Not sure if this is CT or ATM (or even Babbling) so move it wherever seems appropriate
UFO researchers try to go mainstream
Let us know when each of you get your letters.

So; which is it?

And conclusions available at any time?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Are the invites coming with free money-off coupons to the gift shop at Roswell?

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

Yeah, I'm befuddled. It's always within out of reach. Translation?

There, but not there? Factual, but not factual? Proven, but not proven? Identified, but unidentified? True, but false?

It must be hard to be him.

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0....

They have put a great deal of time and energy in believing. But no matter how hard they believe they cannot find the proof. It must be/is frustrating to the UFO community. They 'KNOW' the government is hiding stuff but no matter what they do they cannot prove it.

I also feel the movement is stagnating. They have pretty much talked every aspect of it to death. Except for going to violence and bribery they have tried everything to prove their case.

I recommend bribery as their next step - they've already did the science thing before-several times. Something in the line of the Randi - offering money to someone in the 'know' to spill the beans.

Obviously, not enough. Even thier resident nuclear physicist can't get things figured out.
You would think that they (MUFON people) have been around long enough to have sent thier offspring to school for just this knowledge so that they could have infiltrated all levels of government and science.

Oops; never mind...the aliens are preventing the offspring.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Same old stuff. Same old results. We are always told "soon" the real truth would be revealed and the government will release all those aliens they have penned up. Just a bunch of nonsense. The biggest nonsense peddler is Stanton Friedman. You see, he makes a living off of speaking about UFOs. If the truth were revealed, Stan would be out of job! It is in his best interest to keep talking about the cosmic watergate!

Actually, UFOlogy is not really interested in answers. So far they spend all their funds on UFO conferences and studying old UFO reports. These old reports are completely useless. This was evident in 1997, when scientists were given a very one-sided presentation by UFOlogy's "best and brightest". There response was the same response scientists have been giving over the years. That being, "interesting but come back when you have something more concrete for us to examine" and "oh BTW, you process leaves something to be desired and you need to improve on it". They also said that there was no evidence that ET was involved in any of the cases described. Did UFOlogy learn from this panel? Nope, they pronounced that the scientists declared the Condon report incorrect and something could be learned from studying UFO reports (just for the record, Condon did not state categorically that nothing could be learned from studying UFOs, he just stated that it wasn't worth the effort). That was all UFOlogy learned from this effort. They haven't changed their methods and there is no effort to do so (I can think of many ways to improve what they do but what do I know, I am a debunker/skeptic).

So, UFOlogy will repeat what they are doing, pay for Stan Friedman to tell them the government is concealing dead aliens, and attend UFO conferences like so many trekkies in search of spock. The big difference is that MOST Trekkies know it is not real.

I don't know if I would go that far, but at least they don't claim that the aliens are being covered up.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I didn't read the article, but from the snippits there's one thing that strikes me as funny; the "UFOlogists" seem to think that declairing themselves as going mainstream makes them mainstream.

That's like me suddenly saying, "I'm the sexiest man in America". I can say it all I want, but if no one else thinks so, then it's just not true. (Oh, but it is true, if you were wondering).

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

Could be...the question is, to how many people.
Let's see now...
Fazor (one)
then there's... Um...

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Actually, I'd like to withdrawl that vote, I can't in good consious say that. But you see my point, why do "UFOlogist" think they're going mainstream, other than because they say they are?

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

The more he talks, the more foolish he looks. He gives scientists a bad name. I'm really bugged by his use of his credentials, "I'm a nuclear physicist", as if that, alone, would make available UFO evidence credible...It does not.

If they were to improve their methods, then it wouldn't take them long to realize that the evidence for alien piloted UFO's is simply not convincing.

Unfortunately, they are looking for a different answer.

I enjoy being the second sexiest man in America.

The first guy does all the work and I get all the shows, seconds, and cast-offs.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Ah, just as I have suspected for some time now. Joe Bob Briggs is Not Of This Earth!

