Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
Well I'd be happy to find out more not easily unidentifiable stuff, there's no specific need to look for things that "defy physics".
Just for things that elude the current identification models.
Is there a “UAP phenomenon” worth studying?
- Thread starter Andreas
- Start date
Just for things that elude the current identification models.
Todd Feinman
Senior Member
I'm okay with it. Not going to change a thing for me and many others. Just a better tack. I'm tired of scientists telling me they exist or don't. Lots of bad scientists, lots of bad doctors out there. Passing tests means not a lot.
Mendel
Senior Member.
Just defocus your camera slightly, and you'll produce loads of it!⁵
⁵ bokeh, see https://www.metabunk.org/threads/angels-in-a-snowstorm-on-mt-athos-bokeh.10355/
Todd Feinman
Senior Member
So move on.
All of Skeptics' statements about the phenomenon are preserved here for later reference. You've created a monument to skepticism. It will be remembered always…
I've long toyed with compiling some of the best statements here, but I'd have to get my computer out. Still might. Too hard to search later.
All of Skeptics' statements about the phenomenon are preserved here for later reference. You've created a monument to skepticism. It will be remembered always…
I've long toyed with compiling some of the best statements here, but I'd have to get my computer out. Still might. Too hard to search later.
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Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
I think you point is reasonable, I'm not gonna argue against that. I guess I just disagree on the conclusion.
I believe an anomaly can be entirely objective and worth tracking, even if we can't predict when or where it will happen.
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
That's a good point! But then I think I'd be able to debunk them.
If not, I'll post them on Metabunk.
Mendel
Senior Member.
No anomaly has ever been, in 80 years.
Mendel
Senior Member.
Yeah, but at that point we're at "UAP reports come from people who lack the knowledge/experience to debunk them".
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
I guess we'll see in the next years, or not.
Wanna bet? I won't.
(Not advocating for Disclosure, and the movie about it is…see my other thread spoiler alert)
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
I'm a good sky observer, never seen anything I couldn't prosaically explain.
But I'll keep you posted if that happens.
Mendel
Senior Member.
It's kinda similar to "perpetuum mobiles/free energy gadgets come from people who lack the physics knowledge to understand what they're doing, or hoaxers/hucksters".
the point I'm trying to make is that the very nature of the NHI hypothesis and its postulated characteristics (advanced intelligence and/or technology) makes it unfalsifiable. Conversely, anomalous prosaic phenomenon - eg new forms of lightning, clouds, comets etc - should be objectively observable and able to be studied.
But under what circumstances and when do we agree that there is no NHI, if that is the case?
Mendel
Senior Member.
I would bet, it's free money at this point. The precedent-setter is Philip J. Klass, again, 40 to 50 years ago:
Article: The $10,000 offer
In 1966, Klass made an offer that stood for the remaining thirty-nine years of his life. By 1974, the offer had changed slightly, to the following form:
Klass agrees to pay to the second party the sum of $10,000 within thirty days after any of the following occur:
- (A) Any crashed spacecraft, or major piece of a spacecraft is found to be clearly of extraterrestrial origin by the United States National Academy of Sciences, or
- (B) The National Academy of Sciences announces that it has examined other evidence which conclusively proves that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrial spacecraft in the 20th century, or
- (C) A bona fide extraterrestrial visitor, born on a celestial body other than the Earth, appears live before the General Assembly of the United Nations or on a national television program.
The party accepting this offer pays Klass $100 per year, for a maximum of ten years, each year none of these things occur.[33]Klass made this offer openly to anyone. The offer was specifically declined by Frank Edwards, John G. Fuller, J. Allen Hynek, and James Harder, some of whom were the most vocal promoters of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. One person entered into the agreement with Klass. A man in Seattle, Washington, accepted the terms in 1969 and made two annual payments of $100. Then in 1971 he wrongly claimed the prize. When it was pointed out that his claim didn't meet any of the conditions, the man let the agreement lapse. In his book UFOs Explained, Klass offered to refund the full purchase price to every reader of the book if any of the conditions of his "UFO challenge" were ever met.[33]
The UFO curse
Klass left this statement, originally published in Moseley's newsletter Saucer Smear on October 10, 1983.[35]
THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF PHILIP J. KLASS.
