Witness Testimony Is Not Evidence. First-hand Experience

Originally posted by olaru12
reply to post by Unidentified_Objective

 

Witness Testimony Is Not Evidence. First-hand Experience,

BS...

How many men have been executed on eyewitness, first hand experience?

How many have been convicted/executed solely on eye witness testimony,in Scotland that would be considered 'one persons word against anothers' and not sound enough evidence to convict.

Witness testimony is part of the evidence in a case.Any conviction secured on just eye witness testimony must surely be considered an unsafe convictin !!!

Originally posted by Brighter
but does it matter if the object they saw was 80.243 feet in diameter as opposed to 100? Or that it was 19.37 feet high as opposed to 30? Or that it was .47 miles away as opposed to .5? Or that it moved at 1,453 mph as opposed to 1,500?

Yes it does matter, because if for example you misjudge distance to be a few hundred miles away, and the true distance is a few hundred yards away, then all the following assumptions (size, speed, etc) made on this false assumption will be way off the mark.

In your hypothetical examples above, you suggest that the errors are very small and insignificant, but in reality, when errors in judgement are made, they can often be large and highly significant.

I hope you don't mind if I use an example that I came across in my travels rather than use my own words:

Experienced sky watchers on SeeSat-L may find it difficult to believe that anyone could misidentify a re-entry as a spaceship, but human perception is notoriously fallible, and no one is immune. Much depends on the circumstances and personal experience. Driving through the wilderness under a pitch black sky, and suddenly faced with a slowly moving formation of brilliant lights can be awe-inspiring and even terrifying. The human mind races to make sense of the unfamiliar, drawing on experience that may be inadequate. Depth perception can play tricks, such that something 200 km away, 100 km long, and moving at 7 km/s, seems to be just 200 m away, 100 m long, and moving 7 km/h - the angular velocity is roughly the same.

Source: Seesat-l mailing list

The reverse can also be true in some situations, so all of a sudden you have supposedly city block sized objects, moving at "impossibly high speed", when in fact they are miniature objects, moving at very leisurely speeds, but they appear to be fast and large because a witness has seriously overestimated the distance.

reply to post by Unidentified_Objective

But then, I suspect like many UFO enthusiasts, you'll ask me to try to prove a negative.

Thank you for proving my point that you're all about poisoning the well over any type of reason.

... without proof, outrageous claims are just that....outrageous claims.

The question you always have to ask is outrageous to who?

The old "prove to me that X did not happen!" ....burden of proof is on the people making the claims.

You mean modus tollens? No I'm engaging modus ponens. Try being accurate.

I don't feel like participating in your circle jerk so, ...

Thank you for verifying that you are an untrustworthy source who implicitly shouldn't be trusted till capable of providing evidence that this story can be corroborated by other level-headed sane unbiased individuals. Perhaps this thread should be moved to the "Gray Area?" Possibly the hoax bin?

reply to post by Mishmashum


If only you applied that same scrutiny to claims of UFO sightings. Which is by the way, the point of this thread. You can hate or dislike my story (Which indeed happened and is hardly the first time people misidentify lights in the sky)....but the fact is, people's testimony is not proof of aliens.

Originally posted by fastbob72

Originally posted by olaru12
reply to post by Unidentified_Objective

 

Witness Testimony Is Not Evidence. First-hand Experience,

BS...

How many men have been executed on eyewitness, first hand experience?

How many have been convicted/executed solely on eye witness testimony,in Scotland that would be considered 'one persons word against anothers' and not sound enough evidence to convict.

Witness testimony is part of the evidence in a case.Any conviction secured on just eye witness testimony must surely be considered an unsafe convictin !!!

