New UFO book getting a lot of attention

[airbagmoments]

(As a newbie here, I don't know if discussing media trends regarding bunk (meta metabunk) has a place on these forums and, if it does, which forum it belongs in, so I'm posting in General Discussion, which seems reasonable, but expecting this to get deleted or moved to Rambles.)

Political reporter Garrett Graff has a new book about UFOs. It's getting a lot of attention, including advertorials in Politico and Vanity Fair.

I haven't read the book, but the premise seems to be that while the vast majority of UFO/UAP claims are bunk, enough of them are mysterious to warrant serious research by scientists outside of the military and government agencies.

From the piece he has in Politico which, dishearteningly, I think uses a frame from the "gimbal video" at the top:

There appear to be true UFOs and UAPs, mysteries we can't solve. In recent years, repeated congressional hearings have had Pentagon officials and experienced naval aviators testify they have encountered craft or phenomena that appear to defy known physics, technologies more advanced than anything the U.S. understands.

And:

So what would a serious UFO and UAP effort find? The truth is that there are important, meaningful and world-transforming answers we would likely uncover here even if we never discover an alien spacecraft from Alpha Centauri buzzing the USS Nimitz on a random Tuesday.

And:

These answers will only emerge as our knowledge of physics itself evolves and lets us look anew at what's happening in our world that we don't understand — inter-dimensional or time-traveling visitors, wormholes, extraterrestrials or something even weirder, what one official once called the astronomical truths that are "stranger than the strangest fiction."

And:

...perhaps even more likely, there's a fundamental principle or discovery yet to be made that will render UAPs truly extraordinary, visitors from the future, past, far-away, or even other dimensions, science that we can't even contemplate today.

This is what I sometimes refer to as professional gullibility. It may or may not be a pose, but it's bound to sell a lot of books. I'm guessing a lot of the "mysterious" incidents from the book have been debunked here.

I always think with sadness about how the last big thing Peter Jennings did before he died was to host a professionally gullible hourlong TV special about UFOs.

 

[Mendel]

First, GD is a good forum for this. The staff may move it to the UFO forum, though.

Political reporter Garrett Graff has a new book about UFOs. It's getting a lot of attention, including advertorials in Politico and Vanity Fair.

I haven't read the book, but the premise seems to be that while the vast majority of UFO/UAP claims are bunk, enough of them are mysterious to warrant serious research by scientists outside of the military and government agencies.

Half of the Politico piece reads like an endorsement of the NASA panel report: to let someone non-military run a bunch of sensors and collect data while co-operating internationally. (See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/nasa-uap-independent-study-team-final-report.13166/post-301821 .)

The second half is basically this (excerpted):

Article:

The first two categories of "unsolved" sightings are probably true UFOs and surely have human, terrestrial explanations: They're as-yet-unidentified advanced military technologies, e.g., drones from Russia, China and Iran, or "sky clutter," trash and weird stuff that floats around unnoticed and we don't generally bother monitoring.

The other two categories of "unsolved" cases are the UAPs, that is, phenomena we don't yet understand — as-yet-unknown or little-understood meteorological, astronomical and atmospheric phenomena, like ball lightning, plasma, St. Elmo's Fire, and a whole bunch of other weird and wonderful quirks of our universe that we need to solve and identify.

And then we get to the fourth category where, I believe, the most extraordinary mysteries lie. These answers will only emerge as our knowledge of physics itself evolves and lets us look anew at what's happening in our world that we don't understand — inter-dimensional or time-traveling visitors, wormholes, extraterrestrials or something even weirder, what one official once called the astronomical truths that are "stranger than the strangest fiction." It's easy here, again, to think we know more than we do.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/16/us-government-ufos-military-00127376

From my perspective, there is absolutely no evidence that this fourth category of UAPs exists, in the sense that there are exemplars of it.

Graff believes it because he believes in Fravor's and Graves's interpretation of events:

In recent years, repeated congressional hearings have had Pentagon officials and experienced naval aviators testify they have encountered craft or phenomena that appear to defy known physics, technologies more advanced than anything the U.S. understands.

I don't.
I see no reason to believe it.


P.S.: Welcome to Metabunk, @airbagmoments !

 

[JMartJr]

the premise seems to be that while the vast majority of UFO/UAP claims are bunk, enough of them are mysterious to warrant serious research by scientists outside of the military and government agencies.

Maybe. On the other hand, if I reach into my sock drawer in search of a white sock, and pull out nothing but black socks, at first I might think "there are enough socks unchecked to continue to be worth pulling out more" -- but at some point I start to think "There are no white socks in there I guess, might be better to spend my time doing something else."

They've been pulling UFOs out of the UFO drawer for at least 76 years...

