Proof that humans are bad observes & that witness testimonies are unreliable

news.yahoo.com...

CHICAGO (CBS) - Some residents on Chicago's Southwest Side reported seeing what appeared to be UFOs flying over the city Saturday night. Now, the "Unidentified Flying Objects" may have been identified. What was a UFO is now, apparently, just an FO.

It was about 8 p.m. when Nicole Dragozetich stopped her car to look at several lights moving across the sky near 35th and Western.

"I was just going to a local restaurant to pick up food, and as I was driving I saw residents out in front of their house, staring up in the sky." So she had a look. "You could see them just moving down the street. And they took form. At one point, it looked like an arrow."

Orange, spherical objects, she says, at first symmetrical and then changing in shape..

Dragozetich thought: UFO. But at roughly 7:30 p.m., an organization called the Baby James Foundation was scheduled to release several "sky lanterns" at 37th and Archer — as part of their 3rd annual rally against child abuse. A representative of the organization says he believes they were the source of the "UFOs."

So as you see witness testimonies when reporting UFOs are completely unreliable & really shouldnt be considered evidence of anything. You can say this may be 1 woman but this happens all the time, shes definitely not the 1st. Hopefully people will be more skeptical when dealing with these situations.

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My 1st cousin is a ah..ah..attorney, there, I got the word out..anyway, he said the worst witness that you could have to a crime is a eye witness...

Most sightings are indeed just Chinese lanterns or military craft but a handful are most certainly not.

sweet, goes along with my theory that the bible is BS.

eye witness testimony for ufo's are only good if the eye witness knows whats normally in the sky.

reply to post by JamesMcgaha


Bit of a silly statement ain't it mate. What about witnesses to crimes, should we not believe them either? Also how can you tarnish all UFO witness as unreliable because of the actions of 1 person. It's ridiculous.

I'm sure eye-witness misrepresentations do occur but here's an interesting incident posted by Jkrog of separately located people describing the same thing - any thoughts on this one ?

Yukon Territory, Canada - December 11th, 1996:


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/289ff46f3b15.jpg[/atsimg]

This incident took place in three separate towns along the 134 mile length of the Klondike Highway in Yukon Territory, Canada. The reported size of the semi-spherical UFO is over a mile in diameter, or bigger than a football stadium. Again, there were over 30 witnesses(22 interviewed so far) to this unbelievable event which all concurred on the size of the craft, as well the shape, and all other important facts.

Thread

There are more examples here of close range sightings of unconventional objects - do you think just because the witness testimony sounds outlandish it should automatically be deemed false or mistaken?

Originally posted by MrHappyman989
reply to post by JamesMcgaha

 

Bit of a silly statement ain't it mate. ]

McGaha is all about silly statements. He's a true believer debunker and neither fact nor logic nor common sense will sway his belief.

Originally posted by JamesMcgaha
So as you see witness testimonies when reporting UFOs are completely unreliable & really shouldnt be considered evidence of anything.

Again with the hyperbole. You can't generalize from that one sighting to all witnesses are unreliable all the time. At least you can't do it and not sound silly.

I suppose you're not impressed with mulitple witnesses either? In different locations?

How about with corroborating photos?

How about corroborating photos and radar data?

Originally posted by MrHappyman989
Bit of a silly statement ain't it mate. What about witnesses to crimes, should we not believe them either?

Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.

Source: The Innocence Project

Originally posted by wasco2

Originally posted by MrHappyman989
reply to post by JamesMcgaha

 

Bit of a silly statement ain't it mate. ]

McGaha is all about silly statements. He's a true believer debunker and neither fact nor logic nor common sense will sway his belief.

Right, along comes an opinion you don't feel like rationally discussing, so you attack the character of the opiner.

Then you wonder why serious people won't take your own opinions seriously.

Somebody coming here new to the argument can make assessments of both sides in it, by asking, which side is misrepresenting the argument of the other side in an debater's gimmick, a lawyerly trick of deception? Which side attacks the character and motives of the other side? Which side argues by strenuous assertions of 'facts' they are certain of?

As a general rule, THAT side is the one without logic or facts on its side.

The word proof in the thread title made me cringe. This doesn´t proves anything at all but nice try. Better luck next time. Seriously dude just concentrate on the strange things in space and not on earth. Goddamn please aliens just land on the freakin white houses lawn and and this time shut the sceptics up for good.

Everything is a freakin chinese lantern nowadays.That´s the new swamp gas i guess and of course people believe it no matter what. I´m so tired of all this bs.

reply to post by JamesMcgaha


This is true. It is also true when a gun is involved people tend to forget what they saw. I saw a perfect example a while back. A teacher pulled a gun from under a podium but a few seconds earlier a drugged out looking dude also approached the podium. Sure enough when asked what they saw later, almost everyone in the classroom reported the drugged out looking dude brought in the gun!
Makes you think twice before relying on eyewitness accounts.

reply to post by JimOberg


Did you overlook my second post, Jimmy? Do you agree his one little anecdotal tale proves ALL eye witnesses are worthless? So why do we lock people up based on eye witness testimony? Apparently the courts attach at least SOME value to eye witness testimony. Be careful here or you will end up sounding as foolish as McGaha.

Its not proof of anything. Most ppl see somehting from a distance know its not normal and get excited. However now that this "other" piece of testimony about balloons is revealed, yet this very case was put on the news, as a "mystery" I sense a counter intelligence attempt to entrap and ridicule people and make fun of them attempting to cast doubt on all the many things people have seen and experienced.