Apparently the Scots are much smarter than Americans because plenty of Innocent men have been tried, convicted and executed on eyewitness testimony.

dallaslawyer.blogspot.com...
friendsofjustice.wordpress.com...

btw Unidentified_Objective....that horse is dead!!

reply to post by Unidentified_Objective


Who says I believe in alien spacecraft stories? I believe some UFO stories are something inexplicable because the details have been corroborated by VFR and other sensing instrumentation. I don't leap to conclusions that what is seen is mundane or extraordinary till I have information from numerous sources. Moreover I am even less willing to say something seen is a craft till there is something to indicate the thing is actual flying. Then its even more of a leap to say it is ours or something from another planet. The most I say is that some UFOs are truly inexplicable (go read the the 1956 Lakenheath/Bentwaters case, particularly radar physicist Gordon Thayer's assessment). Nonsense about it always being a misidentification and nonsense that it is always flying saucers deserves to be equally razzied.

Originally posted by FireballStorm

Originally posted by Brighter
but does it matter if the object they saw was 80.243 feet in diameter as opposed to 100? Or that it was 19.37 feet high as opposed to 30? Or that it was .47 miles away as opposed to .5? Or that it moved at 1,453 mph as opposed to 1,500?

Yes it does matter, because if for example you misjudge distance to be a few hundred miles away, and the true distance is a few hundred yards away, then all the following assumptions (size, speed, etc) made on this false assumption will be way off the mark.

In your hypothetical examples above, you suggest that the errors are very small and insignificant, but in reality, when errors in judgement are made, they can often be large and highly significant.

I hope you don't mind if I use an example that I came across in my travels rather than use my own words:

Experienced sky watchers on SeeSat-L may find it difficult to believe that anyone could misidentify a re-entry as a spaceship, but human perception is notoriously fallible, and no one is immune. Much depends on the circumstances and personal experience. Driving through the wilderness under a pitch black sky, and suddenly faced with a slowly moving formation of brilliant lights can be awe-inspiring and even terrifying. The human mind races to make sense of the unfamiliar, drawing on experience that may be inadequate. Depth perception can play tricks, such that something 200 km away, 100 km long, and moving at 7 km/s, seems to be just 200 m away, 100 m long, and moving 7 km/h - the angular velocity is roughly the same.

Source: Seesat-l mailing list

The reverse can also be true in some situations, so all of a sudden you have supposedly city block sized objects, moving at "impossibly high speed", when in fact they are miniature objects, moving at very leisurely speeds, but they appear to be fast and large because a witness has seriously overestimated the distance.

The problem is that the misperception argument fails in the radar / visual cases. You would have to argue that the radar equipment (and often multiple radar installations) are showing a positive read of an unusual object traveling at a particular location, speed and in a particular direction at the same time as the witnesses report an object traveling at that same location, speed and in that same direction.

But how likely is this? You'd have to say that multiple people are hallucinating the same object at the same time, and at that very moment, the radar equipment is erroneously showing a positive read of an object with those same properties. That sounds ludicrous to me.

There is such a thing as taking the misperception argument too far. And in the best UFO cases, such arguments are useless.

The credibility of the person testifying is what matters. Who would be a more reliable witness? A teenage kid or a decorated military official? I was a skeptic until I came across the Disclosure Project. Over 400 military and corporate EYE WITNESSES. They cant all be liars or lunatics. Plus if eye witness testimony is worthless we might as well disregard all religion. Which I already have but the majority of us have not. So what Im saying is we have to ask ourselves how much "faith"do we have in our witnesses credibility.

Originally posted by Semore
The credibility of the person testifying is what matters. Who would be a more reliable witness? A teenage kid or a decorated military official? I was a skeptic until I came across the Disclosure Project. Over 400 military and corporate EYE WITNESSES. They cant all be liars or lunatics. Plus if eye witness testimony is worthless we might as well disregard all religion. Which I already have but the majority of us have not. So what Im saying is we have to ask ourselves how much "faith"do we have in our witnesses credibility.

Credibility ,yes spot on and herein lies the major issue for those who have agendas of belittling or playing down the credibility of the UFO witness testimonies.Who on here including the OP has the credibility or scientific credentials of Dr John Mack and Dr James E MacDonald, who on here is in any scientific position like that of MacDonald and Mack to be able to justify not only a rejection of their conclusions but to completely ignore or not even give reference to these men"s conclusions before rejecting witness testimonies.

