UFO Evidence - A Closer Look at Peculiar Patterns in UFO Sightings

Speaking of being a believer…
“Many of my once beloved 'high profile' cases have collapsed under scrutiny.”
“There are far too many instances where UFO witnesses have misidentified celestial objects”
I do not believe in either of these statements.

I certainly do not believe in much of what Ridpath, Hynek and ATS’s own UFO debunkery club writes right in these very pages.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
….
2. While UFOs can fall into loose categories when it comes to shapes, there are so many different shapes -- which seem to evolve over time -- that there are either hundreds of different aliens trying to study us or they somehow manifest themselves according to each individual witness... .

A very productive avenue of inquiry, if generalized. Does the nature of 'each individual witness' CAUSE the raw perception to tailor itself, or does the nature of 'each individual witness' CAUSE the witness to interpret amorphous never-before-seen shapes to be INTERPRETED based on the witness perceptual history?

Leslie Kean focused on exactly this issue. .. She claimed that UFOs clearly exhibited intelligent behavior because they flew differently depending on whether the observers were military pilots [the UFOs behaved threateningly] or civilian pilots [the UFOs flew neutrally]. I criticized that view [and suggested the difference was in the observer's perception, not the object's behavior] here:

old url

www.nbcnews.com...

with wayback
web.archive.org...://www.nbcnews.com/id/38852385

originally posted by: spiritualarchitect
…. I certainly do not believe in much of what Ridpath, Hynek and ATS’s own UFO debunkery club writes right in these very pages.

As you wish. Do you still believe Jimmy Carter's famous report was a genuine UFO rather than the widely observed NASA barium rocket launch widely seen in that same part of the sky at the same date and time?

originally posted by: jeep3r

Over the years, it seems, that someone pulled the strings and that leads to the involvement of intellegence agencies that have a natural interest in keeping control of anything that has the potential to influence public opinion

Certainly seems that way and always interesting to see that, whilst they were informing their employers (the American public) that the UFO phenomenon was just a silly nonsense, the U.S. Government's own internal documents about the subject painted an extremely different picture.

"Governments around the world have had to deal with the UFO phenomenon for a good part of a century. How and why they did so is the subject of “UFOs and Government,” a history that for the first time tells the story from the perspective of the governments themselves"

UFOS AND GOVERNMENT - A Historical Inquiry

a reply to: JimOberg
Do you know it has been 6 years and 10 months almost to the day since we last spoke, the day you got mad at me for calling you the "The NASA apologist". My how time flies.

originally posted by: spiritualarchitect

“Many of my once beloved 'high profile' cases have collapsed under scrutiny.”
“There are far too many instances where UFO witnesses have misidentified celestial objects”
I do not believe in either of these statements.

ATS’s own UFO debunkery club writes right in these very pages.

How on earth can you (in fact, how dare you) not believe my own words that many once beloved classic cases of mine have collapsed under scrutiny? That is MY conclusion, not yours; you are free to believe what you want, but do not speak for my own thoughts, thanks.

And rather than "debunkery", ATS has its own 'enquiry club'. Isn't that what most of us do? Enquire and research rather than accept someone else's word for it just because someone like Dr Greer told them so? Yet you are more than a Believer, you are a Knower, and it must be wonderful for you; I'm even jealous to some extent.

However, if a case is debunked on ATS as a result of diligent study and research, then it only helps the rest of us in sorting the aforementioned wheat from the chaff, and getting us closer to Real Answers rather than mere Myths.

Because I do not believe you, as I think you are a "Knower" too. By the way, for me that is Partial Knower, so don't be too jealous. And though you want them to be, the cases are not "debunked". But you try so hard, if you are not already, you should get Jim to put you on the CSI payroll. Surly you have earned it.

originally posted by: JimOberg

originally posted by: Blue Shift
….
2. While UFOs can fall into loose categories when it comes to shapes, there are so many different shapes -- which seem to evolve over time -- that there are either hundreds of different aliens trying to study us or they somehow manifest themselves according to each individual witness... .