 

[Mauro]

... the premise seems to be that while the vast majority of UFO/UAP claims are bunk, enough of them are mysterious to warrant serious research by scientists outside of the military and government agencies.

This is an old trope which I personally remember since the mid-1970s. Almost 50 years have passed since then, where we had some pretty big technological advancement in every sector but nothing new at all from 'research' on UFO/UAP, which bodes bad to put more money into it.

It's also an illogical proposition. Suppose you have a big bag full of marbles and you pull out one marble at time. You extract thousands and thousands of them and, everytime, they are black marbles, except that some of them are dirty and it's impossible to say which colour they are, even if in a number of cases a way to clean them is found and they are seen to be black too. Which colour would you bet the remaining dirty marbles, let's call them Unidentified Marble Objects, are?


Edit: @JMartJr preceded me by a whiff with the same arguments

 

[Chunder]

Maybe. On the other hand, if I reach into my sock drawer in search of a white sock, and pull out nothing but black socks, at first I might think "there are enough socks unchecked to continue to be worth pulling out more" -- but at some point I start to think "There are no white socks in there I guess, might be better to spend my time doing something else."

They've been pulling UFOs out of the UFO drawer for at least 76 years...

In response to both sock and marble analogies but what if, like me, you have unequivocal (albeit personal only) evidence of pulling out a white sock or marble ?

For me at least it means I have to leave open the possibility that others have experienced the same thing. I guess without the personal experiences I could rationalise the (conservative no here) hundreds of similar accounts, attributing them to a multitude of different reasons, which would actually be a lot less challenging than what I believe to be the reality.

 

[Mauro]

In response to both sock and marble analogies but what if, like me, you have unequivocal (albeit personal only) evidence of pulling out a white sock or marble ?

For me at least it means I have to leave open the possibility that others have experienced the same thing. I guess without the personal experiences I could rationalise the (conservative no here) hundreds of similar accounts, attributing them to a multitude of different reasons, which would actually be a lot less challenging than what I believe to be the reality.

Personal experiences are a tricky thing. I don't know which kind of experience you had but I don't doubt it was 'real' to you and you sincerely believe what you saw was someting out of the ordinary. But was this 'unequivocal'? That's the problem. There are many reasons why personal experiences are not much reliable (too long a topi ro reharsh here), even if they can be quite vivid and full of meaning for those who experience them, and that's why we moved away a long time ago from using 'personal experiences' as a proof and as a method to understand the world (and we had some big improvement since then). Thousand different extraordinary things have been claimed on the basis of personal experiences (UFOs being just a small subset of them), should we believe them all?

 

[Mendel]

In response to both sock and marble analogies but what if, like me, you have unequivocal (albeit personal only) evidence of pulling out a white sock or marble ?

For me at least it means I have to leave open the possibility that others have experienced the same thing. I guess without the personal experiences I could rationalise the (conservative no here) hundreds of similar accounts, attributing them to a multitude of different reasons, which would actually be a lot less challenging than what I believe to be the reality.

We're not really concerned with the socks, we're concerned with the evidence of them.

To get back to the topic, Garrett Graff wrote in Politico:

Fourth, we must build an effort that's data-based and instruments-based. Our data on the UFO sightings people see and report is almost worthless; it's too haphazard, incomplete, and unreplicable. [...] As Loeb said to me last week, "Trust in data. People are a waste of time."

He's proposing that UAP data collection would enable us to make scientific progress. And that's the real white sock: the UAP data that is a scientific mystery.

We have lots of personal encounter stories that do nothing for science.

The claim is that once we invest in "big data" for UAP, scientific progress will result. And there's simply no rational basis for this expectation; it's wishful thinking that's going to cost a lot of tax money, and I predict the result won't be worth it.

Same as the DoD PSI research in the 80s, btw:

Article:

The Stargate Project was terminated and declassified in 1995 after a CIA report concluded that it was never useful in any intelligence operation.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project

That is the true precedent for the new UAP data collection push.

And I'm always amazed how "don't trust the government" types become supporters for total global surveillance, once it has the UAP label.

 

[Chunder]

Personal experiences are a tricky thing. I don't know which kind of experience you had but I don't doubt it was 'real' to you and you sincerely believe what you saw was someting out of the ordinary. But was this 'unequivocal'? That's the problem. There are many reasons why personal experiences are not much reliable (too long a topi ro reharsh here), even if they can be quite vivid and full of meaning for those who experience them, and that's why we moved away a long time ago from using 'personal experiences' as a proof and as a method to understand the world (and we had some big improvement since then). Thousand different extraordinary things have been claimed on the basis of personal experiences (UFOs being just a small subset of them), should we believe them all?

Should we disbelieve all of them ?

Or apply an unbiased scientific approach to investigate and ultimately answer the question as the book appears to suggest ?

 

[Chunder]

We're not really concerned with the socks, we're concerned with the evidence of them.