To many self appointed know all's who think they are above providing their credibility positions when they put their arguments across, to dismiss such data or conclusions from sources like Mack and MacDonald from a position of not being in any real scientific credible position to either justify it or ignore it is not a justifiable scientific protocol or one that should be presented as evidence.

Those claiming that ALL witness testimony is justifiable in its rejection as evidence have not looked at all the witness testimony out there, to simply state a few witness cases as justifications for a COMPLETE rejection of ALL witness testimonies now or in the future is complete arrogance , we have credible scientific and military witness testimonies on record , what are the chances of those claiming that witness testimony coming from military and some scientific sources is not to be considered as any form of evidence if that role was reversed, they would be falling over back words to make it known from these sources that its not evidence in any shape or form, instead we get silence or they ignore it.

As i have stated before science does not know all there is to know , we could be dealing with ,(in some cases that has or had witness testimony to it), highly complex intelligences and the nano technology they use with a scientific based observational minimal contact agenda, is it any wonder or a possibility that evidence we currently ACCEPT AS EVIDENCE or what we know or what constitutes as evidence is being over looked or not understood if it is emanating from a source that is way beyond our level of technical or spiritual advancements or capabilities.

Premature rejections or dismissals of the possibilities of advanced intelligences NOT providing self-evidence or more to the point that evidence being over looked or not understood because it seems just to way out of the box kind of evidence is not a scientific protocol or justification for a COMPLETE rejection of the validity or creditability of witness testimony as a form of evidence that could be emanating from an unknown aviation-al or unknown contact origin.

I am always reminded of this statement below from Dr John Mack and is one i always am aware of when these type of threads surface that focuses to attack the credibility of anyone testifying to something they perceive as a genuine encounter with the unknown.

"What if the alien encounter phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world but derives from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? What if we were to acknowledge that the phenomenon is beyond our present framework of knowledge?"- Dr John Mack.

WHAT "IF" INDEED.

reply to post by Brighter


Have you got a recent example of such a case? I only ask because radar systems were notorious for producing false returns in the past. Today's systems are much less susceptible.

Either way, there are further question marks above such cases since radar data rarely matches well with witness testimony, and once again we are back to square one with the reliability of witness testimony.

As an example from my own field of specialization (meteors/fireballs), lets take a look at a fireball that occurred over the UK on September 21 this year, and was reported by well over 100 people.

On the map below directional data from collected reports has been superimposed:

Red icons represent movement left to right, while green means movement right to left. The green lines show the azimuth where the fireball was first seen and yellow is the azimuth where it was last seen.

Source: The American Meteor Society

Note how much variation there is in the direction of travel reported by witnesses. The reports are literally "all over the place", and this is by no means uncommon for meteors. It's a graphic demonstration of how bad witnesses people make.

As a side note, just as in most cases where more that a few people see a large meteor or fireball, a hand full of reports stated that they were not sure (at least at first) what the object was that they saw. In other words, it was a UFO to some people.

At the end of the day, it tends to be people that have little or no experience observing the sky and related phenomena like meteors, satellites, etc, who report UFOs, orbs, etc. And for the record, being a pilot, cop, military observer does not make a witness any more credible that a random member of the public since training does not include learning about various astronomical/atmospheric phenomena and all the pit-falls/optical illusions which are often observed in such situations.

reply to post by Unidentified_Objective


And from objective view, I will tell you that every single person to be taking part in some network of lies,... seems unrealistic to me. There's got to be someone who said something that did happen and it could have even been the real info. But because:

- if you put a real video next to a fake video and the real one has similarities with fake ones, with the pre-defined opinion of many, it would be impossible to consider it true, the same goes for stories regarding military officials meeting an alien bein in some base. There could be a real case but since population is entitled to doubt it, I think some of the stories are true and have been skipped from too much watching for fakes.

