Why is it about debunking???

Their ya go, neat clipped 'liars'. I'm sure your mother is so very proud of you disrespecting others viewpoints.
Edit
Upon reread of your post I believe I may have construed your comments incorrectly.

My apologies.

[edit on 18-9-2007 by jpm1602]

Originally posted by jpm1602
Let me be clear, this is NOT a slam on debunkers, more of a critique on the inability of some's lack of open mindedness.

I'm not sure the issue is that simple. There is some quote I will undoubtedly get wrong, but it goes somethig like this: "Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out."

Let me give you an example. I have a couple of friends, Nancy & Doug. I worked with Nancy in a major computer/IT environment for almost 25 years. I was a Division Head of several departments. She was Supervisor of my favorite, IT. We did all the computers. Anyway, she and Doug bought a sailboat and sailed away. She was gone for six years. I hired her back as soon as I got an opening. She came back with a couple of scars (a falling mast hit her) and a strange tale.

It seems she and Doug were sailing on a calm night with a star studded sky in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You can imagine how beautiful that would be away from city light pollution. Nancy was on watch staring at the sky. She saw a shadow creep among the stars to move directly over their 42 foot boat. She says it had to have been extremely high up.

Suddenly her boat and the water around them was flooded with an extremely bright light. It lit up the boat as if it were daylight. It lasted a few seconds, hardly enough time for her to rouse Doug from the cabin below. It left her and Doug both shaken and worried. Nothing else happened. They say it was a UFO--literally.

Now, I believe Nancy implicitly. I have known her well over half her life and have the utmost respect for her. If she says something happened, it did. End of story. She can't prove this happened. There were no witnesses, no pictures, no corraboration at all. But I believe her anyway. Notice, though, that her story isn't about aliens from space; it's about a bright light that lit up her boat, and a dark shape in the sky. Nancy stuck with the facts and did not embellish her story.

The problem is that many times here on ATS that very same set of facts turns into 'proof!' of aliens from space. THAT'S where a skeptic will and should point out that the facts do not support that conclusion. Lights in the sky do not prove aliens, and that's what we constantly hear on these threads. "I saw a light. It changed my life. Aliens are here." Well, sigh, I'm kinda sorry you feel that way. Your evidence just isn't there to form that kind of conclusion.

Now, what was this thing? COULD it have been a bona fide UFO from space piloted by aliens checking out the boat? It's possible, I suppose. You can't rule it out entirely. COULD it have been some sort of secret surveillance craft checking out the boat? It's possible and probably more likely for a number of reasons. That begs the question of why, though. WILL we ever know what that was? No, we won't. It's over and done with.

The lesson here is to not overstep your evidence. Yet it happens all the time. We have a thread right now that PROVES beyond a shadow of a doubt that aliens exist and how could anyone in their right mind NOT believe this? It's junk from a shuttle flight, a round circle with a hole in the middle. What is most amazing to me about this is that people actually are exasperated when other people don't want to jump on this shaky conclusion. If you want to jump off a cliff with wild speculation, go right ahead, but don't expect me to join you.

[edit on 9/18/2007 by schuyler]

reply to post by jpm1602



Apology accepted.

Thank you Hi Score, that was very ignorant of me.

people are stupid in the sense that their attitudes and behavior and thinking can easily be shaped.

The OP has a good point. People are also so used to thinks getting debunked here, that they come to EXPECT IT.

If a group of critical minded individuals got together and mergered their wills/drive for the truth and then gathered some evidence ( eye witness acounts, video footage) then maybe they could put together better evidence of UFO legitamecy and reach more people. until then the dis-beleivers will wait till the president gets on TV and tells them there are aliens in ufo's .

maybe a you tube video that shows the gov'ts history of lying (instances where they were caught) and then show's them saying ufo's are fake or fictional. thus weakening the belief of accuracy of such a "high ranking offical" denouncing Ufo's.

then the door might swing open for them to look at evidence.

