Originally posted by chiron613
No one has to "prove" that UFO's don't exist. The people who claim that they *do* exist need to back up their claims.

"I propose that true skepticism is called for today: neither the gullible acceptance of true belief nor the closed-minded rejection of the scoffer masquerading as the skeptic.
One should be skeptical of both the believers and the scoffers.The negative claims of pseudo-skeptics who offer facile explanations must themselves be subject to criticism. If a competent witness reports having seen something tens of degrees of arc in size (as happens) and the scoffer -- who of course was not there -- offers Venus or a high altitude weather balloon as an explanation, the requirement of extraordinary proof for an extraordinary claim falls on the proffered negative claim as well. That kind of approach is also pseudo-science. Moreover just being a scientist confers neither necessary expertise nor sufficient knowledge.
Any scientist who has not read a few serious books and articles presenting actual UFO evidence should out of intellectual honesty refrain from making scientific pronouncements. To look at the evidence and go away unconvinced is one thing. To not look at the evidence and be convinced against it nonetheless is another. That is not science."

Dr. Bernard Haisch
Director for the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics

As an example of a case for which Klass' proposed prosaic explanation is wrong, or, at best, unconvincing, consider the sighting by police officer Val Johnson of Warren, Minnesota. Shortly after 1:30 AM, August 27, 1980, as he was cruising the countryside in his police car in an area of low population, he noticed a bright light that he could see through the trees of a small wooded area. Thinking it might be a landed airplane carrying illegal drugs from Canada he accelerated along a road toward the area of the light. Suddenly this light moved rapidly toward his car. He heard a noise of breaking glass and lost consciousness. When he regained consciousness he was leaning forward with his head against the top of the steering wheel. There was a red mark on his forehead which suggests that he might have bumped his head on the wheel hard enough to render him unconscious (he said he was not wearing his seatbelt at the time). After regaining consciousness he called the police station. It was 2:19 AM. He had been unconscious for about 40 minutes. He reported that something had "attacked" his car.

When another officer arrived on the scene a few minutes after Johnson's report he found Johnson's car nearly 90 degrees to the road (blocking the road) and skid marks nearly 100 ft long. Johnson was found in a distraught condition, in a state of shock. He said he recalled seeing the bright light rushing toward his police car and he recalled hearing breaking glass. The next thing he recalled was realizing he was sitting with his head on the steering wheel. He did not recall skidding to a stop. He complained about pain in his eyes and was taken to a doctor who could find no eye damage. He did not complain of a headache.

Of particular importance is physical evidence to the police car. One of the two glass headlight covers on the driver's side had been broken, there was a large crack in the windshield on the driver's side, a plastic cover on the light bar on top of the car had a hole in it, there was a dent in the top of the hood, and two of the three spring-mounted antennas were bent 60 or more degrees, with the bend occurring over a short distance (i.e., sharp bends). Examination of the antenna surfaces using a microscope showed that the insect matter ("bug tar") that coated the antennas was "stretched" at the bend, but there was no other disturbance of the insect matter. Evidently the antennas had not been scraped or rubbed when they were bent. Also, the electric clock in the car and Johnson's mechanical wristwatch both read 14 minutes slow, although Johnson was certain he had set both before he had begun his nightly patrol.

The damage to the car was physical evidence that something strange had taken place. Careful studies of the damage were made by the police department and by scientists working with the Center for UFO Studies. They could find no evidence or reason to believe that Johnson had damaged his own car. They could find no prosaic explanation for the sighting. Klass also investigated the sighting. He spoke to several people who knew Johnson and asked about his interest in UFOs. According to his friends he seemed no more interested in UFOs than in numerous other subjects. They could provide no reason to believe he would intentionally damage his car to create a UFO incident. He might "hide your coffee cup," one gentleman told Klass, but "as far as we know, he's never told any untruths."

