discovered about the Apollo program even today. I'm sorry, this is based on paranoia and irrationality and nothing more. Your post demonstrates, Tim, an extreme disregard for scientific integrity by continuing to not offer scientific evidence for a phenomenon which, if it did exist, should manifest itself in very observable ways.

Can you include a link to the Hill Experience, as well? Thanks.

Scientific.

That's a start.

Including Dr. Sims?

Absolutely. I have read numerous webpages and popular books on the subject. As far as I can tell, that's ALL that there is. There are a few reports that the US government has published, and I've read some of them and my overall reaction is: yawn! I can't believe what they wasted their time and my money over. Well, that's neither here nor there, but it is truly bewildering when I here a UFOlogist talk about the conspiracy associated with the project. Did they READ the reports? My guess is most of them haven't. They are filled with such things as "Mr. X saw a strange object on such and such a date. Upon further investigation it was determined that this object was most like a weather baloon." My word, talk about boring!

That's my point. There is no evidence I have ever found that has any credibility. I'll deal with more of this later on.
Oh, I really don't think it is worth the debate. My main concern is that people realize this.

Yes. The American Medical Association has said it is interested in the health aspects of alleged alien abductions. The PHYSICALITY of such issues is not in question, it is the psychosomatic trauma that is of importance to them. I hate to use the word, but "freakshow" comes to mind. Of course, the AMA's invite was done with sincerity, but the fact of the matter remains their interest is not from a "whether these represent actual alien encounters" perspective but rather, "how do we help these people". See the difference?

Yes, Tim. We went over this one with the Jimmy Carter discussion. People who may seem to have a lot of credibility can have problems with themselves. And the military besides is not known for promoting the best of mental health. This isn't a prejudiced statement, it's backed up by medical documentation. Some individuals are wacky and it doesn't matter if they've been promoted to Colonel.

Does putting "bad things" in quotes make physical evidence? I don't care what happened to the airline pilots. I simply want to see the scientific evidence. I realize that ball lightning and other interesting phenomenon have been reported and "scoffed at". But "bad things" is hardly evidence that these are alien encounters. Remember, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. People have had "bad things" happen to them because they asked for a glass of water at an inappropriate time. There are all kinds of explanations for human interactions. We need something that points to proof of alien technology, not sociology.

I like the agent(s) plural as though you have a list of thousands that would come forward. Do you see a pattern, Tim? All of your evidence is "eyewitness testimony". Easily fabricated. You haven't proposed any independently verifiable or scientifically scrutinized evidence. This is not coincidence. You can look for the stuff and you won't find it.

These cases ARE easily disproved on account of lack of evidence. Unfortunately, there are people out there who refuse to accept that as reasonable. Those people are called paranoid.

Many? try VAST MAJORITY. In fact, refer to one case of credible evidence that hasn't been explained. There are photographs that have been shown to have been faked, there are all sorts of examples of evidence that we know are not credible. You have yet to show me scientific evidence to the contrary. Why? Because there is none.

No question, there's a phenonmenon here. I want to know what your evidence is that it is of exterrestrial intelligence origins.

How do you explain psychics and those who believe in them? No one is going to simply explain that all away as mass hysteria, are they? I mean, look at how many sad fools actually believe John Edwards talks to their dead uncles? It's unbelieveable.

No, it is a fallacy outright and utter to say that because there are a lot of people who believe there must be some physical truth behind the claims for exterrestrial interaction. And you are careful in never coming out in saying that, but your posts insinuate this up and down. I want you to come out and say whether you believe there is credible physical and scientific evidence for UFOs being alien spacecraft or that a single alien abduction has occurred. That's what I want.

But there's an abudance of evidence about psychics too. Do you wonder about them? There's an abudnace of evidence that the Moonies are right and Sun Young-Moon is the Messiah of God. Do you wonder about that? What determines your threshhold of plausibility? This question has not been answered at all. What you have given us is more and more eyewitness accounts and people who are "convinced". I can point you to millions of people who are convinced that Elvis is alive, that doesn't make Elvis alive or even say that there might be a physical explanation for it. What it does say is that there is a phenomenon of people who somehow are connecting with a cultural undercurrent of Elvis sightings. This isn't science, though, this is pop-psychology and cultural studies.

Please give us more information on this. Why is it credible? What is the PHYSICAL evidence?

It's okay to think about it, I guess. But what do you say to people who say that there's enough disinformation on Apollo that it keeps them "thinking about it"?