To get back to the topic, Garrett Graff wrote in Politico:

Fourth, we must build an effort that's data-based and instruments-based. Our data on the UFO sightings people see and report is almost worthless; it's too haphazard, incomplete, and unreplicable. [...] As Loeb said to me last week, "Trust in data. People are a waste of time."

He's proposing that UAP data collection would enable us to make scientific progress. And that's the real white sock: the UAP data that is a scientific mystery.

We have lots of personal encounter stories that do nothing for science.

The claim is that once we invest in "big data" for UAP, scientific progress will result. And there's simply no rational basis for this expectation; it's wishful thinking that's going to cost a lot of tax money, and I predict the result won't be worth it.

Same as the DoD PSI research in the 80s, btw:

Article:

The Stargate Project was terminated and declassified in 1995 after a CIA report concluded that it was never useful in any intelligence operation.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project

That is the true precedent for the new UAP data collection push.

And I'm always amazed how "don't trust the government" types become supporters for total global surveillance, once it has the UAP label.

Firstly there are very few personal encounter stories that have been scientifically investigated, those that have (e.g. Valensole) produced scientific evidence that was anomalous. Maybe a few more may provide something for science (note the distinction between UFO sightings people see as in the quote and personal encounters which I took to mean contactee reports).

If the "big data" surveys come up blank then surely that won't be a waste of money as it will disprove the ETH, which would be scientific progress.

Not sure why you think the Stargate Project is a precedent scenario for UAP investigation - it's already thrown up some Chinese spy balloons which I'm sure was useful for the intelligence communities.

 

[Mauro]

Should we disbelieve all of them ?

Why not? Dismally low prior probability and (at best) ambiguous/anedoctical evidence which never gets better = dismally low probability that it's real.

Or apply an unbiased scientific approach to investigate and ultimately answer the question as the book appears to suggest ?

How do you determine UFOs (say) are worth to be studied while Bigfoot or telekinesis (say) is not? Why not the opposite, or why not finance a study on lacrimating statues? How do you decide on funds allocation? Scientists are constantly fighting for funds and, to get a grant, they should at least make a reasonable case that something will come out of the research. No such case is possible for UFOs (or Bigfoot, telekinesis, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.): it's overwhelmingly probable the null hypothesis (there are no UFOs, in the sense of visiting aliens, no Bigfoot, no telekinesis) will be confirmed. Were such a case possible, be sure scientists would flock to study UFOs (assured Nobel prize), Bigfoots (no Nobel probably, but fame fame for sure) or telekinesis (assured Nobel). There are reasons why no grant money is awarded for this kind of studies!

 

[JMartJr]

note the distinction between UFO sightings people see as in the quote and personal encounters which I took to mean contactee reports

Can you clarify what you mean by "contactee reports?"

I'd always understood that the distinction is actually a three-parter -- UFO sightings, occupant sightings or contactees, with the difference between occupant sightings and contactee claims being that the first is just "look, is that an alien walking around next to that UFO that just landed" sort of reports, and contactee cases being "I have been in communication with entities from Venus who have abducted me several times and send a message of universal brotherhood and want us to stop building nuclear weapons and take better care of the rain forest and like that..."

If you are using "contactee" in that sense (the Valensole case you mention, at first glance, seems to be borderline verging on "contactee" in the classical sense), I'd disagree that there is more likely to be anything of value come up in studying those cases. Even in that case, the interesting, "study-able" bits seem to be from the "close encounter" part of the claim, not the "contactee" part. (If there is enough actual information to justify it, you might consider starting a thread on that case.)

Edit to fix the usual typo...

 

[Mendel]

Firstly there are very few personal encounter stories that have been scientifically investigated, those that have (e.g. Valensole) produced scientific evidence that was anomalous.

They found calcium in a field. The use of calcium in agriculture is over a century old.
It's not useful in any way, not a mystery worth solving.

Not sure why you think the Stargate Project is a precedent scenario for UAP investigation - it's already thrown up some Chinese spy balloons which I'm sure was useful for the intelligence communities.

I see no evidence that UAP investigations contributed anything to the detection of Chinese spy balloons.

 

[Ann K]

Firstly there are very few personal encounter stories that have been scientifically investigated, those that have (e.g. Valensole) produced scientific evidence that was anomalous. Maybe a few more may provide something for science (note the distinction between UFO sightings people see as in the quote and personal encounters which I took to mean contactee reports).

As long as these "encounters" are strictly anecdotal, there simply is nothing to be scientifically investigated, and greater numbers of such reports will make no difference at all. There first has to be something to investigate, and without that, stories are going nowhere. Mere stories of contact do not differ in evidentiary value from stories of UFO sightings, so I'm not sure why you want to make that distinction.

