Fair enough; though I suspect those non-PhD scientists' work stayed within accepted mainstream paradigms.

But are you suggesting the JBIS paper is "baseless" with "obvious physical flaws?"

If so.... how so?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Likewise, and none taken.
I find myself more and more skeptical of "skeptics." There appears to be as much an industry of "debunking" as there is pseudoscience. And from what I've witnessed here over the last couple of years is many so-called "skeptics" of the ETH are as uninformed and rooted in "belief" as they so often suggest the "woowoos" are, exhibiting high degrees of subjective thinking when considering the ETH.
I believe I've pointed out a couple of good examples here in this very thread.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

See Scourge, this is the very real problem. You're asking us to try and ID something that is nearly impossible to ID. If you were totally convinced that it was Russian Migs scouting out your hometown for a parachute drop we couldn't help you any more than if you had said it was space aliens. I agree that what you saw was at least mildly enigmatic, but I can't get excited about it. Why? There's nowhere near enough evidence in your experience to begin to make an educated guess. Most of us on this board know the hazards of trying to figure out what's in the sky and how difficult it is to ID stuff when it's difficult to see or just a collection of lights. (Personally, I now always carry binoculars in my car so I can attempt to satisfy my curiosity.) I'm not saying you should stop trying to figure out what it was, but even if, as you say, it would be really stupid for an experimental military craft to be conducting test flights over a populated area, that possibilty is still much, much more likely than it being space aliens.

Have you conclusively eliminted the possiblity of the military? Have you concusively eliminated the possibility of some sort of private stunt pilots? Of someone deliberately hoaxing you? Someone trying to hoax the whole area? I mean, these are very unlkely circumstances, I agree, but each and every one of these is MUCH more likely than it being an alien craft.

See, it's always difficult to prove something by negatively proving it. (i know, I could have said that better). What I mean is that you're trying to say that its probably space aliens because it's not a natural phenomenon or can't have been accomplished by people on earth. Unfortunatley, and this is probably the most basic premise that the UFOers singuarly fail to grasp: it's almost impossible to prove something this way. I can always come up with a scenario that is possible, no matter how preposterous it sounds, that is more likely than sace aliens. It could be a collection of ballons, several miles away, each with powerful lights attached to the bottom of it that wink in and out making it seem like sharp angle turns. Et cetera, et cetera.

Yes, we do ask for extrordinary evidence. After all, it's an extrortdinary claim.

John

Most skeptics I know are willing to accept the possibility - even if a remote one, but don't feel the evidence is particularly compelling. And, to date, not a single Unidentified Flying Object has ever been postively and unequivocally Identified as a vehicle from outer space containing intelligent extraterrestrials. Therein, lies the problem. Its great to speculate on the possibiities, but without clear, unequivocal and independently verifiable evidence that identifies an unidentified flying object as something of extraterrestrial origin, no one can reasonably conclude we are being visited by E.T.

And yes, invectives like "woowoos" and "crackpots" may suggest bias, but the trouble is "UFOlogy" is full of such characters, from Pru Calabrese, who "remote viewed" a spaceship in the tail of Hale Bopp to Richard Hoagland, who still claims there is a face on Mars. "UFOlogy" sports no standardized methodology and has no standards of proof by which a body of systematically organized evidence may be assembled. Its simply "science" by anecdotes, which isn't science at all. Running around collecting ephemeral "sightings" reports about fuzzy objects in the sky and excusing the lack of any real evidence on so-called government cover-ups, doesn't cut it.

Its not up to the "skeptics" to prove the advocates wrong. Its up to the advocates to prove their right. Those who truly think there is a case to be made need to do a better job of making their case. I'm willing to be convinced with something truly convincing.

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Anything may be possible, but not everything actually is. Some things are true and some things are not. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

OT for a second guys, if you don't mind.

Hewhocaves. a few posts back you say this:

I thought I had read where it'll never be possible to view the landers from Earth. This being due to the distance, size of target and the properties of light. "Diffraction limited" is the term used to describe this for scopes, I believe. . .

Is this incorrect?

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. . . My moustache is touching my brain!!!!

yes, i've heard that said as well. however, we've done such wonderful things with adaptive optics in the last few years I wonder if that sentiment shouldn't be revised.

