French National Assembly to host UAP seminar with true believers

[JMartJr]

So for fleeting scenarios, I'd agree that not actively thinking of capturing a photo/video could be understandable.

Yes, in any individual case. The weakness in the "you can't expect good pictures because people are surprised and need a moment to recover, think of their camera and pull it out" argument is that it has to work EVERY TIME.

A similar argument could be made for fireball meteors, plane crashes, homicides, etc. And while often such things happen with nobody taking a picture or video, SOMETIMES people react quickly, or have their camera out anyway, and we have examples of clear, definitive pictures/film/video of all of them.

The argument has been made, "Go out and take a video of the next low flying plane you see, you'll see how tricky it is" misses the point that however tricky it might be to grab a shot of a given unexpected plane buzzing you, we have LOTS of imagry of low flying planes -- that is clear, crisp, retailed and very obvious the sort of thing captured in the picture/video.

Numerous example here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/rare-things-that-have-been-documented-much-better-than-ufos.13047/

 

[NoParty]

And just for the record,
the reason I have never gone public with news that there are 5 leprechauns living in my east walk-in closet,
is less that I fear being made fun of, for believing there are 5 leprechauns living in my east walk-in closet,
than that I truly have no good reason to believe there are any leprechauns living in my east walk-in closet.

 

[Stryder]

IMHO, the statement: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" while logically true is not the absolute "get out of jail free" card that many "believers" seem to think it is.

For 80 plus years we've been hearing that any day now, we are going to get the clear and definitive picture or video proving the existence of ETI visiting earth. In the 1950's, only a few people had cameras and they were cumbersome to use quickly, required film, had delays between taking a picture and having results (developing), and were relatively expensive to own and use. By the sixties, many (most) families in the developed world had a camera and film and development costs were within reach. By the 1980's many families had video cameras, but these were typically dragged out only for special occasions. In the 1990's along came digital cameras where cost per image became negligible and initial camera price was also modest. Importantly, the time between snapping a picture and seeing the results was near instantaneous. In the 2000's, digital phones with digital cameras (still and video) came on the scene. Ownership was low at first, but adoption was rapid. Even in less developed countries, most people had access to such a device by the 2010's. Also in the 2010's the cameras in phones improved dramatically to the point where the camera's were better in many respects than the human eye. Digital security cameras came on the scene this decade as well (first Ring doorbell 2014). In the 2020's, there are more digital phone subscriptions than humans on earth. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there were more than 8.58 billion mobile subscriptions in use worldwide in 2022, while the population crossed the 8 billion mark. Fixed digital cameras (security, doorbells, traffic, etc.) have become ubiquitous. Each of these devices are continuously recording and many have at least a partial view of the sky. The number of images created everyday far exceeds the total of images for many of the decades in the 1950s - 1980s.

I think (again my opinion), that a strong case can be made today that we have enough images or devices showing an absence of evidence of ETI that we are approaching very high-P values of this most likely means there is an absence (of ETI). At the very least, we can state a hypothesis that people's firsthand reports are very likely to be mistaken. We test this by comparing the number of witness reports that seem to indicate an anomaly out of the number of humans on earth and the time they spend looking at the sky versus the number of anomalous images (not LIZ, but actual anomalies) and the number of images of the sky. Given the large number of reported sightings versus the low number of good images showing ETI (zero), we can show the null hypotheses (people are not seeing ETI) to be true at very high p values (3 sigma+?).

Now of course it is "possible" that ETI is here and invisible to all of our cameras and other recording devices, but of course, then they would be invisible to observers as well.

Bottom line, I don't think we need to wait another 20 years to have high confidence that ETI is not on or near Earth. We said something similar 20 years ago, and the sensor coverage of Earth has increased more than I expected in the intervening time. As many commentors have stated, "Time will tell". I think it has told.

 

[Nourali]

So you discount the possibility that we do not have authentic good pictures of truly anomalous objects because no truly anomalous objects exist?

It's literally the opposite of what my words mean...
I don't discout that possibility, i litteraly do count that possibility as I said. I just think there are anomalous objects. Thats my opinion for now.

