JMartJr
Senior Member.
Wasn't the claim that the fact that ZERO of the photos have been identified as "real UFOs," flying saucers or the like? (Nor is there any other proof that "real UFOs" exist.) Hoax pictures exist, as do pics that have been identified later as as balloons, butterflies, meteors. We know all those are possible. We do not know if a "real UFO" pic is possible, we don't know if "real UFOs" exist.But that was my point. If the argument is that the sheer number of photos vs the number shown to be genuine is what makes hoax 'most likely'...then an increase in the number of photos ought to increase the likelihood of hoax.
(And dang, we need a term that differentiates something that is unidentified from the purported explanations of the UFOlogists!)
Regarding the Calvin UFO picture, and the various things that UFO pictures have been identified as showing, it is not a star or Venus, it does not look like a butterfly, it does not look much like a balloon, etc. It does look like a hoax where a model was hung on a string. I don't math at the level some folks here do, but given all of that, I'm comfortable saying it is most likely a hoax (some other hoax techniques have also been proposed -- reflected something in water being among them, debate on how plausible that is is ongoing here. Those seem to me to be less likely than the simple "thing on a string," as requiring more in the way of effort or special circumstances. But whether they turn out to be "likelihood approaches zero," or "surprise, it turns out to be more likely than I think," that can't make the likelihood of hoax go down from where it was if just considering the thing on string hypothesis.)
I agree there are many cases that remain unresolved -- I'd divide those into "cases, if any, that would be hard or impossible to hoax," and "cases where a technique to hoax is easily demonstrable." The latter category may include all of the unidentified cases, people are clever and of course in the modern era any image can be created on the ol' computer. For anybody interested in whether any UFO pics/vids MIGHT be "real UFOs," all of the identified cases drop out, as should all that could be easily hoaxed since, you know, they could be easily hoaxed (you might lose some data disregarding those, but you avoid the danger of dragging in a bunch of spurious data). "Solved" cases remain of interest only as demonstrating how easily mundane phenomena can generate reports of inexplicable UFOs.
In the end, I'd argue photos are entering the category of witness testimony -- not reliable to reach any conclusions about much of anything. That leaves proving that alien spaceships account for some UFO cases in a very difficult situation -- about the only way to prove it now would be to acquire access to one, either through a shoot down or crash, or through the proverbial landing on the White House lawn. I wonder if that's why the Big UFO folks, who have made a business out of UFOs, are now so focused on disclosure and so wedded to the idea that the Government has captured UFOs -- as pics and vids become less compelling, with "flooding the zone" with fake pics accelerating, that becomes the last hill to stand on when claiming you are trying to reveal the truth to the world and prove "real UFOs" exist.