As a quality indicator, sure. But it's a solid indication of how niche a movie is.
Giddierone
Senior Member.
Humm...maybe it was On The Media?
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Yeah, my concern is not with the critics who might think it is or is not a well-made film, but with the audiences who might rate it highly because they found it so convincing!
FatPhil
Senior Member.
Decades back, the BBC was arguably at its worst[*], having everything worthy of contempt from its shameless parotting of even the weakest governmentally-supplied lies regarding the Iraq War to the Ross/Brand fiasco, so I'm not sure where the high regard you appear to have found comes from.
[* I'm too young to remember its reporting of Bloody Sunday, I'm told it was even worse.]
Mendel
Senior Member.
I don't really want to bash mainstream media on a website dedicated to conspiracy theories without adding some context. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bbc/ rates them as "mostly factual", which isn't as good as it could be, but still better than many.
Also, the BBC is a large organisation, and performs better in some areas and worse in others.
And third, while they don't say what we want them to say, I don't think their reporting on the film distorts facts?
This would be a classic case where writing a letter to them would be appropriate.
Has anyone collected Dan Farah's admissions of what he says he left out of Age of Disclosure to make it more palatable? For a while it seemed like /r/ufos was posting a new thread every other day about astonishing new things Farah was telling interviewers that weren't in the video.
That's the thing about selection bias, no? The people who paid for and watched it and who are encouraged to rate it are the r/ufo crowd.
My wife is not going to watch it, let alone rate it on rottentomatoes. Even in the interest of providing an "unbiased" opinion.
So, it's possible to assume that it's highly-rated among people who like to watch documentaries about UFOs (and are willing to pay to watch them.)
Once it goes "free" and all of the people who viewed or heard news stories about the doc start watching it in a "what's all the fuss about" way, I'm sure the ratings will start to drop.
You see this self-filtering effect a lot in book series. I'll read the first novel, it's meh, I'll go to the reviews to validate my opinion and find that first book gets mediocre ratings. However, reviews for books two and three go up -- since only fans who liked the first book bothered to read the following books.
There can also be an effect where people express an irrationally positive opinion about something they've paid for to ease the cognitive dissonance of having paid for something that was disappointing.
Post deleted wasn't AI content. For reference, it was an argument against stigmatizing and de-legitimizing scientific investigation into UFOs. The basis was that, without a scientific counterpart, the non-scientific speculative theories developed by skeptics about the causality underlying alleged UFO or alien encounters are pointless. If we want to figure out the causality, we have to determine it more rigorously than just drawing connections, spurious or not, and writing books or articles about it. The goal shouldn't be just finding something plausible sounding that fits your worldview and having that stand in place of the truth, it should be actually figuring out what the truth is.
Mendel
Senior Member.
I honestly think this applies in full to UFOlogy.
And it's the reason why UFOlogy should be stigmatised.
This does not apply to experiencers. People seeing things they can't explain is normal (and the premise of every magic show). The experiences are valid.
But the explanations that get attached to them (by UFOlogy) are not, for the reasons you've listed, and the practice of doing that should be stigmatised.
The Age of Disclosure illustrates that UFOlogy is not evidence-driven.
UFOlogy seems to have become a catch all for UFO investigation that aren't explicitly aimed purely at debunking. Then some people want to define the catch all as a pseudoscience. That's some pretty heavy handed fallacy reliance. Applied skepticism escapes the pseudoscience moniker because, firstly, it doesn't claim to be a field of science, and second, sometimes it is scientific. And the unscientific applications aren't necessarilly bad or without value in the way that pseudoscience connotes. But in reality, the same is true of what you're calling UFOlogy.
Just because you have a particualar belief about what the truth is, and bennefit from a sociological state that's developed for various reasons, which gives UFOlogy a bad name, it doesn't make the fundamental rules of science and espistemiology apply differently to you than it does to those who disagree with you.
Gary C
Senior Member.
Skepticism is neither science nor pseudo-science. It is merely the appropriate starting point for any unbiased investigation. The skeptic is willing to accept claims based only on the quality of evidence presented. Quantity is not a substitute for quality hence, "the plural of anecdote is not data."