To ufologists who publicly criticize me, ... or who even think unkind thoughts about me in private, I do hereby leave and bequeath: THE UFO CURSE:
No matter how long you live, you will never know any more about UFOs than you know today. You will never know any more about what UFOs really are, or where they come from. You will never know any more about what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs than you know today. As you lie on your own death-bed you will be as mystified about UFOs as you are today. And you will remember this curse.
Still stands today.
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Mendel
Senior Member.
Just agree on "there's no evidence NHI exist".
There's no evidence that Santa Claus exists, either.
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
I don't know, I think your point is valid on NHI.
But I think the "there's nothing to look at, at all" stance is different than "there is no reason to believe in NHI with no evidence".
Todd Feinman
Senior Member
You won't. And an utterly unscientific statement. Y'all just disagree with other SCIENTISTS who think they know what is going on. A raft for the lot of ya.
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
Yeah, you know.
Nah, I'm good.
This is one thing I think that should be supported.
Despite Loeb's certainty that every interstellar object is a spaceship.
The Galileo Project is a relatively neutral program (vis-a-vis Aliens) focusing on the generating of data, lots of data of many different types.
The more 'what's in the sky' data that is collected the better.
EDIT: The US government is doing a similar program to figure out what is flying around over its bases. But that program is classified and the data may or may not be revealed. So Loeb's claim to open-source his data makes this the more useful project.
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
Aaaaaaaand, I agree!
Gary C
Senior Member.
Also the reality of open and ongoing drone warfare is forcing the Pentagon to react to something it should have seen coming.
Gary C
Senior Member.
Science vs Scientists vs UFOs
We really should flag this usage as unacceptably vague.
"Science" is not a person and has no opinion of it's own.
"Scientists" is a catchall for a very very large collection of professional disciplines that follow one or more elements of the Scientific Method in the course of their daily work.
The list I posted above should have waited until today as I failed to explain why it matters and I apologize for that. To say that UFOs/UAPs deserve more scientific study allows everyone to nod in agreement while avoiding the hard parts; which UFOs and which scientists and why?
If you don't know what you are looking at, how do you decide who should study it? Does the report of a "black triangle" go to an aerospace engineering professor or a perceptual psychologist? Does a fuzzy "orb" go to a meteorologist, a plasma physicist, or perhaps an optical engineer?
Regardless of the scientific subject area within which you think your case(s) resides, you have to convince a subject matter expert in that field that it would be interesting to them. Automatically blaming the disinterest of bona fide experts on stigma is a cop out. The volume of pseudo-science passed off to the public as UFO research over multiple decades is more than sufficient to justify someone who's spent years getting a PhD being cautious. The believers are not the ones taking professional risk, the working scientists are. If someone with relevant expertise looks at a UFO case and sees nothing relevant to their field of study, that should be treated as a professional opinion. Not a final verdict certainly but if you are being honest it should encourage you to draw some boundaries around the evidence you think you have.
Asking someone to spend months or years of their professional life studying something because it interests you is only half the battle and only winnable if you are willing to pony up the funding for it. As others have rightly pointed out above, scientists have to eat. Many sources of funding such as governments and corporations have specific goals and criteria for the research they solicit making things that remain "unidentified" out-of-scope based on mission or business model. If you can't match you collection of UAPs to that mission you won't get much interest. Disclosure advocates have learned to couch UAPs collectively as some ill defined threat to national security in order to mine this avenue for PR purposes if nothing else.
Academic research committees may have more latitude to fund pure research but will be more likely looking for questions that expand the corpus of fundamental knowledge within the committee member's subject area. Just because you think you are looking at something that challenges the laws of physics does not mean that people who apply those laws in their day jobs will agree or that they won't be aware of an existing body of work that puts your unresolved cases in the dead end pile.
Having a collection of unresolved UFO cases is neither good nor bad, merely a fact of life. To maintain perspective, keep in mind that 100% of murders don't get solved either.
We really should flag this usage as unacceptably vague.
"Science" is not a person and has no opinion of it's own.
"Scientists" is a catchall for a very very large collection of professional disciplines that follow one or more elements of the Scientific Method in the course of their daily work.