Because it's that crazy. Think about it. If some fanatic ran around saying that the government was controlling us with jet contrails, would the government immediately send out a commission to disprove them (yes such people exist)? No, that's a waste of time and resources. However, UFOlogist wackos were able to organize and develop enough media hype that they finally convinced somebody to begrudgingly address the issue. Talk about embarassing. It's pandering to wackos, that's what it is. Same thing with the book NASA was going to write about whether the moon landing was a hoax. There's some level of "ignoring the idiots" that must be done or you'd spend your life just countering them at every turn. So in the 90s when this stuff came to a head, they decided to release something. It probably would have been smarter for them to keep their mouth shut, but it's a damned if you do and a damned if you don't proposition. No matter WHAT they had said, the conspiricist would have used it as proof. "Oh, they're silent? That's proof!" "Oh, they deny it? That's proof!" "Oh, they confirm it? That's proof!" Come on. That's not proof, that's unfalsifiability.

And that's what it comes down to. There is nothing in the minds of the UFOlogist that will falsify their claims that there are alien spacecrafts and abductions. This is why there is no scientific basis to the subject.

No, it's a mundane detail that nobody really cared about.

Shorter than me.

Because of the damned if you do, damned if you don't proposition. Why should they waste their time on it? Frankly, it may just always be a bad move to say anything on subjects where lunatics are invovled.

Absolutely not.

No, it is exactly as I describe it. There's no way for them to say anything or nothing and not have them be accused of a disinformation scheme. You think differently? Then falsify that claim! What could they have done assuming that this is the truth? If they had told you in the 70s, you still would say, BUT IT WAS 30 YEARS! Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

What's more solid? Do you understand my desire for scientific evidence that isn't up to the interpretation of some bored non-professional?

No, my mind is FAR from made up.

If you presented me with scientific evidence, I'd be overjoyed. Thrilled even.

This is an excellent point. Of course there are some things that are unidentified and flying. Are there crafts that are of an alien design and origin? Well, show me the evidence (scientific evidence, that is).

Well, if someone is mentioning "UFOs" there is an implied bias already. I have met very few people who dealt with UFOs but dismissed the "other worlds, dimensions, and times" theories for what they were.

Perhaps you can understand my desire for scientific evidence? Or is that too tall an order?

Here, here.
"Show me the money!"

Boy you sure do like to jump to conclusions about folks don't you?

Looks like In really rateld your cage, good

...very good!

__________________
"Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent" -Adolf Hitler

Nah, if you look at other threads you'll see that it is common for JS to dissect posts in detail.

So Timothy, how about showing JS that scientific evidence . . .

"So Timothy, how about showing JS that scientific evidence . . ."

I don't recall ever saying I had scientific evidence.

And as far as rattling or not rattling JS' cage, well, when you feel compeled to mention in your post that a six foot dummie mistaken for a four foot alien is shorter then you, you are in the midst of a rant! And most people I know usually rant when their cage is ratteled.

But then again, perhaps JS feels that information is HIS scientific evidence of there never being a crash at Roswell?

As for what I think on Roswell, my opinion , as stated before, is open.

__________________
"Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent" -Adolf Hitler

So, if you have no scientific evidence then what is the basis of your open opinion?

__________________
"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

I viewed the six-food-dummy logic as an utter non-sequitor. What, the dummies were six-feet tall and therefore the government is hiding extraterrestrial technology? Huh? Seemed to me that comment on the size of the dummies was just as much a non-sequitor as my own height. Thus the comment. Sorry, I should have been clearer on the matter. Sometimes, in my hurry, my attempts to be clever get befuddled.

Refute this JS:
http://www.project1947.com/fig/1952d.htm
http://www.rense.com/general8/flew.htm

I missed this article published only 6 months ago:
http://www.space.com/news/ufo_poll_021025.html
I'm not used to thinking of myself as part of the majority [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Refute what?? I mean you are kidding, right? I went to Jeff Rense's home page and it appears that this guy believes in just about every outlandish "theory" that has ever come along.

This belief encludes Chupacabra's, chemtrails, "rods", and he's even got Brad Steiger's "ghost" books for sale. I'm surprised I didn't see any "batboy" sightings there.

It is certainly NOT what anyone of sound mind would consider
objective reporting of ufo's or any of these "theorys".

__________________
"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

From the site:

Well that was super easy.