A UFO investigation results in debunking only if there was a claim that the reported event was caused by an alien, trans-dimensional, or other paranormal phenomena. If there was no bunk inserted in the report, determining that a mundane explanation suffices to explain a UFO sighting is simply finding an answer to a puzzle. No harm, no foul.
My belief is that no extraterrestrial or paranormal explanation is needed to explain the existing body of UFO reports as the quality of those reports has not improved in three generations. Considering the orders of magnitude improvement in our sensor and information processing technology, my confidence has only increased. My belief could change tomorrow if I were to be presented with suitable, verifiable evidence. Another story is not going to persuade me. The film we have been discussing is just that, another story. And it's a remake.
Well, but you have what I guess I am calling applied skepticism (in this case applied to the UFO question), where people identifying as skeptics or scientific skeptics, attempt to establish causes for UFO or alien encounter experiences. Coming up with a plausible sounding theory that seems more likely than a more extraordinary one is fine. But, without testing the theory, it's still just speculation, and doesn't solve the puzzle.
But the thread is full of disparaging comments about UFOlogy in general, which is used as a catch all stigmatized term, to delegitimize anyone investigating unconventional hypotheses. The fact is, the reports detail unconventional things. The unconventional hypotheses are not without merit. Doesn't mean they are correct, but some very well might be.
Where it connects to the documentary, is that since UFOlogy is used as a catch all, people utilizing that framing are taking things they find wrong with this documentary and the people in it, and generalizing it to the whole space.
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Giddierone
Senior Member.
With enough evidence I'll believe anything. The problem of stigma is a self-inflicted condition created by those in ufology who promise evidence of their extraordinary claim yet fail to deliver that evidence. Examples might be Chris Bledso and his "the data is proprietary" comment when asked for the date time and location of his "orb" sighting. If we don't have that data the claim can't be investigated, nor debunked.
Another example is ufologist Randall Nickerson's numerous claims about Ariel School: that there were up to three adult witnesses, that a "very large group" of children were up close with the alien being, and that the children had no predisposition to UFO media. No evidence is given for the first two and abundant evidence disconfirms the third.
In addition to these evidence free claims we're offered hints (without specifics) that something eerie might be going on. Just one example is when Nickerson hints at something strange about the fact that a NASA spacewalk occured the same day: "what were they looking for?" (paraphrase) is what he asks. However, the spacewalk didn't occur until long after the school day ended, and has no known connection to the events at Ariel School. Yet, audiences to his content are lead to believe there's some causal connection or hint to a grander conspiracy. To question this, apparently, is to stigmatize. [the same is true of the persistent linking of the events at Ariel school with the space debris reentry event days before].
Another example is ufologist Randall Nickerson's numerous claims about Ariel School: that there were up to three adult witnesses, that a "very large group" of children were up close with the alien being, and that the children had no predisposition to UFO media. No evidence is given for the first two and abundant evidence disconfirms the third.
In addition to these evidence free claims we're offered hints (without specifics) that something eerie might be going on. Just one example is when Nickerson hints at something strange about the fact that a NASA spacewalk occured the same day: "what were they looking for?" (paraphrase) is what he asks. However, the spacewalk didn't occur until long after the school day ended, and has no known connection to the events at Ariel School. Yet, audiences to his content are lead to believe there's some causal connection or hint to a grander conspiracy. To question this, apparently, is to stigmatize. [the same is true of the persistent linking of the events at Ariel school with the space debris reentry event days before].
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Mendel
Senior Member.
If you want to narrow it down, many of the people featured in the film are UFOlogists. They're the ones advocating for "disclosure".
You have described pseudoscience like this: "You don't establish the causes for these experiences scientifically, or through sound methodology, but you speculate, assert, and draw connections, spurious or not, and then write about it." This is how UFO sightings get labeled. This is how Elizondo presents a lampshade as a mothership, Graves presents Starlink flares as threats to aviation, or Loeb presents a comet as potential spaceship even after his arguments have evaporated.
Debunking is not working on a phenomenon, it is working on a claim.
The claim is "Evidence X shows something extraordinary."
We demonstrate that the claim was made without sound methodology.
When we demonstrate "it could be mundane", then we have not proven that it is mundane, we have proven that the claim of it being extraordinary enough to be paranormal is not justified.