The list I posted above should have waited until today as I failed to explain why it matters and I apologize for that. To say that UFOs/UAPs deserve more scientific study allows everyone to nod in agreement while avoiding the hard parts; which UFOs and which scientists and why?
If you don't know what you are looking at, how do you decide who should study it? Does the report of a "black triangle" go to an aerospace engineering professor or a perceptual psychologist? Does a fuzzy "orb" go to a meteorologist, a plasma physicist, or perhaps an optical engineer?
Regardless of the scientific subject area within which you think your case(s) resides, you have to convince a subject matter expert in that field that it would be interesting to them. Automatically blaming the disinterest of bona fide experts on stigma is a cop out. The volume of pseudo-science passed off to the public as UFO research over multiple decades is more than sufficient to justify someone who's spent years getting a PhD being cautious. The believers are not the ones taking professional risk, the working scientists are. If someone with relevant expertise looks at a UFO case and sees nothing relevant to their field of study, that should be treated as a professional opinion. Not a final verdict certainly but if you are being honest it should encourage you to draw some boundaries around the evidence you think you have.
Asking someone to spend months or years of their professional life studying something because it interests you is only half the battle and only winnable if you are willing to pony up the funding for it. As others have rightly pointed out above, scientists have to eat. Many sources of funding such as governments and corporations have specific goals and criteria for the research they solicit making things that remain "unidentified" out-of-scope based on mission or business model. If you can't match you collection of UAPs to that mission you won't get much interest. Disclosure advocates have learned to couch UAPs collectively as some ill defined threat to national security in order to mine this avenue for PR purposes if nothing else.
Academic research committees may have more latitude to fund pure research but will be more likely looking for questions that expand the corpus of fundamental knowledge within the committee member's subject area. Just because you think you are looking at something that challenges the laws of physics does not mean that people who apply those laws in their day jobs will agree or that they won't be aware of an existing body of work that puts your unresolved cases in the dead end pile.
Having a collection of unresolved UFO cases is neither good nor bad, merely a fact of life. To maintain perspective, keep in mind that 100% of murders don't get solved either.
Todd Feinman
Senior Member
A scientist who is open-minded. From my perspective, a bit naive, but that's probably a good way to approach things. I like him. But scientists say the craziest things sometimes. We have to humor some things.
You know I think you are an amazing bunch. And support your work debunking (the UFO world is full of nonsense too). I also understand your frustration, from your perspective.
But have we really learned anything new? Something worth a scientific study? Sure, we may have learned that a blurry dot in a video probably isn't a spaceship, and that's important given the extraordinary claims that were made about it. But without those claims, the case would have been of little scientific interest in the first place—except perhaps to those developing military imaging systems. I'm not minimizing the work done by us skeptics, but as I wrote earlier, I think our role is mainly to react to claims, test them, and, when appropriate, debunk them. Once a claim has been largely debunked, demanding further scientific study of it seems somewhat pointless.
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
That's why a multi-disciplinary / multi-skilled team is often used in those cases where someone tried and tries to study the subject as scientifically as possible.
But then you also need to consider:
- military / security reasons / classified raw data to further analyze cases.
- lack of funding
- the fact that it's not repeatable
- Often also these groups are a bit isolated.
They do share data, but I don't think there is a real "system" yet.
- some scientists (NASA, AARO) are already doing it.
- Hessdalen, UFO Sverige, CISU, GEIPAN.
There probably are many more.
Some of them are more serious, some of them less.
They haven't found much, I'll agree.
But I'm ok with all that.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Just to respond to a couple of ideas put forward...
Of course this doe not prove that there are no big huge conspiracies that have been kept secret -- definitionally, we would not know about them. But THIS secret would have to be kept by a number of governments, around the world, with conflicting motives, absolutely successfully, for as long time. I don't buy it, but anybody who wants to is of course at liberty to do so.
So to circle back to science and the study of UFOs -- assuming there is more than just a disinterest and "stigma" around UFOs. and is in fact a conspiracy to hide the truth at great risk and expense, that would strike me as a further disincentive to any scientist wanting to study them!