Never is a really strong word to use. I'm 32. Where were we, telescope- wise 50 years ago? (1955) We still had people debating canals on Mars. We could point the Keck at Mars today and knock out that idea. We could probably point any number of ameateur scopes with a CCD on it and do it as well.

And if I can head off what I perceive as the inevitable counter-argument; I don't think any of us on here have said that we will never be visited by ETs, we're just saying that the evidence presented that we have already been visited is shaky at best

John

Previous posts explain why I see this situation as a true conundrum, rather than an amusing footnote. Because a phenomenon like this is –perhaps by its very nature- scientifically indemonstrable, since the one thing required to reach a consensual conclusion is the one thing we will probably never get—a piece of whatever is moving in the sky. Nothing less is going to be taken seriously by the scientific community. But I think some of these reports, especially those by trained observers, hold profound significance worthy of conscientious, rigorous scientific investigation. So it’s a Catch-22.

What I think we need here is a special category of scientific inquiry for phenomena that, by their very nature, cannot produce irrefutable physical evidence, so we can at least –look- at a phenomenon like this without resorting to name-calling and knee-jerk accusations of foolishness/delusion/lies.

Some people are trying to do this, but since precious few scientists are willing to risk their reputations and livelihoods by associating themselves with such investigations, and since their work has to be funded almost entirely by their own savings accounts, little if anything significant is getting done. But I have faith in science, and I think if we had some support by the scientific community to conduct a solid investigation, we may not end up with the ‘smoking gun’ to establish exactly what is going on—but I think we’d be able to demonstrate conclusively that in fact –something extraordinary- is going on. I seem to recall that even Project Blue Book concluded that some small number of reported sightings fell into exactly such a category, but it fell on deaf ears. Why? Since when has science turned its nose up at any unsolved mystery?

So what we’re left with, for the most part, is a very loosely organized group of nonscientists attempting to do something that scientists themselves won’t dare to attempt—make an extraordinary case with nothing more than photographic evidence, some good stories, and an occasional odd soil/plant sample or midnight sunburn of the face. It’s not right—of course their efforts are fumbling, because rather than helping, most scientists would rather sit back and laugh at the show. I’m sorry, but that kind of behavior seems kinda contemptible to me—it’s like watching the neighborhood bully beat up the stuttering girl, and passing the popcorn. And God forbid some poor sucker tries to jump in and help—we’ve seen the apparently well-meaning Dr. Haisch get torn to shreds before our very eyes right here.

And a salient point that seems to keep sailing over the heads of the ‘disbelievers’ here is: how can you say that an extraterrestrial craft is ‘more unlikely’ than a military craft defying the known laws of physics, when Fermi’s paradox was born from the scientific conclusion that ‘they’ –should- be here, right now? If indeed our best guess (and I’d like to take a long hard look at this issue if anyone’s game) is that our galaxy ought to be essentially teeming with intelligent life, then why it is so freakin unlikely that we might actually see ‘them’ from time to time? It’s not scientific—you can’t have it both ways, viz ‘well yes, we’ve concluded that it’s highly probable that we’re the new kids on the block, but you’re a fool if you think we’re going to ever see our neighbors. It’s much more likely that someone around here is performing physics experiments we’ve deemed impossible.’ ?

Algorithm--you're asking non-scientists to make a positive ID of something the scientific community doesn't even acknowledge may exist--doesn't that strike you as a little disingenuous? Can you put the shoe on the other foot and see what a bind you'd be in if -you- saw something that defied conventional wisdom?

Sure, maybe what I saw, and what other people have seen, was nothing more than advanced military aircraft. But if we go with that—then our own government is holding back a few chapters from our modern physics books, and that’s hardly an acceptable state of affairs now is it? Or if what I saw was some radical form of ball lighting or something? Well dang—what if one of those struck a passenger plane? Or worse, showed up on Korean radar during delicate nuclear weapons negotiations? Or as someone suggested earlier—what if it was some unknown kind of mass delusion…something that could happen to pilots and send them into a collision? We should know.