A very productive avenue of inquiry, if generalized. Does the nature of 'each individual witness' CAUSE the raw perception to tailor itself, or does the nature of 'each individual witness' CAUSE the witness to interpret amorphous never-before-seen shapes to be INTERPRETED based on the witness perceptual history?

I tend to think that when anyone is presented with something novel they will try to interpret it according to what they understand. It helps explain why in multiple sightings of supposedly the same object different people will describe different things. Stephenville and the Phoenix Lights are good examples of this. But that still doesn't invalidate that something unusual was seen; unusual enough that the witnesses - civilian or military - couldn't identify it. How unusual it has to be to be unidentifiable depends on the perceptual and discernment abilities of the witness.

For real honest to goodness UFOs, I personally think they represent something no human is smart enough to understand, which assumes that intelligence as a quality has no known limit and humanity is still in the shallow end of the pool.

The notion that UFOs could interact with witnesses and purposely change themselves to match the expectations of the witnesses is less likely. However, we also talk baby talk to cats, so if they were trying to make it easier for us to understand or communicate with them they might try to "dumb themselves down" so we could cobble together some kind of meaning in our heads for them. So we could say, "Here is an apparently solid flying saucer made of some kind of metal," because we have concepts for all those things but not whatever quasi-real phantom energy thing they might really be but which we are too stupid to comprehend.

I'm rambling.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
...
I tend to think that when anyone is presented with something novel they will try to interpret it according to what they understand. It helps explain why in multiple sightings of supposedly the same object different people will describe different things. Stephenville and the Phoenix Lights are good examples of this. But that still doesn't invalidate that something unusual was seen; unusual enough that the witnesses - civilian or military - couldn't identify it. How unusual it has to be to be unidentifiable depends on the perceptual and discernment abilities of the witness.
….

"... something unusual was seen; unusual enough that the witnesses - civilian or military - couldn't identify it...."

We are in agreement. Fortunately, quite by accident, exactly such 'unusual' visual stimuli are now being presented to startled witnesses all over the world, allowing analysts to assess the perceptual/interpretative processes under actual field conditions. Such serendipitous 'control experiments' -- which couldn't ever be performed deliberately for logistic and ethical reasons -- offer insights into what normal people will interpret with first-in-a-lifetime apparitions.

"Stephenville and the Phoenix Lights are good examples of this" -- again, we agree. What sort of NEW visual stimuli would lead regular folks to imagine they were watching a large structured object with lights mounted on it?

Maybe this? The perception of a structured object with a sharp silhouette and glowing windows is a repeatable, common reaction to a night-time fireball swarm which moves horizontally. Examples: a meteor disintegrating or several aircraft with landing lights. The compelling proof of this possible explanation has been provided by satellite reentries that serendipitously create the same visual stimulus -- and the same witness misinterpretation -- all around the world, as shown here: www.jamesoberg.com...

originally posted by: JimOberg
Maybe this? The perception of a structured object with a sharp silhouette and glowing windows is a repeatable, common reaction to a night-time fireball swarm which moves horizontally. Examples: a meteor disintegrating or several aircraft with landing lights. The compelling proof of this possible explanation has been provided by satellite reentries that serendipitously create the same visual stimulus -- and the same witness misinterpretation -- all around the world, as shown here: www.jamesoberg.com...

In this particular case, in this situation, it's going to be a possibility. However, a stray meteor breakup or space junk re-entry is not going to explain how a farmer can see disc in broad daylight and a little alien running around checking out some piece of dirt with a glowing rod. If all UFO reports were just odd things flying in the sky, reasonable explanations would be easier to come by. However, that's just the tip top of a very deep phenomenon, and it would be difficult to definitely say that everything has a relatively mundane explanation but we just don't always have enough data to verify it. I actually think there are some things out there that are literally beyond explanation because we are inherently limited in our ability to understand the phenomenon itself or the key data that would allow us to at least try to understand it.

a reply to: jeep3r

Good informative post. Was somewhat disappointed there was no mention of the work of the late Harley Rutledge and his scientific approach to a direct study of the phenomenon.

a reply to: Blue Shift

We share the impression that some phenomena reported as 'UFOs' are important to understand, even as they are difficult to filter out. They are not all 'nonsense' by any means.

