FatPhil
Senior Member.
For the record, can we have a quote and link for that?
AARO's Historical UAP Report - Volume 1
- Thread starter Mick West
- Start date
I think you're caught in cognitive dissonance. You're defending the absence of evidence and methodology and for some reason you're trying to paint me as illogical.
I'll repeat because you keep getting this very very wrong.
The report states that there was elemental spectroscopy carried out on the materials. It also talks about other aspects of information collected.
It fails to provide any evidence of this.
Mendel
Senior Member.
The report makes no mention as to the methods used to characterize the material.
We agree on this.
But I don't complain that this evidence (that I want) was not included with the report, because I recognize the scope of the report and the consequences for including it. I do hope that AARO will release some version of their pertinent case files, so that we can see the evidence that the report is based on.
Mendel
Senior Member.
https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Project_Sign#cite_note-10 is a thorough, well-referenced (albeit self-published) article on Project SIGN. It states the claim regarding the project name and references it to the book also given in footnote 3 of the AARO report.Also I'm not sure how many of you publish articles for a living but it's certainly not scientific practice to use a fandom page as a citation.
AARO report, p.14:
https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Project_Sign#cite_ref-10
FatPhil
Senior Member.
That is worded with a future aspect - there is an indication of intent, nothing more. It is not a claim that such an analysis has taken place.
Here's the text from the report. Where are the analysis?
Hmm. So they came to a conclusion without analysis? Are you starting to see the problems with this report?
But the Spiderman fandom is also well researched I'm sure.https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Project_Sign#cite_note-10 is a thorough, well-referenced (albeit self-published) article on Project SIGN. It states the claim regarding the project name and references it to the book also given in footnote 3 of the AARO report.
AARO report, p.14:
https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Project_Sign#cite_ref-10
There seems to be a push here for me to accept less than scientific standards. I'm not doing that.
Eburacum
Senior Member.
There is some new detail here, which is interesting. The sample was mostly magnesium, and the bismuth does not occur in pure layers (this contradicts earlier analyses).
Also, an origin is suggested ('possibly of USAF origin'), which raises interesting possibilities. Maybe the sample was provided by an Air Force source, someone who may be deliberately attempting to deceive.
Also, an origin is suggested ('possibly of USAF origin'), which raises interesting possibilities. Maybe the sample was provided by an Air Force source, someone who may be deliberately attempting to deceive.
I know there’s countless examples of why Wikipedia is not
Again we shouldn't take trust me I did the analysis for evidence. Let's wait to see if AARO releases this for peer review. Until then there's no evidence
Mauro
Senior Member
I agree, very good job. A prime go-to reference list for the history of UFO/UAP studies.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
I'm seeing a problem with your argumentation. You made a claim, I called you out on it, and you responded with something that did not support your claim. That's the only thing that I am addressing here, and your attempts to divert my attention elsewhere will fail.
Ann K
Senior Member.
You "demand"?? Then you'll have to get a high position there with some serious clout, have all the necessary expertise, and pass all the rigorous security checks.
It's not wrong to ask, but you're asking the wrong people. Don't yell at us about it. Ask AARO, ask Chuck Schumer, but right now you have access to exactly the same information that we do.
I don't think you know why you're disagreeing.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
That would be an extraordinary coincidence -- that "Saucer" was used for a project name (formal or otherwise) BEFORE Arnold's sighting resulted in UFOs being tagged with the moniker "flying saucers." I suspect memories are re-arranging events here.
That the AAF might have been investigating foo fighters and ghost rockets and the like would not surprise me.
Yes. I demand evidence for claims.
I also professionally combat the antivaxx claims. I think it's up to debunkers to call for evidence. I disagree Ann that we should obtain a position to demand evidence for claims made.
Ann K
Senior Member.
I repeat, you're "demanding" from the wrong people.
Ann this is not how debunking works. When claims are made without evidence I am entitled to question where the evidence is. I am calling out people here who are accepting this document without evidence.
Ann K
Senior Member.
The report says spectroscopy was carried out. If the data is made public, what happens next? Do you, or some other UFO fan, then say "How do we know if that's the real sample, huh?" You'd have to be there, in possession of the sample from the moment it was found to the moment it was analyzed, to know that. And you'd have to be there at the moment it fell from the sky to know it came from some as yet undefined source. It's a never-ending spiral of excuses as to why some people will not believe the report.