UFOlogy has a bad name because it presents belief as fact. We don't.
You can clearly see this in the difference between how astrophysicists approached 3I/ATLAS, and how Avi Loeb approached it: the former were evidence-driven, while Loeb's was belief-driven and tried to make the evidence fit his preconceived idea.
We don't know what GIMBAL shows, but we know that the rotation is a camera artifact, and thus there is no reason to assume the object behind the glare is extraordinary. Established through sound methodology on our part, and public.
The assumption that a report details something unconventional has never been justified after closer examination of the facts. Going to an "unconventional hypothesis" on that kind of evidence is entirely without merit.
The fact that MUFON closes cases when an object is not identified should tell you they're not a scientific organisation.
In well over 60 years, the study of UFO reports has not expanded human knowledge.
It reminds me of how Flat Earth still doesn't have a working map.
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Gary C
Senior Member.
The film makers are not trying to solve the puzzle. They are trying to make a body of previously presented claims sound more puzzling to the tune of $20 a head.
Those chosen for the interviews in this film have in most cases an extensive history of false and misleading claims. Those that do not have produced no evidence that unconventional explanations are necessary. The stigma arises from this overlapping cast of characters peddling the same narrative for generations with no more success than Bigfoot hunters. These are the people who dominate the UFO information space. That is not the fault of the skeptics.
There are not that many people in the UFO space other than believers, grifters, and debunkers. My sympathy for the believers in no way excuses the actions of the grifters who have clearly earned the criticism they receive. No one in this film has done you any favors.
The function of the scientific method is to sort and separate the hard facts into those that are useful to society in helping to accurately describe the universe we inhabit, from the noise and emotional content that obscures those facts. If you have a case that includes sufficient verifiable data to make further investigation possible and potentially productive, start a thread on it. Recognize however that criticism is a normal part of the process. Read some of the peer review feed back on academic papers in any recognized scientific discipline. If you are not prepared to deal with that criticism, I submit that you are not prepared to embark on a scientific investigation.
Ann K
Senior Member.
There is no "causality", singular. There is no "it". There is no single defined phenomenon. Each reported sighting is different and would need its own analysis, and that's what has been done for a good many events on this site. Nevertheless, despite the number of claims all the evidence has NEVER produced anything otherworldly that points to extraterrestrial invasions.
If you think people here tend to make light of UFO reports, you may be correct. A track record of thousands-to-zero tends to discourage us, and we don't have the rosy optimism of the True Believer and think "I'm sure THIS one will be real!". And who is going to study this? No scientific establishment thinks this would be a productive endeavor. No graduate student (except possibly a psychology major) thinks he can get his PhD by researching lights in the sky.
Lucy always pulls the football away.
Mendel
Senior Member.
There's a branch of entertainment that presents "unsolved mysteries". They want to present them, not solve them.
And that's why they don't like people who actually do.
"This is a mystery! Stop debunking me, dognabbit!"
The entertainment narrative must show people trying to solve and failing to build up the "unsolved" mystique.
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Gary C
Senior Member.
Agreed. They are not defending their scientific rigor, they are defending their business model.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
EDIT: Appeared to have cross posted with AnnK and Gary C above, so kinda repeating some of the same stuff.
I think we're back to the "sum is greater than the parts" argument here, something UFO folks get caught up in. All of these reports and sightings must add up to something and point to some kind of phenomenon that needs explaining. At least here, most UFO claims are taken on an individual basis and there is no overarching skeptic's "theory" that explains all of the claims. Each claim is taken as a puzzle and an attempt is made to solve that individual puzzle.
Each claim is different, and very often when there are enough details available, the UFO claim has a mundane explanation. Explanations may include balloons, celestial objects, aircraft, satellites, fauna, camera artifacts, reflections, CGI, pareidolia, confabulated memories, exaggerations out right hoaxes and a myriad of other mundane causes. There is no 1 "theory" to explain all of the various sightings, other than to say it's more likely something mundane than alien.
The supposed evidence for a UFO phenomenon seems to be made up of claims that end up having mundane explanations, claims that have little to no details making them difficult to investigate (something the UFO hustlers are increasingly sharing), and un-evidenced anecdotes. It's not incumbent on skeptics to present and test a valid theory to explain something so tenuous.
