UFOs are UFOs. Some will be fakes, some may not be. Broadbrushing is just as worse, than not being skeptical of what is presented as evidence.

BTW, MK-Ultra wasn't a hoax. They did much worse than injecting pigs with drugs (the well documented LSD experiments on soldiers in the 60s, aren't in dispute).

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UFOs are UFOs. Some will be fakes, some may not be.

Are any known to be real alien spacecraft?

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

I agree. The problem is when someone proposes "new evidence" (in quotes, because i use that term loosely) that an alien craft has visited us.

I think most of us here, for example, would stop short of saying that any reported sighting could not have possibly been an alien space craft. We'd say that for the same reason we say that whatever "evidence" is not proof that it was an alien spacecraft. The nature of these reports is that someone saw something that they couldn't identify, and then it went away. That's not evidence of anything other than whoever saw whatever, didn't know what it was that they saw. Theres not many other ways you can further investigate. You can check radar records for any matching hits. You can check weather reports for likeliness of some known natural phenomenon. You can examine the scene to see if anything from the surroundings could have produced said sighting. But there's no physical evidence to examine.

Therefore when someone posts a fuzzy, grainy video of some bright dot on a black backdrop, with no other evidence but an inexpert witness account (after all, who is qualified as an expert in identification of alien crafts?), we say, "This is not evidence of a UFO. Talk to us when you have more to go on."

That's not broadbrushing. That's being honest. I already said it once today, and it's repeated here all the time, the fact that something is unidentifable or unknown is NOT proof that said thing was alien, ghost, big-foot, or an honest lawyer. Those things require more evidence, and that evidence just is not there. That could change tomorrow, or that could never change.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

mutters, there must be some sort of filter that stops short pithy full caps on here. all I wanted to say was

UFO ≠ETV


but it wouldn't let me.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Ah, well now THAT'S proof of THE MAN'S involvement in this board! (see, at least caps work fine as long as you distribute them with some regularly capitalized words. That's much less annoying

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

It's the NO CAPS conspiracy! That's how the Greys and the Illuminati plan to control us!

Step one: Control Caps
Step two: ?????????
Step three: World Domination.

It's all so SIMPLE!

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Have no idea. But like with any question, one won't find answers unless they seek them.

That can't occur when...

1. There's no funding (and as good as mankind can be, scientists won't work for nothing -- tell that to medicine!).
2. "Skeptics" rather condemn than seek answers.

The inquiry is what is missing in the equation.

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Bring something worth studying to the table and someone will provide funding. There is no funding because no one that would provide funding considers there is anything worth funding. Funding doesn't come from some magical jar, it has to come from a budget from somewhere. You can't just demand that someone fund you, you have to prove to them it's worth their while.

Skeptics demand evidence. If you haven't got any, then there is no point at looking at your claims.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Hrm.

If UFO sightings were held to the same "standard" as the Apollo Hoax community gives to the evidence of the lunar landings...

Certainly every UFO sighting ever made would flunk.

What would pass muster? Seems to me a full Gort scenario would still be impeachable -- hey, witnesses can be bribed or fooled, the military and the press are puppets, and, sacred vermicelli, you think the White House Lawn is really a neutral location?

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Who decides in being gatekeepers?

Actually, research dollars are in short supply anywhere (even medicine where they have a HUGE cash cow, called the pharm industry). But when the gatekeepers decide on political terms what to fund, not science itself, those dollars dry up faster than a pond in Hell.

Read above.

Positive skeptics demand evidence. The Pseudo-Skeptics only demand 15 minutes of fame.

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Another negative, and presuming a hoax without even studying what can be a hoax.

The search for truth won't hurt you, ya know?

Remember, the "common sense" "experts" claimed the world was flat????

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UFO ≠ ETV

this is a test

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Just an FYI about the previous test post: A post requires at least one lower case letter, or will run a conversion routine. It may or may not be visible, but the previous post contains the text "this is a test" but with a white font color.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I make no assumption about the nature of UFO's. I do make an assumption about the nature of belief; that the same kinds of evidence that many UFO believers accept, Apollo Project disbelievers will not accept. Yet, these are often the same people!