You're not going to get the information you want by impugning the reputation of AARO and its scientists without any evidence of misinformation on their part, which is what you're doing.
No Ann. This isn't how science works.
When I make a claim that I carried out an experiment I present the methodology, data and conclusions to the public via the peer review process. It's simple. I'm happy to talk you through it online or offline.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
I don't care what you think or don't think.
Eburacum
Senior Member.
Concerning peer review, surely a scientific report can be peer-reviewed without being publicly released? I'm sure there is a procedure that could allow this to happen.
The reviewers can be given security clearance of some sort. None of this suggests that the reports will never be released; but they might not be released immediately.
deirdre
Senior Member.
You are correct that there is no reason to accept the public report without question. I do understand the point you are trying to make and agree with it.
For outside readers reading: You may eventually see the evidence for some parts of the report. YOu likely will not see the bulk of evidence for a variety of reasons (classified American information the world is not entitled to see, information that is currently part of an ongoing criminal investigation: like if they are going after the leakers who are feeding Corbell etc etc, )
I, personally, do believe the meta material evidence and methodology will eventually be released and/or obtained from FOIA. Skeptics have been waiting 60 plus years for some evidence of extraterrestrial anything. I dont think most skeptics are too sympathetic to believers having to wait a bit for [the bipartisan ufo believers in] Congress to fact check the report and let us know if there are issues or a lacking of actual evidence.
Yes of course. I used to write them when I worked in the government. They always, always, should contain links to data and methodology though.
I mean like it or lump it, this is an area that's of huge public interest. It could conclusively solve some issues once and for all but it will take more than a report devoid of data and also one which cites a fandom page.
Ann K
Senior Member.
I'm glad to hear it, but what I'm pointing out is that even knowing the methodology and results for a particular sample, there's a chain-of-custody question big enough to drive a truck through. And if the past is any example, there absolutely would be nay-sayers pouncing on that, people for whom no answer except "Yes, ET has landed" is acceptable. I certainly hope you're not one of them.
It's axiomatic that we can't prove a negative, but all it would take is one good example of a positive extraterrestrial presence. "Where's the beef?"
Tezcatlipoca
Active Member
This is a historical intelligence assessment - not an academic or scientific study, or journalistic reporting. The standards are entirely different. Holding them to those standards is misaligned and not embracing the fact it's not that. Not to mention compartmentalization issues, like the fact that was done through the CRADA, so, while the testing results may not be classified, they're part of an agreement with a private corporation, in which an NDA exists relating to the output of the agreement.
So, cough, yet another case of information being held back by the one group that can release it (the whistleblowers), because the government has the responsibility not to just drop anything and everything - in this specific case, *because of those same people*.
This is the circular issues mentioned in the report.
-Make agreement that requires NDA
-Blow the whistle on your own effort, make up BS
-Claim government rebuttals aren't enough because they didn't drop information protected by the NDA
deirdre
Senior Member.
that sentence was unnecessary.
deirdre
Senior Member.
that sentence is going to confuse some readers! my first thought was "its not historical at all, our gov and other gov have been assessing these things from the beginning of the sci-fi era ex: Project Blue book, the uk program etc. Then i remembered i read:https://www.intelligence.senate.gov...-year-2023-division-f-james-m-inhofe-national
Skalman
Active Member
It isn't supposed to be a scientific report. But, even for what it is, there are problems with it, as pointed out by critics. Robert Powell from the SCU makes some valid points in his twitter thread on the report. I do not agree with everything he says, of course, but the fact remains that making these kind of basic errors and mistakes does reflect poorly on AARO and gives the government cover-up camp of true believers and the various grifters ammunition to attack the validity of the report. A lot of you people in here are more well-versed in UFO history than I am, and I hope at least one of you can take a look at the thread and make an assesment regarding the validity of his criticism, but below are some excerpts that I have fact-checked and that I think bring up valid points.
This is true. The formatting of the references is abysmal and some of the sources are a tad questionable. These are things one would hope would have gotten caught in the proof-reading stage and it makes AARO look unprofessional.There are many broken links in the references cited; more than I have bothered to count. References #3, #4, and #6 were broken links. Reference #5 and #6 were combined as "56" instead of "5,6". References #8, #10, and #12 are broken links.
