I trust you are aware that the Mexican Airforce sighting has been explained very well, and and the Gulf Breeze sightings are generally accepted to have been a hoax; those sightings and the Phoenix Lights can not really be considered compelling cases. We also have a good thread on Rendlesham on this site, which seems to indicate that some of the accounts of that incident are unreliable, while other more contemporary accounts may point in the direction of a number of mundane explanations.
So at least three and perhaps four of the 'best case' incidents are less than ideal evidence for anything out of the ordinary.

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Actually, you can find some rebuttals to a lot of these if you look closely on the internet or elsewhere. Some of these are non-starters to begin with. The Mantell case has long been considered by many UFOlogists as a skyhook balloon. Lately, others have resurrected it again as some form of holy treasure that should not be debunked. Jimmy Carter's sighting was Venus but because he was a president, UFOlogists cling to all sorts of minutae in his report to say it was not venus even though Carter filed his report to MUFON four years after the event and did not even get the date right for the event (which can be traced back to the lions club meeting he attended). I have quite a few links for those cases (some are on my web page) for those interested in "the other side of the coin".

Roswell (ad infinitum)
Belgium AF intercept
Belgium UFOs
Gulf Breeze
Kecksburg
Trindade Island
Kenneth Arnold (two different links)
Jimmy Carter
Trent photographs
Two classic UFO cases of 1948 (Mantell, Chiles-Whitted)
Gorman and Mantell
RendleSHAM
STS-48
Mexico City solar eclipse

I could add a couple of more but it would be overkill. Some of these cases were simply ignored when they happened only to become big UFO stories decades later (Roswell and Kecksburg are two that come to mind), where the details are no longer accurate. Others rely on the testimony of one or two individuals as to the UFO being seen. Still others have inconsistent reports told by different eyewitnesses. If this is the evidence that UFOs are worth spending precious scientific resourses (time and funds), then it is sadly lacking. No scientist in their right mind would waste effort on something of this nature.

No scientist in their right mind would waste effort on something of this nature.

That's essentially what I mean by my "respectability without rigor" comment. Most non-scientists don't really understand the standards of evidence and investigation that prevail in normal scientific circles. Hence when they want to have their informal investigations accepted at the same level of credibility, they don't understand the rejection. Conversely, when scientists can't investigate something to an appropriate level of scientific rigor, they're content not to draw a conclusion. And that's the source of the "show me more evidence or leave me alone" attitude that many scientists take toward UFO research. UFO enthusiasts need to understand that such an attitude is not preferentially directed at them, but applies to all putatively scientific research. Put simply, scientists will not lower their standards simply because someone expresses intense interest in solving some particular mystery.

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

The fact that people see something in the sky, and cannot immediately identify it means nothing more than...well, that they saw something in the sky that they couldn't identify.

This affects how we interpret the consistency of testimony. Consistency is significant only if it involves a sufficient number of details.

If I'm interviewing witnesses while attempting to determine the cause of an industrial incident, I'll usually hear something like, "I heard a loud noise on the factory floor." But honestly 90% of all such incidents start as a "loud noise on the factory floor," whether they're safety violations, job actions, or equipment failures. Ten people telling me they heard a "loud noise" isn't meaningful consistency. There's a particular kind of loud noise when a steel structural member snaps. That's a completely different loud noise than when a crane hoist brake fails and drops a load on a concrete floor. And there's another completely different kind of loid noise from when a pocket of trapped hydrogen ignites.

One simply can't say that UFO sightings are "highly consistent" when significant detail is lacking. "I saw a bright object moving in the night sky" is not necessarily consistent with "I saw a bright object moving in the night sky."

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

Lol!

Well, it's consistent, just not meaningfully consistent. Like "I saw something," is consistent with "I saw something," though the somethings could be completely different. What they actually saw does not make the statements inconsistent, any more than it can make seemingly inconsistent statements consistent.

TheNick , i had your vision a few years ago. Almost enraged at people who seem to discredit a sighting with just common sense. Today i have changed a lot (this sounds like a ex-drug or ex-alcoholic speech).

As a romantic believer i have to say that concrete proof is reduced to zero, at this time.

If you see a light in the sky that makes a 90º turn at high speed, stops, hovers accelerates, dissapears and reapears, and has the shape of a saucer, at the end of the line, it can be just a secret manmade aircraft.

And even if the craft lands and 3 "aliens" came out, you will have to check that they are not men in suits, to scream finally "alien life on earth"...

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"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." - Albert Einstein

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au..._einstein.html

How about, "Is trivially consistent with..."?

Thanks to Astrophotographer for his excellent work in this respect, by the way.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

I always love Astrophotographer's links. He really does do good work.

I also want to add that I got into aerospace precisely because I believe there is life elsewhere in the galaxy. Skepticism over UFO sightings does not necessarily translate into disputing the exciting proposition that we are one species among many. But when it comes to proof of alien life, I want the real deal and not some trumped-up, over-hyped anecdote or misidentification that offers little more than fame for the person who reported it. And so I take a scientific approach to those claims.

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

Exactly,

I would not want scientists to put resources into investigating UFOs until after a craft crashes, several reputable teams from many universities study in detail the ship/occupants, and publish the results in the same kind of journals that the Mars Rover discoveries are published in. All the "UFO hunter" , "UFO files", etc. on cable are way below scientific standards.

The closest thing I've seen to a "scientific study" was J. Allen Hynek's research. At least he tried to quantify the subject with the "Stangeness vs. Probability" plot and argued that only the data points on the high strangeness-high probability part of the graph merited further study. Even here, I don't agree these diserve further study because "strangeness" is somewhat subjective.

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"fifty is nifty" , unknown poet

When it comes to beginning any investigation a key phrase should always be about any given evidence "Quality before Quantity"

When we have quality evidence then a proper investigation should proceed. A quantity of poor eye witness claims and a ton of hearsay should not be the foundation alone for a full scale investigation.

I guess I am just restating the obvious.

Vons.

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Mission Control : "Please don't kick the robot Bill. "

I also want to add that I got into aerospace precisely because I believe there is life elsewhere in the galaxy. Skepticism over UFO sightings does not necessarily translate into disputing the exciting proposition that we are one species among many. But when it comes to proof of alien life, I want the real deal and not some trumped-up, over-hyped anecdote or misidentification that offers little more than fame for the person who reported it. And so I take a scientific approach to those claims.

Well put. While I believe in the mathematical probability that there are many, many inhabited planets in the universe, at present I only know of the one we're living on. It would be wonderful to find proof of life elsewhere, even if it was only microbial life on Mars. Until that day, I try to separate what I believe from what I know. The burden of proof is on the claimant. To date, nothing that the UFO believers have presented is very convincing of alien visitation to the Earth. Perhaps that will change one day. I only hope to live long enough to see it.

The burden of proof is on the claimant. To date, nothing that the UFO believers have presented is very convincing of alien visitation to the Earth.

And their response is to demand that standards be lowered to accept whatever paltry evidence they have, and to interpret the reluctance to do so as an ideological set against extraterrestrial life and an irrational maintenance of some imagined status quo among mainstream science.

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