French National Assembly to host UAP seminar with true believers

[Leekster]

I don't know what the career of that pilot was, but, for what I know, most civilian pilots are ex-military.

In the USA most commercial pilots are not ex-military. After Vietnam larger percentage commercial airline pilots in the US were former military. With the post cold war draw down and massive retirements the percentage of airline pilots that are former military has dropped significantly. I have read it's around 30% now. I would have to do some research to get exact numbers but it's definitely not a majority these days.

 

[Andreas]

Michael Shermer said in a recent video on UAPs that Kenneth Arnold saw geese.
It's possible, but how does he know? Was he there as well with Kenneth?
I don't see how any other stance other than "there is nothing to look at" is seen as "suspicious".
No alien spacecraft does not mean "everything pretty explained without any problem".

Obviously, it's impossible to tell exactly what Arnold saw. It could have been alien spacecraft, it could have been geese, or he could have made it all up. But what we do know is that there's no evidence of strange crescent-shaped craft flying past Mount Rainier that day. Explaining eyewitness accounts scientifically is impossible without supporting evidence because we don't know what we're supposed to explain, if anything. When it comes to UFO stories, the important thing, to me, is determining whether something constitutes evidence of anything extraordinary or not.

To me, there are two different types of UFOs: the LIZ UFO and the high-information UFO. A LIZ UFO is something that remains unidentified because of a lack of data, while a high-information UFO is something deemed anomalous despite the existence of scientifically testable evidence, for which no mundane explanation exists. The problem is that we have a lot of LIZ UFOs, but not a single high-information UFO. In light of this, the "there's nothing to look at" hypothesis seems like the obvious null hypothesis.

 

[Mauro]

I agree with this, I just don't see how this shows that every time a pilot describes something that seems to be weird (excluding liars), then I have to assume he surely misidentified whatever he was looking at.

Yet again, then I will stop.

I have a big bag with marbles. You pull one out and you see it's black. Then another one, and it's black. Then another, and another, and another... and they are all black. Which colour would you bet the next marble will be?


Or a similar one.

I have a big bag with say 10000 marbles. I propose you this game: you pay me 1$ to draw a marble, if it's black I keep the dollar, if it's red I pay you half a million dollars. Let's say you agree and start drawing marbles. How many dollars will you give me before it starts dawning in your mind that all the marbles in the bag are black?

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

Obviously, it's impossible to tell exactly what Arnold saw. It could have been alien spacecraft, it could have been geese, or he could have made it all up. But what we do know is that there's no evidence of strange crescent-shaped craft flying past Mount Rainier that day. Explaining eyewitness accounts scientifically is impossible without supporting evidence because we don't know what we're supposed to explain, if anything. When it comes to UFO stories, the important thing, to me, is determining whether something constitutes evidence of anything extraordinary or not.

To me, there are two different types of UFOs: the LIZ UFO and the high-information UFO. A LIZ UFO is something that remains unidentified because of a lack of data, while a high-information UFO is something deemed anomalous despite the existence of scientifically testable evidence, for which no mundane explanation exists. The problem is that we have a lot of LIZ UFOs, but not a single high-information UFO. In light of this, the "there's nothing to look at" hypothesis seems like the obvious null hypothesis.

The null hypothesis is fine, and it's the default hypothesis for anyone who takes this seriously.
I just don't get how you can be so certain that there are no cases at all worth looking at.
That's all I'm saying.
I have no idea on what Arnold or Fravor really saw, I wasn't there, assuming "aliens" without evidence is pointless.
But since these are not the only cases, I'd be more careful than simply say it's all 100% errors without any exceptions.
@Mauro I understand your analogy, in that case I would assume all of them are most likely black without saying I'm 100% certain that red marbles do not exist, and that it would be nice to empty the bag to be even more certain.

 

[Eburacum]

Michael Shermer said in a recent video on UAPs that Kenneth Arnold saw geese.
It's possible, but how does he know? Was he there as well with Kenneth?

