Thursday, August 22, 2013

THE UFO DEBATE

"Everywhere, by Stealth"
by Richard Dolan
“Every day, spectacular events occur in the skies, in space, in the oceans, and on the ground. Astonished witnesses around the world see them. For many, the shock of something so extraordinary, so inexplicable, is a consciousness-shattering experience, never forgotten. Yet few of them tell anyone at all of what they saw, save perhaps a close friend or family member.”
 “The things they see are of some variety, but which often fall within one of several categories. Here is a report that is typical. It describes an event that occurred in Hydes, Maryland, on May 15, 1976, but wasn't reported until twenty-three years later to the National UFO Reporting Center, on the World Wide Web. The witness who wrote about this was with five other people, all adults and professionals, lying on the front lawn of a farm after dinner at about 7 p.m. To their great surprise, they saw an enormous, round craft approach slowly from the horizon, perhaps at 30 or 40 miles per hour. It slowly rotated in counter-clockwise direction; white lights were visible on the outer edges. The witness estimated the object's diameter to be 1,000 feet, although it was hard to notice details, due to the sunlight at the time of day. When the object appeared over them, it stopped and split into four smaller, wedgent”d shaped craft. Then, in the "blink of an eye," the objects zoomed away to the North, South, East, and West. There was never a sound during the sighting. "To this day," writes the witness, "we have never spoken about this to anyone, not even ourselves."
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About R.Dolan’s article.
"The UFO Evidence: Burdens of Proof"
by Jim Giglio and Scott Snell 
Examine the sighting report that Richard Dolan (Commentary 1) regards as typical and informative. The report was submitted to the National UFO Reporting Center in 1999 and refers to an event that allegedly occurred in 1976 near Hydes, Maryland:

it was dusk that day. we saw this round craft come out of the northeast over the horizon. it was slowly rotating counter clockwise. white lights only, were on the outer edges. it moved slowly, maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour. it came directly over us. we were on a horse farm, laying on the front lawn just after dinner. this craft was just below the sunlight that was left in the sky. we could not see any details. when it came over us, it stopped. then separated into four smaller craft. then at the blink of an eye, they shot over the horizon. each ship went directly north, south, east and west respectively. there was absolutely no sound from this craft. we learned the next day that there were sightings over peachbottom atomic plant that day. the same direction that our craft came from. to this day, we have never spoken about this to anyone, not even between ourselves. there were 6 of us. two music teachers, a medical lab tech, a texas instruments tech, police officer, a kindergarten teacher.

As scientific evidence, this statement has numerous "red flags" hanging all over it. The writer, supposedly a professional, seems not to want to bother with the standard capitalization rules for English sentences. The statement is only semi-coherent, with sentences describing various aspects of the incident tumbling over each other in a rush; with 23 years to think about the incident, it ought to have been possible to organize the description into a coherent narrative. (S)he reports that no details of the object could be seen, yet states that it was 1000 feet in diameter and traveling 30 or 40 miles per hour. How these size and speed determinations were made is unspecified, nor is there an explanation for an inability to resolve details when it was possible to determine size and speed. Accepting the size and speed estimates leads to another problem. Hydes, Maryland is located near a number of heavily-traveled highways and air transportation corridors. Near-by observers should have numbered in the thousands and generated numerous newspaper headlines; we are referred, instead, to some alleged sightings at a nuclear power plant located a considerable distance away.
Mr. Dolan informs us that this kind of report is typical. He's quite right; it is typical, but as scientific evidence it's worthless. Individuals and organizations adhering to the notion of ET visitation accumulate reports like this by the thousands and periodically present them to the public to support their position. There's a logical fallacy at work in this constant piling-up of reports, the fallacy that large amounts of bad evidence somehow add up to good evidence. They don't. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, nor can you make one out of 10,000 sow's ears. The Colorado investigators were right; despite their volume, reports such as this, which had contributed nothing to science as of 1968, have yet to contribute anything in the intervening 33 years.
The fact that Mr. Dolen gives credence to this flawed statement illustrates an aspect of the UFO issue that ought to trouble proponents of the notion that this issue is a serious scientific problem. We refer to an apparent unwillingness, on the part of far too many of these proponents, to apply even a modicum of critical thinking to such reports.


Ufology, Exopolitics, Conspiracies, Paranoia, Memes, Hoaxes, 2012, UFO, Aliens, Disinformation, Cultism, Brainwashing, Rational Thinking, ET, Xenopolitics, Contactees, Abductions, Disclosure.
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