For these and many more reasons, it’s not only unbecoming, but it’s irresponsible of the scientific community to dismiss the reports in question. Nobody’s going to back a responsible investigation without your support, because answering observed enigmas is your field. But until you acknowledge that there is a question, the rest of us are left out in the cold, reluctant to even share our observations under threat of public humiliation and downright derision. We’ve been waiting for a long time, would it really be so bad to lend a helping hand?

amen

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"I'm a visionary, I'm ahead of my time...
...problem is i'm only about 30 seconds ahead."
George Carlin

Wow... where to begin?

Not necessarily. But you are at least partly correct in that the world will want something more than an easily fakeable light and sound show

so what you're asking for is a science without the scientific method. Good luck there. I think Creationism ascribes to that idea. You should talk to them

Another problem here that's pretty commonplace: the idea that if just enough scientists 'believe' in somehting, it suddenly becomes 'good' science. That's a really misdirected view on how science works.

I'll admit the first part of this actually irked me. But look at the second part. Is that a good body of data? Heck no! I can accomplish the same thing on any given evening. I can take terrible pictures with my digital camera, go digging in a landfill, tell stories around a campfire and break into a tanning salon at midnight.

and right off the deep end we go... there's no point in debating this kind of bitter name calling.

again, you're assuming that you, the observer, have not made any sort of mistake in your observation, that you haven't been fooled by some perspective of vision, that you are not the unlucky recipient of some hoax and that you are a qualified expert in all poissible obects that you can view in the sky. That's an impressive resume then.

how many eskimos are australain pygmys likely to see? Just because something *should* be there does not mean that it *must* be there. In fact, if it isn't there, then there's probably a very likely reason for it. And while hte UFOists are sitting there complaing that the astronomers are doing nothing, it is in fact the astronomers who are finding the exoplanets, understanding the other planets in our solar system and digging deeper into the fundamental principles under which our galaxy is ordered. Yes, they're really "beating up the stuttering girl". And in fact, when all is said and done, I think you'll find that it's the long, slow, methodical approach that will eventually come up with the final, correct answer - not some woowoo with a camcorder along a state highway.

or maybe its just a confused eyewitness.

Wow. that's a real textbook case of a persecution complex. And what happens if your sghting is investigated and its proven to be "observer error" or a natural phenomenon. Are you going to say "Wow, gee. I guess I was wrong! Thanks, science for clearing that up. All I really wanted to know was what that thing in the sky was. Golly, I'm sure glad it was all readily explainable. What a silly mistake it all was!" No, of course not. You're going to want another test, then another test, then another test and etc... Then you're going o pore over the results, look for something that could be misinterpreted as something else, misinterpret it and then say "Oooh Science screwed up because I observed it and I have to be right because my eyes can't possibly be fooled by something because I'm the observer and my fertile imagination has already settled on 'space aliens' as the answer and I won't stop until the data is 'cooked' to the point where it supports my claim.

Hmm.. that may have been a tad harsh. I wish the aliens hadn't told me to write that. I hate when they make me help cover up the conspiracy.

John

There's already a "category" without the scientific method...it's called pseudo-science.

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about and scourge pointed it out as well: You are automataically applying a low a priori probablity to the ETH.
I see this as the crux of the matter.
Why?
Because even in the "scientific method" one must make assumptions to test a theory, and it is in these assumptions that personal bias can shows itself.
The "scientific method" is supposedly "objective" but within the method itself allows for subjectivity to creep in.
Hence the low a priori probability "skeptics" like yourself apply to the ETH.
Here, we have a seemingly mainstream journal publishing a paper that says, according to modern astrophysics, that we should be immersed in a galactic Civ, AND YET, "skeptics" still think the prosaic explanations are "MUCH" more likely.
I see this as the reason that "Science" has alienated (pun intended) the masses. People worldwide have experiences such as scourge's and yet "science" tells him he's a "crackpot" misidentifying some mundane event.

***SNIP***

I disagree. As I pointed out earlier, humans have been writing about "those from heaven to earth came" for millennia, replete in our Religious and Mythic texts. They've also documented countless "sightings" through the ages into our very own day. In the blink of an eye, evolutionarily, humans became a space faring species. Presently, we have scientists saying that modern astrophysics demands ET is all around us.
So what exactly is so "extraordinary" about such a claim?