To an extent, yes. This was touted as a film about disclosure, it's in the title. I take the term "disclosure" to mean something is going to be "disclosed". That is, evidence will be offered. It wasn't. Worse, it was many of the same old hacks making the same old un-evidenced claims they have been making for years, if not decades.
The host and anchor of the film is Elizondo, someone that has made multiple fantastical and spectacularly wrong claims. The whole ATTIP thing is wrong. Puthoff, Davis, Stratton and others are part of the Skinwalker Ranch gang. The whole Skinwalker Ranch shtick is equal parts UFO, paranormal and entertainment. Sharing findings about UFOs and 7' werewolves on a TV show and at fan conferences is self stigmatizing. They create their own stigma.
Now go back and really read The New Science of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena paper we discussed. Written by the likes of real scientists Knuth, Nolan, Villarroel as well as UFO hustlers like Richard Dolen, it reports to be "real science" about the UAP phenomenon. It's not. It's a rehash of old stories, many of which are completely debunked as well as incorrect assertions about ATTIP as well as the same Skinwalker Ranch folks that showed up in The Age of Disclosure. No evidence, no revelations, no disclosure, no new science. Just the old stories and the call for more sensors, because aliens are always just out of sensor range.
So, yeah, I tend to generalize it to the whole space. It's their own stigma that they have created.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/new-science-of-uap-paper.14041/
I think we're back to the "sum is greater than the parts" argument here, something UFO folks get caught up in. All of these reports and sightings must add up to something and point to some kind of phenomenon that needs explaining. At least here, most UFO claims are taken on an individual basis and there is no overarching skeptic's "theory" that explains all of the claims. Each claim is taken as a puzzle and an attempt is made to solve that individual puzzle.
Each claim is different, and very often when there are enough details available, the UFO claim has a mundane explanation. Explanations may include balloons, celestial objects, aircraft, satellites, fauna, camera artifacts, reflections, CGI, pareidolia, confabulated memories, exaggerations out right hoaxes and a myriad of other mundane causes. There is no 1 "theory" to explain all of the various sightings, other than to say it's more likely something mundane than alien.
The supposed evidence for a UFO phenomenon seems to be made up of claims that end up having mundane explanations, claims that have little to no details making them difficult to investigate (something the UFO hustlers are increasingly sharing), and un-evidenced anecdotes. It's not incumbent on skeptics to present and test a valid theory to explain something so tenuous.
To an extent, yes. This was touted as a film about disclosure, it's in the title. I take the term "disclosure" to mean something is going to be "disclosed". That is, evidence will be offered. It wasn't. Worse, it was many of the same old hacks making the same old un-evidenced claims they have been making for years, if not decades.
The host and anchor of the film is Elizondo, someone that has made multiple fantastical and spectacularly wrong claims. The whole ATTIP thing is wrong. Puthoff, Davis, Stratton and others are part of the Skinwalker Ranch gang. The whole Skinwalker Ranch shtick is equal parts UFO, paranormal and entertainment. Sharing findings about UFOs and 7' werewolves on a TV show and at fan conferences is self stigmatizing. They create their own stigma.
Now go back and really read The New Science of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena paper we discussed. Written by the likes of real scientists Knuth, Nolan, Villarroel as well as UFO hustlers like Richard Dolen, it reports to be "real science" about the UAP phenomenon. It's not. It's a rehash of old stories, many of which are completely debunked as well as incorrect assertions about ATTIP as well as the same Skinwalker Ranch folks that showed up in The Age of Disclosure. No evidence, no revelations, no disclosure, no new science. Just the old stories and the call for more sensors, because aliens are always just out of sensor range.
So, yeah, I tend to generalize it to the whole space. It's their own stigma that they have created.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/new-science-of-uap-paper.14041/
John J.
Senior Member.
Unfortunately we are not in a position to test whether an artefact is an alien spaceship.
I don't think it's stigmatizing to say that claims of alien spacecraft in human possession are very questionable indeed and that the few first-hand accounts of this are almost certainly unreliable.