 

[deirdre]

If the "big data" surveys come up blank then surely that won't be a waste of money as it will disprove the ETH,

why do we have to disprove the ETH? it is a waste of money. Feed children, reduce medical costs, house our vets and elderly or prove to Chunder that Ets arent visiting earth... hhmmm how should we spend the money?

 

[Mendel]

If the "big data" surveys come up blank then surely that won't be a waste of money as it will disprove the ETH, which would be scientific progress.

Project Blue Book did that, and the people who wanted to believe still kept on believing. There is no "evidence of absence" that can convince those who do not want to be convinced.

That's why we're focusing on the claims of "scientific value"; because here the lack of evidence works in our favor, showing that they're based on wishful thinking and not much else.

Spend the money on building nuclear fusion power reactors, that's SciFi within reach that can actually help save humanity.

 

[FatPhil]

There are reasons why no grant money is awarded for this kind of studies!

Academia is like legislation and sausages - you really don't want to see how the stuff is made. A lot of funding applications, and the subsequent studies, pass through my company's hands. We've had some classics. One I remember was the one that proved that people want wooden buttons on their mobile phones. At least we're getting a slice too, and the ratio of applications that turn into studies tells us we're doing a really good job for the clients.

 

[Chunder]

why do we have to disprove the ETH? it is a waste of money. Feed children, reduce medical costs, house our vets and elderly or prove to Chunder that Ets arent visiting earth... hhmmm how should we spend the money?

It's obviously not a binary choice but if taking that reasoning why do we need a space programme, or any military costs above maintaining a nuclear deterrent, or any scientific R&D, or... ?

No need to reply, I get the feeling you have a strong belief that it is a waste of money, I just have a different view and one which, as I have already intimated, is difficult to justify outside of my own personal experiences.

 

[Mendel]

No need to reply, I get the feeling you have a strong belief that it is a waste of money, I just have a different view and one which, as I have already intimated, is difficult to justify outside of my own personal experiences.

Has any money that has been spent on UFo research so far changed any of your beliefs? What would a government UFO program have to accomplish to change them?

Or are you merely hoping that it would somehow change ours?

 

[deirdre]

or any military costs above maintaining a nuclear deterrent,

i'm ok with the military investigating and fixing their radar glitches, and figuring out why some of their pilots think China might be buzzing their training sites with advanced tech. Let Mexico pay to prove ETs..their people are more into that sort of thing and they have plenty of sightings down there.

 

[FatPhil]

It's obviously not a binary choice but if taking that reasoning why do we need a space programme, or any military costs above maintaining a nuclear deterrent, or any scientific R&D, or... ?

Right now, I simply cannot think of a field relevant to everyday life in a modern western society that *hasn't* benefitted from the space program. Some modern development of optics, sensor technology, telemetry, energy storage, or materials science will be involved in almost everything that you see around you, even if it's remote. E.g. everyone who wears spectacles or sunglasses has benefitted from NASA's helmet tech. Just as everyone who's had laser eye surgery has benefitted from NASA's eye-monitoring tech. Every diabetic has benefitted from NASA's health-monitoring tech. Everyone benefitting from solar power, which is everyone attached to the grid as well as almost everyone not attached to the grid, has benefitted from NASA's photovoltaic tech. Those freeze-dried berries in your pack of fruit muesli? Yup, that's NASA tech too. The list is literally endless.

And that's Just one space program (I was presuming you were thinking of the American one, others do exist) - I didn't even start on the utterly absurd "or any scientific R&D" extension.

No wonder you said "don't answer", any answer from anyone who understood your question would absolutely destroy your position.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Not sure why you think the Stargate Project is a precedent scenario for UAP investigation

I think Stargate is a pretty good analogy or at least a cautionary tale related to UFOs and the government.

• It was an attempt to scientifically study, and hopefully harness, psy, the existence of which, like UFOs and aliens was based largely on anecdote, stories, personal experiences and known hoaxes.
• It was principally overseen by a true believer in psy, Maj Gen. Stubblebine:

A key sponsor of the research internally at Fort Meade, Maryland, Maj. Gen. Stubblebine was convinced of the reality of a wide variety of psychic phenomena. He required that all of his battalion commanders learn how to bend spoons a la Uri Geller, and he himself attempted several psychic feats, even attempting to walk through walls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project

• Much like Senator Ried and Lue Elizondo's claims that the Russians and Chinese are already reverse engineering UFOs, Stargate was founded in part because the US government was afraid the Soviets were already doing it:

In 1970 United States intelligence sources believed that the Soviet Union was spending 60 million roubles annually on "psychotronic" research. In response to claims that the Soviet program had produced results, the CIA initiated funding for a new program known as SCANATE ("scan by coordinate") in the same year.

