Do you believe in UFOs & flying saucers ?

I can see that steddyeddy has replied to my post but have the post hidden as he/she is in my ignore list. If someone could confirm that he/she has replied in the usual "steddyeddy way" by

• not replying to everything in the post
• implying that I am a bad scientist while also saying that I use ad hominims
• not apologising for not responding to my last post
• not acknowledging that the other side were objectively correct about something
• not trying to debunk something at the 16th time of asking

If not, I shall gladly donate €20 to any suggested UFO group so that we can finally find out the truth™.

I decided to unignore you for curiosity and wow, it's worse than I thought. Yep, your post ticked all the boxes and then some.

steddyeddy wrote: »

I would suggest you take the emotion out of your posts as you seem unable to have a scientific debate without resorting to ad hominins or arguments from authority.

Amazing! Please tell me that that is a serious comment because that would be beautiful. A scientific debate?! I've asked you about 20 times to have a scientific debate, and you have refused to each time by constantly ignoring or deflecting. I have made plenty of comments related to science in my discussion with lintdrummer and you have not once commented on them.

Watch. Watch happens when I ask you this yes/no question. Watch how you ignore or deflect from answering it in your reply.

Is that one video I posted from Mike correct or incorrect?

steddyeddy wrote: »

You have asserted that Mick West has "debunked" the naval encounters yet multiple fighter pilots, radar operators and even NASA astrophysicists have stated that he is misinterpreting the data. Despite this you take it as gospel. You also completely misinterpret the report.

I believe I only referenced Mike in response to the acceleration of the object. Would you like to link to my post where I have said this? Or are you, quite surprisingly, making this up?

steddyeddy wrote: »

Finally. it is not exactly the hallmark of a good scientist to ignore those who disagree with them.

Oh wow, another zinger! I really really hope, for the sake of improvements in biology, that you are at least self aware enough to know that you doing exactly this with Mike. You, by your own definition of what a good scientist is, are admitting to being a bad scientist. Fascinating.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Dude you sound young but I suspect your attitude is turning off people in science.

I'm actually highly acclaimed in my field, thank you for asking. Would you like to tell us what your education and career is since you seem to think that you being a scientist is significant?

When you are talking to what is seemingly a brick wall, such attitudes can be justified. Especially when said brick wall says that I'm using ad hominems while also personally attacking me in every reply.

And since you are so interested in having a scientific debate, would you like to go back and respond to the scientific points I have made with lintdrummer? No rush.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Great. I'll be cutting out all of the personal attacks and arguments from authority and am willing to engage purely in a scientific debate.

Can we start with you explaining the position you're coming from in this regard and what general hypothesis you would like to debate.

My position is that there are indications that there is new technology being encountered by military officials. My position on the human element here is that there are people with access to more data than we do who are convinced of the position I have laid out in the first sentence. The report and the preceding and subsequent statements by former presidents (Also briefed on security issues), employees and heads of the intelligence services, military officials and NASA officials lends supports that they think that a different form of technology is at play here than has been seen before.

I have no idea or speculation as to what the pilots are.

If you want to have an adult conversation, answer the question I asked you in bold because I have asked you it about 20 times. If you ignore it again, you are further demonstrating that you no interest in finding that you might be wrong, i.e. that you have confirmation bias.

Edit: And you've gone silent again, self-admitting that you're a brick wall.

maccored wrote: »

is that the video that's already been debunked but you don't accept the debunker because he's a pilot? Surely thats showing your own confirmation bias? thats the last bit in bold I can find. Couldnt actually find the video itself

No, it's a different video. Give me one second to find it.

Edit: This video. steddyeddy has stated on multiple occasions that this video has been debunked by navy pilots. Do you agree with that and if so, would you like to explain how considering steddyeddy seems so sure of it and yet can't explain it?

And since posting that video, steddyeddy seems to have focused in on that guy as if he's my hero even though I had never heard of him before posting that video and I never mentioned anything else he said or did.

Nope, that info came from Fravor and Dietrich's account, not the video. I do still think it's an interesting addition to the incident, something physical was at the location picked up by radar. Like you say, it could be something mundane, but in the context of the other data and that it remains unidentified, it just adds to the overall picture of the series of events over those few days.