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Actually, SF never got his PHD. He has a masters and has not been involved in the nuclear field for decades (60s or 70s I think). I doubt he could even get a job today.


Bingo!

Same cast of characters: Friedman, Knapp, Carrion, et al. These are the people who have for years put themselves in the limelight talking about alien visitors and secret government cabals to hide just enough of them from us so that no conclusive rebuttal can be given against the UFO hypotheses. Why would this new reach for credibility suddenly have a different goal than advancing the alien-visitation theory? The hemming and hawing is the natural result of trying to walk the fine line between doing real science and staying true to the faith. Unfortunately real scientists see right through it.

The classic straw-man approach: "If it's not this one small thing, then it must be our pet explanation." There's no basis for concluding any of the sightings have anything causally to do with each other. What's wrong with evaluating each report according to its evidence? Why does the alien-visitation hypothesis have to get stapled automatically as an option for each unexplained thing seen in the sky? There is no legitimate presumption of commonality just because someone always defaults to the same thing when no other conclusive answer presents itself.

I don't think these organizations really understand the degree to which they're being unscientific. Until they're willing to throw off all semblance of a preconceived answer -- which means shedding their very identity -- then no mainstream scientist will take them seriously.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

You know, I would actually be interested if they really were trying to do what they claim, i.e. get real science processes and scientific review of the claims. But that is not what they want.

That's not exactly what they said. They said they wish to gain respectability, they wish to reach out to academia and get help with scientific review of the case files. They want to find a way to stimulate scientists' intellectual curiosity to help explore the topic. So they didn't just declare themselves mainstream.

Yes, JayUtah, I was going to say something similar. They start with one possible explanation and assume it is the default explanation for every unidentified occurrence. That is exactly the problem with their method to begin with - assuming only 1 possible explanation. So now they're going to eliminate all the cases they can show are clearly human caused (deliberate frauds, military black projects, etc). Somehow that leaves any not conclusively proven as being aliens? What about not getting conclusive proof, but the incident still being human caused? What about simple mistaken identities, delusions, altered state events (hallucinations)? Eliminating only one fraction of causes does not automatically mean the alternative answer is aliens. You actually need evidence for aliens.

What does that even mean? How is Friedman not an apologist?

So where were the triangles 50 years ago? Doesn't this suggest to you that the answer is not aliens just managing to stay 1 step ahead of our technology, but possibilities such as secret defense tech staying 1 or 2 steps ahead of the mainstream knowledge, or psychological factors based upon stretching what we know is possible in conceivable ways? I would think both secret military and psychological explanations would be much more likely given that trend.

You actually need evidence for aliens.

Or more specifically you need a non-affirmative way to falsify the alien-visitation hypothesis. To refute such a hypothesis affirmatively would be, for example, to show it can't be an alien spacecraft because it's a model blimp that got away from its owner. To refute it non-affirmatively means you have to be able to say it's not an alien spacecraft because alien spacecraft can't behave that way. That's of course roughly equivalent to knowing how they do behave, not just ascribing properties to them wishfully, presumptively, or circularly.

A hypothesis that can't be falsified directly and must be supplanted instead by a conclusive alternative in order to fail simply factors out of the investigation. If no examination of evidence affects the plausibility of some hypothesis, then such a hypothesis can be neither held nor rejected on the basis of evidence and cannot be tested scientifically. The number of such rhetorically inert propositions is functionally infinite, so there's no reason to pay any special attention to any one of them over the others.

That's the very obvious methodological flaw that everyone seems to see except the UFOlogists. Until they correct that glaring error, they really cannot expect to have any overture taken seriously by mainstream science. It's nothing more than an attempt to legitimize the pseudoscience burden-shifting approach that assumes a farfetched proposition as the default and demands proof to the contrary.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

The problem with this organizations is that they are alien-hipotesys oriented. And that is not cientific at all.

For other way, i consider the ultimate irony, that the goverments don´t have a specialized department searching and studing the sightings.