From the article:

Yeah, the American public is notoriously gullible. Did you know that the majority of folks also believe in psychics? It is sad that the vast majority of Americans are simply ignorant of basic scientific information and facts. Kinda like some people on this board.

Timothy, I am not sure what you mean by "simbiant" but if you are suggesting that life on earthlike alien worlds could evolve into forms similar to terrestrial life I agree, to a point. Similar engineering problems could result in similar solutions. It is not likely that there would be anything other than a BROAD similarity, the odds against one for one duplication of traits are very long. As I stated, we might get the occasional bipedal alien race but it would be the wildest long shot of all time for them to be (a) humanoid, (b)of human-type intelligence, (c)inclined towards spacefaring, motivationally as well as technically, (d)extant at the present time, as opposed to half a billion years ago or half a billion years from now, (e)native to the Milky Way, I am arbitrarily dismissing intergalactic travel & (f)visiting earth, ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Deinonychus and Megatherium were both two armed bipeds which evolved on the most earthlike planet of them all, EARTH, and neither of them were humanoid nor have any other bipedal creatures been, aside from Homo sapiens and our immediate kin. The great majority of aliens purported to have been in contact with the PXer and UFO crowd are reported to be humanoid, most of them in the big-headed almond-eyed saucerman or satin robed "Angel from Space" form and have been reported to be from lots of different worlds as well. This is stretching credulity and common sense far beyond the breaking point. Your second point I take to mean that you are implying the possibility that what most UFO people consider to be alien spacecraft are not, but rather craft piloted by time
travelling future humans, thus explaining their humaniform aspect. Time travel is a whole different kettle of fish which I am not going to debate here as it has nothing to do with Nibiru, Zeta Reticulans or space aliens in general, although it is an interesting twist to the UFO phenomenon. It would be nice to see it backed up by material evidence, but hey, those future guys already read their history books and knew we didn't find them out before they traveled back here anyway.

__________________
If you can't dazzle 'em with dexterity, baffle 'em with BS.

I think the real question is "How common is technological civilization?". I have no doubt that the universe is teeming with life on the millions or billions of worlds which meet the criteria for harboring life as we know it but it does not automatically follow that tool using intelligence would arise on any of them. It is a common misconception that complexity and intelligence are the end results of evolution but that simply is not the case. Organisms sometimes develop more complex or "advanced" traits in the course of adapting to their environments but some organisms exist essentially unchanged for millions or even tens or hundreds of millions of years. What's more, if a lifeform can adapt better by losing a previously developed complex structure then it will often do so, as in Mexican Cave Tetras losing their eyes or emus losing their flight capabilities. Intelligence is not neccessary for the successful survival and propagation of life and evolution does not strive toward any "goal" in that regard. I would be thrilled if we found incontrovertible evidence of alien intelligence, surely somewhere in the universe besides earth has spawned intelligent tool users, but it is worthwhile to remember that there is no guarantee that any given life-bearing planet will ever have such a race. I think there is EVERY reason to believe life is common, but NO reason to think that extraterrestrial intelligence is anything but scarce.

__________________
If you can't dazzle 'em with dexterity, baffle 'em with BS.

"Saying that Carter's statement is harmful to the debate is preposterous. If Carter had said, "There is no evidence." You'd have branded him a liar. What he did was give the conspiricists a bit more credit than I give them. That's being kinder and gentler, not being evasive To debate..."

"If they had told you in the 70s, you still would say, BUT IT WAS 30 YEARS! Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

"But there's an abudance of evidence about psychics too. Do you wonder about them?"

Personally, I don't believe in psychics, but you sure do seem to be comffy with telling other people you don't know what they would do or say in a given situation. If thats not an atempt at being a psychic I don't know what is!!!

Moreover, I did not say Carters statement harms the debate, what I said was:

But if you choose to believe it, the remark, "there's a lot of different
answers" certainly can be taken in many ways. And therefore exploited by several different agendas. A broad open statemnet like that is as harmfull as helpfull to a debate, and I'm sure a very bright man like Jimmy Carter was fully aware of that if or when he made it.

Now, do I need to unpack that one for you

...again?

Bias interpretations like the above really show just where you are coming from. And like I said before:

All this tells me is you are comfertable talking about things you know little if anything about, as you have made a very big assumtion here on someone you really know nothing about, me!!!

I believe you were in fact talking about me, and if you had any real nerve you would have been man enough to either admit it at the time, or admit you made a mistake and jumped to a conclusion you had NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE to make.