And you know better -- Greek thinkers had figured out a round world. But you are right that common sense is not a good guide to scientific fact. Nor is popular belief.

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Do you know what you're even stating?

Read it again.

So who cares about them, do the damn research! Stop doing the turkey dance (heck, it's too early for Thanksgiving!!).

Didn't help Columbus now did it when he set sail -- especially getting the monies to try to sail for the New World, as they thought he was "mad" for trying.

Like the Wright brothers.

Like Goddard.

Like Yeager.

Same thing I say about the manned space program, especially how popular belief fuels too much imaginations of seeking to find little green men on Mars or beyond!.

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Have no idea.

How is that different from "no?" Since there is clear knowledge of some past sightings having been faked, and clear knowledge of other past sightings being misidentified natural or man-made phenemona, and no knowledge at all of any past sightings having been the result of alien visitation, how is it not rational to consider either of the former more plausible than the latter for some other sighting, all other things being equal?

The inquiry is what is missing in the equation.

No, simply an understandable lack of interest in an alternative for which there is absolutely no prima facie evidence. Since you seem so interested in proper methodology for scientific inquiry, as opposed to a mindless dismissiveness you're trying to pin on us, explain exactly how the "alien spacecraft" hypothesis can be falsified for some sighting? How would the "alien spacecraft" hypothesis be scientifically testable?

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

"UFOs. Ugly Fat Omeletes."
-Eddie, Aliens Don't Wear Braces
Bailey School Kids Series

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

No is an affirmative, ah, NO!

Wow! Laying it on thick!

You were doing fine until you reached here...

Knowledge is there from many reports. Proving it is another matter.

Which means, like all things unknown, you make a list..............

But Randi et al doesn't want to research anything paranormal...WAAAAAHHH!!

I don't know if little green men landed on Earth ( and frankly wouldn't care, since they didn't bring me any chocolates! ), but since I don't know IF they did, if folks want to research it, it's not for me to say to them, "no". Knock those socks off!

Gatekeepers don't own knowledge, Jay, folks will research under/over/around them.

And the sad part of all of this is, IF anything is found, the ones with the eggs on the face won't be those folks these pseudo-skeptics claim to be wearing tin-foil hats.

That's why the peanut gallery tends to be neutral.

Why science also won't never stamp out a belief in God, too.

Remember, I'm a skeptic of pseudo-skeptics, and my job isn't to provide the evidence as I'm not proposing any beliefs, but will question the methods and reasoning of pseudo-skeptics for the benefit of Science.

I watch the watchers, Jay.

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Actually, they knew the world was round. The argument was about how large it was. Columbus was against popular opinion in having what ultimately turned out to be an incorrect idea of the size of the Earth. He was funded because the commercial possibilities that lay in a new spice route seemed too great to ignore. He succeeded because he found another continent instead -- and, after some years had passed, ways were found to make money off the resources there.

Similarly, the Wrights did not go against the opinion of those who understood what was being done in human flight. They simply made faster progress than any pundit expected -- and in large part not because they built a craft that worked, but because they built a new science that showed the way to build such craft.

Yeager, also, had many people behind him who strongly believed the sound barrier could be surpassed. No-one "accidentally" made an aircraft powerful enough to reach supersonic flight, or casually let him alone with the time and altitude to try for it. He became "fastest man alive" in a clime of professionals who understood the goal and had the basics of a science to describe the situation he would encounter.

In none of these oft-quoted cases was there something that went not only against popular belief but also the experience of professionals in the field: that was proven wrong by a single maverick with nothing but a determined belief in their own accuracy.



Not to say it doesn't happen. There are some cases where the claim was extraordinary, but was eventually bore out. Plate tectonics, for instance.

But here is where I part with the UFO believers, the psychic power believers, the homeopaths and so forth.

First, is that the new theory, no matter how striking it is, does a better job of answering existing observation.

Second is that the new theory is parsimonous; it does not require an overturning of large parts of the previous understanding of the world.