*
**
Yet decades and decades after the earliest claimed crashed craft and/or recovered aliens, nothing substantive has leaked. This goes back even further to to 1897 if you want to count the Aurora, Texas report of a crashed airship with occupant supposedly "not of this world." * (Though there is no hint that I am aware if that the Government recovered that one -- it was claimed that the wreckage was dumped down a well, and the pilot's "papers" in an unknown language were never seen by anybody kown, other than a mention of them existing in a newspaper report.)
Indeed. But after a LONG time, none has!
The record of governments keeping huge secrets for a long time with massive conspiracies is not encouraging for anybody hoping it has been the case with UFOs. They couldn't keep secret a "third rate burglary" and the associated stupid crimes during Watergate, they couldn't keep secret things I won't repeat about President Clinton and cigars. The Manhattan Project was plagued by leaks. **
Of course this doe not prove that there are no big huge conspiracies that have been kept secret -- definitionally, we would not know about them. But THIS secret would have to be kept by a number of governments, around the world, with conflicting motives, absolutely successfully, for as long time. I don't buy it, but anybody who wants to is of course at liberty to do so.
So to circle back to science and the study of UFOs -- assuming there is more than just a disinterest and "stigma" around UFOs. and is in fact a conspiracy to hide the truth at great risk and expense, that would strike me as a further disincentive to any scientist wanting to study them!
Yeah, not surprised that scientists think studying almost anything is a good idea -- but how many of them dropped what they were doing and switched to UFO research? Does that tell us how important they think such research is?
Oh? Anyone wanting to back that claim up, please jump in. What I am seeing is not that, I'm seeing the usual gang of suspects and some new recruits doing what they have always done -- trying to make a huge pile of lack of evidence in case after case look significant.
*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora,_Texas,_UFO_incident Note that there is no actual record at the cemetery or evidence of a pilot being buried in the cemetary -- JMExternal Quote:
**
https://fas.org/publication/manhattan-project-leaks/External Quote:
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
I love this case, it really shows there really WERE retro engineering programs on crashed UFOs! In 1897!
Grooosch is right!
Todd Feinman
Senior Member
Right. I just knew it was going to come up with controversial stuff to get you guys going.
Ann K
Senior Member.
In some ways that reputation is a trap. If Villaroel were to publicly come out and announce that she had recanted her previously held opinions because she found the evidence did not support it, THEN the stigma would be coming from her previous supporters.
A recent example of that effect is among the flat earth believers. Several of them accepted the invitation of scientists to travel to Antarctica where they were shown that it's not an impenetrable ice wall, and that (contrary to a commonly held misconception among them) the sun is visible 24 hours a day in summertime. Those who said "Enough of that nonsense, I accept that the earth is a globe" were vilified by the rest of the flat earth community.
It's easier for many people to accept the comfort of a shared delusion than to have to adjust to facts.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
They might want to start by turning their lights off at night, if they don't want to be detected... often said in jest, but I think it makes a valid point. If they are real, super advanced and do not want to be detected, why allow themselves to be sighted at all?
How long? It's been percolating along since at least 1947, longer than that if you count foo-fighters, phantom airships or the visions of Ezekiel. I would suggest that if evidence was going to turn up over time, it has had a LOT of time to do so. I'd argue that this suggests that there is nothing there to provide physical evidence. Or, at least, if there is something there it is able to avoid leaving us any physical evidence, for whatever reason it might not want to do so.
Though I guess they had a unique view of retro-engineering back then -- shove all the evidence into a hole in the ground! ^_^
(For those interested, The Mystorian over on YT has a pretty good (and pretty entertaining) take on the claimed Aurora airship crash, and some useful background on the Phantom Airship flap in general. Be aware that he uses some profanity.
Source: https://youtu.be/dBMDK0LgO24?t=822 )
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
You're close minded.
That was not a hole in the ground, it was an interdimensional portal!
The aliens just thanked them later for returning the retrievals because they knew humans could not study those things in the 1800s.
Todd Feinman
Senior Member
I hear you, perfectly reasonable to conclude that.
Todd Feinman
Senior Member
That is a good question. Some get the light show, some don't.
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
On a more serious note, this is a thing I've noticed so far in this thread.
Can we actually conclude that the only reason to further analyze the "anomalies" would be if they're intelligent?
