Quote below from "A study claimed UFOs orbited Earth in the 1950s. Then scientists checked the math", Adam Frank, Big Think, August 27, 2026 as per
@Smythe Bacchus'
post #851. Frank's article discusses "Critical Evaluation of Studies Alleging Evidence for Technosignatures in the POSS1-E Photographic Plates", link provided by
@sigmops in
post #228, Digitized Sky Survey POSS-1 thread.
External Quote:
The lead author is Wesley Watters of Wellesley College. He is an astronomer who has written several papers reviewing UAP sightings and arguing they deserve a deeper, agnostic analysis. ...Another author ...Knuth published a well-known study of Navy-pilot UAP sightings exploring whether the trajectories seen by the pilots showed evidence for extreme physics at work. ...What is striking about the author list is that it represents a group that cannot be seen as hostile to the basic idea that UAPs are a valid scientific problem or that they might represent technosignatures.
If anything, Frank understates the evidence that some of the Critical Evaluation authors are open to the idea that UAP reports might indicate the presence of exotic artefacts.
Four of the five authors of "Critical Evaluation of Studies Alleging Evidence for Technosignatures in the POSS1-E Photographic Plates",
Wesley Andrés Watters, Laura Dominé, Sarah Little and Kevin H. Knuth were co-authors, along with Villarroel, of the paper (well, opinion piece)
"The New Science of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena" (link
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.06794; thread
New Science of UAP Paper).
Knuth was the lead author.
[This should have said "Four of the six authors", Cameron Pratt, Matthew Szenher are authors of "Critical Evaluation" but not "The New Science".]
The thread for "The New Science of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena" is well worth a read. Members here have noted the large number of listed authors, many of whom have well-documented beliefs that UAP reports represent sightings of exotic intelligently-controlled artefacts/ phenomena. There is discussion of the content of that paper. It contains no original research.
It discusses previous UFO/ UAP reports, but some are described/ summarized in ways that seem to be based on witness reports (or subsequent interpretations) that are
not supported by other, possibly more reliable evidence about those events (e.g. Roswell, Malmstrom).
Some of the author's summaries arguably maximize the chances that a subject-naïve reader might believe that the cases being referred to are strong evidence of something extraordinary having happened, because the authors do not mention known evidence to the contrary, and sometimes repeat earlier claims that are highly questionable:
Roswell is mentioned under "Physical Evidence" but its probable cause is not. There was an "incursion" at Malmstrom air force base in 1967. The Ubatuba incident "involved the catastrophic explosion of a UFO". At Council Bluffs "about 11 people, in separate groups, witnessed an event where a hovering object dropped a large mass of molten metal"; but only 5 witnesses were identified; 2 claimed to see a hovering UFO, 3 others claimed to see something fall (but not from anything), none saw anything drop from a hovering object.
I think "Critical Evaluation of Studies Alleging Evidence for Technosignatures in the POSS1-E Photographic Plates" is of interest not just because of the content of that paper, but additionally because of the previous UAP claim-related work of some of its authors:
"Critical Evaluation" is wide-ranging and direct in its criticism of Villarroel
et al.'s claims. Some of us (well, me anyway) might wonder why four of those authors chose to undertake this work when they have previously authored a paper, along with Villarroel and others, that is (I believe) uncritical, even accepting, of extraordinary claims which are largely anecdotal, some of which have been explained or shown to be highly questionable by further investigation. I guess moving to a more questioning position about UAP claims might be progress.
That 4 of its authors were also authors of "The New Science" doesn't have any bearing on the content of "Critical Evaluation", and that paper might be an important contribution to evaluating Villarroel
et al.'s claims (although I think there were good reasons to be sceptical of those claims before "Critical Evaluation" and they have been discussed here).
Frank raises Watters' and Knuth's previous work related to UAP claims as evidence that they are not "hostile" to the idea that UAP reports represent technosignatures, i.e. they are evidence of (presumably exotic) technology. (Same applies to Laura Dominé, Sarah Little).
He (I think correctly) implies that it is therefore harder for members of the "UAP/UFO community" to dismiss the paper as the work of hostile authors.
But this might reflect a problem with that community, or at least some of its representatives. Just as "Critical Evaluation" should stand on its own merits, regardless of the prior work of its authors, so should any other paper (including those of Villarroel
et al.) It shouldn't matter who the authors are (unless they have an established record of objectively flawed research or mistaken conclusions, in which case additional caution might be understandable).
People here are sceptical of Villarroel
et al.'s work on transients not because of who she is, but because extraordinary claims have been made without (arguably) the transparency that might be expected to allow review/ replication of that work.
In the light of the extraordinary conclusions drawn by V.
et al., it
must have occurred to them that
complete transparency would be expected.
The content of V.
et al.'s papers, and the conclusions drawn from investigations that it is difficult for others to replicate, are the issue, not the authors.
Only accepting research which conforms to our prior beliefs, or from people we like (perhaps because their research conforms etc.), is to fundamentally misunderstand the scientific process. It does not help further our (or any individual's) understanding of objective reality; it is cherry-picking that reinforces beliefs that might be falsified by the research that is ignored.
I think Frank is right to ask
External Quote:
Does that community want their subject to be part of the actual scientific process — where beliefs can get legitimately challenged — or do they just want to hold on to their beliefs no matter what?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To be a bit pedantic, I'm not keen on Frank's phrasing in bold below,
External Quote:
...this is not a group of scientists with a bias against UAPs as a whole (in my experience, most astronomers do have this bias)
...I'm not sure most astronomers have a bias against UAP as a discrete, objective phenomenon to be studied; they just don't believe that the evidence indicates that there
is a discrete, objective UAP phenomenon to be studied, and this might not be because they haven't considered the proposed evidence.
Not accepting a phenomenon exists because the claimed evidence for it isn't persuasive isn't a prejudice, and I'd suggest not a bias.
I don't expect many historians believe there is much to be gained by studying ghosts, although if they existed they might be a rich source of historical information. I wouldn't describe this as a bias, or an indication that Big History hasn't done enough to disclose what it knows about ghosts.
Many astronomers/ related scientists are at the forefront of investigating things in the sky, and almost all serious work around SETI comes from respected scientists within this field. If evidence for an extraterrestrial biosignature is found, it will almost certainly be discovered by "mainstream" scientists working as part of a larger collaboration.