Where materials supposedly from UFOs have been investigated by UFO enthusiasts, the work has often been of a low standard, e.g. no serious attempt even to identify what a particular item might be: something identical to a known mid-20th century windmill component is unlikely to be used in an extraterrestrial spacecraft (see thread Meta Materials From UFOs, https://www.metabunk.org/threads/meta-materials-from-ufos.12995/. Investigators have made claims of materials acting as wave guides, or even having powers of levitation, that they provide no evidence for (why not just film something levitating in the lab?) and which others cannot replicate.
A bit like claims of mediumship and telepathy, the phenomena described by "believer" investigators sadly doesn't occur in other people's experiments.
Garry Nolan has recently said that the Council Bluffs material cannot have been caused by a thermite (or similar) burn,
There is a published paper in a peer-reviewed journal that describes an investigation of the Council Bluffs material, "Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics", 2022; PDF available here https://www.metabunk.org/threads/is...g-lemke-2022-a-useful-paper.13286/post-349189
Nolan (along with Jacques Vallee) is one of the four authors. He must have been referring (above) to his own investigation (there are no published later investigations using the same sample material AFAIK).
It is very, very clear if you read Nolan et al.'s paper that they wouldn't have been able to detect* the presence of any oxides with the equipment they describe using.
They could have tested material which was 100% oxide, and they wouldn't have found it was an oxide, because their spectrometer couldn't detect elements of less than 20 atomic mass units. So no oxygen. Nolan appears to argue that because they couldn't detect oxygen, using equipment that can't detect oxygen, no oxygen was present, so there were no oxides in the material.
It must be possible Nolan forgot the limitations of the equipment the authors used, and then came to the conclusions quoted above, but the paper does not support those conclusions in any way.
In passing, at one point the paper states that no aluminium 27 was present in the samples, elsewhere it is clear aluminium 27 is a major component. The reason appears to be that the "no aluminium" statement is part of a block of text lifted from an earlier Vallee paper and describes a different sample from a different event; this text, with minor (but insufficient) modifications, is presented as referring to the Council Bluffs material.
People interested in finding out the causes of UFO reports often only have the claims of witnesses, and sometimes photos/ footage (often of low quality) to assess.
It is very difficult to formally test any proposed explanation, unless the theorised cause is repeatable/ demonstrable and the claimant agrees that that is indeed what they saw.
You are right of course that proposed explanations might not "solve the puzzle", and might be speculative, but not all explanations/ theories are equally likely to be objectively true.
So far, many UFO reports have been shown to be caused by misidentification, some are perhaps misperceptions. And some are deliberate hoaxes. None have been shown to be due to non-human technology. It is possible that this will continue to be the case.
We know UFO reports are not dependent on ETI craft being present. If Earth is not being visited by ETI, no amount of studying UFO reports will reveal that they are actually alien artefacts.
However, some UFO reports are intrinsically interesting (to some of us anyway), and I think they deserve studying. The possibility of Earth being visited by ETI can't be ruled out, and other things may be learnt about perception, psychology, social factors, perhaps shadowy research programs (U2s and A-12s/ SR-71s have all been the source of UFO reports, a Mogul balloon was the cause of the Roswell narratives and arguably the whole "we've retrieved crashed UFOs" mythos) though I'm sceptical about claims of astonishing new technologies, many of which seem to be straight from science fiction. Anti-gravity drives date from the Cavorite of Wells' First Men in the Moon, 1901; cancelling inertia (and thus circumventing relativity and allowing spectacular spacecraft manoeuvres- including near-instantaneous acceleration/ deceleration) goes back to E.E "Doc" Smith's Lensman series of the 1930s/40s.
I'm not sure there is a real social stigma attached to "UFO=ETI" believers, any more than there's any real stigma attached to people who tell a ghost story in a social setting.
(That isn't to say some "skeptics" aren't unduly dismissive, rude and ignorant, but that's humans for you).
There are no job bans, no campaigns to get the believers out of our schools or whatever, UFO believers aren't barred from university courses or hounded off campus, no-one gets denied service in a shop or the use of a bus. Their views are not censored; quite the reverse: Countless uncritical TV programs and many series about UFOs, "ancient aliens" etc., sometimes with misleading "reconstructions" that go beyond the original claim. My local bookshop has the paperback edition of Elizondo's Imminent prominently displayed. There's no boycotts of hobby stores stocking construction kits of Lazar's alien spacecraft. No-one gets beaten up for saying they've seen an alien craft (at least I sincerely hope not).