[edit on 19-9-2007 by cpdaman]

Well Schuyler it would seem to me the war on skepticism/believers will be much like the war on terror. Never ending until a mothership lands on Las Vegas with 500 aerial news trucks around and we exchange trinkets and pleasantries with another species broadcast around the world. Why they choose to play this cat and mouse game who knows. They do seem to have a 'non interference clause' much like on Star Trek sans the abduction and implant thing that experts find are materiel of unknown origin (in some cases). I guess if you wanted to manipulate a person or a race it may not be best to jump out the shadows and exclaim 'here I am' the gray that's been yanking your chain around. You are an elloquent speaker Schuyler, I understand precisely where you're coming from on this.

Good question. Two reasons come to mind;

One being the information, pic or vid being the subject of the thread has often been accepted a real and turned out to be a fake image or information. This leads some to become understandably skeptical of a to-good-to-be-true reports. and,

Two, Some people can't be bothered researching the information presented or are very-green in the subject, so it's just easier to deny what's being presented. I call those comments the space-wasters.

Debunkers are fowl smelling trolls who don't want to believe and insist believer don't believe either. Debunkers are the close minded.

Dallas

Now now Dallas. First it was the tooth fairy, then the Easter Bunny, then Santa Claus! It's not their fault.
lol/sarcasm

It's quite simple, really...

To answer the OP: It is "about debunking" because it is the only way to establish the truth. Debunking, as practiced by most researchers, is certainly not a purely cynical state of mind and it is not about advancing an agenda of abject skepticism.

Debunking is simply a process of trying to examine a claim thoroughly enough to be able to prove what it is not in order that we might be able to prove what it is. It’s nothing more than the process of elimination as an exercise to discover the truth.

We want the same thing, don’t we? The truth, right? But for scientists, researchers, investigators, the truth must be verifiable. Science, if done right, allows for an impartial third party to repeat, or at least witness and evaluate, the same phenomenon. Like Schuyler’s colleague; the woman obviously experienced something fantastic, it probably changed her outlook on life forever. It is not a matter of not believing her. I am happy for her – envious even. But because we have only her story to evaluate we have no choice but to move on. There is nothing more to evaluate, nothing to examine. Even if she took a picture of the lights in the water, after a while, all we can do is shrug and say how interesting it is, how intrigued we are, but ultimately, there will be nothing left to do but wonder and ask the fine lady to tell us her story yet again.

If you have a buddy throw a trash can lid into the air and you take a quick and grainy snapshot of it with your cell phone from across the street, you may very well convince multitudes that the grey disk seemingly skimming over your neighbor’s house is a UFO. In fact, that is exactly what it will, and must, remain: some object, seemingly flying, and despite your embellished description, completely unidentifiable.

Why is this so? Because the claimant could not produce the UFO, nor any other empirical evidence for that matter, a researcher has no choice but to record the incident as inconclusive. Notice we are not calling the claimant a liar, a cheat, or a hoaxer – because we don’t know that either. We simply do not have enough evidence to conclusively determine its authenticity. Now, if we can go to the neighborhood, interview the neighbors, get additional testimony, retrieve records of weather and air traffic, then perhaps, just perhaps, we might eventually uncover the truth.

Suppose we find the guy’s neighbor and he fesses up to tossing the trash can lid – even shows us the can it came from. He might even be willing to duplicate the toss for our amusement. The case would be debunked. I submit that is far preferable than perpetuating a myth merely to maintain the satisfaction of believers. Yet this is often exactly what occurs.

We all “want” the UFOs to be real. We all hope that we are lucky enough to be a part of that glorious moment when extraterrestrial intelligence is finally acknowledged to us poor and huddled masses. We NEED to debunk claims so that we can get to the truth. If we can’t debunk them then we just might have something – and we’d be thrilled!

Look – up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? We must rely on someone, and better yet several people, to ask these questions and to diligently seek the answers to these questions. I hope they can eliminate all possibilities. I want them to ask – and be able to confidently answer that it is NOT a bird, it is NOT a plane. You see, it is these folks, the debunkers that are here so derided, that I would turn to first. Not the dogmatic believers who merely want to ridicule those that are trying to uncover the truth.

