The Calvine object – a secret US reconnaissance platform?

[Todd Feinman]

And evidence that is THAT poor is not going to do much to establish an amazing new phenomenon previously unknown to science!

A lot of speculation soup has been made with that stone --er model --er thingamajig. Unless someone else got a pic of the event from a different view, I don't know how you could squeeze any more juice out of it.

 

[Andreas]

I think the "could it be genuine" question is a serious one, not merely a lack of skepticism.

I understand what you mean, but it's almost always possible to construct a chain of events that makes something seem possible. When some people see a fishing line holding a UFO in place, their first approach is to explain it away as a scratch on the negative. In the Calvine case, I'm sure the photo could, in fact, be genuine. It's possible that the witness saw something in the sky and took a few photos of it. But for this to be true, we need to construct a long chain of assumptions to explain the parts of the case that don't add up.

Both Clarke and Pope argued somewhat along the lines of, "Sure, it could be a hoax, but if not, then it could be…" And we could do the same thing with Adamski and Meyer. Once the possibility of a hoax is set aside, suddenly a case like Calvine seems much more interesting. But in reality, it isn't.

To summarize: we don't know who took the photo, we don't know when or where it was taken, and we don't know why the Daily Record didn't find it interesting enough to publish. But after studying the case thoroughly, I'm quite sure about one thing: the MoD didn't take it seriously and made only a minimal effort to investigate what really happened. And with such a weak case with few known facts — and a photo vague enough to effectively hide all traces of a hoax — asking whether the case could be "genuine" is the wrong way to approach it.

 

[Ann K]

And with such a weak case with few known facts — and a photo vague enough to effectively hide all traces of a hoax — asking whether the case could be "genuine" is the wrong way to approach it.

I disagree. We have a pretty good grasp of things like physics and how objects behave in our atmosphere. When something is seen that is described in a way that defies those laws, we do not first react to think "Whoa, this thing breaks the laws of physics. We better throw out all the long-established laws of physics!" No, any scientist would first look for an explanation for that behavior, one that doesn't require the extraordinary proof that would be needed to support the extraordinary claims. In such a case "could it be genuine" is exactly the right question, and when it is resoundingly answered in the negative, we have no need to search for sci-fi explanations.