Why Ufology is not a science?

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: Chadwickus
a reply to: intrptr

Ha ha, nice try. What I saw with others on a hill top a lonnng time ago was not an 'atmospheric manifestation'.

That you know of..

That you couldn't 'know of,' you weren't there. In that light alone, your suggestion that we couldn't differentiate between what we witnessed and the weather is utterly contemptuous.

Sadly that is what debunkers, and those who have never witnessed a fantastic and inexplicable sighting themselves do to "get even" with the world for not getting to witness such things, and then they take matters even further by trying to say they know better than the witnesses, what those witnesses saw. All of course without any testable material that might even hint at validating such a wild anomaly in logic.

a reply to: Blue Shift

That was a very good response.

Of course there was Heavens Gate and there's a current UFO cult with a "UFO Jesus" in Russia Right now.

How about spirituality then?

What is the relationship between that and
UFOs?

There are dozens of channeled / UFO cults...and mostly they just publish Urantia type books
With no prayers, etc.

Kev

originally posted by: NoCorruptionAllowed,,,,All of course without any testable material that might even hint at validating such a wild anomaly in logic.

Agreed to the need for testable hypotheses to show situations where witnesses see an unusual visual stimulus of subsequently documentable prosaic nature, and perceive/remember/report a narrative significantly inconsistent with the actual stimulus. And show multiple examples of the same erroneous perception.

I offer two well-documented examples where exactly such a testable hypothesis exists.

The Kiev fireball swarm and similar examples [link above]

The November 7, 2015 Trident launch off California and the hundreds of eyewitness reports of erroneous motion, range, and shape...
satobs.org...

a reply to: ufoflicks

been hijacked by Ufologists when it really belongs to Biologists.

So you're suggesting that perhaps a more apt job classification would be UFO exo-biologist or alien biologist. I think the stigma is what makes a scientists aversion to that sort of descriptor.

This seems to have some good science links

Institute for Exobiology
hrolson.tripod.com...

The major problem as I see it is different ufo sightings have nothing in common except in the sense that they involve things in the sky that are not explained by the witness.

When certain phenomena turn out to be more than an artifact of imagination, they eventually graduate into the realm of actual science. Meteors, ball lightning, sprites (high altitude lightning).

If people really have been seeing or will continue to see flying saucers, eventually some mode of observation will reveal the elusive truth of the matter.

The fact that there are more sensors than ever to record activity going on in our atmosphere, coupled with the fact that ufo evidence is becoming less and less credible (or downrigtht explainable), suggests to me that ufos have been more of a social or psychological phenomenon after all.

originally posted by: JimOberg

originally posted by: NoCorruptionAllowed,,,,All of course without any testable material that might even hint at validating such a wild anomaly in logic.

Agreed to the need for testable hypotheses to show situations where witnesses see an unusual visual stimulus of subsequently documentable prosaic nature, and perceive/remember/report a narrative significantly inconsistent with the actual stimulus. And show multiple examples of the same erroneous perception.

I offer two well-documented examples where exactly such a testable hypothesis exists.

The Kiev fireball swarm and similar examples [link above]

The November 7, 2015 Trident launch off California and the hundreds of eyewitness reports of erroneous motion, range, and shape...
satobs.org...

Thanks Jim,
You are certainly right that often times people report what to them seem unworldly, only to find out it is a normal thing like a new missile that looks too strange to be man made, but indeed is. Or many other prosaic things that although not an everyday occurrence, are still just as mundane as a copy of the Washington Post.

On the other hand, there are things seen by many that are quite far from the prosaic, and I myself have seen a few. Sometimes they are so far from prosaic, as a push lawnmower would be to a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Not all of them are human made as far as many who have seen them are concerned. As far as getting others to believe it has never been my concern though. Attempting to do that is like arguing with an old mule.

originally posted by: NoCorruptionAllowed

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: Chadwickus
a reply to: intrptr

Ha ha, nice try. What I saw with others on a hill top a lonnng time ago was not an 'atmospheric manifestation'.

That you know of..

That you couldn't 'know of,' you weren't there. In that light alone, your suggestion that we couldn't differentiate between what we witnessed and the weather is utterly contemptuous.