So, not the ones observings fault, and yes, that is what it would be as this was on the news, and why would they target only cases with a release unless they're set up.

Odd all these balloons that are casting lights and such. I find it very odd, never seen anyone do anything like that before.

I have to wonder why examples used to prove this point always involve lights seen floating in the distance and never involve anything like an interesting UFO report, much less a close encounter.

reply to post by JamesMcgaha


So all UFOs are something other than what they give every appearance of being?
Surely, you understand that when a person sees something with which they are familiar or don't even believe in that theeir observations will be quite a bit different than the actual facts of whatever they saw?

Take an eye witness to a typical crime or accident where the witness is familiar with all of the activities if not surprised by what takes place. The witnesses always get it screwed up so you claim. OK. But did the event not happen? No. It happened. It is just the details are wrong and sometimes about the basic elements such as how many shots were fired or which car entered the intersection first.

You want to dismiss hundreds of thousands of UFO sightings over half a century some with physical evidence of pictures, radar returns and physical traces?

I think you defeat your own argument if we follow your logic

That is a fail argument.

This website itself seems to contradict your opinion that humans are bad observers.

reply to post by JamesMcgaha


The problem with saying witness testimonies when reporting UFOs are completely unreliable is the fact that this gives alot of de-bunkers and skeptics the excuse to say this all the time. No matter how many witnesess see the object and how close the object was to the witnesess.No matter how reliable the witneses are , like pilots, militery people, astronauts etc.

Their mind is made up already that witnesess are unreliable, so they know what they are going to say, even before they look at the case

This needs to change. I am not saying that they should believe every witness, but why don't we ever hear these people say " You may have seen what you saw, but we need evidence" Instead, they are always trying to find excuses using stupid explanations. Seems like there is alot of arragonce and ignorance when it comes to de-bunking this subject

I think its important to understand that using only the examples where a persons eye witness testimony has been false, or under informed is a little crass. Its also the case that some peoples eye witness testimony has saved lives. Every time a scout spots a well hidden snipers nest in war, and every time a cop sees a dangerous felon from across a busy street and captures them, preventing all manner of nasty crimes, these are simple eyes on identifications and they save lives, every day.

Do doctors go inside a body and point at the liver and say "what the hell ? Looks like an Unidentified Floppy Object?" no they do not! But when they see something foriegn to the dominion of thier training, by gum they have it out of you quicksmart. They do all that with the evidence of the eye. I cut keys and fix locks in my job as a locksmith. Of all the complicated machines and tools that I use in my daily grind, the one I rely on most is my keen eyesight. I can tell when something is just a millimeter, and sometimes a fraction of a millimeter out of alignment inside a lock, on a cut on a key, or in the wood work into which I fit the locks I fix. Without that sight I would have to rely on feel alone, and my job would be largely speaking impossible.

On specificaly the topic of UFO and identification of anomalies in the sky, it is important to understand that unless one is familiar with all or at least the large majority of regular inhabitants of the sky, that they will struggle to correctly identify any object with which they are unfamiliar. If I had been there, I would have taken a look in the sky, and said "Oh, bloody chinese lanterns again. Great, way to confuse the issue!" . But thats because I often look into the night sky, sometimes with optical assistance, and am familiar with most of the regularly seen objects which pass my sight when looking skyward. When someone like me, or any of the other regular watchers of the sky on this site, look up and see something which is strange , even to our trained and expirienced eye, then that is a different matter.

While it is , I think, important for everyone to keep an eye on the sky, it is also important to realise that not all witness testimony is equal in terms of its usefulness, or accuracy.

Originally posted by Aliensun
reply to post by JamesMcgaha

 

So all UFOs are something other than what they give every appearance of being?
Surely, you understand that when a person sees something with which they are familiar or don't even believe in that theeir observations will be quite a bit different than the actual facts of whatever they saw?

Take an eye witness to a typical crime or accident where the witness is familiar with all of the activities if not surprised by what takes place. The witnesses always get it screwed up so you claim. OK. But did the event not happen? No. It happened. It is just the details are wrong and sometimes about the basic elements such as how many shots were fired or which car entered the intersection first.

You want to dismiss hundreds of thousands of UFO sightings over half a century some with physical evidence of pictures, radar returns and physical traces?

I think you defeat your own argument if we follow your logic

That is a fail argument.

Dr. James McDonald discussed the merits and drawbacks of witness testimony in his remarks before the House Comittee on Science and Astronautics in 1968:

Then, looking at the negative side, all of us who have checked cases are sometimes in near anguish at the typical inability of the scientifically untrained person to estimate angles, to even understand what you are asking for when you ask for an angular estimation. We are all aware of the gross errors in distances, heights, and speeds so estimated. And I would emphasize to those who cite jury trial experience that the tendency for a group of witnesses to an accident to come in with quite different accounts, must not be overstressed here. Those witnesses don't come in from, say, a street corner accident and claim they saw a giraffe killed by a tiger. They talk about an accident. They are confused about details. There is legally confusing difference of timing and distance, and so on; but all are in agreement that it was an auto accident. So also when you deal with multiple-witness cases in UFO sightings. There is an impressive core of consistency; everybody is talking about an object that has no wings, all of 10 people may say it was dome shaped or something like that, and then there are minor differences as to how big they thought it was, how far away, and so on. Those latter variations do pose a very real problem. It stands as a negative factor with respect to the anecdotal data, but it does not mean we are not dealing with real sightings of real objects.