This is also something that should have been caught at the proof-reading stage. As for his claims of AARO not giving an accurate description of what Arnold said he saw, as far as I know there are conflicting versions of what he claimed they look like and I haven't digged further.The Kenneth Arnold sighting is one of the most historical cases in the early days of the phenomenon. The AARO paper listed the date of the sighting as June 23, 1947. The correct date is June 24.
This one is more tricky. He links to a diagram from one of his books (UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (And Don’t Know)), which I don't have access to and AARO's reference is a list of eight different sources, including some broken links (I assume you can get around that for at least some of them by reformatting the URL's properly, I've managed that with at least one of the sources) and a youtube video. So I used the numbers given in the report here (it is a UFO fact sheet, seemingly sent to the FBI by the USAF after the FBI made a request, now published on FBI's webpage) on p. 4 of the PDF and tried to make rough estimates of the numbers in Powell's diagram to compare them with this result:This next error can only be made by someone with a superficial understanding of the history of UFO/UAP. 1960 had one of the lowest numbers of sightings in many years (https://x.com/rpowell2u/status/1700318332954571051?s=20), yet the AARO paper claims the opposite! AARO states:"AARO’s review of Project BLUE BOOK cases shows a spike in reported UAP sightings from 1952-1957 and another spike in 1960. These reporting spikes most likely are attributed to observers unknowingly having witnessed new technological advancements and testing and reporting them as UFOs."
They correlate very well, which is expected since the Blue Book data is included as one of Powell's sources and does comprise the majority of the sightings for almost every year. In my opinion, Powell is correct in pointing out that "a spike in reported UAP sightings from 1952-1957 and another spike in 1960" does not accurately describe the data, but neither does Powell's assertion that , "1960 had one of the lowest numbers of sightings in many years". It was only the 14th year of Project Blue Book, in itself a quite short period of time, and of those years only four had a higher number of sightings according to the Project Blue Book Data. Taken over the whole span of the project, 1960 comes down just above both the mean and median, making it a pretty average year for the time period in question.
This is already becoming too long and I need to get some real work done as well today, so I'm gonna finish here by saying that I also agree with Powell in that it is a regrettable oversight that the report doesn't include the foo fighters and ghost rockets of WWII. I think that is a better starting point than 1947, in that it more accurately captures the beginning of the modern UFO sightings. Arnold and Roswell made the phenomenon famous, sure, but the foo fighters and ghost rockets were (to my knowledge) the first time governments (including the USG) took reports of UFOs seriously enough to investigate them.
DavidB66
Senior Member.
'huge public interest' is an ambiguous phrase. It may mean something that is of great importance to the public, but not necessarily that many people know or care about (say, the details of corporate law), or it may mean something that a lot of people find very interesting (say, Taylor Swift's boyfriends), but is not necessarily important in any other way. UAPs would only be of 'huge public interest' in the first sense if in fact UAPs do involve extraterrestrial intelligence or hitherto unknown physical phenomena. Which I doubt. There is obviously some 'public interest' in the second sense, but I suspect it is much more limited than UFO enthusiasts believe. A small minority of people are obsessed with the subject; a larger minority find it mildly interesting (enough to watch TV shows on the subject, etc); but the 'silent majority' won't greatly care about it unless and until a UFO lands in the town square.
Of course it would be nice to have more details about particular cases, but I don't see that AARO is obliged to provide it, at least in its public reports. It won't satisfy everyone, but that is probably an unachievable goal anyway.
deirdre
Senior Member.
the report starts 1947? because the requirements say:
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov...-year-2023-division-f-james-m-inhofe-national
i wonder if ive been linking to an old bill that was later amended?
deirdre
Senior Member.
"public interest" is usually used to mean "we want to check what [the government] is doing"
that oversight of the government is a big thing in AMerica. like the Prince Harry Visa application court case is based on "public interest". It's not saying the public is interested in knowing what's in Prince Harry's visa (although im sure that is true for some people), the public interest is in whether the government gave him special treatment when approving his visa. ie. we want to know if the government is doing shady shit behind our backs.
I'm not sure how to start explaining how wrong this is.
Can you tell me how experimental evidence is proof of a negative?