Take Relativity. It did not ask that Newtonian physics be abandoned, nor argue that the observations that supported Newtonian physics must be wrong. What it did was show that the answer given by Newtonian physics was incomplete.

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Knowledge is there from many reports. Proving it is another matter.

Word games. Cite a UFO sighting from the past that was proven to be an alien spacecraft. Not merely attributed to aliens, but proven.

Which means, like all things unknown, you make a list...

No, you make two lists.

The first list is Possible Causes Known to Exist. On that list go flocks of birds, normal aircraft, fraud, optical illusions, and the like.

The second list is Possible Causes Not Known to Exist. On that list go space aliens, angels, ghosts, government holograms, transvestite space cows, pixies, and all the other fanciful, far-fetched entities for which no evidence of previous existence can be supplied.

Since that second list is not scientifically testable, you throw it away. It's better to conclude that a sighting's cause is "unknown" than to try to claim by pseudoscience or default that it "must" be one of the causes on the list you threw away.

If you can't understand why two lists are necessary, then you don't understand the qualitative difference between fact and supposition.

Gatekeepers don't own knowledge, Jay, folks will research under/over/around them.

Empty rhetoric never answered any question. If you want a hypothesis to be considered, you must give prima facie evidence and a falsifiability test. That is the requirement of the scientific method. If you cannot provide those, you must admit your hypothesis cannot be tested scientifically.

And the sad part of all of this is, IF anything is found, the ones with the eggs on the face won't be those folks these pseudo-skeptics claim to be wearing tin-foil hats.

You're worried about egg on your face when you should be worried about being right for the right reasons.

If anything is found, the skeptics will happily change their tune. If anything is found, that means the landscape of evidence will have changed. when the evidentiary landscape changes, the skeptics naturally re-evaluate their position to accommodate the new evidence, if necessary.

The tin-foil hat crowd has drawn a conclusion that is not based on evidence. If the evidence should someday change to render that conclusion true, the conclusion will still not have been drawn on the basis of evidence; it will have been only accidentally correct. Getting the right answer doesn't count if you don't get it by a defensible, testable process.

When you care more about the truth than how you appear to others, then you'll earn their respect.

That's why the peanut gallery tends to be neutral.

You're not by any means neutral. You passionately despise those who don't want to artificially elevate the credibility of implausible claims until the evidence merits it.

Remember, I'm a skeptic of pseudo-skeptics, and my job isn't to provide the evidence...

I'm not asking for evidence in this case. I'm asking for your proposal of a test for falsifiability for a hypothesis. How would you prove, in a non-affirmative way, that a sighting was not caused by space aliens? Please answer my question.

...but will question the methods and reasoning of pseudo-skeptics for the benefit of Science.

I've asked you what qualifications you have in scientific inquiry. Since you haven't answered, I assume you have none. I don't think science wants your help.

I see no reason to take methodology and reasoning lessons from someone who won't discuss the falsifiability of the claim she wants considered. If you aren't conversant in the most basic concept of scientific reasoning, then I fail to see the lofty pedestal from which you presume to criticize me.

I watch the watchers, Jay.

No, you just make a lot of meaningless noise. You can't demonstrate that any of your "watching" is based on anything other than stuff you make up.

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

Similarly, the Wrights did not go against the opinion of those who understood what was being done in human flight. They simply made faster progress than any pundit expected -- and in large part not because they built a craft that worked, but because they built a new science that showed the way to build such craft.

Nobody thought the Wright brothers were mad. On the contrary, there was intense interest from other parties in what the Wrights were doing. They extended numerous invitations for the Wrights to attend events, which the Wrights rightly realized were attempts to spy on their work. The Wrights knew they had knowledge no one else had, and so collaborating and conferring with other competitors would not avail them of much, but would aid their competitors significantly. Since the Wrights were the only self-funded major player in the powered flight race, this would have put them at considerable advantage.