Sadly that is what debunkers, and those who have never witnessed a fantastic and inexplicable sighting themselves do to "get even" with the world for not getting to witness such things, and then they take matters even further by trying to say they know better than the witnesses, what those witnesses saw. All of course without any testable material that might even hint at validating such a wild anomaly in logic.

Thank you. IOW,

"I've never seen something, therefore it can't exist."

Imo, at the base of it, they know how silly that sounds. Personally, those 'roadblocks' are agenda driven, preconceived notions, a narrow horizon, or more likely dogmatic belief systems.

Since we will never be rid of Gubment spokespersons or Organized religion, we will hardly get to the bottom of it without 'outside' help. Seems thats convenient with them for now.

Deception on all levels. Except for the witness who goes, hey wait a second…

a reply to: 3danimator2014

To be able to discount ANY possible reason for what you saw (natural phenomenon, satellites, aircraft, drones etc….)

Satellites are up in orbit, reflecting the sun. What we saw flew by below the valley rim. IOW, the mountains on the far side of the valley were higher, we were higher than the 'thingy'.

Natural phenomenon, as in the weather? 300 days of the year its balmy clear skies here, that night it was particularly clear, from our vantage point on the western valley rim of the South Bay we could see the lights of Oakland and San Francisco, only possible on the clearest of nights.

Aircraft? My dad was a lockheed aerodynamic engineer, worked at the Sunnyvale moffett air station wind tunnel complex facility. From a tyke I went with him to every demonstration air show on base, reviewed every aircraft type and performance, from the air demonstrations to the static ground displays. He taught me astronomy, I owned an eight inch celestron telescope, he taught me satellites (that was his strong suit) we watched them together. Missiles, he worked on the sub launched Polaris nose cone, we watched all the moon missions on TV at our house. His more than able ability to point out every aircraft flying and tell me what type was only superseded by ex Navy friends I had in the 80's that also flew out of Moffett on P3 Orions whose job it was to identify everything sailing or flying.

I have been a shooter, collector of military firearms, shot a million rounds. While everyone else was living normal lives I remained mostly a recluse watching rented VCR tapes of military history since from before you were born. Also read a ton of books on the subject. Been here for several years now looking for others and their evidence to compare with my experience.

Whats your background again for determining what I saw wasn't unknown to earth tech?

in an age where literally everyone carries a high quality camera, with video recording capabilities, you would expect photographic and video evidence to be on the rise, and a few years ago it was, with obvious fakes and photoshops.
does anyone see a ghost anymore?
oh wait ufo, ill tweet on my phone with an 8 megapixel camera, you run and get the 80s camcorder making sure to miss the good stuff.

all we have now is clouds that don't 'look like god' or planes contrails.

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: NoCorruptionAllowed

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: Chadwickus
a reply to: intrptr

Ha ha, nice try. What I saw with others on a hill top a lonnng time ago was not an 'atmospheric manifestation'.

That you know of..

That you couldn't 'know of,' you weren't there. In that light alone, your suggestion that we couldn't differentiate between what we witnessed and the weather is utterly contemptuous.

Sadly that is what debunkers, and those who have never witnessed a fantastic and inexplicable sighting themselves do to "get even" with the world for not getting to witness such things, and then they take matters even further by trying to say they know better than the witnesses, what those witnesses saw. All of course without any testable material that might even hint at validating such a wild anomaly in logic.

Thank you. IOW,

"I've never seen something, therefore it can't exist."

Imo, at the base of it, they know how silly that sounds. Personally, those 'roadblocks' are agenda driven, preconceived notions, a narrow horizon, or more likely dogmatic belief systems.

Since we will never be rid of Gubment spokespersons or Organized religion, we will hardly get to the bottom of it without 'outside' help. Seems thats convenient with them for now.

Deception on all levels. Except for the witness who goes, hey wait a second…

You think skeptics never see things they can't explain?

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: CovertAgenda
Is it a religion then?

It's similar in that it is a psycho-sociological phenomenon that attempts to define or ascribe meaning to perceived extraordinary experiences. Probably the biggest difference is that religion tends to suggest that if you do something or believe something a particular way you will benefit from it. If you pray, or meditate, or believe in Jesus, or live according to the Eight-Fold Path, etc., you will have a better life, or afterlife. Except for very few fringe groups, most people feel that interactions with UFOs are essentially baffling or neutral, and there's no way you can purposely interact with them to make your life better.