 

[Andreas]

And you are dismissing witness reports... because you don't trust them? That's not very scientific. We have plenty of examples of witnesses being dismissed for science to later recognize they were right, epistemology is full of it.

This is a bit of a tangent from the original discussion, but since so much of this thread has ended up revolving around eyewitness testimony, I think it's worth addressing.

One point that keeps getting lost in these discussions is that honest witnesses are not the same thing as reliable witnesses. The vast majority of eyewitnesses are not lying. They genuinely report what they believe they saw. But human perception and memory are reconstructive, not photographic. People misperceive, misinterpret, misremember and unknowingly fill in gaps.

A good real-world example is the study of eyewitnesses to the murder of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh. Researchers compared 29 witnesses' descriptions with CCTV footage showing the offender only minutes before the attack. They found that 42% of all reported attributes were incorrect. Even more striking, over 60% of the witnesses got the offender's upper clothing wrong, despite clothing being one of the most obvious things people believe they would remember accurately. Estimates of age and height were even worse.

So when someone says, "Why would dozens of witnesses lie?", they're asking the wrong question. The relevant question is: Why should we assume that sincere human perception is an accurate recording of reality? Decades of cognitive psychology suggest that it isn't.

 

[FatPhil]

It's literally the opposite of what my words mean...

But it isn't. You claimed, and agreed to the interpretation when pressed, that it was the difficulty of obtaining good evidence that explains why there is no good evidence.
Mauro's now pressing you on the alternative explanation that there are in reality no things to have good evidence of. Which, if you are being consistent, you must reject as it contradicts what you've previously said. And if you are being inconsistent, well, I think this branch of the discussion has come to a mostly useless close.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

This is a bit of a tangent from the original discussion, but since so much of this thread has ended up revolving around eyewitness testimony, I think it's worth addressing.

One point that keeps getting lost in these discussions is that honest witnesses are not the same thing as reliable witnesses. The vast majority of eyewitnesses are not lying. They genuinely report what they believe they saw. But human perception and memory are reconstructive, not photographic. People misperceive, misinterpret, misremember and unknowingly fill in gaps.

A good real-world example is the study of eyewitnesses to the murder of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh. Researchers compared 29 witnesses' descriptions with CCTV footage showing the offender only minutes before the attack. They found that 42% of all reported attributes were incorrect. Even more striking, over 60% of the witnesses got the offender's upper clothing wrong, despite clothing being one of the most obvious things people believe they would remember accurately. Estimates of age and height were even worse.

So when someone says, "Why would dozens of witnesses lie?", they're asking the wrong question. The relevant question is: Why should we assume that sincere human perception is an accurate recording of reality? Decades of cognitive psychology suggest that it isn't.

I think some people, not necessarily alien believers, would conclude that some witnesses could be actually reliable.
I think most skeptics think that if this were the case, these cases would not have been unidentified or anomalous in the first place.

 

[jumbobob]

Yes, in any individual case. The weakness in the "you can't expect good pictures because people are surprised and need a moment to recover, think of their camera and pull it out" argument is that it has to work EVERY TIME.

A similar argument could be made for fireball meteors, plane crashes, homicides, etc. And while often such things happen with nobody taking a picture or video, SOMETIMES people react quickly, or have their camera out anyway, and we have examples of clear, definitive pictures/film/video of all of them.

The argument has been made, "Go out and take a video of the next low flying plane you see, you'll see how tricky it is" misses the point that however tricky it might be to grab a shot of a given unexpected plane buzzing you, we have LOTS of imagry of low flying planes -- that is clear, crisp, retailed and very obvious the sort of thing captured in the picture/video.

Numerous example here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/rare-things-that-have-been-documented-much-better-than-ufos.13047/

I think the cases reflected in that thread are slightly different. Many of those are linked to an event that leads up to a photo/video or IP/Ring cameras that run 24h a day. The difference with a UAP is that there's no build-up to the thing happening. I'm aware I'm generalising a bit, as there are definitely once in a life time photos/videos. I compare it to taking a speed boat from point A to B in the ocean and then seeing a whale breach. You saw it for 2 seconds, you think it was a whale but you'll never be sure as you have no evidence.