At least ONE of probably an entire zoo of 'prosaic' explanations also offers a potential explanation of why military intelligence services really OUGHT to pay attention to 'UFO reports' all over the world, while doing their best to disguise their interest in them, for entirely terrestrial motivations. This by no means rules out truly exotic stimuli for some reports and that possibility should never be overlooked.

Videos such as recent missile launches in Russia and China and from around the world [and off it], over decades of observations, demonstrate how a collection of public observations [especially with video imaging] can provide insights into measurable characteristics of very interesting aerospace activities of highly classified or commercially private nature.

The most fertile hunting ground for such worldwide reports over the last seventy-plus years has been the UFO literature, both print, oral, and now internet. Secondary sources might include astronomy club newsletters.

Any national intelligence service anxious to appraise a potential adversary’s aerospace capabilities would therefore obviously seek hints in UFO reports and elsewhere, along with traditional espionage practices.

Such an agency would also realize that an adversary’s recognition of the intelligence value of such generally-disregarded public reports could result in imposing censorship and thus a loss of such opportunistic insights.

Any national military security service would recognize the symmetric informational vulnerability of their own highly secret aerospace activities if observed, misinterpreted, and reported as UFOs, if recognized overseas.

As a defensive measure, such an agency would have to keep tabs on domestic UFO reports to detect any leakage of unrecognized clues to its own secret projects that it was responsible for protecting, that an insightful adversary might be able to exploit, in order to take steps to reduce [or scramble] easy observability.

Consequently, a thorough national security program would have an excellent two-part justification for actively collecting and thoroughly assessing worldwide “UFO reports”, regardless of any potential additional stimuli.

Deliberate observable performances to calibrate actual accuracy of such reports might be a prudent measure.

Deliberate activities to spoof adversary observers or evaluators might be feasible, even if merely to advertise to other intelligence agencies that such an information window was more unreliable than naively assumed.

To preserve the value of such opportunistic unrecognized information resources, the agency’s justifiably-intense interest in such reports would necessarily have to be kept secret, or disguised, or misinterpretable.

Additionally, a study of national ‘UFO reports’ is an excellent way to characterize the effectiveness and sensitivity and the blind spots of that nation’s aerospace monitoring technology, to identify exploitable weaknesses or single-point system failure possibilities.

originally posted by: standingwave
a reply to: jeep3r

Good informative post. Was somewhat disappointed there was no mention of the work of the late Harley Rutledge and his scientific approach to a direct study of the phenomenon.

Good thread here mate.

Project Identification: Ufology's Red-Headed Stepchild

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit

ATS has its own 'enquiry club'. Isn't that what most of us do?

Yes honest enquiry and objective research is always a good recipe mate (also a nice sprinkling of intellectual honesty).

Thought some very good points were made in the video (and letter) below and official investigations into UFO patterns and report percentages are mentioned (and blatantly ignored by pseudo-sceptics) - also seems that even the joke that was the Condon Committee couldn't wangle their actual unknown rate down under 30% (actually it was probably more like 50%.)

As a scientist who has been studying the UFO evidence since 1958, I must commend ASTRONOMY for publishing such a splendid example of the intellectual bankruptcy of the pseudoscience of anti-ufology ,namely Phil Plait’s “The Science Behind UFOs” (May 2013). He avoids all the science!

There are 5 large scale scientific studies. None are mentioned. There are at least 12 PhD Theses about UFOs. None are mentioned. There are numerous radar visual accounts. None are mentioned. There are more than 5000 Physical Trace Cases collected by Ted Phillips from 95 countries. None are mentioned. There are a number of well investigated UFO abduction cases investigated by Professionals such as Psychiatrist Dr. John Mack of Harvard. None are mentioned.