I am doubtful in general but I am more inclined to think - too many cases, there can't be all a lie but since no one would believe such a t hing, it is that easy to put something real for once and to be skipped without looking back at it.

reply to post by FireballStorm


The fatal problem with the 'false radar return' argument, as I've mentioned, is that in order for it to work, you'd have to have the radar malfunction in the same exact way that matches the witness testimony. Again, you'd have to argue that the radar is producing false returns of an object with properties x, y and z at the same exact time that other radars and multiple witnesses are also reporting an object with properties x, y and z. The probability of this happening is infinitesimally small. Unless you can explain how this is likely to happen not only once, but on multiple occasions, the 'false radar return' argument has zero merit.

I have no problem with the fact that people sometimes mistake natural phenomena for 'UFOs'. That's kind of stating the obvious. The problem is that the aerial objects that are at the heart of the core cases in Ufology resist any such explanation. Do meteors have a metallic symmetrical appearance and pace commercial and military aircraft? Do they have multiple lights around them? Do they perform unusual and evasive flight maneouvres? Do they hover in mid-air? Of course not.

I believe Project Blue Book alone contains over 75 radar cases.

One interesting case from 1994 is discussed here:

The Holland-Michigan Case

Out of curiosity, which books on the UFO phenomenon have you read, or what kind of research have you done regarding it?

Originally posted by Brighter
reply to post by FireballStorm

 

The probability of this happening is infinitesimally small. Unless you can explain how this is likely to happen not only once, but on multiple occasions, the 'false radar return' argument has zero merit.

If you have radar systems that are prone to false returns, as they were up until recently, then the chances that some will coincide with witnessed UFO sightings, are much greater than "infinitesimally small". Especially since there are lots of radar systems, and lots and lots of UFO reports every year.

So I do think this argument holds water.

There is also the chance in some cases that there was a real physical/solid object of terrestrial origin, that was simply not identified, as there is the chance of alien visitation, but I think this is by far the least likely possibility, given the lack of physical evidence for it, and all the evidence that people and radars make mistakes.

Originally posted by Brighter
reply to post by FireballStorm

 

I have no problem with the fact that people sometimes mistake natural phenomena for 'UFOs'. That's kind of stating the obvious. The problem is that the aerial objects that are at the heart of the core cases in Ufology resist any such explanation.

Usually only to those who do not look hard enough for mundane explanations, although (as I said in a previous post in this thread), just because a mundane explanation is not obvious does not mean that there is not one.

Originally posted by Brighter
reply to post by FireballStorm

 

Do meteors have a metallic symmetrical appearance and pace commercial and military aircraft?

Yes, they can sometimes appear to have these characteristics.

Originally posted by Brighter
reply to post by FireballStorm

 

Do they have multiple lights around them?

Some meteors will break up/fragment when they enter the atmosphere, so yes, they can.

Originally posted by Brighter
reply to post by FireballStorm

 

Do they perform unusual and evasive flight maneouvres?

Yes, they can appear to fly erratically sometimes, but it is usually just an optical illusion.

Originally posted by Brighter
reply to post by FireballStorm

 

Do they hover in mid-air?

Actually, once again, yes they can appear to hover.

Originally posted by Brighter
reply to post by FireballStorm

 

Of course not.

See - this is just what I'm talking about. People will dismiss out of hand that there can be a mundane explanation, simply because they assume one does not exist. It all comes down to knowing your way around the sky and atmospheric phenomena as well as knowing how we perceive the world around us. Unfortunately, there is so much to learn, it would be virtually impossible for anyone to master it all, and we are not even considering those phenomena that we have yet to discover!

It took me a good 10 or so years of observing and research, just to learn the basics of meteors, to a point where I'd consider myself reasonably competent in the subject, and I've only just started to learn about other aspects/atmospheric phenomena.

In the time I've spent reading this site (since 2007 under my previous user name), I have yet to encounter a single UFO investigator who comes anywhere near to having a basic level of experience in all the fields necessary in order to have even a slim chance of being able to explain the "inexplicable" cases out there.

For that reason, and the others I've mentioned, I think there will always be cases that remain unsolved, even though there may well be mundane explanations.

Going back to the questions above that you asked about meteors, I'll be more than happy to explain the "why's" in depth if you like, but if you want to learn, I'd suggest that you do the leg work yourself - many of the answers can be found here on ATS if you look.