Regarding what you said about the "amplitude" of what someone sees (I take that you mean the apparent size of the object), I would expect that most people seeing something very large, so, less likely to be a misinterpretation of something mundane, would be more likely to try to record it, than if seeing something small. My reason for assuming that is that a viewer would be more inclined to dismiss something small, as possibly mundane (and perhaps not worth recording), than something larger and easier to identify if it was mundane.

To clarify regarding amplitude/size, when you refer to things being large or small, do you mean how great a part of the viewer's field of view it occupies, and not a viewers assumption of its actual dimensions? i.e. something that is "large" is not something occupying a small part of the viewer's field of view, but which they assume is large, but at great distance. For example something reported as "the size of a football field", but "kilometres away", so seen as small in their field of view, would not constitute a "large" object.

Yes, I think we're saying the same thing. If I'm able to see something and immediately realise that it is not normal and the viewing occurs over minutes/hours - I don't see a reason to not have some sort of evidence.

Distance to a large object does add a complication. But I was thinking of the Stephenville sighting, multiple witnesses, ridiculously large object, slow moving and no evidence. Seems weird.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

If I'm able to see something and immediately realise that it is not normal and the viewing occurs over minutes/hours - I don't see a reason to not have some sort of evidence.

I see a possible reason, rare phenomena.

 

[Andreas]

I think some people, not necessarily alien believers, would conclude that some witnesses could be actually reliable.
I think most skeptics think that if this were the case, these cases would not have been unidentified or anomalous in the first place.

But I think people often approach this from the wrong perspective. I don't think only a handful of witnesses are credible—I think almost all witnesses are credible. The problem is that credibility does not imply reliability. Honest people can sincerely report what they believe they saw and still be objectively wrong. The real question isn't whether we should believe the witnesses. It's whether it's reasonable to assume that any of them actually interpreted what they saw correctly.

 

[Nourali]

But it isn't. You claimed, and agreed to the interpretation when pressed, that it was the difficulty of obtaining good evidence that explains why there is no good evidence.
Mauro's now pressing you on the alternative explanation that there are in reality no things to have good evidence of. Which, if you are being consistent, you must reject as it contradicts what you've previously said. And if you are being inconsistent, well, I think this branch of the discussion has come to a mostly useless close.

There is a difference between:

"I believe X is the best explanation at the moment,"
and
"X is an established certainty and all other possibilities are impossible."

That's basic epistemic nuance.

The alternative hypothesis, that there are no real anomalous objects to get evidence of, remains logically possible. I just don't think it currently accounts for all the strongest cases as well as my interpretation does.

So no, this is not inconsistency. It's just not binary thinking.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

But I think people often approach this from the wrong perspective. I don't think only a handful of witnesses are credible—I think almost all witnesses are credible. The problem is that credibility does not imply reliability. Honest people can sincerely report what they believe they saw and still be objectively wrong. The real question isn't whether we should believe the witnesses. It's whether it's reasonable to assume that any of them actually interpreted what they saw correctly.

No I actually meant that even if we were to assume 80% of witnesses are credible, some people might argue that a certain percentage of those "credible" witnesses are also accurate in their descriptions.

 

[FatPhil]

So no, this is not inconsistency. It's just not binary thinking.

But the question you answered in the affirmative was "does this fully explain ...". That's pretty binary.

 

[Ann K]

I'm not here to convince you but to answer any questions. You can do your own research looking for reliable anomalous video.

You seem to misunderstand the burden of proof. We skeptics are not the ones claiming there are anomalous cases that may turn out to be evidence of alien intrusion into earth's atmosphere. Those who make the claim must provide corroborating evidence. That's not OUR job.

 

[Andreas]

No I actually meant that even if we were to assume 80% of witnesses are credible, some people might argue that a certain percentage of those "credible" witnesses are also accurate in their descriptions.