One more time:

NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE to make.
---------------------------------------------

"I have read reports on UFO-sightings and alien encounters as primary source documents on the World Wide Web. I have yet to see one credible case."

I really don't believe you have read much of anything good on this subject. If you have you would not make the following statement;

"Well, if someone is mentioning "UFOs" there is an implied bias already. I have met very few people who dealt with UFOs but dismissed the "other worlds, dimensions, and times" theories for what they were."

Well, gee, a ufo to me is just that, an unidentified flying object. Does that meen it is unexplainable, or from another planet, God, NO! And the only implied bias here is your own to catagorize anyone who is willing to admit such as gullible, non scientific, a looney, etc., etc.

I can think of other people who share my interest who feel the same way I do on this, like Prof. Vic Zeller. There are some fine researchers in ufology that feel this way, their not all loonies.

You also contradic your self here. On one hand you admit to meeting people, a few anyway, that are not bias on ufo's. But you also say just mentioning ufo's is an implied bias. You really need to figure out just what you really do think on this issue. But unlike you, I will not make an attempt to demand this from you, rather I'll just take it for what it's worth. Or is, a contradiction. Which by the way is how most debunking is done.

Just what HAVE you read or researched, and by who?

If you believe anything you read on the w.w.w. you are as gullible as the next guy! Even more so if the reading is on this topic.
---------------------------------------------

"And by evidence, I am very clear. I want an observation."

"Does putting "bad things" in quotes make physical evidence? I don't care what happened to the airline pilots."

The bad things, line is a direct quote, I don't recall the pilots name, sorry. But then again what do you care, you don't care what happened to him.

Personal testamony, which is evidence in any court of law, of an observation IS evidence! Not scientific, but then again some scientific evidence is not admisable in a court of law as evidence. You say you want scientific evidence, then you say you want an oservation, I believe you really want neither. You would atempt to debunk any evidence put to you, and in the case of a credable first hand account, you would simply discredit the person. This is the oldest trick in the book, used by both sides. A good bonafide scientific, or non scientific researcher would know that.

Piont in case:

"People who may seem to have a lot of credibility can have problems with themselves."

And just what could those problems be, doctor? Mental, emotional, gullibility? Or perhaps they just don't think like you do? Or maybe, just maybe, they were there and you wern't!
--------------------------------------------

"By the way, Tim, there's a reason crankdotnet includes Dr. Sims in its compilation:
http://www.crank.net/ufo.html"

Like I have said more then once, I DON"T BELIEVE ANYTHING I READ ON THE WEB! But just so you know, I went to the above link. It has several lines on Sims, and thats all I found there. They are simply copied from Sims' web site...WOW big news there!

If this is how you debunk, then you belong on sites like this! A site I know of is UFO Watch Dog, do a search on the name, you'll find it.

Is that the best you got on Sims?

And by the way, I don't believe all of Sims claims. I simply stated the fact he has lecture to the A.M.A. But then again, you most likely missed that.
---------------------------------------------

"If I tell you that I have had an encounter with the invisible pink unicorn, does that qualify as evidence? In my mind, no."

No, its' invisable, how would you know...dah!

How about keeping it at least somewhere neer the ground, hey?
---------------------------------------------

"Can you include a link to the Hill Experience, as well? Thanks...Please give us more information on this. Why is it credible? What is the PHYSICAL evidence?"

Why should I? If you have already came to your opinion on the matter you should already have looked at the information! It is one of the best know cases of all time. Didn't you read about it on one of those great web sites? You do know about this case don't you? I meen everyone who has ever looked into this subject knows about the Hill case, you'd have to be under a rock not to! Or being very week, or should I say it? Unscientific, in your search for information on this topic.
---------------------------------------------

"It's okay to think about it, I guess. But what do you say to people who say that there's enough disinformation on Apollo that it keeps them "thinking about it"?

Thank you for your permission. Your issue really seems to be whether or not I/we think like you.
---------------------------------------------

"I like the agent(s) plural, [CIA], as though you have a list of thousands that would come forward."

Talk about jumping to conclusions! Man, now THATS a scientific statemnet if I ever heard one. And it's not 'would' come forward, it's 'have' come forward. You would like more then one name, hey? Why, you have done your own research on this issue, you should be giving me names!

But I'll give you names, when you start telling me who the millions of people are who believe Elvis is still alive. Are any of them former CIA?
---------------------------------------------


"Perhaps you can understand my desire for scientific evidence? Or is that too tall an order?"