Well, no; that is just a supposition on his part. I expect that if Shermer had been in the cockpit with Arnold he would have probably reported the same subjective experience, or maybe one with a few minor differences; this is common for cases with multiple witnesses. All this means is that the multiple witnesses have probably been subject to the same error or set of errors.

To determine if Arnold's sighting were geese, or pelicans, or experimental aircraft, or extradimensionals, Shermer would need to occupy a completely different vantage point, probably one much closer to the phenomenon, at a distance where the nature of the phenomenon would be unmistakeable. This is obviously impossible, so the great unsolved cases will remain unsolved for lack of reliable information.

 

[Ian Ridpath]

Michael Shermer said in a recent video on UAPs that Kenneth Arnold saw geese.

Actually the explanation put forward by my colleague James Easton many years ago was that he saw pelicans, and it made good sense. So either Shermer mis-remembered what Easton said, or you mis-remembered what Shermer said.

 

[jarlrmai]

I always find it grimly interesting that Kevin Day (of tictact fame) was onboard during one of the most tragic events of US military mis id's when the US Navy shot down an Iranian airliner.

 

[Mauro]

@Mauro I understand your analogy, in that case I would assume all of them are most likely black without saying I'm 100% certain that red marbles do not exist, and that it would be nice to empty the bag to be even more certain.

Not sure which of the two examples you are referring to, but if it's the second it would be expecially nice for me, with a net gain of 10000$

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

Not sure which of the two examples you are referring to, but if it's the second it would be expecially nice for me, with a net gain of 10000$

Let's say this.
If I drew 99 black marbles out of a bag of 100, I still would not be confident enough to say there's surely no differently colored marble left inside.
I'd have to empty the bag to be 100% sure.
I wouldn't bet any money on it, unfortunately for you, but I still would not say I'm certain that there are no red marbles in your bag.
Now, if I had 10 people saying they saw a red marble in your bag once, I'd be even more curious to empty it.
Not that this applies that well to UFO reports in general, I'd just be careful saying "no red marbles there just based on probability".

Regarding Arnold, @Ian Ridpath.
I'm sure Shermer said "geese" in that video, but since I already know the pelican theory about it, he surely misremembered Easton's conclusion.

 

[RobertBillyBob]

If I drew 99 black marbles out of a bag of 100, I still would not be confident enough to say there's surely no differently colored marble left inside.

Would having no proof non-black marbles exist change that? How much would you be willing to invest to check if the one millionth marble was any other color after still lacking any proof non-black marbles exist?

 

[flarkey]

Where this bag of 100 marbles analogy falls down is that after the 99th black marble is drawn, we shouldn't be calculating the odds of the 100th one being a different colour marble. We should be calculating the odds of it not being a marble at all. Perhaps the odds of it being something that we've never seen before such as a crocoduck?

 

[Ann K]

I just don't get how you can be so certain that there are no cases at all worth looking at.
That's all I'm saying.

IF all you have is a story, and we know that many stories are unreliable,
THEN how do we know which of the stories has any truth to it?

There's nothing to tell us which tales have any truth to them, and which do not. Even if we assume they're all telling us exactly what they THINK they saw, we have no way to separate the accurate recollections from the imagined ones. Yes, I think we can discard any that require something to break the law of physics, but that still leaves a lot of unverified and unverifiable accounts. You insist that there's a possibility that there's some good info in there, but others think we run the risk of diluting any good information we might have with mistaken identities. To an investigator, untrue conclusions may be indistinguishable from unverifiable conclusions.

 

[John J.]

I don't see how any of this proves there cannot be pilots who are accurate in their descriptions and see stuff that eludes our current known categories.

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that pilots/ other aircrew might be able to give accurate descriptions of a previously unknown/ undescribed type of flying/ airborne object. Must have happened quite a few times in WW2, maybe a few times since, where the reported sighting of a new type of foreign aircraft was later confirmed beyond doubt.
In principle, this might apply to a hypothetical alien craft or some other visible exotic phenomena.