• The various programs that were eventually amalgamated under "Stargate", often included a number of government contractors who were believers in psy, including Hal Putoff, Russel Targ and Edwin May, as such they often found positive results and the existence of psy:

Physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff began testing psychics for SRI in 1972, including one who would later become an international celebrity, Israeli Uri Geller. Their apparently successful results garnered interest within the U.S. Department of Defense.

Note here the supposed expertise of the investigators. This is also something we see in UFOlogy today. These were physicists (Puthoff's specialty was lasers) conducting what amounted to something like behavioral psychology experiments. As a result, they were easily fooled by people like Geller.

• Despite the supposed positive results, none of it ever withstood later scrutiny:

In 1995 the project was transferred to the CIA and a retrospective evaluation of the results was done. The appointed panel consisted primarily of Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman.

Hyman came to the conclusion:

Psychologists, such as myself, who study subjective validation find nothing striking or surprising in the reported matching of reports against targets in the Stargate data. The overwhelming amount of data generated by the viewers is vague, general, and way off target. The few apparent hits are just what we would expect if nothing other than reasonable guessing and subjective validation are operating.

• As often happens in UFOlogy, people and claims just keep recirculating. After losing his government contract with Stargate in the '70s because of his poor work with Geller and others, Puthoff was back at the government trough in 2010 collecting money via AASWAP and BAASS to study psy. Again.
• After 20+ years, countless programs, various government agency oversights and untold amounts of money the government concluded that there is likely no evidence to support the existence of psy. Nevertheless, lots of people still believe in it.
• Every time a previous or current government UFO program comes to the conclusion there is no compelling evidence for alien visitation, the UFOlogical world erupts with some combination of "coverup and/or insufficient funding". Much as people like former Stargate researcher May complained when the project was finally shutdown in the '90s.

All around I think it's an instructive lesson. IF the rumors are true about Col. Gill taking over at ARRO for Kirkpatrick, I think will see it play out very similarly.

If the "big data" surveys come up blank then surely that won't be a waste of money as it will disprove the ETH, which would be scientific progress.

Incorrect. This is "proving a negative" which can't be done. IF some sort of large-scale program involving big data and whatever else came up with a "blank", then all that can be said is similar to what is said now: Given the data presented and studied there is no compelling evidence for alien visitation. And the same argument will then be presented: Not enough data, not enough funding, not a big enough study and so on.

For some, the current lack of compelling evidence is likely because there isn't any and therefore more studies or funding or "big data" isn't going to produce any. For others, the compelling evidence already exists, it just needs to be uncovered. In that case, any study, even if it involved all the resources and the total budget of the US government, would be insufficient if it did not provide the evidence that is believed to already exist.

 

[Chunder]

Right now, I simply cannot think of a field relevant to everyday life in a modern western society that *hasn't* benefitted from the space program. Some modern development of optics, sensor technology, telemetry, energy storage, or materials science will be involved in almost everything that you see around you, even if it's remote. E.g. everyone who wears spectacles or sunglasses has benefitted from NASA's helmet tech. Just as everyone who's had laser eye surgery has benefitted from NASA's eye-monitoring tech. Every diabetic has benefitted from NASA's health-monitoring tech. Everyone benefitting from solar power, which is everyone attached to the grid as well as almost everyone not attached to the grid, has benefitted from NASA's photovoltaic tech. Those freeze-dried berries in your pack of fruit muesli? Yup, that's NASA tech too. The list is literally endless.

And that's Just one space program (I was presuming you were thinking of the American one, others do exist) - I didn't even start on the utterly absurd "or any scientific R&D" extension.

No wonder you said "don't answer", any answer from anyone who understood your question would absolutely destroy your position.

You have obviously totally misunderstood my response as you seem to think I am advocating cancelling the things listed.

Can you let me know what position it is you think I hold that warrants your response ?

I thought it was quite clear in my response to Deidre, in that it wasn't an either / or matter (not that the worthy of funding question is really relevant anyway, it will either happen or it won't and if the general populaces opinion does come into play recent polls have shown how that is likely to go) but if it was you could argue that any expenditure not directly for "Feed children, reduce medical costs, house our vets and elderly" should be cut.

Don't answer was because it is an irrelevant hypothetical question with no right or wrong black and white answer.

 

[Chunder]

Has any money that has been spent on UFo research so far changed any of your beliefs? What would a government UFO program have to accomplish to change them?

Or are you merely hoping that it would somehow change ours?

Firstly just to point out that I don't have any beliefs on this matter, only opinions.

All UFO research of any quality has informed my opinions, as would a Govt UFO program.

I am merely hoping that well funded scientific research yields data (or even better if conclusive enough then answers) about some aspects of the phenomenon.

 

[Ann K]

I am merely hoping that well funded scientific research yields data (or even better if conclusive enough then answers) about some aspects of the phenomenon.