The largest study is “Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14” done by engineers and scientists at Battelle Memorial Institute under contract to the USAF. It has over 200 tables, charts, graphs, maps, etc. and deals with 3201 UFO sightings of which 21.5% were finally listed as UNKNOWNS, completely separate from the 9.3% listed as Insufficient Information. The better the quality of the sighting the more likely to be an UNKNOWN.A chi-square statistical analysis showed that the probability that the UNKNOWNS were just missed knowns was less than 1%.

The 247 page ”Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects: Hearings Before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives” ,July 29, 1968, provides testimony from 12 scientists , three of whom were astronomers. One was Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Chairman of the Astronomy Department at Northwestern University, and for more than 20 years consultant to the USAF Project Blue Book. His book “The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry” should be required reading and contains many intriguing sightings. The most comprehensive presentation was by Dr. James E. McDonald, Senior Physicist in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona. He covered 41 separate cases including sightings by astronomers such as Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of the planet Pluto, and multiple witness radar visual cases.

The University of Colorado’s “Scientific Report on UFOs “(The Condon Report) included information on 117 cases of which, according to a special UFO Subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 30% could not be identified..

originally posted by: JimOberg
a reply to: Blue Shift

Any national intelligence service anxious to appraise a potential adversary’s aerospace capabilities would therefore obviously seek hints in UFO reports and elsewhere, along with traditional espionage practices.

First of all my compliments for your hard work, jeep3r!

@Jim:

I think in the early days, your proposal has already been put into operation based on the recommendation in the 1947 Twining memo.

The 1947 Twining memo pointed out the extreme performance characteristics that were reported:

"The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely."

And it already mentioned:

"The possibility that some foreign nation has a form of propulsion possibly nuclear, which is outside of our domestic knowledge."

It recommended:

"a detailed study of this matter to include the preparation of complete sets of all available and pertinent data which will then be made available"

Project Sign was born, and its ‘estimate of the situation’ was: ET, not Russian.

Finally, in 1955, a statistical analysis of UFO reports collected by Blue Book was published (special report nr 14). They, too, noticed maneuverability as a defining factor for the 434 unknowns:

"All but about 40 unknowns [so: about 400 unknowns] were classified as such solely because they were reported to have performed maneuvers that could not be ascribed to any known objects. With the exception of some radar sightings, all of these maneuvers were observed visually."

They only had 12 cases with a detailed description/drawing of the UFO and these descriptions/drawings varied considerably.

So, a past exercise similar to the one you propose yielded 400 unknowns that varied in appearance but all were reported to have performed maneuvers that could not be ascribed to any known objects. This pattern of maneuverability has persisted up to and including the recent sightings by the US Navy, where Fravor observed the “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability” that was already mentioned by Twining back in 1947.

These “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability” are still observed today as stated in Elizondo’s five observables. A persistent pattern from 1947 to today.

The pattern of varying shapes has also persisted. It was the main reason that special report 14 concluded in 1955:

"On the basis of this evidence, therefore, there is a low probability that any of the unknowns represent observations of a class of `flying saucers'."

I do wonder … IF we are dealing with an extraterrestrial intelligence far ahead of us, why on earth assume that they only have one model of their crafts: The ‘flying saucer’? The ET-Ford of the Galaxy…
I mean, just look at the diversity of stuff that we put in the air…

originally posted by: spiritualarchitect

If you are not already, you should get Jim to put you on the CSI payroll.

Bit off topic there mate and I'm sure CB isn't an ideological cultist (or paid shill) - there is some revealing info here about CSI/COP though and in the post above it Jacques Vallee does discuss 'global UFO patterns' (which I suppose is what we all should be doing on this thread).

a reply to: karl 12

"The most comprehensive presentation was by Dr. James E. McDonald, Senior Physicist in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona. He covered 41 separate cases including sightings by astronomers"...