Please also note, that I'm not suggesting by any means that meteors can account for all UFO reports. Far from it, but I'm sure that some can.

Originally posted by Brighter
reply to post by FireballStorm

 

I believe Project Blue Book alone contains over 75 radar cases.

One interesting case from 1994 is discussed here:

The Holland-Michigan Case

Certainly an interesting case, but I suspect that it might still be old enough that it falls into the category of "unreliable radar systems". Some of the older radar systems that were extremely susceptible to false contacts may not have been replaced with newer less susceptible systems up until relatively recently. When exactly I can not say for sure, but I hope someone else with more knowledge of the subject will chime in.

If that is the most recent case you can find, then I think that you have to ask yourself "why has there not been a case of this nature in over 18 years?". Don't you find that just a little bit strange given the sheer number of UFO reports since then?

Originally posted by Brighter
reply to post by FireballStorm

 

Out of curiosity, which books on the UFO phenomenon have you read, or what kind of research have you done regarding it?

All the research I have done has been via the interweb, and the vast majority of reading I have done on the subject of UFOs has been here on ATS.

But, there is a fair bit of "crossover" between the subject of UFOs and other subjects I have spent time studying.

Continually reading UFO case reports does very little to explain what is behind them I would say. Understanding how the atmosphere, and atmospheric phenomena work in terms of hard physics is much more important, along with actually spending time observing (both photographically and with the MK 1 eyeball).

Whilst I'd agree that my approach is a little bit unorthodox, where has reading books got investigators - pretty much nowhere I'd argue. Are you any closer to answering some of the big questions that have hung over the subject for many decades?

I would not even class myself as a "UFO investigator", but I do think I can shed some light on some aspects of the subject by looking at it from a different angle to the vast majority of people.

Another failed attempt to dismiss eye witness accounts and to belittle the UFO phenomenon

Its quite obvious OP you know nothing about UFOs and no ones buying 'im looking for the truth' BS you keep peddling because if that was true then you would have to consider eye witness accounts along with other available evidence.

You also conveniently ignore or disappear when confronted...i wonder why that is ? Since you believe i belong to the tin-foil hat wearing brigade and not worthy of reply how about addressing some of other posters comments made here in your own thread

Originally posted by JayinAR
I whole-heartedly disagree with this thread's premise and honestly don't know why I am bothering to respond.

At any rate, yes, eye witness testimony IS evidence of an event. It is not, however, empirical in any way, shape, or form. ETA: The idea is to get pieces of evidence such as this and couple those pieces of evidence with things more empirical such as radar reports, photographs, etc.
Happens quite often actually.

edit on 26-12-2012 by JayinAR because: (no reason given)

Originally posted by Krusty the Klown
Also you are not considering eye witness testimony for UFO's that are witnessed undertaking manouvres that we do not have the technology to produce which is corroborated by radar evidence. The eye witness account is corroborating evidence.

You are basing your conclusion on one isolated incident, not through repeated investigations, although you could probably get the same results, it does not rule out other possibilities.

edit on 26/12/1212 by Krusty the Klown because: Kan't do grammar

Originally posted by K-PAX-PROT
Credibility ,yes spot on and herein lies the major issue for those who have agendas of belittling or playing down the credibility of the UFO witness testimonies.Who on here including the OP has the credibility or scientific credentials of Dr John Mack and Dr James E MacDonald, who on here is in any scientific position like that of MacDonald and Mack to be able to justify not only a rejection of their conclusions but to completely ignore or not even give reference to these men"s conclusions before rejecting witness testimonies.

Originally posted by Brighter

This post is basically a 5,000 word false inference.

You're focusing on a single case of poor witness testimony, and drawing a conclusion about witness testimony in general. If you knew anything about logic, you'd know that in predicate logic, going from 'some' to 'all' is an invalid move - just because some witness testimony is poor, you can't conclude that all witness testimony is poor. In fact, you don't even need to know formal logic to know that. You just need common sense.