I mean, If I set up a sensor to find "things that do very fast accelerations, 90 degrees turns, whatever" and it catches it, 98% of the time it's clutter, but then you have a small percentage of 2% left where you cannot really explain it away easily, and you think it's worth analysing, with maybe more people, more scientific rigour, better instruments, OPEN DATA, than I don't think you have to assume it's intelligent glowing balls at all.
That alone in my view does not imply that studying the subject HAS to mathematically look for intelligent life, we have SETI for that, which I also am very grateful to for doing its job.
Can we actually conclude that the only reason to further analyze the "anomalies" would be if they're intelligent?
I mean, If I set up a sensor to find "things that do very fast accelerations, 90 degrees turns, whatever" and it catches it, 98% of the time it's clutter, but then you have a small percentage of 2% left where you cannot really explain it away easily, and you think it's worth analysing, with maybe more people, more scientific rigour, better instruments, OPEN DATA, than I don't think you have to assume it's intelligent glowing balls at all.
That alone in my view does not imply that studying the subject HAS to mathematically look for intelligent life, we have SETI for that, which I also am very grateful to for doing its job.
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Todd Feinman
Senior Member
That's the next stage for the skeptic. Unknown electrical phenomenon. Then it will have to be proven that they are acting under intelligent control. Determining where they are from might take the rest of one's life, if it ever could be absolutely determined. It's a carnival ride. If I had more time to draw. Ride "The Skeptic" roller coaster. Folks standing up, blindfolded going into the open clam maw of a disk…
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Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
My previous answer did not include the money, funding, element of the discussion.
I'm ok with NASA studying UFOs, I'm not an American taxpayer.
I'm ok with NASA studying UFOs, I'm not an American taxpayer.
Ann K
Senior Member.
But you preceded that with
In other words, they reached no conclusion. They could not be "wrong in their conclusion". The items they studied remain unidentified. The reason for that could be any of the several reasons already discussed: perhaps the items were in the LIZ, the sightings were of very short duration, the report could have been a verbal description only.
"No explanation" is not an explanation, nor is it a conclusion that an object is mysterious in any way.
Edit to add: You have also described the groups as having professionals who "applied the most rigorous scientific methodology", yet you immediately disparage them when you say you want teams with "better organized teams and studies". Make up your mind.
The problem is, if you give me a two-year-old video of, say, a dot of light over the ocean that appears to show anomalous acceleration, what am I supposed to do with that as a researcher? I can't go back and set up sensors and there's no more data available than what the camera recorded.
Logically, there doesn't seem to be anything weird going on around NHI or aliens. And in this day and age with AI, no one is going to believe it unless the alien/plasma/cloud/animal holds a massive press conference and walks around as real evidence.
Buuuutttt
Reading the testimonials from the US docs and the Australia docs from 50s/60s it would seem like something was going down. The chances that people were seeing similar things like orbs and tubes all around the place is interesting. Add to the fact (to some degree) the clever government people trying to understand processes and causes for some of the strange sightings back then also seems to add weight.
It's going to be a really interesting (maybe 6 months?) to see how this unfolds, with threats from the believers about releasing THE evidence and then government slowly churning out whatever they have. But I don't think anyone will believe anything unless something like all the major international news corps show live evidence of something. I keep thinking of Mars Attacks
Interesting times
Buuuutttt
Reading the testimonials from the US docs and the Australia docs from 50s/60s it would seem like something was going down. The chances that people were seeing similar things like orbs and tubes all around the place is interesting. Add to the fact (to some degree) the clever government people trying to understand processes and causes for some of the strange sightings back then also seems to add weight.
It's going to be a really interesting (maybe 6 months?) to see how this unfolds, with threats from the believers about releasing THE evidence and then government slowly churning out whatever they have. But I don't think anyone will believe anything unless something like all the major international news corps show live evidence of something. I keep thinking of Mars Attacks
Interesting times
Todd Feinman
Senior Member
Absolutely.
Fritzkquzerk
Active Member
Fair semantic point.
But "no explanation' is exactly what I find interesting. Simple as that.
I think you can study UAPs as many do.
We agree no conclusive physical evidence has been found.
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