Is it to tall an order to ask you to make up your mind between scientific evidence, or an observation? To not jump to rash unscientific conclusions while demanding scientific evidence?

I could go on and on here, and I'm sure you could too. However, we are getting ready to start packing for our move from this house in Rhode Island to our new house in Maine, my time to indulge in things like this is getting shorter and shorter.

But hey, the bright side is I'm also getting a new computer when we move! Anyone have any suggestions on it?

__________________
"Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent" -Adolf Hitler

simbiant = ape like

I may have mis spelled it, I'm far from being the world best speller, and I type to fast. Sorry.

And your argument is very good, unlike some others who post here.

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"Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent" -Adolf Hitler

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Are you serious?

I'm re-posting this so A.DIM has a chance to respond.

Dear Tim,

For some reason, you seem to be very upset by all this. I mean personally. Perhaps you think I'm upset personally and are attacking in kind? I don't know.

You say on numerous occasions that you think I'm jumping to conclusions because of my interpretation of your post. I'm trying to find where I accuse you of doing the same with my post. When you decided that I was being personally off-putting towards your person re: the Jimmy Carter incident, I tried to simply explain myself. That's all. I didn't go on a personal character attack because I don't know what that's supposed to accomplish.

Here we are, dealing with words, words mind you, and we are bound to misconstrue and misinterpret the other person. That's why it's a dialogue and not a free-for-all.

? How is saying "I don't know what you will do or say..." an attempt at being a psychic? Don't the psychics say the opposite?


I'm willing to admit I know of no scientific evidence for UFOs. I'd be happy to look at that. In fact, that's really the sum total of what I'm asking for.

[quote]
jumped to a conclusion you had NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE to make.

One more time:

NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE to make.
[quote]

No, that's right. I have no scientific evidence. The conclusion one comes to with no scientific evidence is one of skepticism.

Okay. So there's this value judgement "good" associated with this. You go on to mention one person: Vic Zeller, who I will deal with in a moment and personal accounts which I know for a fact to be the worst sort of evidence and not scientific in the least. If anything, our conversation should be witness to that. We seem to be "misinterpretting" each other left and right. Again I'll deal with that later too.

Are you willing to tell me that the majority of people you come in contact with who speak about UFOs are not doing so in the context of 'aliens among us'? If so, then I'll concede your point. Mine was simply a statment of what I find to be true. Of course, you find me to be an unreliable narrator (you don't think I've read anything, for example). This is a good thing because it proves my point that it's very difficult to trust human testimony. It is certainly a possibility I'm making every word of what I'm saying up on the spot. That's why science does not base itself around going and interviewing folks on physical phenomenon in order to investigate them, but rather presents objective evidence.

Professor Vic Zeller at a community college in Mass. insists that he has an open mind when it comes to the possibilities of UFOs. There is nothing wrong with that. What he says that's important, that you too Tim have hinted at, is the following:

This is a very enigmatic statement. Instead of being straightforward about his position, he offers something along the lines of a tactful skirt: "some people don't think that's proof". Well, what does he think?

There is a basic criteria science for what qualifies evidence as proof and what qualifies as suspect. Personal testimony, even from the smartest of individuals, is always suspect. There is not necessarily intrinsic harm in entertaining possibilities, but eventually one has to move on to real science. If we didn't do that, we might still be stuck arguing over Aristotle's four elements. The evidence for the four elements of Aristotle was based on personal testimony from an extremely competent, capable, and intelligent invididual. Do we continue to entertain the possibility that he was right?
Not in science we don't: because we don't have any physical evidence that would lead us to believe that these were actually elemental in nature. The same idea goes for the extra-terrestrial origins of UFO "spacecraft". Since we have no physical evidence or scientific evidence, they are simply not accepted as a possibility.

Even if we were to find, in the future, some evidence for an advanced-life-form spacecraft, that actually would NOT validate the claims of most of those who were advocating UFOlogy. This is simply because there is no standardization that is possible at all between testimonies. Rather, it is happenstance and hodge-podge accounts reliant on memory and authority that we have to go on.

What's really sly about Zeller's type of "belief" is that it is all surreptitious.