You're making a typical pseudo-skeptic move here. You're hyper-focusing on a poor case and attempting to draw a conclusion from that. But why not focus on the strongest UFO cases? Instead of focusing on a bunch of silly high school students falling to the ground in an epileptic fit over an RC helicopter, why not examine the military cases that involve radar returns and multiple air and ground visual confirmation of the object? Do you think these pilots were chasing around RC helicopters? Nonsense.

The problem is with taking things in isolation. You can prove anything you want by focusing on a single case. But is that objective, logical and scientific? No, not at all.

The trick is to weigh all of the evidence. Be careful not to fool yourself by drawing false conclusions.

don't be a pseudo-skeptic! If you're going to talk about logic and objectivity, actually be logical and
objective about your approach to the topic!

edit on 26-12-2012 by Brighter because: (no reason given)

Originally posted by FireballStorm
reply to post by Brighter

 

Have you got a recent example of such a case? I only ask because radar systems were notorious for producing false returns in the past. Today's systems are much less susceptible.

Either way, there are further question marks above such cases since radar data rarely matches well with witness testimony, and once again we are back to square one with the reliability of witness testimony.

As an example from my own field of specialization (meteors/fireballs), lets take a look at a fireball that occurred over the UK on September 21 this year, and was reported by well over 100 people.

On the map below directional data from collected reports has been superimposed:

Red icons represent movement left to right, while green means movement right to left. The green lines show the azimuth where the fireball was first seen and yellow is the azimuth where it was last seen.

Source: The American Meteor Society

Note how much variation there is in the direction of travel reported by witnesses. The reports are literally "all over the place", and this is by no means uncommon for meteors. It's a graphic demonstration of how bad witnesses people make.

As a side note, just as in most cases where more that a few people see a large meteor or fireball, a hand full of reports stated that they were not sure (at least at first) what the object was that they saw. In other words, it was a UFO to some people.

At the end of the day, it tends to be people that have little or no experience observing the sky and related phenomena like meteors, satellites, etc, who report UFOs, orbs, etc. And for the record, being a pilot, cop, military observer does not make a witness any more credible that a random member of the public since training does not include learning about various astronomical/atmospheric phenomena and all the pit-falls/optical illusions which are often observed in such situations.

That summarizes my point beautifully....along with hundred of thousands of cases where witnesses had conflicting stories or saw something different than the others.

And yes, I do seek truth and am geniunely interested in the phenomenon,,,,but, most cases cannot be taken seriously because to date, its a rarity that there's any supporting evidence to back the story up. Human beings do not have the most accurate senses so, a UFO case where all you have is witness accounts.....you basically have zero evidence because of how unreliable witness accounts are. I'm still waiting for a mass sighting where the UFO lands and its televised live on national TV. I'll be the first to say "Yep...that right there is a bona fide UFO/alien ship."

Originally posted by FireballStorm
If you have radar systems that are prone to false returns, as they were up until recently, then the chances that some will coincide with witnessed UFO sightings, are much greater than "infinitesimally small". Especially since there are lots of radar systems, and lots and lots of UFO reports every year.

So I do think this argument holds water.

With all due respect, I'm pretty sure this argument is leaking water like the Hoover Dam.

We're not just talking about some random 'false return' here. We're talking about a 'false return' that corroborates the location, speed and behavior of not only (in some cases) other radar installations, but also corroborates with the multiple eye-witness testimonies that describe an object in that same location performing those same maneuvers.

Originally posted by FireballStorm
In the time I've spent reading this site (since 2007 under my previous user name), I have yet to encounter a single UFO investigator who comes anywhere near to having a basic level of experience in all the fields necessary in order to have even a slim chance of being able to explain the "inexplicable" cases out there.

There are a couple of issues here. A common line of thought is that one needs to have an extensive scientific education in order to come to some basic conclusions regarding the UFO phenomenon. And while this would of course be beneficial, what one really needs to begin with is strong research, investigatory and critical thinking skills. There is an excellent thread on this subject regarding Stanford University Professor of Astrophysics Dr. Peter Sturrock's comments on this very subject:

Do Your Homework Before Entering the UFO Fray

The second issue is that you seem not to have read the conclusions of the research already performed by some very competent and skeptical researchers. I would recommend looking at the work of the astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald and the astrophysicist Peter Sturrock.