Agreed,
Although the difference could be attributed to the manifestation of the purported 'words of god' documentation that is part of a wider indoctrination and conditioning system related to the religion. The only reason one knows how to pray, meditate, believe in Jesus, or live according to the Eight-Fold Path, etc., or know you will have a better life, or afterlife, is because it has been passed down (written/verbally etc). Not via a personal empirical process .

UFOlogy doesn't benefit from this kind of conditioning, there is no 'Book of ET' that provides 'guidance'.

Again, and in response to KellyPrettyBears comments, im trying to keep cults out of the discussion for simplicity's sake.

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: Chadwickus
a reply to: intrptr

I never suggested it was.

All I'm saying is just because you and 3 or 5 or even 1000 people didn't know what it was, doesn't automatically mean "aliens".

Thats exactly what you mean, "it wasn't aliens… "

By the way, you don't need to be a pilot to get the illusion of planets or the moon or sun "chasing you". You can repeat the phenomenon from a moving car, or bicycle even.

We weren't moving, we were standing on a hill top, it 'passed' by us at or beneath the rim of the valley crest. It was amazing neon blue, made no sound, impossibly fast, including a sudden, abrupt angular change of direction, with no radius of turn.

We all witnessed it, it was obviously not weather, a planet, or man made.

An interesting sighting report. It's possible that you guys saw something similar [a Foo Fighter in it's hi-power bluish-white phase] to my own Foo Fighter sighting. Can you please explain a bit more about you're UFO sighting --- Or give me a link?

Thanks,

Erno

a reply to: ufoflicks

J. Allen Hynek put it succinctly: what makes ufology different from other sciences is that it has no UFOs to examine, only reports of UFOs. It is impossible to perform controlled experiments or make repeated observations. If it is to be honest with itself, ufology is as much about psychology, sociology, and even epistemology as it is anything in the physical sciences.

originally posted by: Tearman

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: NoCorruptionAllowed

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: Chadwickus
a reply to: intrptr

Ha ha, nice try. What I saw with others on a hill top a lonnng time ago was not an 'atmospheric manifestation'.

That you know of..

That you couldn't 'know of,' you weren't there. In that light alone, your suggestion that we couldn't differentiate between what we witnessed and the weather is utterly contemptuous.

Sadly that is what debunkers, and those who have never witnessed a fantastic and inexplicable sighting themselves do to "get even" with the world for not getting to witness such things, and then they take matters even further by trying to say they know better than the witnesses, what those witnesses saw. All of course without any testable material that might even hint at validating such a wild anomaly in logic.

Thank you. IOW,

"I've never seen something, therefore it can't exist."

Imo, at the base of it, they know how silly that sounds. Personally, those 'roadblocks' are agenda driven, preconceived notions, a narrow horizon, or more likely dogmatic belief systems.

Since we will never be rid of Gubment spokespersons or Organized religion, we will hardly get to the bottom of it without 'outside' help. Seems thats convenient with them for now.

Deception on all levels. Except for the witness who goes, hey wait a second…

You think skeptics never see things they can't explain?

The difference is that when a skeptic experiences something they don't understand, they are open minded enough to admit that it is an unknown phenomenon, rather than try to cram it into a preconceived box. I have had strange experiences, but I feel no need to make up stories in my head about alternative timelines or disembodied spirits.

originally posted by: DJW001
a reply to: ufoflicks
.... It is impossible to perform controlled experiments or make repeated observations. If it is to be honest with itself, ufology is as much about psychology, sociology, and even epistemology as it is anything in the physical sciences.

Not entirely true -- serendipitous 'control experiments' have been occurring accidentally for decades, but ufologists don't WANT to study them because they are by definition IFOs and hence not of interest. But you put your finger on a key scientific issue, good! If we COULD deliberately create 'control experiments' of known visual stimuli and then study how regular people perceive, interpret, and remember what they 'know they saw', we could obtain significant insight into the process of reverse-engineering what people report seeing, back to what reasonably might have caused it. Otherwise it's all 'might haves' and 'should haves' and decades more of frustration.

There is a literature of discussing how people have occasionally misinterpreted meteors, or Chinese lanterns, or Venus [don't laugh!], but these seem useful only at the margins of a few cases. Important to know [and not to mock], but only partial answers and still only suggestive and hypothetical.