This is very similar in type to the way creationist scientists present their argumentation. Nothing is said about the scientific method or about credibility. Sagan's baloney detector is a peripheral consideration. Everything becomes a theory and a possibility. That's problematic. How do I distinguish between one idea and another? Do I have to entertain Ragnorok? Do I have to entertain the theory my nephew comes up that the universe is contained in a bubblegum bubble that a rollerskating God is blowing up? There are "testimonies" and then there is evidence. The reason I'm not interested in testimonies from a proof of reality standpoint is because I'm a scientist. That is, I believe that science is the best tool we have for arbitrating between fantasy and reality. If you disagree with that, it's a whole other discussion, but I have come across very few thinking and rational individuals who take issue with this.

From a strictly sociological, phenomenological, or psychologocial voyeuristic point-of-view, I love to hear people's stories about UFOs even if they have no evidence to back them up. Which brings me to my ultimate criticism of Zeller. He conveniently sidesteps the issue of credibility in the New Standard article even though, in the course of the interview the following occurred:

But he doesn't go any further than that. What are we to make: that any book written is worthy of consideration? That there isn't an economy of thought but rather every idea stands on equally well-proven ground? I should hope not. Now before you jump all over me, Tim, and say that I'm jumping to conclusions about what Zeller believes I'm going to admit I don't know whether the man is a decent investigator or not. I don't have any evidence to say one way or the other. What I do know is that in this particular, and dare-I-say, somewhat favorable?, character sketch in the New Standard, he doesn't address the issues of what is "data" and what is "fancy". I love to study religious and quasi-religious movements, but I would never make the mistake of simply calling that my "data". It's not data, it's correspondence and illustrations of human thought and design. There's a big difference.

So, it comes back again to the ultimate question I have: where is the scientific evidence? You have come back at me with mammoth posts aplenty, Tim, for which I'm appreciative because the more we discuss the more we may come to understand, but this fundamental question you have been silent on. Well, not totally silent. You do try to stick up for testimony as valuable.

It sort of comes out in the details. You and Zeller, to me (and I will grant I have only interacted with both of you on a limitted basis, but that's what I have to go on for now), both seem to be in a nice little non-commital arena. When it gets down to evaluating the facts, like in regards to Roswell, there seems to be a distinct bias towards the "I want to blow your mind" mentality. No doubt you're going to find this characterization offensive, but it seems to me that lending credulity to, frankly, disproven theories like "There's a disinformation policy in regards to UFOs being undertaken by the government" you seem to be alligning yourself with with the camp that believes in the alien-life. I might liken this to the Intelligent Design folk who say, frankly, they are non-committal when it comes to whether "evolution" happened or not, but see the problems. They bite off my head every time I call them the "C" word. "I'm not a Creationist! I just see intelligent design." This is a problematic point of view, though, because it fails to distinguish between real scientific evidence and idle speculation. I view the "on-the-fence" positions of people with regards to the paranormal or extraterrestrial origins of UFOs to be in the same type of intellectualy dishonest situation.

But that's my bias, Tim! I encourage you to try to convince me otherwise, if you so desire. As I said, what I'm interested in is scientific evidence.

I think that a) there is no scientific evidence supporting the case that there is an extraterrestrial origin to UFOs, b) the Roswell incident has been well-explained and sufficiently debunked as proof of extraterrestrial spacecraft landing, c) the vast majority of UFO sightings are explainable phenomenon and there have been none that have been collected that I know of that have as support for them any kind of believable scientfic physical evidence, d) if extraterrestrial craft were to visit Earth, the astronomers and scientists observing would see it and report it, there would be nothing "isolated" about the incident, and e) there is no government conspiracy with regards to this issue.

Philip Klass and Don Menzel's stuff. Allen Hynek's articles in the 1960s journals. David Jacob's book: The UFO Controversy in America. Edward Condon's 1969 seminal work which is available online here:http://www.ncas.org/condon/

This is a short starting reading list. Do you want me to continue?

Oh, I thought the world wide web was a reliable source. Silly me.

It's the most suspect of all evidence admissible in a court of law, with the possible exception of circumstantial evidence. Why do you suppose hearsay testimony is frowned upon so much? Because people are notorious for misremembering and misinterpretting the actual events and circumstances surrounding a supposed "observation".