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Would seeing the results of the analysis of Art's Parts confirming, more or less, what everybody already knows make that big of a difference in the scope of things? It seems that analysis is the sole "experiment" AARO carried out. I wouldn't really call it an "experiment", just an analysis of a piece of junk that UFOlogist claim can do all kinds of things. Though they've never managed to actually demonstrate those claims.
I think it shows the catch-22 congress creates with things like this. As in the case of the Condon committee by testing a bit of Mg purportedly from a crashed UFO in Ubatuba, even after finding nothing remarkable, the fact that they tested it gives credence to the otherwise unsubstantiated claim it was from a UFO.
The same thing happened with the '90s Roswell report, when it was suggested the testing of anthropomorphic dummies in the '50s might have been confabulated into "recovered aliens" years later. While logical, it just reenforced the notion that the claims of "recovered alien bodies" was legit, while in fact there was not a single source for alien bodies at Roswell prior to the sensationalized and hyped book, The Roswell Incident written 30 years after the fact by Charels Berlitz. He also wrote "factual" books on The Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, the Philidelphia experiment and Noha's Ark.
If the analysis of Art's Part is released, I would expect the UFOlogist to say if AARO did not "hit it with a terahertz and make it float" they didn't really study it and it's part of the cover up. Like the supposed alien bodies at Roswell, the pieces from Ubatuba and Art's Parts should have been ignored until the parties making the wild claims about them can in fact produce some evidence for said claims.
John J.
Senior Member.
No, "mainstream" Ufology, in the US at least, has become similar to other (unrelated) paranormal subjects, conspiracy theories and areas of fringe thinking.
No matter what information AARO made public, there would be people who would claim that it's a cover-up.
If you took the "They're Here" believers on a tour of (e.g.) Area 51 and allowed them to wander at will, and talk to anyone they chose, they would conclude the real work was being conducted elsewhere.
If the ARRO staff were examined under oath and with polygraph monitoring, UFO believers would say they've all had resistance to interrogation training. -Or were plants without knowledge of the real truth.
As others have said, it's very difficult to prove a negative. UFO believers are, well, believers; they've adopted a narrative that largely ignores the fascinating diversity of UFO reports in favour of the plot of The X-Files. The ETs/ ultraterrestrials they believe in are inept pilots of vulnerable craft. Those aliens that don't crash are content to leave their casualties and hardware lying around; their UFO retrieval program is less advanced than that of the US.
The US defense establishment, and broader Government, will never be able to offer the evidence that "believers" require because (1) the DoD doesn't have evidence of alien artefacts in US custody, maybe because there aren't alien artefacts in US, or anyone else's, custody and almost certainly never have been, (2) you can't prove a negative and (3) there are legitimate limits on transparency (not oversight) for national security reasons.
Imagine in 1944 (yeah, I know that's pre-Arnold, and this is rather fanciful):
Concerned Citizen of Los Alamos: There's been weird stuff seen in the skies lately, and reports of crashes. What's going on in that new secret establishment over there? No-one tells me. Are you studying a Martian spaceship?
Official: I can't tell you what's going on over there, but we're not studying a spaceship.
Concerned Citizen: But I hear rumours that you've found metals with isotope ratios that aren't found on Earth! They must be extraterrestrial!
Official: Er, yes, we've got some metal of that description, but it's not extraterrestrial. We made it.
Concerned Citizen: That's just a whitewash! How can you prove that you made it?
Official: OK, OK. We've got this machine called a calutron, and a technique called gaseous diffusion, and we've looked at machines called gas centrifuges... I'll send you the details. Just to show you we don't have Martians.
deirdre
Senior Member.
what does any of that have to do with the fact that AARO telling us "the bismuth layer wasnt pure", should not be taken at face value without seeing the laboratory results for ourselves.?
@Stryer can you please stop making everyone jump through hoops to
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RTM
Active Member
So where now for disclosure, who will do the disclosing? Someone above said that the ball is now in the court of ET hypothesis supporters, what can they provide on their own if they were putting their hope in people who they are accusing of the cover up?
Is it a case that this is one long grift or they were hoping that the stories they heard would finally come to the surface?
Is it a case that this is one long grift or they were hoping that the stories they heard would finally come to the surface?
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