Whether they went against the "opinion" of others in the race is a matter of interpretation. The other competitors had a wrong notion of flight control, which limited significantly their potential. The Wrights had first discovered three-axis flight control, which no other party had. And they had discovered, by their own means, errors in the prevailing understanding of certain aeronautical principles and quantities. The machinery they produced to derive their own substitute knowledge (e.g., wind tunnels) became the basis of subsequent flight development.

The key to understanding this is to realize that the Wrights were consummately scientific in their redefinition of certain aerospace concepts such as lift and drag. They were not random mavericks bucking the prevailing trends. They were responsible innovators in the field. Their separation from others was to protect their intellectual property until the necessary patents were in place. That sort of secrecy is standard practice in today's industries.

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

Who?

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle1672192.ece

These skeptics found their "holy grail" in a book where the author proclaim it was "made up" by Washington Irving (and God, has the skeptic sites plastered it all over!). The same author is, who I've read from a review, "pleads to remove physics from metaphysics".

Yet another agenda driven campaign. No wonder why Randi et al hailed that author.

But like God, they can't remove the initial belief itself, that long proceeded a fictional story (for Irving just didn't invent it out of thin air...he was a reflection of his day, with what's "common knowledge", like most authors today still rely upon for their novels...why sci-fi novels tend to look so outdated in 20 years).

Just as scientists today believe in what their peers don't, same was true in Columbus' day (and if they didn't, Galieo would've never surmised Earth revolved around the Sun, and just accepted "common knowledge" of his day).

You don't hear much of the scientists today who told the Wright brothers flight was impossible from their plane? Nor the mockery of Goddard's rockets (which the lay public wouldn't know why or HOW to mock, but the papers of the day somehow knew WHAT to mock)? Nor the "conventional wisdom" that the sound barrier will kill anyone trying to break it?

No. That's quietly shelved.

Those sailors probably did go out to sea with those beliefs, too. As no one knew what was ahead...there wasn't a GPS satellite to tell them otherwise!

That's the problem with such skeptics. They take one idea, hammer it home as one "truth", and defy you to "prove" otherwise. I just did, because human nature trumpets any agenda!

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Is there an argument in there?

I am not sure where you are going with this, although there does seem to be some suggestion made that my understanding of the medieval world view is informed entirely from some recent popular book.

I ask what if any argument is being made, because more and more discussion with you seems to be turning into "I'll argue on whatever side I like as long as it makes me look like the smartest person in the room."

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

You herald yourself as a trumpeteer.


I would call you a noisemaker who likes the sound of their own noises.

Although the 'cause' you claim is a worthy one, you are carrying it to absurd lengths.

Aaaand she's outta here.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Somehow I see the entire hoax theory encapsulated here...relace scientists and lay public with HB...and the last sentence fits the HB claims about the VAB radiation to a "T".
Incorrect "conventional wisdom" is shown wrong when it's proven wrong, as seen in the examples above.

I'd like to see just ONE clear, high-resolution picture of an alien UFO, flying saucer or otherwise.

Today, hundreds of millions of digital cameras, camcorders and cell phone cameras are widely deployed around the world. Many have low-light capability, extreme optical zoom, and image stabilization.

There's no shortage of people saying "it was as big as a house -- landed right in front of me". If that truly happens, eventually someone would whip out their cell phone and take a picture. Or an amateur videographer with a 40x optical zoom would get clear, high resolution video.

Motivated photographers have no problem getting quality pictures of entertainment celebrities, often at extreme range.

Yet all "alien UFO" images remain fuzzy blobs of light.

It's the exact opposite of Apollo -- thousands of super-clear pictures, multiple Saturn V launches before millions of eye witnesses, etc.

Moo?

tbm

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Paddle faster!! I hear banjo music!!

Someone I worked with once said that they thought that space exploration was a huge hoax and that all the pictures we got from Hubble, the Mars exploration rovers, Cassini, Galileo, and so on were computer generated.

They then proceeded to tell me that no matter what I said to them or showed them they would never think any different because that is what they believed an no one could change it.

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My Music, 56k stream available -Check it out!

Then praying for them is the only option.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek