Are All UFO Reports Wrong, Or Are They Evidence That UFOs Exist?

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Either you neglect witness testimony or you accept it.
False dichotomy. No, you examine the witness and the testimony before deciding if it is credible. If so, you check to see if there is enough info to determine if it is correct. If not enough info, it remains unidentified. And of course if multiple witnesses give different accounts, you're left with the assurance that at least some of them are incorrect.
 
You just illustrated what I stated in my first post above:

Your attempt below to explain your claim about me in the above fails to follow any sound sequence of reasoning accessible to me. But I'm happy you think I illustrated something.

Either you neglect witness testimony or you accept it. If you neglect it (at least the extraordinary parts), you cannot state as a scientific fact that what the witness said they saw "was not impressive after closer analysis" - this is merely an assumption.

Now we're going in circles. Let me repeat: I can state as a fact that "what the witness said they saw" was not impressive evidence to me, and it doesn't even require a closer analysis to not be impressive to me. It's just an anecdote. I can also state as a fact that anecdotal evidence (i.e. witness reports) is not generally regarded in science as particularly reliable. I have stated it before. And will gladly state it again. I've also provided citations and links that explain the matter in greater detail, supported by psychological studies.

For you to get somewhat worked up about such a non-controversial statement, and to make it seem like a controversial statement, tells me more about your own proclivity to give witness testimony more value than science generally does. Which is fine by me. Just don't pretend you're being particularly scientific in so doing.

If you can demonstrate that there is a single set of UFO witness testimonies of the same event that fulfils the 4 criteria of credible witness testimonies articulated earlier, and isn't impacted by what Chris French calls "top-down influences", I'd be a tad more impressed by it. And even then it would still remain, scientifically, anecdotal evidence and as such insufficient for scientific proof.
 
UFOs appear in 500 year old paintings and 10,000 year old petroglyphs.
I think it's widely accepted that ancient paintings and drawings depict comets or meteorites, or (as I recall) a nova in one instance. Without a doubt those things were "unidentified" at the time, but since we lack the chance to question the artists, the more mundane explanation seems probable than anything more esoteric.
 
False dichotomy. No, you examine the witness and the testimony before deciding if it is credible. If so, you check to see if there is enough info to determine if it is correct. If not enough info, it remains unidentified. And of course if multiple witnesses give different accounts, you're left with the assurance that at least some of them are incorrect.
Correct, but what I'm referring to is a situation where witness testimony is all you have. So, there is no other info to determine whether it is correct, just the story of a witness. In such cases, you either decide to accept it or to neglect it. The only other option is to accept only parts of it, but this quickly ends up in cherry-picking those parts that suit your favorite hypothesis (which is unscientific).

If you have multiple witnesses their accounts will always differ in the details but not with respect to the gist of their observation. Even then, you either accept the gist of their story or not. Only accepting (parts of) stories from indvidual witnesses will, again, often lead to cherry-picking.
 
Do I believe in ufos? Sure, I did astronomy for a hobby & saw dozens over the years. What were they? I don't know, that's why they're unidentified. Could they have been weather balloons, high flying planes, satellites? Sure but I don't know which. Were they alien spacecraft? No reason to think so. The only spacecraft I know I saw were a couple of space shuttles (remember them?). The only weird thing i ever saw was on a Halloween night & I'm pretty sure it was a hoax that almost no one noticed, back in the '60's ufo hoaxes were everywhere.
 
I think it's widely accepted that ancient paintings and drawings depict comets or meteorites, or (as I recall) a nova in one instance. Without a doubt those things were "unidentified" at the time, but since we lack the chance to question the artists, the more mundane explanation seems probable than anything more esoteric.

In case anyone is interested in the debunk of 'UFOs in ancient paintings' I recommend a visit to https://www.sprezzatura.it/Arte/Arte_UFO_eng.htm . They turn out to be common artistic features of those time periods, which are now largely forgotten by the general public and become reinterpreted as anomalies. For instance the UFO in the 'Annunciazione' by Carlo Crivelli:

1666984522787.png

Unbelievable as it may be, those who publish this stuff [the object in the painting being an UFO] really seem to have never entered a museum. If so, they would notice that there is a vast amount of Annunciations in which a ray descends from the sky reaching the Madonna. Furthermore, as far as the Crivelli painting is concerned, they would notice that the object in the sky is formed by a circle of clouds inside which there are two circles of small angels.
1666984833678.png
https://www.sprezzatura.it/Arte/Arte_UFO_1_eng.htm

There are very many cool examples on the website.
 
Correct, but what I'm referring to is a situation where witness testimony is all you have. So, there is no other info to determine whether it is correct, just the story of a witness. In such cases, you either decide to accept it or to neglect it. The only other option is to accept only parts of it, but this quickly ends up in cherry-picking those parts that suit your favorite hypothesis (which is unscientific).

If you have multiple witnesses their accounts will always differ in the details but not with respect to the gist of their observation. Even then, you either accept the gist of their story or not. Only accepting (parts of) stories from indvidual witnesses will, again, often lead to cherry-picking.

I accept (in a vast majority of cases) that an eyewitness believes they are providing an accurate description of an event they experienced. Stories of events that people experienced with no other corroboration range between "not at all interesting," and "somewhat interesting" depending on the experience being related, who is relating it - but mostly in the sense that all sorts of people claim to see all sorts of things, and often earnestly believe they were caused by something that cannot be explained by current scientific knowledge.

The one aspect of eyewitness accounts I find intriguing in an evidentiary sense is the currently quite poor understanding of what consciousness is, and what systems it may interact with that we simply are not yet aware of. However, as Sabine Hossenfelder argues, this may be a realm where science *cannot* be advanced.

As she explains in relationship to Multiverse theories:


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHa1vbwVaNU


The issue with... multiverses is they postulate the existence of something that cannot be observed. Not only can you not see them, but you cannot interact with them. They are entirely disconnected from ours. This does not mean other universes do not exist, it merely means that science says nothing about whether they exist.

To me this logical framework applies to interdimensional aliens, ghosts, spirits etc. They could be useful constructs to understand human experiences, but they may not be related to anything we would consider science, and it is likely impossible to fully prove or disprove their existence.
 
what I'm referring to is a situation where witness testimony is all you have. So, there is no other info to determine whether it is correct, just the story of a witness.
Just speaking for me, but I have little interest in such cases. They may be honest reports of what people saw, or they may not. If they are, then they may reflect seeing something extraordinary, or something ordinary that was perceived as extraordinary. Barring any other evidence, there is little to analyze and no real way to confirm what was going on.

In that sort of situation, I don't think there is much value is guessing whether you should believe them or not, nor in guessing about how accurate their descriptions are nor much else. I set 'em to one side as being not very useful in trying to determine if there is a unique unknown phenomenon, or what if anything the witnesses saw.

Not trying to tell you what to think, just how I think.
 
False dichotomy. No, you examine the witness and the testimony before deciding if it is credible. If so, you check to see if there is enough info to determine if it is correct. If not enough info, it remains unidentified. And of course if multiple witnesses give different accounts, you're left with the assurance that at least some of them are incorrect.
Not necessarily. Although it sounds intuitively obvious, dealing with multiple witnesses makes an investigator's job more difficult. Among other variables, you must account for differences in each of their locations and relative timings of their observations. Two or more witnesses can give differing accounts but still be factual correct. We use, and even count, on this to help build a situational "mosiac" and timeline of events.

As an investigator, you are more suspicious if multiple witnesses, especially if in a group, tell you the same story as it can mean they have collaboratively put the story together or been coached/rehearsed. You expect the big picture story to be similar, but not details. This is why we try to interview group witnesses individually, it also eliminates group dynamics.
 
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Correct, but what I'm referring to is a situation where witness testimony is all you have. So, there is no other info to determine whether it is correct, just the story of a witness. In such cases, you either decide to accept it or to neglect it. The only other option is to accept only parts of it, but this quickly ends up in cherry-picking those parts that suit your favorite hypothesis (which is unscientific).

If you have multiple witnesses their accounts will always differ in the details but not with respect to the gist of their observation. Even then, you either accept the gist of their story or not. Only accepting (parts of) stories from indvidual witnesses will, again, often lead to cherry-picking.
The alternative to choosing the cases that seem most reliable is listening to all cases and giving equal weight to the ones that are not, in fact, equal in the quality of evidence they bring. Note, I didn't say anything about the cases that meet one's "favorite hypothesis". I said the ones that seem most reliable, with coherent and believable stories from witnesses without an axe to grind, clearly explained, and if possible those with additional evidence such as photos, time and date, direction of the viewing, and/or corroborating witnesses.
 
While I was guilty as anyone of trying to quickly tackle a few of the items mentioned in the OP, maybe some of these arguments would best be served in their own threads with links to them posted here. I'm thinking at least these 2:

1. Eyewitness testimony. May also include thoughts on memory, as they are interrelated.
2. UFOs in Art. I'll try to get this one going over the weekend if no one else does in the meantime.
 
While I was guilty as anyone of trying to quickly tackle a few of the items mentioned in the OP, maybe some of these arguments would best be served in their own threads with links to them posted here. I'm thinking at least these 2:

1. Eyewitness testimony. May also include thoughts on memory, as they are interrelated.
2. UFOs in Art. I'll try to get this one going over the weekend if no one else does in the meantime.

I would also include "human perception flaws" in #1. People who are perfectly mentally healthy are fully capable of hallucinating under the right conditions without drugs involved. (Sleep paralysis, deep meditative states.)

I haven't done a deep dive into this but there is some evidence that specific frequencies of light or sound can "trigger" hallucinations in otherwise "normal" people as described in this white paper from the University of Rochester:

Hallucinations occur in both normal and clinical populations. Due to their unpredictability and complexity, the mechanisms underlying hallucinations remain largely untested. Here we show that visual hallucinations can be induced in the normal population by visual flicker, limited to an annulus that constricts content complexity to simple moving grey blobs, allowing objective mechanistic investigation. Hallucination strength peaked at ~11 Hz flicker and was dependent on cortical processing. Hallucinated motion speed increased with flicker rate, when mapped onto visual cortex it was independent of eccentricity, underwent local sensory adaptation and showed the same bistable and mnemonic dynamics as sensory perception. A neural field model with motion selectivity provides a mechanism for both hallucinations and perception. Our results demonstrate that hallucinations can be studied objectively, and they share multiple mechanisms with sensory perception. We anticipate that this assay will be critical to test theories of human consciousness and clinical models of hallucination.

Most encounters also take place on really small timescales (a few seconds) in less-than-ideal conditions. The brain attempts to identify things based on pre-existing information about other things that looked similar. Ergo: seeing a flash of something opens one up to whatever interpretation was the most readily available etc.

This book really opened my eyes to how limited, yet creative, the human mind can be:

1666997611715.png
 
The classic example, still used today, is Eric von Donigan's claim that the Mayan tomb stone of Lord Pacal shows him "driving" a spaceship, when in fact trained Mayanists say it's a standard Mayan representation of Pacal being taken to the underworld.
Erich von Däniken, if you want to look him up, is the correct spelling, though Dave transcribed the pronunciation fairly well.
 
Correct, but what I'm referring to is a situation where witness testimony is all you have. So, there is no other info to determine whether it is correct, just the story of a witness. In such cases, you either decide to accept it or to neglect it. The only other option is to accept only parts of it, but this quickly ends up in cherry-picking those parts that suit your favorite hypothesis (which is unscientific).
I'd do neither of these.

You analyse the witness story to separate actual observations from interpretation and discount the latter; and then consider whether the person had the ability and opportunity to make these observations.

"Suddenly accelerated very quickly and disappeared to the left" is interpretation; "image started moving left on the screen until it was out of scope" is the observation, and if we also observe that tracking was lost, then we realize that the apparent acceleration need not actually have happened, because the camera would have moved off the target, resulting in the observation as reported.

NOBODY has any experience watching and identifying UFOs because none have ever been identified; we don't actually have UFO experts, what we have is experts in UFO lore. Would you let someone who has never touched a car before work on yours? Or would you prefer an actual expert?
 
I haven't done a deep dive into this but there is some evidence that specific frequencies of light or sound can "trigger" hallucinations in otherwise "normal" people as described in this white paper from the University of Rochester
Isn't that flickering a thing that can also trigger epileptic seizures? I'm not a neuroscientist but I wonder if they're connected.
 
I haven't done a deep dive into this but there is some evidence that specific frequencies of light or sound can "trigger" hallucinations in otherwise "normal" people

Here's an extract from a BBC article on the so-called 'Dreamachine' designed to get people hallucinating without drugs:

In the Dreamachine, the orange and blue colours start to overlap, and after a few minutes I notice that I'm seeing stripes and criss-cross patterns. These kinds of effects, caused by strobe lighting, are called flicker phosphenes, and are visually similar to the simple hallucinations that drugs can induce. These simple geometric patterns probably originate in the primary visual cortex.

As the music changes, the stripes I can see become waves. I start to see little white spots, like a universe of stars, swirling behind the coloured waves. Then the music changes and the colours follow. The scene now looks like a desert landscape – beiges and browns stretching off into the distance – except with dark tower blocks on the horizon which I am flying towards. I have no idea if the frequency of the strobing has changed, but the shapes I can see are continually in flux.

Like in a dream, I have a sense that time is moving forwards, but I have no idea how long the machine has been running or how long is left. At one point I notice that I'm barely paying attention to what I'm seeing anymore and I wonder if I had briefly fallen asleep. But I snap back into the moment.

The desert has now been replaced by multicoloured geometric shapes, like a simple kaleidoscope or an abstract, tessellated stained glass window. There are bright lime greens, yellows, blues and reds. The shapes move towards me, as though the window is breaking apart. I am reminded of the guide at the start who explained that all the colours I can see are generated by my brain. It's the most compelling part of the experience yet, and when the scene changes to something else I miss the colourfulness of the stained glass.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/...nate-without-drugs-and-learn-about-your-brain
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Sounds pretty cool. Though I'm always amused when people liken this sort of thing to an LSD (or similar) trip - they've obviously never done a decent enough dose! :D

"Suddenly accelerated very quickly and disappeared to the left" is interpretation; "image started moving left on the screen until it was out of scope" is the observation

Just last night I had someone telling me about a tiny UFO they saw once. They said it stopped in front of a weather gauge and read it.

Of course I asked them how they knew it was reading it and, to their credit, they admitted that was their interpretation.

Then they told me about a friend of theirs from Colombia who has sent them pictures of several UFOs. They were so impressed when I guessed the friend lived in Medellin. :D
 
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Now we're going in circles. Let me repeat: I can state as a fact that "what the witness said they saw" was not impressive evidence to me, and it doesn't even require a closer analysis to not be impressive to me. It's just an anecdote. I can also state as a fact that anecdotal evidence (i.e. witness reports) is not generally regarded in science as particularly reliable. I have stated it before. And will gladly state it again. I've also provided citations and links that explain the matter in greater detail, supported by psychological studies.

No, we're actually getting somewhere. Compare your statement above with your original statement:

Visually, 'something' indeed looked like a strangely-shaped and/or a strangely maneuvering object. Where we see our opinions diverging is in acceptance that the shapes or maneuvers that seemed extraordinary on the surface have been shown, after closer analysis, not to be all that impressive. When scrutinized carefully and analytically, they've consistently been shown to be optical errors or interpretive mistakes featuring ordinary objects.

I agree with your latest statement but not with the original one, since the original one implies that we have enough data to consistently show that witness stories are based on misinterpretation. This is not the case. Your original statement is much too strong.
 
I agree with your latest statement but not with the original one, since the original one implies that we have enough data to consistently show that witness stories are based on misinterpretation. This is not the case. Your original statement is much too strong.

When I wrote the part in bold I was thinking of the Navy UAP footage and the way similar optical illusions in live footage can be misinterpreted by the witnesses in their testimonies. In this case, there were hardly any direct eyeball witnesses. Only 'witnesses' who read data on screens. Closer analysis and scrutiny of that type of footage (a lá Mick) has shown non-extraordinary physical speeds and maneuvers. In other words, my original statement is not too strong in its original intended context. Maybe I expressed myself unclearly.

Moreover, closer scrutiny of certain non-trivial inconsistencies overtime and between the witness testimonies (a lá Mick et al) demonstrate that we should not take them at face value. Which doesn't mean the witnesses are dishonest or incompetent. To discuss them further, we can guide you to the right threads. But not derail this one.
 
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When I wrote the part in bold I was thinking of the Navy UAP footage and the way similar optical illusions in live footage can be misinterpreted by the witnesses in their testimonies. In this case, there were hardly any direct eyeball witnesses. Only 'witnesses' who read data on screens.
Incorrect, there were four eyeball witnesses from two vantage points, looking down on the object from their cockpits. Alex Dietrich and David Fravor have given their eyewitness accounts in public. The fact that they were moving while observing the object from their cockpits gave them an opportunity to estimate its distance based on parallax relative to the ocean surface. This, in turn, enabled them to estimate its size. I agree that this would be much harder to do on a screen of a sensor tracking the object, but your assumption that this was the case is wrong.
 
Talking of Nimitz, I recently came across this (what I assume to be) excellent detailed summary:

https://somerandomstuff1.wordpress....ncies-and-uncertainties-in-the-radar-accounts

Of particular interest to me were the multiple inconsistencies in the accounts of Day, et al to do with the radar readings. But since y'all are talking about Fravor I'll post this section:

Arguably the most crucial inconsistency in the entire Nimitz event pertains to the length of time the four pilots in the two Super Hornets actually lay their eyes of the tic tac. Fravor has said, “There was four of us in the aeroplanes literally watching this thing for roughly 5 minutes”. In another interview Fravor has quite unambiguously re-emphasised this point, “The four of us looked at it for five minutes with our eyes”.

Dietrich who piloted the second Super Hornet has a decisively different recollection of how long she saw the tic tac for, “Visual for 8-10 seconds after merge plot”. She has again reaffirmed this timeframe by saying, “I only had visual of Tic Tac for 8-10 sec from high cover”. Additionally, Dietrich has cast aspersions on a 5-minute timeframe, “If I had a full 5 min with it I would have been able to give you a make, model and serial number!” Dietrich has also said “5 min would be a lifetime for a visual and dogfighting”.

When Fravor was told of Dietrich’s 8-10 second estimate of her visual on the tic tac, he responded “We saw it hovering and flew around the circle and then cut across to get closer. Based on a slow turn rate and slow descent I say roughly 5 minutes. Could have been less but it was way more than a few seconds”.

The next inconsistency relating to Fravor’s encounter with the tic tac pertains to the precise nature of the manoeuvrings by both Fravor’s Super Hornet and the tic tac. In the ‘Fravor’s Engagement with the Tic Tac’ section further up this article, Fravor described steering his Super Hornet downwards in a clockwise motion whilst travelling in a circular trajectory. Fravor also recalled the tic tac consistently staying on the opposite side of the circle to him as it ascended. When the two craft were at an equitable altitude, Fravor cut across the circle, headed for the tic tac and the tic tac accelerated out of sight.

According to Slaight who had a bird’s-eye-view vantage point of the encounter, in the rear seat of Dietrich’s plane, the tic tac and Fravor’s manoeuvrings were significantly different to how Fravor described. The beginning of Slaight’s recollection matches Fravor’s memory- Fravor headed downwards towards the tic tac. Slaight then believes that the tic tac travelled in a direct line towards Fravor’s plane before changing its course and physically circling Fravor’s Super Hornet. According to Slaight, the tic tac then stopped and hovered for between 1 and 2 seconds in mid-air before it accelerated rapidly from the scene.

The next potential inconsistency in the events involves the tic tac and its relation to the white water when it was first observed by the four pilots. Dietrich has commented, “I saw the Tic Tac cross directly over the water disturbance”. These words by Dietrich seem to suggest that the tic tac happened to be flying across the white water, somewhat akin to a missile. In the Nimitz Report, Dietrich described the object initially traveling from left to right over the white water at 1,000-3,000 feet in altitude. She additionally described the object as travelling in a straight line at between 300-500 knots.

The Executive Summary of the tic tac encounter quotes Fravor’s WSO who shares a similar observation of the tic tac’s initial movements to Dietrich. It states that “His (the WSO’s) report differs from CDR Fravor in that he reported the object travelling level at approximately 500-1000 feet at approximately 500 knots”. This part of the report refers to the period before Fravor began his descent.

In contrast to Dietrich and the Event Summary accounts (which reports Fravor’s WSO’s recount), Fravor has said, “What we see is this white tic tac looking object, just above the surface of the water, pointing north-south. It’s going (moving): north, south, east, west. It’s just radically moving: forward, back, left, right at will. It’s moving around the disturbance, the white water that we see”. It is not clear from Dietrich, the event summary (based on Fravor’s WSO’s recollections) and Fravor’s accounts whether the object was initially spotted simply crossing the white water or whether it was bouncing around erratically above the white water.

There are a number of further possible discrepancies between the pilot’s recollections and the Event Summary, which was written many years before the pilots made their recollections public.

Fravor has specified that when the tic tac vanished, “It takes off and it goes south”. The Event Summary mentioned that the “Last visual contact had capsule at 14kft (14,000 feet) heading due east”.

Fravor has said, “It’s unrestricted visibility, you can see all the way to the horizon”. In contrast, the Event Summary states that Fravor’s plane, “Lost visual ID of capsule in haze”. Dietrich has been asked to clarify this ambiguity. She has said “As you get further towards the horizon, there is a marine level of haze”. Dietrich has suggested that there is typically a natural haze on the distant horizon and that there was a perfect level of visibility leading up to this standard, horizon haze. This seems like a reasonable resolution however it still remains uncertain whether the pilots viewed the physical tic tac as it made its way to the horizon or whether they lost sight of it as it sped past the nose of Fravor’s plane.

Dietrich and Fravor both recall being navigated to the intercept of the UAP at 20,000 feet. In contrast, the Event Summary states that the UAP was travelling at 25,000 feet and that the Super Hornets arrived at 24,000 feet.

Day has said, “As soon as he (Fravor) got to the merge plot position, the object which he was intercepting, dropped from 28,000 feet down to 50 feet above the water in 0.78 seconds as I found out later, the next day”. Kurth who arrived in the UAP’s vicinity before Fravor has said “I accepted their vector toward the Unidentified Contact. I had Fravor’s flight on radar and was directly over the top of them when they were visually observing the Supersonic Tic Tac”. The question arises- if Kurth was first on the scene, did the tic tac drop down on his approach?

Fravor has quite clearly described the shape of the white water as cross shaped. In contrast, Dietrich and Kurth recall the white water as resembling a slightly elongated circle, perhaps more similar to an oval shape.

Fravor has recently estimated that the tic tac took between 30 and 40 seconds to travel to his CAP Point. In an interview in 2018, Fravor provides a different timeframe. “The whole time that’s elapsed is maybe a couple of minutes for us to turn those jets around and do what we did and this thing appears 60 miles away so you can do the math but let’s just say that’s really fast. Faster than we can go”. This comment by Fravor seems to indicate a “couple of minutes” of travel time for the tic tac to arrive at the CAP Point. Day has characterised the tic tac’s movement to the CAP Point as “Instant”. Dietrich has said “It didn’t make sense in terms of a time-distance problem how it would have done that. Either it was supersonic and able to get there super-fast or it dropped off and something else popped up that had the same radar signature”.

The inconsistencies and uncertainties concerning Fravor’s interception of the tic tac are by no means intended to doubt the general sequence of events that occurred. They should serve to emphasise that there are details of the event that are both contentious and unknown. There have been some questions raised about the accuracy of some of the documents written about the event and by eliminating these documents as a source, some of the discrepancies vanish however a number of inconsistencies between witness accounts remain.
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Do we have a Navy videos eyewitness inconsistencies thread? They're pretty useful to see all together.
 
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Incorrect, there were four eyeball witnesses from two vantage points, looking down on the object from their cockpits.

And these witnesses have been internally inconsistent overtime as well as mutually inconsistent in some non-trivial details of their testimonies. We are going in circles and derailing this thread. You clearly wish to delve further into these inconsistencies, so why don't you continue on the relevant threads and address the specific arguments set forth (it seems @Rory just beat me to it and brought some of them into this thread which I don't really think serves the thread's purpose). The threads that you didn't want links to but preferred rather to hash it out right here as if it's a new debate that warrants revisiting right now.

Alex Dietrich and David Fravor have given their eyewitness accounts in public. The fact that they were moving while observing the object from their cockpits gave them an opportunity to estimate its distance based on parallax relative to the ocean surface. This, in turn, enabled them to estimate its size.

That's your assumption. Not a fact.

An opportunity of an estimation does not imply the correctness of an estimation. This assumption has been addressed in the relevant threads as well as videos.
 
There really should be a new acronym for alien craft. People refer to them as UFO's, then some people use UFOs in it's true meaning which is unidentified flying object. Then some people use it and you have no clue which meaning they are alluding to.
 
Talking of Nimitz, I recently came across this (what I assume to be) excellent detailed summary:

Do we have a Navy videos eyewitness inconsistencies thread? They're pretty useful to see all together.

I'm not sure if there's a useful way to incorporate this into a Metabunk analysis, but some enterprising journalist may want to follow up on this bit of hearsay from a Medium article by UAPX Researcher Jeremy McGowan. He wrote several blogposts detailing his experience of what he describes as cult induction conducted by Sean Cahill, a film maker who also happened to be on the NIMITZ Bridge Crew in 2004.

https://uapx-media.medium.com/my-se...3-red-flags-red-flags-everywhere-c6fe43021dbd

Jeremy claims that Sean texted him in frustration because according to Sean, David Fravor believes the tic tac encounter "was not actual," meaning he thinks he and his team witnessed some kind of weapon or vehicle test:


I was sitting in traffic on my way to work at around 7:45 am on December 9th, 2020. The highway was a full-stop parking lot. So my mind began to drift as I watched the guy beside me pick his nose and chain-smoke cigarettes. I reached for my phone and sent Sean a message asking why I, a 49-year-old with a crappy truck, a worse job, and no appreciable skills to speak of, was in the middle of a large-scale project with Lue Elizondo and not someone like Lt. Cmdr. David Fravor — the pilot who laid eyes on the TicTac during the 2004 Nimitz Encounter. Why would Lue invest his time in me and not someone like Fravor?

As I said above, the answer I received should have shaken me to the core. But I think it was so bold, open, and honest that it simply didn’t register with me. Sean’s answer is my mental poster child for why I now question EVERYTHING. Sean stated, quite matter-of-factly, that Lt. Cmdr. Fravor didn’t think the TicTac incident was actual. His exact words were that he thought it was “fake.” I sat for a moment in my car with a gobsmacked look on my face which, luckily for my tint, no one in traffic could see. Finally, I typed up a clarification text and asked:

“What do you mean by he knew this was fake?”
Sean replied: “He thought it was fake or our and he was sure. Didn’t believe in anything past a black program and acted like he knew better.”

Pressing for more clarification I responded with:

“So he saw what he saw and he believed it to be US technology and he propagated a narrative that he himself believed to be false?”
Sean replied with the “heart” emoji signifying his acceptance of the correctness of my statement. I didn’t know what to do with that information.
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The full article, and full series of articles are a bit on the rambling side, but he walks you through the entire process of being recruited as a UFO influencer after he submitted his UFO sighting to the History channel. He is able to verify at least some of his story with documentation but has declined to publish individual texts/communications. Conspicuously, Lue Elizondo and Sean Cahill both have gone silent on Twitter as of 09/08/2022, the day after the piece was published.
 
As an investigator, you are more suspicious if multiple witnesses, especially if in a group, tell you the same story as it can mean they have collaboratively put the story together or been coached/rehearsed. You expect the big picture story to be similar, but not details.
And so it is in the Nimitz case..

Dietrich gave a possible explanation for the time difference by the way: Fravor probably had a visual on the object much sooner than she had, since she was on Fravor's tail and was responsible not to collide with him so she mainly had eyes on Fravor's jet during the first episode of the encounter. Only after Fravor started to engage she could freely look at the object.
 
And so it is in the Nimitz case..

Dietrich gave a possible explanation for the time difference by the way: Fravor probably had a visual on the object much sooner than she had, since she was on Fravor's tail and was responsible not to collide with him so she mainly had eyes on Fravor's jet during the first episode of the encounter. Only after Fravor started to engage she could freely look at the object.

Threre's a difference between the kind of dissimilarity @Duke refers to and the inconsistencies outlined in the article cited by @Rory. Which should be discussed in detail on the relevant threads.
 
There really should be a new acronym for alien craft. People refer to them as UFO's, then some people use UFOs in it's true meaning which is unidentified flying object. Then some people use it and you have no clue which meaning they are alluding to.
True, I think thats party why they changed it to UAP, as UFO has so much cultural baggage as meaning alien craft.
UFO is one of those words like gay,decimate,actually etc who's original definition has changed over time. When I use UFO I use it as something ppl assume to be an alien craft
 
When I wrote the part in bold I was thinking of the Navy UAP footage... In this case, there were hardly any direct eyeball witnesses...
Incorrect, there were four eyeball witnesses from two vantage points, looking down on the object from their cockpits. Alex Dietrich and David Fravor have given their eyewitness accounts in public.
Fravor et al were not witnesses to any of the leaked Navy UAP videos, though.

There has been massive confusion in the media on this, which has not helped, including at least one case of an interviewer asking Fravor to walk them through what he was seeing during the Gimbal video -- wrong year, over the wrong ocean!

The reports on the Tic Tac UFO doing incredible things have no supporting video (at least none that has been leaked or released). The leaked videos, where we can see for ourselves, show LIZ targets that, on analysis, don't exhibit anything unusual: Gimbal does not rotate, Go Fast is going slow, Flir1 does not do anything at all.
 
Threre's a difference between the kind of dissimilarity @Duke refers to and the inconsistencies outlined in the article cited by @Rory. Which should be discussed in detail on the relevant threads.
I don't see a significant difference. The interview below is one of the rare interviews where the pilot is simply asked to summarize what happened and the interviewer has the courtesy to let her finish without interrupting. It's an interview where CNN's Anderson Cooper talks to retired Navy Lt. Commander Alex Dietrich, a veteran combat pilot who piloted the other jet during Fravor's encounter, about her report of spotting a UFO off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

Her story starts at 1:30 in the interview and contains the same elements as that of Fravor:
- they were redirected during an excercise to investigate a real world radar contact
- when they reached the location, nothing was seen on their own radar but they see something in the water below them
- the next thing they see is the tic-tac, her description of it matches that of Fravor
- the tic-tac seemed to jump from spot to spot almost without visible acceleration
- Fravor engaged with it while Dietrich stayed at altitude
- Fravor turned with it
- Then is "just disappeared" "it zoomed out of the picture so fast that we all were scrambling on the radio"


Source: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/05/19/alex-dietrich-ufo-sighting-ac360-intv-vpx.cnn
 
I don't see a significant difference. The interview below...

Itsme, you're still derailing this thread. Stop (1) dodging the detailed discussion on the Nimitz witness accounts on the relevant threads, (2) ignoring the responses given to you on those threads, while (3) regurgitating your original points from those threads (which have been responded to) on this thread as if they're new and undisputable. Your responses, including the above one which you are repeating under a new guise after its 1.0 version was removed by moderation, also consistently ignore the actual inconsistencies outlined for you while focusing on the similarities between somewhat vague accounts. Similarities that do not demonstrate credibility given there's reasonable doubt that especially the last 2 of the 4 criteria of credible witness testimonies (articulated by Chris French) haven't been met (whilst problems with the first 2 have also been identified and pointed out here at MB). Which were:

(1) Significant mutual consistency;

(2) Significant internal consistency over time;

3) Independence (not having been discussed or mutually shared) and;

(4) Freshness (being publicly shared -- for us to independently examine their veracity for ourselves -- soon after the events were observed);

There's nothing to suggest some (or all) of the witnesses couldn't have made parallax errors in judgment but refusing to acknowledge it due to Fravor's stature in the group dynamics, wingman loyalty, and the very human tendency to deny personal/professional failures and mistakes. Ignoring what's written to you while repeating your original points ad nauseam is not conversation. It's monologue which, frankly, comes across stubborn and wilfully ignorant.
 
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I see that this discussion upsets you, which was not my intention. So I'll stop.

The only thing I did is confront your claims with data and logical arguments. I never got personal. This is not the first time on this forum that such actions from my side result in personal attacks from my "opponent" (on some occasions I was even blocked from posting any further messages).

This forum has a tendency to turn into a "debunker's echo chamber" sometimes. I think it is wise to carefully consider the arguments of the few members who do not aim to debunk but simply try to get the facts straight.
 
I see that this discussion upsets you,

Actually it doesn't. I'm only calling out your derailments and willful ignoring of relevant counter-arguments. Instead of a dialogue, you're having a monologue and you're merely repeating you points without responding to the responses to your points.

which was not my intention. So I'll stop.

No need to stop. Just take it to the right threads which you are avoiding. Almost as if you don't really want to get down to the nitty gritty but only to have a platform for your own monologue.

The only thing I did is confront your claims with data and logical arguments.