But there is no convincing testable evidence for the presence of alien spacecraft visiting Earth (or, at present, alien life of any sort anywhere) or for any sort of phenomenon which, seen clearly, might reasonably be mistaken as alien spacecraft visiting Earth (or something similarly exotic).
There is irrefutable evidence that just like other people, pilots sometimes make misidentifications or errors of judgement.
Unlike first sightings of foreign aircraft, no sightings of UFOs by pilots have ever later been confirmed to be anything exotic*; this is true of all UFO cases.

I'd guess most combat jets, maritime patrol aircraft, attack helicopters etc. carry cameras of some description, but we haven't seen much evidence from these (exceptions include FLIR-1, GIMBAL, discussed elsewhere). This might indicate that either reported sightings by aircrew are fleeting, or not supported by photographic evidence gathered at the time, in which case we hear no more about them: we don't get to see evidence of aircrew UFO sightings that are shown to be mistaken, evidence that aircrew can be prone to misidentifications/ perceptual errors/ over-interpretation just like everyone else.

I don't think there's anything wrong with @Fritzkquzerk's proposal, that aircrew might be able to accurately describe something novel that they encounter. But there's very little evidence that there are exotic craft/ strange phenomena that might be mistaken for exotic craft for aircrew to describe. Anecdotal accounts remain anecdotal accounts, no matter who they're from.


*U-2 pilot Ronald Williams might have observed a meteorological sprite in 1973, 16 years before their existence was demonstrated beyond doubt. But this wasn't a UFO report- and sprites were shown to exist within 16 years, and have been photographed and filmed thousands of times since (post #79, When Ball Lightning Isn't Ball Lightning thread). We're 79 years on from Kenneth Arnold's sighting, 78 from Mantell, 74 from (very ambiguous) sightings by F-94 pilots during the "Washington invasion", 50 years from Iranian F-4s pursuing a UFO, 22 years from FLIR-1 and Tic Tac, 11 years from GIMBAL. But we still have no real evidence of extraterrestrial life or artefacts of any sort.
UFOs have been visible from, but just beyond the reach of, P-51s, F-94s, F-4s, F/A-18s (and often their cameras).

In terms of non-ET explanations for UFOs, we're also 26 years on from the UK's frankly awful Project Condign report, which mentioned reports from aircrew ("Unexpected Encounters by Aircraft" and elsewhere), Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Condign) and its light-bending "Buoyant Plasma Formations". It was conducted by the section of DI55 that was responsible for the MoD's "UFO desk" up to that time, but perhaps not coincidentally not for long after. The report assumed that the Belgian black triangles were accurate-ish reports, and came up with what might be considered a pseudoscientific explanation. On page 1 it has a prominent photo of a Belgian triangle, labelled

An example UAP formation of the triangle type

...it's the hoax photo admitted to by Patrick Maréchal in 2011, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave. Some Condign pages, including the photo, are viewable via Internet Archive here https://dn760105.eu.archive.org/0/items/condign-vol-2-1-258/uap_vol1_pgs1to13_ch1_text.pdf

 

[Todd Feinman]

IF all you have is a story, and we know that many stories are unreliable,
THEN how do we know which of the stories has any truth to it?

There's nothing to tell us which tales have any truth to them, and which do not. Even if we assume they're all telling us exactly what they THINK they saw, we have no way to separate the accurate recollections from the imagined ones. Yes, I think we can discard any that require something to break the law of physics, but that still leaves a lot of unverified and unverifiable accounts. You insist that there's a possibility that there's some good info in there, but others think we run the risk of diluting any good information we might have with mistaken identities. To an investigator, untrue conclusions may be indistinguishable from unverifiable conclusions.

That seems like a perfectly honest assessment of the situation. All you have is witness testimony in most situations. You can hope for testable physical evidence to become available. It is possible to categorize witness descriptions by shape, etc. and that has been done. Solving the endless dots people are constantly saying are aliens, is good too.