Grusch has provided testimony.
Some others touched on a few points but going to expand on it too;
Because we KNOW that such evidence can be mistaken. People make up stories sometimes. People hallucinate. People are fooled by a third-party hoaxer. People experience something that grows and morphs in memory. Testimony in those and similar cases is not useful. And there is no way to differentiate such people from a witness who is absolutely accurate, honest and correct in recalling and testifying to what they experienced.
We'd convict for murder on less than the testimony of an eye-witness? Maybe, but to convict for murder, you'd like to be able to show the body, right? You want to be able to show the jury the weapon. And we'd overturn it if things like DNA evidence come to light, as happens reasonably frequently. For UFOs, the "DNA evidence" and the "smoking gun" remains missing after many years of looking for it.
Agreed. For the most part, but personally I think the world of UFOlogy is so intent on proving aliens are real, they not only go along with a lot of well-meaning misidentifications, but they also fall prey to a complete cottage industry that ranges from outright hoaxes to overhyped stories and blob photos. UFOlogy in general would do well to be more skeptical and demand actual evidence before jumping on the next bandwagon of a supposed smoking gun case.
They do because they extend trust to people who reinforce their beliefs.
There are numerous examples of people knowingly defeating vetting measures. Polygraphs give false positives and false negatives, and can be deliberately subverted. At best they give an indication of physiological stress responses, which can occur in many people who are knowingly repeating a falsehood, but not in all. Some individuals show indications of physiological stress when asked questions even though their responses are truthful and accurate.
People's perceptions can be fallible. That is why sceptics are interested in having evidence in addition to testimony.
If my wife said that, I'd pretend to believe her, I suppose. Peace at home my trump other considerations!
No, it is more like saying "No anecdotal story can be considered PROOF of extraordinary claims (or ordinary ones) in and of itself. Where is the supporting evidence? What does it show?"
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This is a very interesting argument, but long and totally off-topic. Maybe you could open a thread in Open Discussions or Rambles.
Yes, I would believe Mrs Duke (or anyone else I know, and know the reliability and mental fitness of) believed she/they saw what she/they described. Most witnesses are honest, but often inaccurate. They believe what they think they saw and report what they believe.
Even though you can't judge the credibility of the person who told the story to Grusch.
I would question it. Especially if they did not have a picture. They could have been mistaken by what they saw. If they had a picture and told me they took it and that is what they saw I would believe they didn't fake the picture. It would be evidence supporting alien craft are real. It would not be proof.
This is somewhat inaccurate as there were 62 pictures eventually drawn by various students, but only about 12-20 students were actually interviewed and reported seeing a UFO of some sort with some of those reporting some sort of man that could be construed as an alien.External Quote:
Now 62 has gone to 100. At the very least he's exaggerating or worse just throwing out bigger numbers to make the story more dramatic. Note also, Jesse has 62 kids seeing a UFO, Grusch has 100 kids seeing an alien. And this is a story we can check out and see Grusch is misremembering or exaggerating, even from the not so accurate canonical version of the story preferred by UFOlogists.External Quote:
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You have a strange misunderstanding of the processes of science. Most scientific studies are not of single-occurrence events or uncorroborated witness accounts or one-pixel photographic "evidence", so it is unsurprising if those particular events are not as thoroughly studied as you might wish. If, as sometime happens, a person has possession of oh, say, three tiny mummies of unknown provenance and refuses to release them to anyone except the hand-picked scientists that are likely to believe in them, it's also not surprising that they don't show up in wider studies. But these are the exception rather than the rule.
Some scientific equipment (e.g. a large hadron collider) is rarely duplicated. Anthropologists working with a specific tribe wouldn't expect a different team to come in and replicate their observations.
Not just "Appeal to Authority", but "Appeal to False Authority".
Statistically, one of the traits most strongly correlated with credulity is being credulous.
I SO agree with this statement. Individual scientists make false and unverifiable claims ALL the time. Linus Pauling comes to mind concerning Vitamin C and Cancer. It's not about the one lone man with a claim. It's about their peers examining the claim and being able to replicate it, verify it and be able to make predictions based upon it.
They've even coined a phrase for the problem, "the Nobel disease". It refers to people who have been (rightly) lauded for one body of scientific work who then go on to embrace fringe concepts, perhaps overconfident in their own scientific acumen.
Although, to be fair, that's not really evidence against the honesty of the next guy. If a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then, it should be possible for the UFO Community to someday find a non-nut.
It says nothing about the honesty of the next guy.
Sorry missed that. Thanks!
I have to wonder if he was "shown evidence of a craft", and think it a lot more likely that he was actually shown 2-D video of something that was unidentified. We have seen many, many videos of dots (or birds, or bugs) that are doing movements that would be highly improbable if they were large enough that one might refer to them as "a craft", but not at all unusual if they are bug-sized. The same is true if he saw video of an airplane radar screen, and there are many examples in Metabunk of people who see one thing but mistake it for something entirely different.
Yes I do agree with this. However, there is certainly better evidence available. In particular, satellite imagery via SENTIENT, sigint, and other platforms confirmed a Tic-Tac like object in this NRO report, which was then forwarded to AARO as being a possible UAP. So, upon first inspection by analysts, which was Grusch's job previously, and he also stated, under oath, that he had personally analyzed objects which "defied the laws of physics".
The "better evidence" is in the form of written discussion, carefully worded and heavily redacted. It says, in effect, that something unidentified was reported, and your link assumes a lot from that meager fact. At a quick scan I see no way that I (and the other Metabunk contributors) could possibly ascertain whether it is indeed better evidence. You state, I suppose as evidence, that Grusch vouched for it, but whether or not he can be trusted to give an accurate account is exactly the thing that we have been trying to determine.
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Also I didn't see anything in the black vault article which referenced the FIOA documents saying that the "tic tac" object "defied the laws of physics". All it mentioned was that it resembled the shape.