Did he guaranty there was no prosaic explanation for any of those reports? How many persuasive explanations for HIS selected 'best' set would it take to shake your faith in his standards?

originally posted by: Guest101
...
These “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability” are still observed today as stated in Elizondo’s five observables. A persistent pattern from 1947 to today....

Calling these five items 'observables' sets my fallacy-alarm buzzing. Here's my previous posting on that theme:

The '5 observables' allegedly demonstrated by the bizarre events reported by Navy pilots are NOT ‘observations’, they are INTERPRETATIONS of what the raw observations might mean. What IS ‘observable’ is that the author of the list knows less than zero about the proper function of a military intelligence officer or any investigator of unknown causes of eyewitness perceptions, which is to observe and record, NOT to interpret or explain. To jump to such interpretations preemptively is a notorious intellectual fallacy that REAL investigators have learned must be avoided because once formulated, an explanatory theory can subconsciously flavor the interpretation of new evidence, and even skew the direction of follow-on research, and through lines of questioning, even skew the memories of direct witnesses. As NTSB accident investigators know, pilots are among the MOST susceptible witnesses to memory editing, probably because of their entirely proper professional instinct to reach fast assessments of unusual observations in terms of potential hazard to themselves. This is a very valuable bias in terms of flight safety, at the cost of dispassionate intellectual curiosity.

So what was really observed?

Anti-gravity lift. [objects] have been sighted overcoming the earth’s gravity with no visible means of propulsion.

This would be ‘observable’ only through its effect on the motion of the object, or more precisely, on changes in its measured azimuth/elevation relative to Earth horizon [not to a viewscreen]. With objects of unknown size, any eyeball estimate of range is worthless.

Sudden and instantaneous acceleration. The objects may accelerate or change direction so quickly that no human pilot could survive the g-forces

Effective acceleration determination requires knowledge of a time history of the object’s angular rate, observer-to-object range rate, and accurate range value. There seems to be no description of reliable capture of any of these parameters, so ‘acceleration’ CANNOT be observed.

Hypersonic velocities without signatures. If an aircraft travels faster than the speed of sound, it typically leaves "signatures," like vapor trails and sonic booms

Determination of raw velocity requires these same parameters, so without them the ‘velocity’ is not observable.

Low observability, or cloaking. Even when objects are observed, getting a clear and detailed view of them—either through pilot sightings, radar or other means—remains difficult.

‘Observability’ can be observed qualitatively but needs more details about which sensors are involved, from human eyeball [under what attenuation/illumination conditions] to visual sensors [visible light, IR, etc] to ground or airborne skin-track radar, lidar, or other technology. Without time history of quantifiable measurements in an environment of potentially rapidly changing range and aspect angle, the ‘observation’ observability is a dubious characteristic.

Trans-medium travel. Some UAP have been seen moving easily in and between different environments, such as space, the earth’s atmosphere and even water.

This is yet another INTERPRETATION of low-observable imagery, involving a target of unknown size and range.

Some of these interpretations may well be validated by investigation of the actual raw observables, but beginning an investigation based on pre-existing conclusions [and then selecting the evidence that fits] is a recipe for confusion and frustration and dead-ended detours. It demonstrates the sad unsuitability of such sloppy methodology to attempting to make sense of these undeniably interesting reports.

a reply to: Guest101

There's certainly a lot of very interesting UFO reports. But conclusions are often contradictory. Even Condon which was summarised in a certain way to enable the shut down of Blue Book actually contained reports on what appeared as unknown objects capable of erratic manoeuvres and rapid acceleration which appeared intelligently controlled.

The Twining Memo also seems to confirm the similar anomalous nature of sightings but also comments

The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these subjects....

General Twining was in New Mexico between July 7th (when he arrived in Roswell) and July 11th 1947. It would seem that he was in a position to know exactly what came down near Roswell. But with that single line contradicts that the US had any physical evidence from a "crash recovered exhibit".

a reply to: karl 12

I get a laugh out of people that don't believe in UFO’s but are constantly having to post about how there are no UFO’s.
As always, you are my favorite poster. Stay safe.