But if you don't think the video shows anything spectacular, why were you debating the video? You are fully aware that I don't think the video is doctored or anything like that and that there is therefore an object or an anomaly of some sort within it, so why were you stressing things like no heat signature? You believe that the video alone shows evidence of something moving at significant speeds at high altitude with no propulsion. But also that the video alone does not show something spectacular?

Probably, yes, because I believe the unusual radar data exists. If the radar data didn't exist then I'd be less interested, it's the combination of the various data (and I include testimony in that, even though it is the least reliable source) that makes this case interesting to me.

And, again, I shall not comment on radar data that I don't have access to.

Having brushed the topic under the carpet for years we now have senior military officials past and present, former presidents, nasa, the senate... all saying that there is something unexplained happening in America's skies and it may present a threat to national security.

But former presidents, senators, NASA, military etc. have all said such things for decades. In fact, as I said before, my PhD was about something in the atmosphere that could not be explained.

You're just picking parts of what I say and running away with it. I said they "may or may not have a common sense explanation". I did not say that they unequivocally don't have a common sense explanation.

Again, completely and utterly false. I am not picking parts of what you said. What you said was

They have stated that they can't categorise 143 of the 144 cases, 80 of which involve data from multiple sources. They have so far defied common sense explanation.

That is an objectively incorrect statement. No, they so far have no defied common sense explanation. There is nothing in the report that claims that. That just have not been identified, nothing more.

Not only is it an incorrect statement, but it is a very common way for conspiracy theorists to get some ammo for their ideas. If you, as a pilot, stated that in an interview, such theorists would quote that objectively false statement for years to come. They would say "hey, this pilot says that 143 have defied a common sense explanation! It must be true!" Even though the source you took that belief from did not only not say that, but did not even imply it.

The report itself even states, and I quote:

"we may require additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect on, analyze and characterize some of them. We would group such objects in this category pending scientific advances that allowed us to better understand them."

I mean it's black and white, they are saying they do not understand some of what they have seen and it may require advancements in science in order to achieve that understanding.

Again, you are taking a quote and making false statements using that quote. What does the second word of that quote state? They at no point suggested "they do not understand some of what they have seen".

Of course it may require additional scientific knowledge, because they are unidentified objects, so you have to have an "other" category by definition. If they instead stated, "we don't have enough data to identify this object, but it's certainly not a new phenomena", that wouldn't be the scientific way of analysing data.

I have some basic meteorological training. I have also studied basic radar principles. All clouds above the level where temperature is -40°c are composed entirely of ice crystals. Ice crystals in suspension in the air but not visible as cloud are rarer and usually are associated with convective weather, having broken away from an active cumulonimbus cloud that has breached through the tropopause. I don't see any mention of convective weather in the area on the days in question but I accept the report is likely accurate and ice crystals were detected at high levels.

I wouldn't even jump to the conclusion that ice crystals were detected at high levels during this period myself, I just mentioned it as one possibility. But if you believe that, let's go with it.

Now we don't know what, if any issues this causes the AN/SPY-1. We're not told of any known radar errors associated with ice crystals. So I'm not in the least bit surprised that it's not offered as an explanation for this case, because it isn't one.

How did you come to that conclusion?

Ice crystals can cause optical illusions for human observers when light reflects off them. I would hazard a guess that this is the likely use case with regard to UAPs inferred by the report. See here for example pictures.

Yes, which is why I'm not claiming that that's what Fravor and others saw. I'm just suggesting that the radar stuff could be related to a meteorological phenomenon and what the pilots saw was something else. I'm not saying that with confidence as it's just one of so many possibilities.

I don't think I did jump to any conclusion. The report focused on military UAP reports where there was pilot testimony and good data from 2004 to 2021. This incident ticks all the boxes, do you contest that?

I do not contest it at all.

Also, what explanation? There is no explanation for this incident at this time.

Are you again making the same mistake of suggesting that a UAP does not have an explanation? A UAP, by definition, can be considered as such because it in fact has multiple explanations. This incident also has many explanations. Video - you are agree is not significant. Testimony - plenty of ways testimony can be wrong. Radar - we don't even have access to, but there many explanations for false radar tracks, even over days.

Can you provide a link that demonstrates this behaviour for this particular radar? Otherwise this is just a nothing statement.
Your hypothesis here requires us to believe that the minute chance of two similar shaped high altitude ice crystals came to the right distance to create a radar error that lasted many hours. And that this sequence of events just happened to be repeated over a number of days. Now who is being far fetched?