I don't think potential judges, teachers, astronomers, TV executives, police officers etc. etc. face a screening question, "Do you believe UFOs are proof of aliens?" The major social media platforms don't take down UFO claims.
Meanwhile, it's not uncommon for prominent critics of the "UFOs are alien ships" narrative to be labelled as "shills" and be accused of deliberately distorting the truth. It is implied that they stand in the way of some momentous breakthrough in our understanding.
Skeptics who are not professional scientists are criticised for not being scientists, often by people who are not scientists and who value the theories of other non-scientists. Equally there is sometimes a naïve faith that pro-believer scientists are somehow competent across scientific disciplines, an argument from authority (again, the example above of a scientist who isn't a metallurgist, inorganic chemist or physicist, and who appears to forget the physical constraints of equipment described in a paper he co-authored, basing an argument on something not being detected -because he couldn't have detected it- in order to reject a mundane explanation).
*"Indicate" might be a better word than "detect"; the spectrometer results show what elements are present, not compounds (e.g. oxides).
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Todd Feinman
Active Member
Metabunk and the skeptical, scientific approach to UFOs, is important and useful. UFOlogy attracts a lot of pseudoscientific speculation and has become a shelter for all kinds of people with various mental issues or tendencies to confabulate. I've seen it myself, on different UFO forums, and grew tired of it. Holding the line for science in an age of misinformation and ignorance, is important; the candle must be kept lit, in every storm.
Metabunk is looking for evidence that can be tested and verified. I think it is easy to slip into a negative bias about UFOs and UFO experiencers, because there is so much nonsense and debunked claims that accrue around the subject. There is evidence of similar experiences with UFO witnesses, and even corroborating evidence, but for Metabunkers, it must be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and that proof must be extraordinary —for them. Science always finishes last, and kicking and screaming at that, but I think they will eventually get there.
Underwhelming or nonsense evidence isn't going to do it. Need the Extraordinary.
Trying to prove it is simply extraterrestrial, or understanding where it is from, when acceptable evidence arises, will be a whole other challenge. Might be able to get to "under intelligent control" for them, in their lifetimes.
Metabunk is looking for evidence that can be tested and verified. I think it is easy to slip into a negative bias about UFOs and UFO experiencers, because there is so much nonsense and debunked claims that accrue around the subject. There is evidence of similar experiences with UFO witnesses, and even corroborating evidence, but for Metabunkers, it must be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and that proof must be extraordinary —for them. Science always finishes last, and kicking and screaming at that, but I think they will eventually get there.
Underwhelming or nonsense evidence isn't going to do it. Need the Extraordinary.
Trying to prove it is simply extraterrestrial, or understanding where it is from, when acceptable evidence arises, will be a whole other challenge. Might be able to get to "under intelligent control" for them, in their lifetimes.
Montauk
Active Member
Looks like Farah went on Billy Corgan's (Smashing Pumpkins) podcast, The Magnificent Others to promote the movie:
Source: https://youtu.be/ysoazbRVK5k
I doubt he's gonna present or talk anything about anything new but Corgan is usually a no-nonsense guy so I'd be curious how this turns out.
Source: https://youtu.be/ysoazbRVK5k
I doubt he's gonna present or talk anything about anything new but Corgan is usually a no-nonsense guy so I'd be curious how this turns out.
Smythe Bacchus
Senior Member
I've attached the YouTube transcript.
Full-spectrum discussion, all the UFO, coverup, alien threat, spirituality, and ancient alien tropes are touched upon. More topics than the actual film apparently. Corgan is inquisitive, supportive, and largely uncritical in his questioning.
Farah explicitly describes himself as having entered the rabbit hole. He repeatedly states his belief is from many interviews with credentialed people (David Grusch has said much the same., i.e. argument from authority).
On crash retrievals and reverse engineering, Farah also briefly mentions anecdotes he'd heard of intact alien craft found near military bases. Perhaps they lost the keys, or ran out of fuel? I'll be very upset if I watch the film and this is not covered or explained.
