95% of U.F.O. sightings can be explained???

I keep hearing this repeated over and over again and I want to know where this numbers come from. In my experience it's more like 95% can't be explained.

Was there a Scientific study that reached this number and how did the study reach this number?

I have been looking in these areas for close to 20 years and I've never seen an explanation rate of 95%. Since I've been on ATS, I haven't seen close to 50% of sighting, close encounters or abduction cases explained.

Is this just a made up number to make things sound more mysterious?

Technically, calling them UFO's does explain them. It files them into a class of unknown flying objects. So all UFOs are explained.

reply to post by neoholographic

In my experience it's more like 95% can't be explained.

In your experience?

Or just YouTube videos?

How many murders can't be explained? Are aliens therefore guilty?

What percent of your socks remain lost? 2%? 1%?

Do you thus presume they Mars?

reply to post by neoholographic

In my experience it's more like 95% can't be explained.

Is that because you don't accept the explanations given ? , I don't see how anyone can seriously think 95% of UFO sightings can't be explained.

95 out of 100 UFO sightings are dismissed turning then into Identified Flying Objects,
or flashes, or reflections, CGI, models, etc.

Anyways, a 5% seems yet A LOT to me.

Really.

reply to post by neoholographic


It's not making up a number any more than you are. You say "in your experience 95% cannot be explained." Well, if you demand scientific evidence for the opposite, then where is your scientific evidence? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And where, exactly, does the 95% number come from? You provide no sources.

In MY experience, having studied this longer than you have, that percentage is probably about right, but mis-construed. What these folks ought to be saying is that 95% of the sightings are either explainable or OF NO CONSEQUENCE. The reason I say this is because so many sightings are of daylight disks or nocturnal lights. In other words, someone saw a "dot" in the sky they could not identify. These sightings are of no consequence because you can't really DO anything with them. Some guy saw a dot. So? Does that mean aliens from space? It could be anything. And when you read through the Blue Book reports, for example, by far the majority of these sightings are of that nature--dots. I know because I've gone through hundreds of them in mind-numbing boring detail, straight from the "report cards" that contain the original information. That's what "Document Archivist" means to the left. It was once an ATS project. Edit: Oh, wait! it's not there any more. Demoted again. (Sigh!)

Now, below is a table which is a summary of witness testimony in the now infamous 2001 Steven Greer National Press Club conference. I printed it yesterday in a different context, but here let's examine just what these witnesses, chosen especially because they were "excellent witnesses" to profound sightings and testified at the conference. In the listing below there are three columns, which don't reproduce well on ATS as the column spacing is lost. They are the type of incident, the number of people who witnessed this type of incident, and the percentage of the total. So you see the first category is "witnesses in the military" with 43 people representing 61% of the total.

Table X: Statistical Summary
Categories Number Percent
Witnesses in the Military 43 61
Enlisted 23 33
Officer 20 28
Press Club Speakers 19 27
Saw a physical UFO 22 31
Saw lights in the sky 12 17
Saw radar blips 17 24
Saw pictures or a movie 9 12
Saw message traffic 4 6
Were told stories by others 50 71
Total 70 100%
Table X-2 (Note: Numbers are not additive because witnesses are in several categories each)

You can see here that the majority of witnesses saw lights in the sky, radar blips, were told stories by other people, etc. 31% saw a "physical UFO" but we don't know what that means until we analyze their testimony. I have done that in the context of a larger paper I'm doing on Greer, from which this summary table is taken. It's way too large to reproduce here.

Bear in mind that these are the "really good" witnesses who flew in to a press conference, not your average guy out riding a bicycle who saw a "UFO." But even here you see that a whole lot of people (71%) were "told stories by others," which puts those stories squarely in the realm of oral tradition, not direct testimony. For other testimony you might want to peruse the files and databases of the National UFO Reporting Center to get an idea of the types of witness reports that are common.

And as far as the sightings that are explainable? If you've been studying the issue for 20 years you must have seen dozens of airplanes, birds, and even cars on hills at night reported as UFOs. Just yesterday a guy reported a UFO near Seattle. Look at the video and you can even see the strobe light of the airliner it came from. And birds? Once you've seen one and had it explained to you (Here's the wing. here's the head. Here's the beak.) they become a lot easier to spot. Yet another seagull.