No link, just a science shower thought. How have you concluded that it's a minute chance given how many ice crystals there are during such events and that meteorological events can last for days? What is your maths behind that?

And, as an add on, ice crystals can melt and reform as they fall or move. That can also explain sudden apparent jumps in their location. Again, just a shower thought, and again, I'm not saying it's credible (or even necessary given that we don't have the radar data), I'm simply demonstrating that it's quite easy to come up with common sense explanations even just while you're typing a message.

Firstly you are completely misquoting me because I stated "reliable reports". I'm going to take a leaf out of your book here and insist that you acknowledge that in your next post.

You are correct, my apologies. I'm actually quite confident that I did mean to write "reliable reports" and slipped up. It's of little significance as if you replace UAP with report in what I said then I still hold by my statement that you misquoted. They stated that the systems were reliable, not that the reports were reliable.

Secondly let's get what they focused on correct. They focused on reports that were witnessed first hand by military aviators and that were collected from systems they considered to be reliable. They put emphasis on the first hand pilot reports as much as the reliable systems. You cannot discount the pilot testimony.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here. You're saying that I cannot discount the pilot testimony? Because they focused on both? You even said about that the testimony was the least reliable source above.

Let's say that hypothetically there is a phenomenon of "large pieces of plastic floating in the air" at high altitudes. (There isn't that I'm aware of).

I never said there was a "phenomena" of it. But based on the fact that they included it as a likely explanation for some of the UAPs, it's safe to assume that many of the things reported by pilots as unidentified later turned out to be plastic when they looked at the data.

I'm saying high altitude because the Nimitz video was taken at 20000ft. Such a piece of plastic would only be capable of moving at the speed of the air in which it floats. It wouldn't take much analysis to at least come to the conclusion that whatever this object was it was coasting in the direction of the wind at the same speed as the wind. You would not be able to say it was plastic but you would be confident enough to say this was some debris floating on the wind.
Therefore it is still a UAP, yes.

Where did I state that the Nimitz incident could be plastic? I only gave a plastic bag as an example of something with "unusual flight characteristics" and that some of these UAPs could be plastic bags. And the military believe that they could be too, which is why it they specifically mentioned it. Not quite sure of the point you're trying to make here.

I've already explained this to you in my last post. But I'll go again. It's from my own experience, that despite thousands of hours flying, including night time transatlantic crossings, I have never seen a UAP. The company I work for also has an internal anonymous incident reporting system which is published monthly to enhance safety. I have never seen a UAP in those reports.

Yes, you have said this a few times, but you have not explained what the significance of it is? I have said that the overwhelmingly majority of pilots likely have not seen a UAP in their careers. You seem to be just backing up my statement.

Yes, that is true. I suppose I hoped there was some common sense applied to filter out the less mysterious reports, as it were, especially considering the 144 reports are just a fraction of the total number received. After all the UAP reports were seemingly handpicked to be considered for this final report.

The reason they did not filter out less mysterious reports, in my mind of course, is that such a report would be blank. They have listed several categories, one of which is other, and have of course correctly stated some may or may not fall into each category. They have no stated that any of these 144 UAPs definitely fall into the "other" category and I am obviously of the strong opinion that they have not ruled out that all 144 UAPs could fall into the other four categories.

Again, I'm not confused by the term UAP. I have no doubt that birds, balloons etc. could account for some or indeed all of the UAPs in the report, as has already been the case with the deflating balloon. I'm just more intrigued with the Nimitz event and the extraordinary set of circumstances - including radar errors over multiple days due to multiple days of rare weather phenomena and extreme misinterpretation of visual cues by multiple eyewitnesses - that are required to come up with a prosaic answer.

I know that you are primarily interested in this one incident. But based on what I believe is a misunderstanding on your part of what a UAP is, I would stress again that you give an example.

As you said, this report has focused on incidents with firsthand reports and data collected from reliable systems. Can you give an example of how such an incident is a UAP if a possible explanation of what that UAP is is a bird?

That's a bit of a cop out. I was asking specifically about thermal fluctuation and whether you think it's conceivable that that is what we see on that video?

In the video? No, not at all. We're both in agreement that the video does not show anything unusual and is of little significance after all.

Not every UAP, but I'd have expected more than 1 in 144.
And you'll probably ask me to quantify how I come to that conclusion so I'll pre-empt and say that I can't, it's just my feeling on it.

So the only reason you believe this report is of any significance is because of a "gut feeling"?

Yes. And I've no idea. Like I said in my last post, and this is the second time you've asked me a question I've already answered, it may have been down to the personalities of the individuals involved, you would have to ask them.

Same can be applied to the Nimitz incident.

I'm not now, nor have I previously suggested any such thing. You may be inferring that, but that's on you.
Pilots are susceptible to optical illusion and misinterpretation of visual cues at any time. What I was suggesting, and I still contest is true, is that it is much harder to identify an object in the dark than in daylight.

So do you believe that is likely that a group of pilots have been wrong about a similar incident in the daytime? Or was my inference instead correct? If my inference was incorrect, then what is the point of this night vs day argument you are trying to make if you also believe a similar thing has happened in the past during the day anyway?

Maybe you don't believe there was an object in this case at all? But I believe there was and I think it's unlikely that 4 pilots in broad daylight from 2 different viewpoints all suffered from the same optical illusions or gross misinterpretation of what they were seeing.

4 pilots suffered from optical illusions? How many pilots saw it with their eyes again?

It's a good thing those aren't the only two options. Fravor may have seen something he believed was unexplainable, the other(s) saw something unusual but not necessarily unexplainable but either intentionally or unintentionally sided with the unexplainable idea as that's what their superior believed. Or perhaps Fravor got caught up in the excitement of seeing something unexpected, wrote his report while still excited, realised he may have jumped the gun a few days later after calming down, but stuck with his statement for his reputation's sake, and is maybe even enjoying the fame from it too. I'm not suggesting that either of those are the case, I am just saying you have suggested two common sense explanations, and I have suggested two more, and there are many many others. And within e.g. optical illusions, there are many many sub explanations. We do not need to jump to the idea of government scientists coming up with new technology that college professors couldn't and things like that.

The same Josef Hynek who did a complete 180 on the subject? Read his wiki.

Yes. I did read his wiki as I used it to source my screenshot and I assumed you would resort to this disingenuous argument. Just because Hynek changed his opinion about something does not suggest in any way that Hynek, a man very knowledgeable in statistics, was not being scientific when he collected and analysed his data either before or after he changed his opinion. In fact, it takes a strong will to admit to yourself that you were wrong about something after such a long time. Fravor might want to take a page out of his book.

Seems that Hynek was biased in his interpretation of the data as that was what he was employed to do.

Ok? Are you suggesting that should discredit everything from SETI? And all other similar jobs whereby we are employed to do some specific thing?

What was his definition of a misperception? How did they conclude that it had been a misperception, what data did he use? Hynek started this work in 1948. He had very little to go on other than what he was told the pilot observed and what he concluded.

I wouldn't have a clue. I am instead under the assumption that this expert collected and analysed his data correctly, and you have not demonstrated why I should not believe that. Did he specifically state any point after he changed his viewpoint that his methods for determining these numbers were wrong? You would think that, as a scientist, that if he realised he was horribly wrong about something that he would have stated it in some form afterwards, especially since he also had a different opinion afterwards.

Likewise, if it's believed that he was wrong about the misperception rate of pilots, why has another study not come along to discredit him? It would be a very basic thing to do what he did, and you would think it would be important thing to have some idea of how often pilots are wrong. Since I asked you in the previous to link to such a study and you haven't, I assume no such study exists. So, after 40+ years, his analysis has not been discredited by people on either side. What should someone conclude from that?

Well I'm not considering the Hynek data as accurate anyway. But in this particular case it's a combination of things. It's that there were two aircraft observing from 2 positions. It's that there were 2 pilots in each aircraft. It's that the radar data supposedly backs up what they say they observed. I'm not ruling out that it is all coincidental and the radar was faulty and they grossly misinterpreted what they saw.


Again, what's the significance of there being four pilots if they did not all see it? I'm a bit confused. In fact, the fact that there were four pilots but all four of them didn't see what was supposedly a bizarre object is of benefit to my argument and not yours, is it not?

I just think it's more likely something was in fact there and we haven't identified what that was.

Oh it's just not just more likely. Again, no one is doubting that they saw a UAP.

I differentiate based on my own bias. Airline pilots don't spend a huge amount of time looking out the window, they rely on their instruments. Military pilots on the other hand spend most of their time looking outside. This may explain why they observe more UAPs.

