The Science of UFOs: Fact vs. Skepticism , page 8

reply to post by kidflash2008

Good point, I totaly agree with your comments but I think theres a big difference between cynical debunkery and true,open minded scepticism.

Starting out with a preconceived explanation and then proceeding to shoehorn it in irrespective of any contradictory evidence,glaring discrepencies or factual innacurracies that get in the way is a common debunker tactic and to,my mind,about as far from objective,
free enquiry as a person can get.

Theres some good points made in this article by Dr Allen J Hyneck:
'What is the responsibility of the scientist?'
www.nicap.org...

And theres also some other pertinent points raised about 'Occam's Razor here:

The UFO skeptics don't understand Occam's Razor, and they abuse it regularly. They think they
understand it, but they don't. What it means is that when several hypotheses of varying
complexity can explain a set of observations with equal ability, the first one to be tested should
be the one that invokes the fewest number of uncorroborated assumptions. If this simplest
hypothesis is proven incorrect, the next simplest is chosen, and so forth.

But the skeptics forget two parts: the part regarding the test of the simpler hypotheses, and the
part regarding explaining all of the observations.
What a debunker will do is mutilate and butcher
the observations until it can be "explained" by one of the simpler hypotheses, which is the inverse
of the proper approach. The proper approach is to alter the hypothesis to accommodate the
observations. One should never alter the observations to conform with a hypothesis by saying "if
we assume the object was not physical, despite the level of evidence that would imply the
solidity of a conventional aircraft with near-certainty, then we can also assume the object was
not moving, was not exhibiting the color orange, was not 50 feet in diameter as described, and
then declare that it was really Venus."

But that's okay for the skeptics to do because it's an "extraordinary claim" being made that
deserves to be explained away in a Machiavellian fashion as rapidly as possible with the urgent
zeal of a religious missionary. Now, to alter observations to force conformance with the
preferred hypothesis -- is that science? Or is that dogma? The answer, of course, is dogma. This
practice is extremely poor science, and the approach undermines the very spirit of scientific
inquiry. It is simply unacceptable to alter the observations that refuse to conform with the
predetermined, favored explanation.