What is "the phenomenon"? It has already been shown that many different things can cause UFO sightings, from atmospheric events to balloons to butterflies to bugs on lenses. "The phenomenon", if a single one must be identified, would seem to be the mental state of individuals who insist on seeing interstellar travelers in mundane things.

 

[Chunder]

What is "the phenomenon"? It has already been shown that many different things can cause UFO sightings, from atmospheric events to balloons to butterflies to bugs on lenses. "The phenomenon", if a single one must be identified, would seem to be the mental state of individuals who insist on seeing interstellar travelers in mundane things.

Any study should identify and disregard the noise.

 

[FatPhil]

You have obviously totally misunderstood my response as you seem to think I am advocating cancelling the things listed.

Can you let me know what position it is you think I hold that warrants your response ?

You introduced an equivalence between the funding of woo-oriented programs and the funding of NASA.

The obvious conclusion from you doing that is that you think that there is an equivalence between the work of woo-oriented programs and the work of NASA.

If that is not a position that you hold, please desist from introducing irrelevant equivalencies into your argument, and just state your position factually.

 

[Ann K]

Any study should identify and disregard the noise.

And when the noise has been discarded we are left with a hatful of nothing. Everything that remains is in the LIZ, with no solid evidence to study. But does that satisfy the Ufologists? Nope, it does not; they're the people who say "I don't know what it was but I know what it was".

 

[Chunder]

I think Stargate is a pretty good analogy or at least a cautionary tale related to UFOs and the government.

• It was an attempt to scientifically study, and hopefully harness, psy, the existence of which, like UFOs and aliens was based largely on anecdote, stories, personal experiences and known hoaxes.
• It was principally overseen by a true believer in psy, Maj Gen. Stubblebine:

A key sponsor of the research internally at Fort Meade, Maryland, Maj. Gen. Stubblebine was convinced of the reality of a wide variety of psychic phenomena. He required that all of his battalion commanders learn how to bend spoons a la Uri Geller, and he himself attempted several psychic feats, even attempting to walk through walls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project

• Much like Senator Ried and Lue Elizondo's claims that the Russians and Chinese are already reverse engineering UFOs, Stargate was founded in part because the US government was afraid the Soviets were already doing it:

In 1970 United States intelligence sources believed that the Soviet Union was spending 60 million roubles annually on "psychotronic" research. In response to claims that the Soviet program had produced results, the CIA initiated funding for a new program known as SCANATE ("scan by coordinate") in the same year.

• The various programs that were eventually amalgamated under "Stargate", often included a number of government contractors who were believers in psy, including Hal Putoff, Russel Targ and Edwin May, as such they often found positive results and the existence of psy:

Physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff began testing psychics for SRI in 1972, including one who would later become an international celebrity, Israeli Uri Geller. Their apparently successful results garnered interest within the U.S. Department of Defense.

Note here the supposed expertise of the investigators. This is also something we see in UFOlogy today. These were physicists (Puthoff's specialty was lasers) conducting what amounted to something like behavioral psychology experiments. As a result, they were easily fooled by people like Geller.

• Despite the supposed positive results, none of it ever withstood later scrutiny:

In 1995 the project was transferred to the CIA and a retrospective evaluation of the results was done. The appointed panel consisted primarily of Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman.

Hyman came to the conclusion:

Psychologists, such as myself, who study subjective validation find nothing striking or surprising in the reported matching of reports against targets in the Stargate data. The overwhelming amount of data generated by the viewers is vague, general, and way off target. The few apparent hits are just what we would expect if nothing other than reasonable guessing and subjective validation are operating.

• As often happens in UFOlogy, people and claims just keep recirculating. After losing his government contract with Stargate in the '70s because of his poor work with Geller and others, Puthoff was back at the government trough in 2010 collecting money via AASWAP and BAASS to study psy. Again.
• After 20+ years, countless programs, various government agency oversights and untold amounts of money the government concluded that there is likely no evidence to support the existence of psy. Nevertheless, lots of people still believe in it.
• Every time a previous or current government UFO program comes to the conclusion there is no compelling evidence for alien visitation, the UFOlogical world erupts with some combination of "coverup and/or insufficient funding". Much as people like former Stargate researcher May complained when the project was finally shutdown in the '90s.

All around I think it's an instructive lesson. IF the rumors are true about Col. Gill taking over at ARRO for Kirkpatrick, I think will see it play out very similarly.



Incorrect. This is "proving a negative" which can't be done. IF some sort of large-scale program involving big data and whatever else came up with a "blank", then all that can be said is similar to what is said now: Given the data presented and studied there is no compelling evidence for alien visitation. And the same argument will then be presented: Not enough data, not enough funding, not a big enough study and so on.