Which have been responded to both here and on the relevant threads. Also with logical arguments.

I think it is wise to carefully consider the arguments of the few members who do not aim to debunk but simply try to get the facts straight.

I agree. It's also wise to do it on the threads that already exist for a more careful analysis of Nimitz accounts. Plus it's also wise to do the same in reciprocity rather than engaging in a monologue.

Peace.
 
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No one else has done this, so I'll try my hand at replying to every point, especially since you're kind of implying it's the quantity of evidence that matters, rather than its quality.

I believe that UFOs are real. There are hundreds, probably thousands of photos published in the 50's & 60's that show dozens of kinds of UFOs. They can't all be fake.

"Fake" would be the wrong term, but why can't they all be mistaken? I think you're looking at it roughly like this: each sighting may have a low probability of being aliens, say 5%, but when you put thousands of 5% probabilities together, it becomes almost certain that at least one is aliens. This is simply not a valie approach. It's more like this: 95% of sightings have been explained and known not to be aliens, and 5% remain unknown because we don't have enough information to be sure what they are. It's not that the remaining 5% are likely aliens. In every single case where we've been able to determine what it was, it's never been aliens.

Imagine we live in a world where aliens are visiting us. We know that at least 95% of sightings are still false. If we switched to a world in which aliens were not visiting us, we'd still expect to see 95% of the sightings, presumably still thousands of sightings. You'd still be making the same argument in that world.

If we live in a world where aliens are not visiting us, then yes, all the sightings can be, and must be, false.

Policemen, pilots and military officers from all over the world have reported craft going back to the 40's. Are all of them confused or lying? I doubt it. Apollo Astronauts have seen and photographed them. Astronaut Gordon Cooper claims to have seen them and filmed them.

A lot of it comes down to how much faith you put in eyewitness testimony. And in particular people seem to think policemen, pilots and military officers have hightened powers of perception. Or maybe it's just that they're taken to be more trustworthy. Sure, we agree that few of them are lying. I believe they're just mistaken. A pilot posted videos attempting to debunk Mick West's explanation of one of those three leaked navy videos, and he made several whopping mistakes in them. Pilots are not super-human, just human like the rest of us.

I also think the numbers of such people reporting these things is much lower than implied. As a percentage of the total number of policemen etc, it's very few. I wonder how it compares to the percentage who end up being convicted of a felony or court-martialed? Not drawing any association between the two groups, just that it's an indicator that they are not always trustworthy. But in the case of UFO sightings, I expect very few are lying, just mistaken.

Think of optical illusions. Is the dress white or blue? Even reliable "experts in dress-making" may see it incorrectly. West's explanations of the three leaked navy show them all as some kind of optical illusion, and pilots will fall for this just like anyone else might.

Robert Salas had 10 minuteman nuclear missiles shut down at the same time security personnel reported seeing one directly over the missile silo.

Analysed and explained here:
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4842

Col. Charles Halt and 80+ USAF personnel witnessed an encounter that Halt recorded contemporaneously on his pocket tape recorder. Is Col. Halt, the radar operators and 80 of his men lying or confused?

Analysed and explained here:
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4135

UFOs appear in 500 year old paintings and 10,000 year old petroglyphs.

Or, are they things that we interpret as UFOs using today's cultural influences?

UFOs not being real would require a global conspiracy to fake photos, videos and radar data, paintings and cave drawings and recruit thousands of policemen, pilots and military officers such as David Fravor come forward and lie.

If there was a global conspiracy to convince the world that alien visitations are real, they'd do a much better job. Why only blurry photos? Why so many holes in stories? I see it the opposite way. If alien visitations were real and known about by the military etc, and in the skies for anyone to see and take high quality photos of, they've done an amazing job covering it up. That would require a global conspiracy.

The 62 Ariel school kids who have told the same story for 30+ years would all have had to agree with one another on what lie to tell and how to fake drawings of what they saw that day and continue telling the same false story all these years.

When I was told about this case, I had several questions:
- Did all the students see the UFO?
- Did any teachers see the UFO?
- Did their stories change at all?
- Were the children interviewed separately?

When looking into it, I found the answer to every question I had was answered in a way that raised red flags.

Only about a quarter of the students saw anything out of the ordinary, and none of the teachers. They were initially interviewed in groups, in front of each other, by their teacher. None of the students reported any kind of environmental messages being transmitted into their heads until months later, after a UFO-believing psychiatrist was brought in to interview them. Their stories changed after that point.

We'll never know what really happened, as the evidence is more blurry now than the blurriest UFO photo, but there are lots of red flags to indicate that it probably wasn't aliens.

More details here:
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4760

Rob.
 
Is it not worked out like this? (Just five hundred independent 5% probabilities.)
Yes. But the reports are hardly independent. (Your work into the geographical distributions of UFO and cryptid reports strongly suggests they're not.)
 
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