I want to know what explanation can be eliminated so I might consider what else it could be.

I do however, value all opinions, and believe even those that can do nothing more than “feel” the truth have something meaningful to contribute…

Separate the wheat from the chaff, a lot of people will just blindly follow anything they read, and if anyone tries to question (hell if scientists had never done this we'd still all be religious zealots believing the world was flat) they get shot down as being debunkers.
I while there is quite a few sarcastic/unfriendly replies to some of these threads I think if the constant "debunking" finds one case that cannot be explainained is worth 1000's of the fakes being shot down.

Thats just my opinion.

[edit on 19-9-2007 by V0NkA1N87]

it's difficult to film ufos closeup, witnesses say electrical equipment doesn't work when the ufo is very near. People who are abducted are paralysed, they cannot film anytning. And I suspect the times where ufos are observed by a lot of people, the ufo uses psychic illusions and manipulation to make believe to the people what they saw didn't happened. It's easy for them, they have an amazing technology. The only thing we can rely on is witnesses, and there is untold numbers of them, and their stories all support eachothers, there is no reason to not believe them. Millions of people don't call themselves and plan to make a joke about aliens, and put in jeapardy their career, their family, have everyone believe they are insane, just no.

I get accused of being a debunker all the time, and abused here on a regular basis, all for having common sense while displaying a firm grasp of logic and reason. Sometimes, I think the door here swings both ways.

I have never debunked anything, really. It is damn near impossible to anyway. People believe the goofiest stuff, and are too ignorant of science and how things work for you to explain it to them anyway. You can see example of this on hundred of threads around here. But mention it aloud and you get blasted by the same people who don't understand why they are blasting you in the first place.

reply to post by IgnoreTheFacts


Iggy, I sympathize. I really do. For a site that claims to 'deny ignorance' they sure have more than their fare share. However, I think it is fair to say that over time you become known for your posts, i.e: their quality, insighfulness, and ability to explain your position. Since this thread is on debunkers, one of the things people who dislike debunkers say is that people who are skeptical often dismiss an issue with derision. People on the defensive will often say, "Well, prove it isn't!" Now I know full well that a skeptic does not have to prove a negative, and in some sense that position represents ignorance itself. But I still see the point. If you are going to be skeptical I think you owe it to your readers to explain why something doesn't work for you. Calling people ignorant doesn't usually work. In other words, it's best to concentrate on the sin rather than the sinner.

You, for example, have staked out an extreme position: IgnoreTheFacts as a handle with a mood of 'skeptical.' So there's no doubt where you are going to come down on any given subject. Couple that with borderline personal scorn toward posters and you shouldn't be surprised. It's not that you are wrong; you're probably right more often than not, but you tend to make people angry because it looks like you don't respect them as people. That's what has happened to you over on the Lear forum. I'm no saint; and there are times when I've taken a bit of a b-slap at someone who is wearing their ignorance a little too proudly, but on the whole it isn't a good idea and further, it doesn't advance the state of the art.

The thing is, on a forum such as this the only cost for admission is access to a computer. We have people of all backgrounds, ages, shapes, sizes, and educations here. Sometimes people are ignorant of science because they simply have not had access to an education. For example, some people will criticize the use of the statistical method here, but it is because they have never had statistics explained to them in such a way that shows how useful it can be. Besides, sometimes you might take on someone and discover they are a ten year old kid. Puts a different spin on it, huh? maybe adults shouldn't tell kids they are stupid. So, my point is that a more educational skeptical post is not as likely to be criticized as one that just says all the believers are idiots. I mean, that's easy. It takes a lot more time and care to explain why their conclusions or their evidence is wrong.

So lighten up. Have some fun, Realize that if someone really wants to believe the Moon has an atmosphere, cities, and civilization, they probably are not going to be easily convinced otherwise. You don't have to hire them. Just cross your fingers they don't get into a position of influence. I'm not trying to be nasty here so I hope you take this okay.

[edit on 9/19/2007 by schuyler]