For some, the current lack of compelling evidence is likely because there isn't any and therefore more studies or funding or "big data" isn't going to produce any. For others, the compelling evidence already exists, it just needs to be uncovered. In that case, any study, even if it involved all the resources and the total budget of the US government, would be insufficient if it did not provide the evidence that is believed to already exist.

Valid points and I concede that Stargate is a viable precedent for that argument.

In terms of proving the negative I had in mind some specific scenarios which may disprove the nuts and bolts theory, but on reflection yes, someone can always use a magic theory to prevent a definitive conclusion. When I have more time I may expand on both points.

 

[JMartJr]

Any study should identify and disregard the noise.

There's a problem inherent in that, though. It per-supposes the existence of a signal amidst the noise. Sadly, previous attempts to do a comprehensive study surveying all available cases have come up with a lot of noise that can be eliminated (balloons, satellites, meteors, hoaxes, advertising lights on aircraft, searchlights, bugs, etc.) and a residual of cases that have to be marked "insufficient data," stuff off in the Low Information Zone. It is possible that LIZ cases MIGHT contain the presumed signal, but there is evidence that they do not (for example, as instrumentation gets better, the LIZ moves further out from the observer -- but the signal is not uncovered, evidence but not proof that LIZ cases are just noise that is too far away to identify.)

The "noise cases" do have some value to a study, though -- they demonstrate that mundane causes can generate fantastic reports. That being the case, there is no need to assume a signal lurks out there, as the noise has been shown capable of generating the reports.

Which does not prove there is not some actual mysterious phenomenon out there. But good faith efforts to find it have been made for at least 70 years and have not found the evidence for it. At some point the conclusion can be drawn that there is probably nothing there to find, and the topic should more properly be studied by psychologists interested in the enduring power of folklore or memes in culture to endure over decades.

 

[Chunder]

And when the noise has been discarded we are left with a hatful of nothing. Everything that remains is in the LIZ, with no solid evidence to study. But does that satisfy the Ufologists? Nope, it does not; they're the people who say "I don't know what it was but I know what it was".

You are pre-empting the outcome of a study that hasn't taken place, with one of the primary objectives being to obtain data and lift it out of the LIZ.

 

[Chunder]

There's a problem inherent in that, though. It per-supposes the existence of a signal amidst the noise. Sadly, previous attempts to do a comprehensive study surveying all available cases have come up with a lot of noise that can be eliminated (balloons, satellites, meteors, hoaxes, advertising lights on aircraft, searchlights, bugs, etc.) and a residual of cases that have to be marked "insufficient data," stuff off in the Low Information Zone. It is possible that LIZ cases MIGHT contain the presumed signal, but there is evidence that they do not (for example, as instrumentation gets better, the LIZ moves further out from the observer -- but the signal is not uncovered, evidence but not proof that LIZ cases are just noise that is too far away to identify.)

The "noise cases" do have some value to a study, though -- they demonstrate that mundane causes can generate fantastic reports. That being the case, there is no need to assume a signal lurks out there, as the noise has been shown capable of generating the reports.

Which does not prove there is not some actual mysterious phenomenon out there. But good faith efforts to find it have been made for at least 70 years and have not found the evidence for it. At some point the conclusion can be drawn that there is probably nothing there to find, and the topic should more properly be studied by psychologists interested in the enduring power of folklore or memes in culture to endure over decades.

It doesn't and most definitely shouldn't pre-suppose the existence of a signal.

 

[Mendel]

You are pre-empting the outcome of a study that hasn't taken place, with one of the primary objectives being to obtain data and lift it out of the LIZ.

Data in the LIZ cannot be "lifted out". Every sensor system has a LIZ. See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ufo-acronyms-what-is-the-liz.11742/ for examples.

If you let the US government do global surveillance that could detect and track any flying-saucer-like object, believers will simply claim that the visitors are too small to be detected, putting them back in the LIZ:

Article:

An astrophysicist in the country of Georgia recently put forward a thought-provoking theory that space may be filled with tiny alien probes that go undetected by those looking for signs of ET life. [...] In his paper, Osmanov suggests that perhaps scientists have been looking for the wrong signs of life and theorizes that ETs may rely on self-replicating spacecraft that are built on a nanoscale.

Source: https://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/astrophysicist-argues-that-aliens-could-be-exploring-space-via-nanoprobes/

 

[deirdre]

You are pre-empting the outcome of a study that hasn't taken place, with one of the primary objectives being to obtain data and lift it out of the LIZ.

it's not like various governments (and private entities) haven't tried studying these "phenomenon" before.

 

[JMartJr]

It doesn't and most definitely shouldn't pre-suppose the existence of a signal.

I'd tend to disagree that it doesn't, but agree that it shouldn't!

Previous studies over multiple decades have been signal-free, though. It would seem fair to ask, "Before funding ANOTHER such study, are there any grounds to assume a different outcome this time?" If not, at some point one has to ask at what number of negative studies have we passed the point of not needing another one.