Let me give you an example. A student here was attending an observing session outdoors and excitedly came running in for me to see something. We got outside just in time to see six lights in the shape of an "x" wink out of view. He was extremely excited. I said to calm down. I went dutifully the next day and logged on to the FAA page and accessed the flight plan records for the area. Sure enough, the airforce had alerted the local airport that they were going to be doing training excersizes in the early to late evening in the area. The student remained dubious. They couldn't have been human airforce craft because, as he claimed, they were moving too fast across the sky and with too much agility. And furthermore, why did they all "wink out" at the end? Well, the discerning reader should be able to answer these questions for him/herself. It takes a cool head to be able to evaluate a situation, and making bold claims about what is or isn't possible requires being able to evaluate physical evidence, not just emotional evidence. Do you think the student timed the passing of the UFOs overhead with his watch and try to measure the angular displacement with respect to time? No, he was too excited. Detailed observation requires one to prepare oneself in case of an exciting find. Scientific evidence requires a strict dose of credibility in its acquisition.

In fact, scientific rigor is much stricter than a court-of-law. Not only do we want to know "beyond a reasonable doubt", we want to be able to have evidence that is falsifiable, objective, and physical. Personal testimony is not admissible because it is simply too fraught with other considerations (uncontrolled variables, if you will) to be consistent.

And the reason for that is because science is very upfront about how "certain" they are of results. That's what is so interesting about forensics, no one has a clue how credible witnesses are, the jury is left to their own devices, but we MEASURE the credibility of scientific evidence and this allows the court to dismiss some of it as inadmissable. Just one of the quirks of being honest and transparent.

Why's that?

Well, I described what I require. I require extraordinary evidence, it is true. These are extraordinary claims.

Well, I think the story I told above is a good illustration of what I mean. Because there is a history and a mythos surrounding the whole endeavor of observing UFOs, there is a preconceived bias in my mind against it, I'm more than willing to admit to that. But I'm not a lost soul by any means. All I want is something that is well documented with scientific evidence. That's it.

Wow, that's a rather strong statement.

It seems that you may not be familiar with Crankdotnet. All it is is a list of sites that are chosen by committee as being pretty much "out there". Frequenters of this board will know that crankdotnet generally nails things when it comes to scientific credibility. This very site is listed as an "anticrank". Now, that's a personal opinion, Tim, and you are certainly free to rail against it as much as you like. I just use this resource as a clearinghouse for problematic claims. Do you want me to evaluate Sims point-by-point? Actually, I don't think you do, because, as you said:

Which is what I thought was your purpose in the first place. Perhaps you should reread my post on my explication of what the AMA was all about.

By the way, http://www.ufowatchdog.com seems to be out-of-commission until the trial ends.

Are you serious that you don't see the parallel? Why hasn't a single credible report been put forward? What do you make of the investigations that were done by science in the late 60s I referred to above? Is this all just to be dismissed and now we have to start over?

The "invisible pink unicorn" is a device made-up in order to explain how impossible it is to prove a negative. I cannot prove that ETUFOs don't exist because there is no proof for them. One can take the existence of ETUFOs on faith, and that's probably the position that has the most integrity if you are going to maintain the ETUFO is a possibility.

Aww, c'mon, Tim. No need to throw a tantrum.

I have read about it enough to know that it has no scientific evidence associated with it. You seem to think it is a credible case. I would like to know your source. I have shown you mine.

By the way, scientific research does not come through reading eyewitness reports.

Suddenly we've degenerated into argumentative spitefulness. No matter. I really _haven't_ come across the numerous CIA agents. But, as you've pointed out, that's not what really interests me anyway.

Well, you can start here:http://groups.google.com/groups?q=El...O-8859-1&hl=en

See for yourself if they are former CIA agents. I don't know what that's supposed to prove, but knock yourself out!

An observation needs to be scientific to be at all plausible when we are dealing with extraordinary claims.

I don't have much time, so I need to be brief:

JS,
I am not offended, not in the least! I think we are just both very outspoken people. I honestly regard the ability to offened me as an empowerment, one only I can give. So the only people who have that ability are family.

I actually enjoy this, sorry, but I do! I just wish I had more damn time right now!

Real quick:
Vic Zeller, I'm not aware of the article you mention, do you have a link? I have spoken with him, I have corresponded with him a few times and have heard him interviewed on radio. I like him, and I do share some of his opinions. I believe he has an open mind since he has seen things in the air and sky and can't explain what they were and has always, as far as I know, simply refered to them as unidentified. Not alien craft. I believe he is one of the more science rooted people interested in ufology that I have ever spoken with. Which may mean nothing to you.

In some ways I think our veiws on ufology are very similiar. I am just not limited to only scientific information, evidence, etc.

So is the glass half full, or half empty? My bet is you will say it's 100% empty.