I mean, sure, a testimony can be right or it can be wrong. When people see Venus, some correctly identify it as Venus, others think it's a star, others think it's an airplane, and still others sincerely believe they've seen a large hovering spaceship. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I'd guess that most people would say they saw an unusually bright star. Those people would be perfectly honest—and obviously wrong. Just like those who sincerely believe they've spotted a spaceship. The difference is that only the people claiming to have seen a spaceship make it into the UFO literature.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

I mean, sure, a testimony can be right or it can be wrong. When people see Venus, some correctly identify it as Venus, others think it's a star, others think it's an airplane, and still others sincerely believe they've seen a large hovering spaceship. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I'd guess that most people would say they saw an unusually bright star. Those people would be perfectly honest—and obviously wrong. Just like those who sincerely believe they've spotted a spaceship. The difference is that only the people claiming to have seen a spaceship make it into the UFO literature.

Well does the Venus analogy always apply to UFO cases?
We might argue that lights in the distance, at night, are easy to misinterpret.
But again, this stance somehow must assume that everytime someone observes something difficult to explain then the observer must be unreliable.
I think this is where the disagreement often comes from.

Edit:
There's also many cases we know of that happened at daytime, of people seeing stuff up close.
But when something weird is close enough, then the hypothesis of the hoax or hallucination is brought up much more, so in those cases we might argue whether the witnesses were actually "credible" and not only reliable.

 

[JMartJr]

No I actually meant that even if we were to assume 80% of witnesses are credible, some people might argue that a certain percentage of those "credible" witnesses are also accurate in their descriptions.

None of which matters if you cannot reliably differentiate between the credible and the non-credible, or the accurate and the inaccurate. If you can't do that (and we can't) then anecdotes are never going to be much use as evidence.

 

[Andreas]

Well does the Venus analogy always apply to UFO cases?
We might argue that lights in the distance, at night, are easy to misinterpret.
But again, this stance somehow must assume that everytime someone observes something difficult to explain then the observer must be unreliable.
I think this is where the disagreement often comes from.

Edit:
There's also many cases we know of that happened at daytime, of people seeing stuff up close.
But when something weird is close enough, then the hypothesis of the hoax or hallucination is brought up much more, so in those cases we might argue whether the witnesses were actually "credible" and not only reliable.

We live in a world where some people claim to have seen the Loch Ness Monster up close, while others claim to have seen Bigfoot walking among the trees. People report seeing fairies and gnomes, ghosts and the Mothman. Even more people claim to have seen the Virgin Mary or to have been spoken to by angels. And, of course, some people report seeing UFOs and extraterrestrials. Should we always conclude that "where there's smoke, there's fire"?

UFOs exist in the LIZ, and eyewitness accounts of close encounters remain unsubstantiated stories. You mention hallucinations and hoaxes, but the truth is often more subtle than that. Human perception is not a passive recording of reality. The brain actively constructs our experience, filling in gaps based on expectations, context, and prior knowledge. It naturally creates coherent narratives from incomplete information, often without our conscious awareness. Memory is equally fallible. It is reconstructive, not like a video recording, and it can change each time it is recalled without the person realizing it. Memories can also be influenced by conversations with other witnesses, causing people to adopt details they sincerely believe they observed themselves.

So I don't agree that "this stance somehow must assume that everytime someone observes something difficult to explain then the observer must be unreliable." On the contrary, it is entirely consistent with what cognitive psychology has taught us about perception and memory. People in general are surprisingly trustworthy, but we still don't need aliens in the equation.

 

[FatPhil]

So I don't agree that "this stance somehow must assume that everytime someone observes something difficult to explain then the observer must be unreliable." On the contrary, it is entirely consistent with what cognitive psychology has taught us about perception and memory. People in general are surprisingly trustworthy, but we still don't need aliens in the equation.

With very little modification I could accept something like that sentence. It's true inasmuch as almost all people are unreliable observers almost all of the time. And because of that, you can strike the "something difficult to explain" part. "There's a man in a gorilla suit walking amongst the players passing the balls between themselves" is a very simple explanation of something that, evidently, is extremely simple to explain, and yet almost everyone was an unreliable observer of it. It's not an insult, it's not an attempt to stratify humans by ability of lack thereof, it's just a broad-brush conclusion for all the reasons you state about the entirely natural shortcomings of how we detect, perceive, interpret, and recall things that we experience.