Corgan offers his own anecdote from over 20 years prior, about having a discussion with a retired Rear Admiral in the Russian Navy, a relative of his partner at the time. With his partner as an interpreter, Corgan asked about aliens.
My aside: UAPs may obviously include false observations of things not real, e.g. incidents like the 1983 Nuclear False Alarm. where a Soviet early warning satellite falsely detected sunlight as an ICBM launch. A level-headed engineer, Stanislav Petrov decided to wait for corroborating radar evidence, and none was forthcoming.
Perhaps there is a lesson in there for all of us, especially for those convinced the outlandish is real with no hard evidence.
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purpleivan
Senior Member.
Is it a common rabbit hole for rock stars, or are they just more noteable than people in other lines of work.
There have been an awful lot of people who could be catagorised as "rock stars" over the last few decades, after all. So having even a few dozen of those diving down that hole, would be expected.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
They consider it "authority". I, and I'm sure others, do not.
Smythe Bacchus
Senior Member
Yes, for an argument from authority to be valid, the authority must have supporting evidence and be relevantly credentialed to speak to that evidence. That is clearly not the case here.
jarlrmai
Senior Member.
I guess I dunno maybe it just seems that way.
Smythe Bacchus
Senior Member
Apparently the research on this is mixed (whether those with arts/humanities backgrounds are more likely to believe in the paranormal), but I found part of this paper to be relevant:
Article: Development of the Paranormal and Supernatural Beliefs Scale using classical and modern test theory
Demographic differences
Owing to the somewhat mixed research suggesting a correlation between paranormal beliefs, academic discipline and aspects of thinking, responses to the paranormal scale were compared for those with and without higher education backgrounds; and between those from science and non-science academic disciplines. Most participants held an undergraduate degree or higher, while less than half held post-secondary qualifications or lower. Participants with university degrees had lower total paranormal scores than participants without university degrees. The difference in scores between the two education groups was significant. Of the participants with degree qualifications, most were from science-based disciplines including psychology, natural sciences, technology, and other medical backgrounds, while the rest included social sciences, education, business, philosophy, theology, art and humanities, law, and architecture. .... Those from science-based disciplines demonstrated lower paranormal scores compared to those with art-based degrees, and the difference in scores between the two discipline groups was significant.
Ann K
Senior Member.
It's more than just HOW we think, but WHAT we've been taught, too. Medical students see what happens in the human body after death, and may be more skeptical of ghost stories. Physicists know the limitations of travel in our atmosphere, and may be more quick to dismiss the UFO tales of "impossible speed" (it's impossible) or "incredible speed" (it's not credible). Zoologists know the evolutionary pathways of life forms, and can laugh off the stories of crypto-critters.
It can be very hard for a non-scientist to grasp these concepts.
MonkeeSage
Senior Member.
External Quote:
If we analyze Marco Rubio's comments to Sean Hannity about his appearance in the film (video and transcript in post #272), I think we come to the conclusion that there is probably not really a "there" there.
A. Rubio was/is:
- Former vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
- Former member of the Gang of Eight.
- Current Secretary of State.
- Acting Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.
B. Rubio has:
- Co-sponsored a bill that created an office (AARO) with authority to receive and investigate all levels of classified UAP info, including historical cases (50 U.S.C §3373).
- Co-sponsored a bill that grants immunity for whistleblowers from NDAs, DoE policies and any other laws that would prevent disclosure, and protecting them from retaliations for making disclosures (50 U.S.C §3373b).
- Supported the UAP Disclosure Act (UAPDA).
Rubio said:
External Quote:
What does it mean when Rubio says he doesn't have "independent knowledge" and he doesn't have any "independent way to verify" the whistleblower claims?
Rubio has had the highest levels of access to IC compartmented information in his former roles, and the highest levels of access to Executive classified information in his current roles (see A). Rubio has shown his willingness to seek verification and enact legislation promoting disclosure (see B).
This rules out several explanations for his statements:
- He didn't have access (contradicted by A).
- He didn't look (contradicted by B).
- He was duped by the deep state (contradicted by A & B).
- He is in on it (contradicted by B).