Does all this mean there aren't any UFOs? Of course not! There are by definition. the real question has ALWAYS been, "What are they?" and the conclusion that they are "aliens from space" is rarely justifiable. And no, I'm not addressing abductions here. That would take more time than I have.

But to your major point. It's probably true that 95% of UFOs are NOT explainable in the way that you define "explainable," but your claim that 95% are NOT is equally suspect. You provide no sources or justification for either figure, nor any evidence that you have looked into it carefully from a statistical standpoint. The reports ARE out three, in everything from the published literature to places such as I have cited above. Perhaps you'd like to take the time to compile all that and prove your point--or come to a much different conclusion after you have really examined the evidence.

As far as I'm aware the number comes from Dr. J. Allen Hynek and his work on Blue Book as well as the research he did after. If there's one person who could have come up with an accurate estimate in this matter I would say it's Hynek.

reply to post by neoholographic


95% of them have an explanation but that doesn't mean the explanation is what was witnessed. A glowing orb can be said to be ball lightning but that doesn't mean it was ball lightning. It just means it can be explained by the phenomenon.

It's the 5% that needs to be focused on because it would only take one of those to be ET visiting.

How can any UFO stats be accurate. There are probably far more ufos sighted and not reported. Its like trying to determine HEP C or some other virus numbers. There are many many that go unreported. Many feel its safe to identify many ufos as metalic flying saucers or glowing saucers. Not unidentified at all.

5% was certainly peddled a lot by Nick Pope (who worked for the M.O.D. UFO dept), up until 2010/11 but not so much now that he has retired and that dept shut down. But that "5%" theory has existed for some time, back to Hynek I presumed, the origins of "5%" coming from Blue Book.

To put it into perspective, in 2009 the M.O.D. received somewhere in the region of 600 UFO reports. Nick Pope is often a big speaker on the 5%, so as he dealt or has some insight into those 600 reports that year and holds that 5% theory, that means roughly 35 of the cases he got reports for in 2009 had completely unexplainable attributes, under several years of him understanding and knowing what are genuine mis-identifications and/or of explainable nature. That's roughly 2 fully unexplainable reports per month.

Here is one way on how they determine the UFO:

whatever supposed amount in percentage that is or can be explained, I am only interested in the percentage that are not or CANNOT be explained, and of this, there are many, going back for a long period of time!

data5091
whatever supposed amount in percentage that is or can be explained, I am only interested in the percentage that are not or CANNOT be explained, and of this, there are many, going back for a long period of time!

That's a very valid point, but we're still stuck. Let's just say that the 5% that cannot be explained is valid represents a large number, therefore....what. exactly? Is that simply an inability on our part to explain them, or is it something more? Just the fact that "we can't explain" a certain percentage of sightings does not justify any sort of conclusion other than we can't explain them. For example, saying, "We can't explain them, therefore they are aliens from space." is not a justifiable conclusion. My guess is most all of us would agree that "aliens" doesn't follow the lack of an explanation. In fact, such a conclusion may show simply our lack of ability to provide an explanation more than anything. We're simply reporting on our own ignorance (in the technical sense of the term.)

And if we DO manage to explain some of these unexplainable sightings in the future, they may be fairly mundane explanations. A good example is the SR-71. We know for a fact these were seen and reported as UFOs. The military simply kept quiet and rather liked the idea because it took the pressure off revealing a highly secret aircraft. When they finally admitted the SR-71 existed, some of those unexplained sightings suddenly became all too explainable. I would suggest the triangle UFOs fall into the same category. So do Kecksburg and Cash-Landrum.

Of course, that doesn't mean there still won't be an argument. There have been whole books written on Kecksburg concluding it was NOT a Russian satellite for all sorts of reasons, but you look at the picture of the satellite, an acorn shape, and you look at a picture of the Kecksburg reconstruction sketches, complete with "alien" (i.e.: Cyrillic) writing on it, which are acorn-shaped, and you have to go through torturous contortions to avoid the conclusion that the "UFO" was a Russian satellite. I know there are lots of people who will vehemently argue this could not be the case, but you know what? We're done. Stick a fork in it. It's on life support. Pull the plug. I'm done arguing about it. And for some of these "unexplained" cases that is what you have to do unless you want to run around in circles the rest of your life. If they've been explained and people still don't accept it, there's not much you can do about it. Jesus is coming again. Rock on.