Corollary question might be "Past studies that found nothing have not seemed persuasive to some number of people, is there any reason to think another study, if the results were the same, would settle the question?"

My answer to those would be "No" to the first, and "EMPATHICALLY NO" for the second, so I'm not sure I see value in another such study. If you have reason to believe the answer (particularly to the first question) should be "Yes!" I'd be interested in hearing it... or reading it, I guess!

And to be clear, I have no issue at all with a non-governmental effort to research anything anybody wants to research in this area -- in such a study it's not my money being spent, so even if it turns out to be another waste of time and money I'm not out anything.

 

[NorCal Dave]

it's not like various governments (and private entities) haven't tried studying these "phenomenon" before.

Indeed!

The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) claims to have over 170,000 reports of sightings. MUFON has a huge publicly searchable database of sightings tuned up at US taxpayer expense via AASWAP/BAASS in the mid '00s. The Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) has a database that is accessible to serious UFO researchers, and they have all of The National Investigations Committee on Aeireal Phenomenon (NICAP)'s database.

Plenty of "data" out there.

Government programs from the '50s through to today include Project Bluebook, the Condon Commitee, AASWAP, maybe AATIP, the UAP Task Force (UAPTF), AOIMSG and AARO. As most of these have not found evidence of alien visitation, they are often considered part of the coverup, or non-performing due to lack of proper funding and commitment.

Even when these programs are run by UFOlogists, such as AASWAP, maybe AATIP and some of UAPTF, there is still a lack of compelling evidence. A few IR videos from the Navy, some spooky stories in a book and a collection of LIZ sightings, many of which were in fact identified as drones, bokeh and just plain stars.

And to reiterate, these were programs being run by people that are claiming the government has evidence of alien craft, visitation, captured alien crafts and Non-Human Biologicals (Aliens). We had the fox guarding the hen house so to speak, we should have been served up heaps of fried chicken. Instead, it was the usual bits of orbs and lights and "Well what about this!!?" ending in the call for "more studies," "more funding" and "more government involvement".

 

[Ann K]

You are pre-empting the outcome of a study that hasn't taken place, with one of the primary objectives being to obtain data and lift it out of the LIZ.

Studies HAVE taken place, as long as there have been people seeing weird stuff. The fact that it's not your preferred study by your preferred agency is irrelevant. "Lifting information out of the LIZ" runs the danger of inventing details out of whole cloth, such as we have seen with AI, and such things as colorizing a black and white photo. The LIZ is the LIZ for perfectly good reasons.

 

[jdog]

As the members of that NASA panel pointed out, it's hard to study something where the best evidence you have is someone's impressions of something they saw in the distance that they didn't recognize. There is clearly a cultural phenomenon; it's not at all clear that there's an unquantified physical phenomenon.

 

[JMartJr]

The LIZ is the LIZ for perfectly good reasons.

And to follow up, can NEVER be eliminated. Better instruments can push it further away, as has been happening since such instrumentation was first invented, but there will always be some distance at which an object or phenomenon can be detected, but not resolved -- we can tell something is there, but not much about what it is. Anything in that "zone" that is in the air (or, I suppose, space) will always be available as a UAP/UFO, something "flying" that is noted but not identifiable.

 

[Chunder]

Studies HAVE taken place, as long as there have been people seeing weird stuff. The fact that it's not your preferred study by your preferred agency is irrelevant. "Lifting information out of the LIZ" runs the danger of inventing details out of whole cloth, such as we have seen with AI, and such things as colorizing a black and white photo. The LIZ is the LIZ for perfectly good reasons.

Maybe I phrased it wrong, the lifting out was not taking poor information and extrapolating rather gaining better information so that whatever occurrence it was is no longer in the LIZ.

By the way there is no need to remind me that my preferences are irrelevant (even though I don't have any other than that I would welcome an unbiased well funded science based in depth study, which HASN'T taken place), I am aware that my opinions are also in the scheme of things, but it doesn't have to negate civil discourse.

 

[Mendel]

Maybe I phrased it wrong, the lifting out was not taking poor information and extrapolating rather gaining better information so that whatever occurrence it was is no longer in the LIZ.

That's typically not possible.
I think you are imagining that sensor A detects something in its LIZ, and then someone remembers sensor B, looks at its stored data, and identifies the phenomenon.
But the collective system of sensor A and B has a LIZ of its own, and there's nothing that can remove it without creating a new LIZ.
The characteristics of the LIZ change over time, but it won't go away.

Spoiler: xkcd cartoon

ALERT: Human 910-25J-1Q38 has created a Youtube channel. Increase erratic jerkiness of flying by 30% until safely out of range.
https://xkcd.com/2572/