As linked above, I suggest that we have, purely by accident, some ALMOST good-enough substitute 'control experiment's -- reports of astounding visual stimuli of known events, and the equally astounding perceptions later recalled by witnesses.

www.jamesoberg.com...

What can they teach of of how FAR a witness's perception may fall from the raw stimulus? And how often does it happen to sober, intelligent, rational, and mature human beings?

a reply to: DJW001

As I wrote my post I recalled experiments that astronomers did to investigate the possibility that the canals of Mars were optical illusions. We now know that the canals are entirely the product of the human mind imposing order a visual field that lacks order. I agree that there would be resistance to similar experiments among ufologists.

a reply to: Tearman

You think skeptics never see things they can't explain?

Of course they do, depends on ones definition of a skeptic…

skep·tic
ˈskeptik/Submit
noun
1.
a person inclined to question or doubt all accepted opinions.

originally posted by: Erno86

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: Chadwickus
a reply to: intrptr

I never suggested it was.

All I'm saying is just because you and 3 or 5 or even 1000 people didn't know what it was, doesn't automatically mean "aliens".

Thats exactly what you mean, "it wasn't aliens… "

By the way, you don't need to be a pilot to get the illusion of planets or the moon or sun "chasing you". You can repeat the phenomenon from a moving car, or bicycle even.

We weren't moving, we were standing on a hill top, it 'passed' by us at or beneath the rim of the valley crest. It was amazing neon blue, made no sound, impossibly fast, including a sudden, abrupt angular change of direction, with no radius of turn.

We all witnessed it, it was obviously not weather, a planet, or man made.

An interesting sighting report. It's possible that you guys saw something similar [a Foo Fighter in it's hi-power bluish-white phase] to my own Foo Fighter sighting. Can you please explain a bit more about you're UFO sighting --- Or give me a link?

Thanks,

Erno

I speak of it on occasion (like here), have yet to do a thread on it. Its not that important for me to convince others, just give a witness perspective when I feel moved.

Like to hear your recount, too. What I saw couldn't rightly be called a "foo fighter". From what I know about that phenomenon, what I saw didn't match the reports and photos from WWII.

If I was to give a subjective opinion about the purpose of what it was I saw, it behaved like a probe.

In other words, we send probes to other planets and moons, they 'fly by' taking measurements with instruments and then they are gone.

Thats the impression I had of this thing. The way it bisected the valley in a straight line path at a constant velocity.

Like I said, subjective.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: WeRpeons
a reply to: intrptr

Skeptics have a multitude of scientific explanations that try to explain away the UFO phenomenon. They can immediately point to CGI and drones to explain away sightings. However, like you said, there have been sighting well before CGI, video recorders, and digital photography.

Nothing can explain away a personal sighting, especially when it's seen by multiple witnesses. You have to be there in the moment to become a true believer and come to the realization that there are things out there that science just can't explain away.

Science doesn't "explain away" things. It just doesn't accept existence until reliable proof can be presented of existence. That isn't science saying that the thing doesn't exist though.

To be honest, nothing is wrong with the term "UFO". After all, it means unidentified flying object. Which is a PERFECT description of these things. But attributing any other characteristics to what you JUST labeled as "unknown" is hypocritical and not scientific.

I tend to think skeptics often don't bother investigating using the scientific method either. Science neither proves or disproves anything in the field because they dont want to be bothered with it. The lack of scientific investigation by anyone on either side of the issue is obvious.

Shermer, for one, is big on that. He leans on ufology not being science quite a bit. Or he'll say something like people can have mass delusions, people mistake planets for ufos, so that must be the explanation. That kind of thing. I think that's where the "explain away" comes from.

I just wish skeptics and scientists would accept "I don't know" as an answer. That doesn't happen often enough. And that's a criticism of ufologists all the time, but it applies to both sides.

a reply to: jordan77

I just wish skeptics and scientists would accept "I don't know" as an answer. That doesn't happen often enough. And that's a criticism of ufologists all the time, but it applies to both sides.

Here's the difference between skeptics and most self proclaimed ufologists. A skeptic will say: "I'm not sure, but it's probably..." whereas "ufologists" will too often say: "This can only be ETs, what more proof do you need?"