 

[purpleivan]

There's also the issue of how "reliably reliable" someone is. Even if someone has incredibly accurate recollection of their experiences 90% of the time, there is no way of knowing if a specific experience is part of that 90%, or the less reliable 10%, without corroborating evidence.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

With very little modification I could accept something like that sentence. It's true inasmuch as almost all people are unreliable observers almost all of the time. And because of that, you can strike the "something difficult to explain" part. "There's a man in a gorilla suit walking amongst the players passing the balls between themselves" is a very simple explanation of something that, evidently, is extremely simple to explain, and yet almost everyone was an unreliable observer of it. It's not an insult, it's not an attempt to stratify humans by ability of lack thereof, it's just a broad-brush conclusion for all the reasons you state about the entirely natural shortcomings of how we detect, perceive, interpret, and recall things that we experience.

I think the difference between how skeptics see some events and how the SCU does, lies in the interpretation of eyewitness reports.
SCU considers them reliable enough. Scientifically, of course, eyewitness testimony is a very unreliable kind of evidence, and it's also completely useless if there's nothing to corroborate it.
While I agree on this premise, this shouldn't imply that even if we exclude all the hoaxes, the remaining sightings must all consist of equally false claims, without exception. This, I think, is the core of the disagreement.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

So I don't agree that "this stance somehow must assume that everytime someone observes something difficult to explain then the observer must be unreliable." On the contrary, it is entirely consistent with what cognitive psychology has taught us about perception and memory. People in general are surprisingly trustworthy, but we still don't need aliens in the equation.

This is correct, but if I look at the sky and see a plane, and recognize it as such, by its shape, movement, color, noise, light pattern, whatever.
What are the chances that what I'm seeing is actually a blimp?

 

[Baptiste Fr]

You seem to misunderstand the burden of proof. We skeptics are not the ones claiming there are anomalous cases that may turn out to be evidence of alien intrusion into earth's atmosphere. Those who make the claim must provide corroborating evidence. That's not OUR job.

We have a government office that has proven that we have very reliable, very anomalous cases. All data is available freely on the GEIPAN website.

 

[Baptiste Fr]

No indeed, I'm rather trying logic vs. the purely rethorical assertion you made:


This assertion has exactly zero epistemological value, as demonstrated by the fact that you can change the subject at will to fairies, leprechauns, angels, demons, ancient Greek Gods or whatever and get exactly the very same rethorical effect and nothing more.

You also did not answer my question: is the fact that no authentic good photos or videos of phenomenon X exist that we know of, evidence for or against the existence of phenomenon X?

We have good photos, the fact that you are stating that we have none makes me think you already categorized that none exists, and as I'm not here to convince you, I'll not enter a debate on cases with photographic proof, and I'll let you to your opinion that none is good.

 

[Baptiste Fr]

Tim Printy's analysis of the Stephenville event and the MUFON report has been online for eighteen years, and yes, MUFON (or certain individuals associated with MUFON) have responded). Indeed, one individual from Texas MUFON was quite impressed and presented Printy's analysis in a meeting, but he seems to have been ostracised somewhat for this.

See
https://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/SUNlite2_4.pdf

So you've already have their answer, please publish it, i'd be interested to read it

 

[Baptiste Fr]

What is a "true report" and can you point to one that came out of the New Jersey drone flap?

I'm not in charge of that case, maybe you could ask one of the ground investigators? I think the Tedesco brothers were there.

 

[Baptiste Fr]

Yes, in any individual case. The weakness in the "you can't expect good pictures because people are surprised and need a moment to recover, think of their camera and pull it out" argument is that it has to work EVERY TIME.

A similar argument could be made for fireball meteors, plane crashes, homicides, etc. And while often such things happen with nobody taking a picture or video, SOMETIMES people react quickly, or have their camera out anyway, and we have examples of clear, definitive pictures/film/video of all of them.

The argument has been made, "Go out and take a video of the next low flying plane you see, you'll see how tricky it is" misses the point that however tricky it might be to grab a shot of a given unexpected plane buzzing you, we have LOTS of imagry of low flying planes -- that is clear, crisp, retailed and very obvious the sort of thing captured in the picture/video.