Unlike some of the 'popular scientists' such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking who armchair-speculate on the phenomenon, these men actually did spend decades thoroughly researching the subject.

Originally posted by FireballStorm
If that is the most recent case you can find, then I think that you have to ask yourself "why has there not been a case of this nature in over 18 years?". Don't you find that just a little bit strange given the sheer number of UFO reports since then?

I don't find it surprising in the least. The very existence of the objects and their apparent technological superiority has been an enormous embarrassment to military establishments around the world, and they've simply become far more efficient at suppressing any such radar data.

Originally posted by FireballStorm
All the research I have done has been via the interweb, and the vast majority of reading I have done on the subject of UFOs has been here on ATS.

Refer to the authors that I mentioned above for access to some more informed opinions.

Another radar case that might be of interest is the Lakenheath-Bentwaters UFO Incident Here is an excerpt from that thread:

Originally posted by jkrog08
The only thing known for sure is that there were multiple radar hits from multiple stations of unknown objects traveling at extreme speeds, ground visuals, a C-47 that got a close visual, as well a British fighter jet that did get a radar and visual lock on one of the objects.

Here is what the Condon committee had to say about the Lakenheath-Bentwater incident:

In summary, this is the most puzzling and unusual case in the Radar-Visual files. The apparently rational, intelligent behavior of the UFO suggests a mechanical device of unknown origin as the most probable explanation of this sighting.

J. Allen Hynek made some remarks in his "The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry" that I think are directly relevant to the OP (p. 108):

Any one UFO case, if taken by itself without regard to the accumulated worldwide data ... can almost always be dismissed by assuming that in that particular case a very unusual set of circumstances occurred, of low probability (but strange things and coincidences of extremely low probability do sometimes occur). But when cases of this sort accumulate in noticeable numbers, it no longer is scientifically correct to apply the reasoning one applies to a single isolated case. Thus, the chance that a thoroughly investigated UFO case with excellent witnesses can be ascribed to a misperception is certainly very small, but it is finite. However, to apply the same argument to a sizable collection of similar cases is not logical since the compounded probability of their all having been due to misperceptions is comparable to the probability that if in one throw of a coin it stands on edge, it will stand on edge every time it is thrown.

reply to post by FireballStorm


Not everyone saw the same thing that night, this is what I posted about it

I had a sighting around 9pm On the night everyone in the UK saw a "meteor" I put the kettle on and looked out of my door. Looking NW. I could see 2 or 3 little red lights dancing around way up high in the sky, I couldn't make out what I was looking at so I made my cup of tea then looked out again. They were gone but a few houses down it looked as if there were flames sticking out the sides of a chimney, That would be NNW. I'm guessing this was some distance away and my view was blocked by the houses. I'm not sure if these were both the same thing or not.

I heard on the news that kielder observatory had a sighting at 9:20pm that night, other sightings of the "meteor" were around 10pm and 11pm.

It's not a good case to show "how bad witnesses people make." I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just pointing out that we didn't all see the same thing.

reply to post by Unidentified_Objective


Have you ever seen your Mother?
What’s that you say… “Of course”?
Sorry, not buying it.

How about a car… have you ever seen a car?
Sorry, just because you say so, I am not buying that one either.

Have you ever seen a house?

You see, EVERYTHING you have ever known you have seen and you were an eyewitness to it.
Stop using the excuse that if YOU have not seen it that it cannot be real.
If 10,000 people say they have seen a house then they have seen a house.
If 10,000 people say they have seen a flying saucer then they have seen a flying saucer.

Stop wasting our time whining about it.

reply to post by Unidentified_Objective

And yes, I do seek truth and am geniunely interested in the phenomenon

Why are you interested in a phenomenon that can't be proven?

How can you discount witness testimony if you're looking for the truth?

How much science - how many discoveries - depended first on supposition?

How many things in life were reported by witnesses before they were accepted as fact?

If that's too many questions for you to take seriously and then actually answer, then please answer this one: what is the point of your OP?

:-)