Agreed.

Therefore, a commercial pilot not looking outside may catch a glimpse of something in the corner of their eye and end up misinterpreting what they saw. A military pilot is more likely to see something sooner and get a better look.

Agreed. But if a pilot saw something for long enough to confidently conclude that it was object travelling faster than the speed of sound, breaking the laws of physics and had a shape he had never seen, then I don't see the relevance of this argument.

No I don't have links to studies. I have my own experience and knowledge.

Which, as any statistician will tell you, is of no significance.

That's not what I was suggesting either, read what I wrote again. I specifically spoke about pilot observations and whether bad observations should mean that we discount all observations. Thus the analogy with erroneous scientific observation.

You were asking if experimental scientists should stop doing experiments, i.e. stop doing their jobs, if they make an inaccurate observation. Again, I would say that that is a bad analogy.

I'm not a UFO nut. I think on balance the likelihood is that there is a prosaic explanation. Logic determines that is more likely than something extraordinary and new. But I keep an open mind and in this case I'm intrigued by the evidence we've seen and I am struggling to see a plausible explanation that ties everything together.

But you seem to be quite defensive about the idea of a logical explanation? You're saying that you're taking the Hynek data with a pinch of salt only because he changed his personal opinion, for example.


No, it takes years and continual training to change attitudes and perhaps ego is the wrong term to have used, though it was certainly part of the problem. A general attitude would be more appropriate perhaps. But there has been continual improvement over the years since CRM was introduced. Of course there are still occasional incidents which demonstrate an attitude problem was a contributing factor, but they are much less prevalent than they used to be.

And as you probably expected, I would ask you to quantify how less prevalent it was 17 years ago compared to less than 30 years ago.

I was not a pilot 17 years ago, too young for that. But we study the accidents that have been caused due to poor CRM and the problem was rife pre 90's.

Good thing this incident was not pre 90s then.

Regardless, you asked me why those pilots made the error they did and why they didn't consider the fact that the night conditions obscured what they had witnessed. A question I obviously can't give you the answer to, I merely offered you an opinion so there's really nothing to gain by trying to discredit this, to get your answer you would have to ask the pilots involved.

Agreed.

No I have not, but that incident you linked occurred in 1991 so CRM was still a very new concept. It took years for it to be developed and to have an impact on the attitudes of commercial pilots.

Do you have any link that suggests that CRM did not have immediate impact on the attitudes of commercial pilots? You weren't there after all, or are you again only basing this on more hearsay from fellow pilots and/or because you want to believe that that is the case? And I don't just mean a link showing the the application of CRM improved over time. Of course it would improve over time.

Links to what? All I've seen is what most have seen, the Joe Rogan podcast he did, the 60 minutes interview. He comes across as genuine to me and I don't doubt he has sought rational explanations. I think one of the hardest things for anyone to do is confront there own perception of an event and challenge it, particularly if you have no other rational explanation proposed.

Well, considering neither of us are psychologists, I don't think either of us can or should conclude anything from interviews, podcasts etc. about whether someone is genuine or not. I have co-authored a book on psychology in relation to medical physics, but I certainly would not suggest that my opinion has more significance than yours on the matter. Because neither of our opinions matter. Because we're not psychologists.

Most unsolved murders are missing a suspect or motive. Here we're talking about observations of objects potentially behaving in ways that we can't understand yet. If what is being observed is accurate, we may discover an explanation in time with further research. So I think it is significant.

There are, however, plenty of unsolved murders that have witnesses, CCTV footage etc., as well as combinations of such sources. Do you believe that such unsolved murders require aliens, secret technology or something similar?

These occurrences don't seem to be stopping either


Why would occurrences of UAPs ever stop? You use the phrase "don't seem" as if UAPs could stop being a thing in the future.

These occurrences don't seem to be stopping either which allows us the chance to continue studying and gaining new data. You can't do that with a murder from a few hundred years ago.

Eh, what? You're unlikely to gain new data for a murder from a hundred years ago, just like you're unlikely to gain new data for a UAP from a hundred years ago. The occurrence of UAPs don't seem to be stopping, and the occurrence of unsolved murders don't seem to be stopping. You don't seem to have made any point here.

Butson wrote: »

As is the norm on Boards, two individuals take the thread over.

You are free to reply to my or lintdrummer's message. Or you can continue to make irrelevant comments. Your choice.