The simplest explanation that is consistent with A & B is the whistleblowers either did not provide verifiable info, or the info they provided failed verification (e.g., they had misidentified known secret programs as being UAP related).
This explanation does not require unsupported assumptions like an illegal conspiracy so powerful even SSCI/Gang of Eight and the Executive branch have no oversight, or that the whistleblowers are intentionally lying.
This explanation is consistent with actual findings: The first AARO historical report relates a claim from a whistleblower about a military officer who touched a recovered UFO, but upon investigation and according to sworn statement from the officer, they never told such a story, and they thought it might have originated from their real experience touching an F-117 while it was still a secret project. The whistleblower telling the story as they heard it was likely sincere, but a known secret program was mistaken for a UAP program. (https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/AARO_Historical_Record_Report_Vol_1_2024.pdf PDF pp. 8, 32)
This explanation also accounts for why Rubio shifts the focus from unverified claims to real threats in the Hannity interview:
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So I think the most likely explanation for Rubio's statements that he lacks independent verification of the whistleblower claims is that he had the access, he looked, but he was unable to find evidence that verified the claims about UFOs and aliens.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
This is repeated often, but there's no evidence for it. All the evidence, in fact, points the other way.
Smythe Bacchus
Senior Member
More relevant quotes from Billy Corgan's talk with Dan Farah. Does Rubio still believe in the possibility of a secret program?
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And how exactly do you "get" scientists to accept something is real if you cannot provide them with anything real to study? Are we in the domain of equating reality with belief? The disclosure movement, IMO, appears uncomfortably like a religious cult.
Farah also offers an explanation for how the secrecy could be completely legal. Does any situation where a sitting president cannot know or alter the executive orders of a prior president make any constitutional sense?
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This film, IMO, is about lobbying for disclosure, i.e. begging for the "legacy program" to reveal itself ("legacy" implies handing the alleged program over from one generation to the next).
Ultimately, the argument for its existence appears to still be based solely upon shared mythology, anecdotes and belief.
Mendel
Senior Member.
"Sovereign citizens" will also offer all sorts of explanations how what they're doing is legal.
I think any order that compelled someone to lie to the sitting President can't be legal.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
I was going to suggest that the standard retort is that Eisenhower set up a super-duper secret program that later administrations aren't read into. Including the gang of 8 and later presidents. It's a somewhat silly mythos based on a number of very suspect sources that we've covered in other threads.
I meant to post this yesterday and got sidetracked and low and behold @Smythe Bacchus provided the quotes above showing that Farah is buying into this very myth.
Some perpetrators of this idea include former USAF Master Sergeant Dan Morris, although in his telling it's questionable if even Eisenhower had the proper clearance. But of course some Air Force enlisted guy did:
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/disclosure/briefing/disclosure12.htmExternal Quote:
One of the earlier claims of Eisenhower an aliens (Etherians) comes from an LA based clairvoyant, Gerald Light, who claimed to have met the aliens with Eisenhower at Muroc, now Edwards Air Force base:
https://borderlandsciences.org/project/etheria/corr/1954-04-16_-_Gerald_Light_to_Meade_Layne.htmlExternal Quote:
Former CIA pilot John Lear and his sometime buddy and later rival William "Bill" Cooper weighed in as well:
Eisenhower's 1954 Meeting With Extraterrestrials: The Fiftieth Anniversary of First Contact? - UFO EvidenceExternal Quote:
Cooper would go on to write the conspiratorial manifesto Behold a Pale Horse before dying in a shootout with law enforcement. Not exactly reliable sources.
Be interesting to see who Farah's sources are for the Eisenhower super secret program claims.
Ann K
Senior Member.
@NorCal Dave
...because a defining characteristic of people 38 levels above top secret is that they are so eager to tell you all about things that they're not supposed to mention.External Quote:
Mendel
Senior Member.
I note that disclosure has been imminent since 1954.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
...which there is no penalty at all for me telling you about.External Quote:
We can't tell the President, but I can tell you all, no worries.External Quote:
So secret that it didn't exist... I'm willing to believe that bit, I guess!External Quote:
...but I can tell you about it.External Quote:
Yet there is NO sudden surge in amazing magical physics defying technology that might have come from studying this information.External Quote:
Internal consistency, where art thou?
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