Numerous example here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/rare-things-that-have-been-documented-much-better-than-ufos.13047/

I said birds, not planes, planes move in a linear fashion at constant speed. For meteors, they are indentified by the mind and suffer no fear of peer pressure, so it's logical that we have more. The fact that you consider that we have absolutely no good pictures of UFO is puzzling to me. Did you have a too small corpus to look at, or did you consider conventional explantations sufficient to explain them all, or have you take the category "explained" for granted and looked at none?

 

[Baptiste Fr]

I think the difference between how skeptics see some events and how the SCU does, lies in the interpretation of eyewitness reports.
SCU considers them reliable enough. Scientifically, of course, eyewitness testimony is a very unreliable kind of evidence, and it's also completely useless if there's nothing to corroborate it.
While I agree on this premise, this shouldn't imply that even if we exclude all the hoaxes, the remaining sightings must all consist of equally false claims, without exception. This, I think, is the core of the disagreement.

Most judicial systems heavily rely on witness testimony. There was a time material evidence almost didn't exist.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

Most judicial systems heavily rely on witness testimony. There was a time material evidence almost didn't exist.

Science and the Law are different, we really have to consider that.

 

[Baptiste Fr]

There's also the issue of how "reliably reliable" someone is. Even if someone has incredibly accurate recollection of their experiences 90% of the time, there is no way of knowing if a specific experience is part of that 90%, or the less reliable 10%, without corroborating evidence.

You can assert the reliability of the witness, and you know that the interpretation part of his testimony is subject to bias. By language analysis you can determine which part is the interpretation and focus on the most reliable part.

 

[Baptiste Fr]

Science and the Law are different, we really have to consider that.

I would refer you to the discovery of meteors I explained ealier, in the case of the Aigle meteor shower.

 

[Eburacum]

The fact that you consider that we have absolutely no good pictures of UFO is puzzling to me. Did you have a too small corpus to look at, or did you consider conventional explantations sufficient to explain them all, or have you take the category "explained" for granted and looked at none?

The members at Metabunk have looked at a very large number of cases, and failed to find any really convincing examples. If you have some good examples we will be pleased to examine them.

Note, however, that most examples from the 20th century are difficult to examine in their full context, so they can often appear inexplicable; whereas more recent examples can be examined using a wide range of tools, such as satellite ephemera and commercial flight radar data, and Mick West's Sitrec tool.

 

[Eburacum]

I would refer you to the discovery of meteors I explained ealier, in the case of the Aigle meteor shower.

More important in this respect in my country was the fall of the Wold Newton Meteorite, a large chondrite meteor that fell in 1795, very close to an observer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wold_Cottage_meteorite

This does prove that sometimes the paradigm really does need to shift, and we should always be on the lookout for unexpected phenomena. But the Wold Newton meteorite is a very large physical piece of evidence, that was examined by a large number of scientists and now resides in a museum, something that is so far lacking in UFOlogy.

 

[Mauro]

We have good photos, the fact that you are stating that we have none makes me think you already categorized that none exists, and as I'm not here to convince you, I'll not enter a debate on cases with photographic proof, and I'll let you to your opinion that none is good.

I did not state anything. Indeed you said (post #31):

No photos of video that we know of, you can't deduce a truth from a lack of information.

Now it'd be interesting to know what you actually think, do we have good photos (in which case, obviously, I'd like to know which they are!) or don't we?

But yet again, what I wanted to point out is that if we have no photos, adding to it "that we know of" is just an exercise in rethorics with no epistemological value. Do you now agree with this ?

 

[Ann K]

We have good photos, the fact that you are stating that we have none makes me think you already categorized that none exists, and as I'm not here to convince you, I'll not enter a debate on cases with photographic proof, and I'll let you to your opinion that none is good.

"We have good photos" is a simple declaration, the truth of which could be demonstrated by showing us some good photos. Then we can turn the analytical skills of dozens of experts on a picture to see if meets the definition of "good" in any way. That would not require you to "enter into a debate", merely to give us access to some data. Surely someone who really wanted to know the truth would not be afraid of whatever evidence we come up with.