__________________
"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

lol.. you made me use the dictionary. bad you.

Seriously, I see your point, and you do have a valid point. Yes, we do tend to look at ETs as the absolute last case scenario for something inexplainable. But I personally don't see a problem with that, nor do i see it as "science" conducting a crusade against the UFOists.

Look, it's really simple. When you're trying to figure out what something is, one of the easiest ways to do so is deciding what it's not and working from there. So you start with the easiest things to eliminate. Is it a plane? Is it a star? Is it Venus? Is it a weather balloon? Is it an RC glider? Parachutist? Good Year Blimp? Comet? Meteor? Ball Lightning? frisbee with a laser pointer taped to it? Etc... And if it passes all those and you can conclusively prove that it isn't any of those AAANNND you have useful data to analyze you can start making some general assumptions about it based on the data. That is: size, speed, altitude, etc... keeping in mind the limitations of the data that you possess.

Those last couple of sentences are where IMHO most UFOers go horribly, horribly wrong. They eliminate the obvious and then presume that it's space aliens. So you've got some lights in the sky. Fine. Some people saw them. Great! Were there any photographs taken - and I mean useful ones, not what you tend to see on the Sci-Fi channel. Were the five people standing next to each other, or were they miles away. I'd like to be able to triangulate this thing to see how far and how high up it was. Did you see anything except lights? Could you see a craft? Or have the space aliens perfected interstellar glowsticks?

It doesn't take long (and I'm sorry scourge for using your example - believe it or not, I believe you saw something odd in the sky that day - I just don't know what) before you realize that there's very little substance to the sighting. Without data to analyze, theres little for the scientist to do. And that's frustrating, because the witness desperately wants to know what he/she saw, especially if it is aliens. I mean how cool would that be? Nevermind the appearances on Letterman, the permanant entry into the history books, the cash lecture tour - just to know that we're not alone, well that in itself is damn comforting. We could ask their advice. "How did you survive the nuclear age? The Red Sox winning the world series? The almost-collapse of civilization?"

But it's preciscely because it's such an enticing idea that we HAVE to be extra skeptical. What a disservice we would be doing if we blew the whistle too early, if we misidentified something natural as aliens? What would people think? And then if we mistakingly convinced ourselves that there were aliens actively watching us from low orbit or closer and we tried to contact them and there was no one to respond... Then what?

You know, theres a lot of flack about science "alienating" people. And yet, people gladly embrace the fruits of science - the technology, the advances, etc... UFOists have been studying this same phenomenon for over fifty years now. In that time, science has gone from vacuum tubes to tablet PCs, from the moon to the edge of the solar system, from an average death at sixty to almost eighty. And yet the UFO "evidence" today is as shabby as it was fifty years ago. You talk about science being such a terrible thing, but it has one thing going for it. It works. Somehow, in the midst of the greatest revolution in the history of humanity, the UFO movement has completely and totally stood still. IMHO it's not science that has alienated the masses. they love us. We give them IPods. It's you guys.

John

Science works well indeed. I agree quite strongly with the following (from this article):

Woverine,

That is a great quote. A fertile imagination and an open mind are wonderful things, but they are only the beginning steps towards knowledge and wisdom. Rigor and discipline are necessary to complete the process.

Regards,
Algorithms

__________________
Anything may be possible, but not everything actually is. Some things are true and some things are not. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

I agree with that article completely Wolverine, especially this part:
"the scientific method must be employed as the basis for drawing conclusions regarding paranormal claims." But if most scientists abide by this, then why are they not particpating in the inquiry more actively?

I like science; it’s the best thing since soap. I’m saying we need to apply it to the ‘sighting’ phenomenon, rather than leaving it up to the cranks to draw wild-eyed fantasies about it. But ever since Project Bluebook was closed, the only place people have to turn, even if they have a compelling case happening right in front of them, is to the –least qualified- people in the country. Am I the only one here who appreciates this problem?

This is why I’m saying we need –scientists- to look at this stuff, because the layman isn’t equipped or qualified to meet this high standard of skepticism. You’re asking the layman to do the work of a group of top-notch scientists