Am I saying there are NO UFOs or that there are NO aliens from space? Absolutely not. Those conclusions do not follow either. The first is absolutely, categorically true, and the second is still a large unknown. We simply cannot reach that conclusion with what we have so far.

reply to post by neoholographic

In my experience it's more like 95% can't be explained.

20 years into ufo's and you believe 95% are unexplained?
Why dont you post a couple of video's to back up that statement?
Post some that you think are unexplained, because i believe that maybe 1% cant be explained.

I think a more accurate way of stating the situation is that 99.99 percent of all UFO sightings would have a mundane explanation if we had a little bit more information about them. Black project aircraft, unusual weather conditions, crazy aberrations in your eyes or brain, etc.

That leaves maybe one or two a year which may (or may not) be a manifestation of interactions with other flavors of reality that we currently don't understand (or are unable to understand due to our limited intelligence). They are very rare, and unlikely to show up on a YouTube video any time, ever.

reply to post by schuyler


Long answer but it says nothing.

There's still ZERO evidence that 95% of cases are explained and 5% aren't explained. That's just a lie.

You said some cases are based on second hand knowledge. This is why there's something called weighing the credibility of the witness. When a Detective investigates a case, they don't actually witnesses the crime. What they do is weigh the credibility of the witnesses that have witnessed the crime. So again, trying to belittle this as second hand information doesn't make any sense.

For instance Astronaut Edgar Mitchell believes extraterrestrials exists and this is based on him weighing the credibility of the witnesses who gave him information.

The reason why this was given weight is because it's Edgar Mitchell the Astronaut and not an Edgar Mitchell whose fresh out of the Psych Ward.

It would be senseless and it would defy logic if we didn't give weight to what Edgar Mitchell was saying.



I remember when Edgar Mitchell first said these things, the ATS skeptic immediately called him a senile, old man. Why did they do this? Because they realize that common sense tells you to weigh the credibility of the witness. They were trying to ruin his credibility.

At the end of the day, the 95% number is just a lie. There's no evidence that backs up that number. When I said I believe that 95% of U.F.O. cases can't be explained, that was a Reductio ad Absurdum. I was just showing you how silly it is to make the claim that 95% of these cases can be explained.

It's probably not 95% either way and that's my point.

neoholographic
reply to post by schuyler

 

Long answer but it says nothing.

There's still ZERO evidence that 95% of cases are explained and 5% aren't explained. That's just a lie.

You have provided ZERO sources, that is true.

For instance Astronaut Edgar Mitchell believes extraterrestrials exists and this is based on him weighing the credibility of the witnesses who gave him information.

Yet Mitchell saw nothing himself. You are using the "Argument from authority," which is invalid. What Mitchell said or hasn't said does not bolster your case in the slightest. In fact, what, exactly, IS your case? You say "95% of cases are unexplained" without providing ANY sources other than your own feelings, and what does that explain, exactly? Aliens from space? I don't think so.

If there is a case to be made, you haven't made it nor have you provided ANYTHING substantial in the way of evidence. Your "95%" figure is simply a shot in the dark with zero evidence.

And that's not good enough.

reply to post by schuyler


First off, you should have read the entire post. I said 95% are unexplained is a reductio ad absurdum that shows how silly it is to make the claim that 95% are explained. And you're actually proving my point as you argue how absurd it is to make the 95% claim either way.

Edgar Mitchell does bolster my claim and destroys yours. It's idiotic not to weigh the credibility of the witness. It's what we do all the time. The reason Edgar Mitchell was on every TV show when he said this is because he has CREDIBILITY. If Edgar Mitchell fresh out of the psych ward would say this, he wouldn't be on every TV show being interviewed.

When Stephen Hawking said that Aliens are almost certain to exist, it was given weight because he's Stephen Hawking the brilliant Cosmologist and not Stephen Hawking the ex-con. We weigh his credibility.

Michio Kaku says Aliens exist and he was on CNN talking about it. Why? Because he's a Best Selling, Theoretical Physicist and not Michio Kaku the Alcoholic who saw a U.F.O. after a bottle of Vodka.



Again, it's common sense to weigh credibility but to the skeptic we should throw out all reason and logic when it comes to these areas.

For anyone new to the topic the UFOs are 1000% unexplained but for anyone who educates himself on the topic, knows that the unknowns or suggesting too high/alien technology would be 99.999% explainable