Klass concluded his discussion of the Officer Johnson UFO sighting by offering two alternatives. He wrote:

"The hard physical evidence leaves only two possible explanations for this case. One is that Johnson's car was attacked by malicious UFOnauts, who reached out and hit one headlight with a hammerlike device, then hit the hood and windshield, then very gently bent the two radio antennas, being careful not to break them, then reached inside the patrol car to set back the hands of the watch on Johnson's arm and the clock on the car's dashboard. These UFOnauts would then have taken off Johnsons' glasses, aimed an intense ultraviolet light into his eyes, and replaced his glasses, while being careful not to shine ultraviolet on his face.

Or the incident is a hoax. There are simply no other possible explanations."

Klass' amusing version of the "UFO/ET hypothesis" should not detract from the importance of his statement that "There are simply no other possible explanations." In other words, if it was not a hoax then there is no prosaic explanation for this sighting. Perhaps Klass realized that the hoax hypothesis was unconvincing at best and intentionally tried to make the UFO alternative seem silly. (One envisions "little green men" or "grey entities" molesting the police car and Officer Johnson, perhaps laughing gleefully as they hammered his car!)

The police department did not accuse Officer Johnson of damaging the police car. Yet, Klass' book, published about 3 years after the incident, clearly implies that this event had to be a hoax since it was clearly not a misidentification or a delusion (recall that, according to Klass, roughly 98% are misidentifications and the remainder are hoaxes or delusions). Several years after the publication of the book I challenged Klass to send a letter to the police chief of Warren, Minnesota, along with a copy of his book chapter so that the police chief would realize that he should charge Johnson with damaging the car. So far as I know, Klass never did send such a letter and Officer Johnson has never been charged with damaging the police car.

Klass is not the first to offer prosaic explanations. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who, in his later years, became a strong proponent of UFO investigation (founder of the Center for UFO Studies in 1973), began his "UFO career" in 1948 as a strong debunker. His explanations of a number of UFO sightings helped to set the tone of governmental UFO investgation in the early years. One of his most unconvincing explanations was that offered for the sighting by Mr. A. C. Urie and his two sons on August 13, 1947. They lived in the Snake River Canyon at Twin Falls, Idaho. According to the FBI investigative report of this case, at about 1:00 P.M. Mr. Urie "sent his boys to the (Salmon) river to get some rope from his boat. When he thought they were overdue he went outside to his tool shed to look for them. He noticed them about 300 feet away looking in the sky and he glanced up to see what he called the flying disc."

This strange object was flying at high speed along the canyon which is about 400 feet deep and 1,200 feet across at that point. It was about 75 feet above the floor of the canyon (and so more than 300 ft below the edge of the canyon) and moving up and down as it flew. It seemed to be following the contours of the hilly ground beneath it. Urie estimated it was about 20 feet long and 10 feet wide and 10 feet high, with what appeared to be exhaust ports on the sides. It was almost hat shaped with a flat bottom and a dome on top. It's pale blue color made Urie think that it would be very difficult to see against the sky, although he had no trouble seeing it silhouetted against the opposite wall of the canyon. On each side there was a tubular shaped fiery glow like some sort of exhaust. He said that when it went over trees they didn't sway back and forth but rather the treetops twisted around, which suggests that the air under the object was being swirled into a vortex. He and his sons had an excellent view of the object for a few seconds before it disappeared over the trees about a mile away. He thought it was going 1,000 miles an hour.

Hynek offered the following "prosaic explanation" which became part of the official Air Force record on the sighting (see the files of Project Blue Book): an atmospheric eddy. Why this explanation? The object appeared pale bluish in color, like the sky, and the trees were moving around as if a swirling wind went over them. Hynek explained the blue color as a "reflection" of the blue sky in the hypothetical atmospheric eddy. He offered no explanation of how this eddy could appear to have the strange "hat" shape, be traveling at about 1,000 miles per hour, how there could be a fiery glow at one location on the side of the "eddy" or why the eddy would appear as a solid rather than transparent object.

With a little thought he could have realized that no atmospheric eddy could reflect or bend light (as in a mirage) coming down from the sky enough to redirect it toward the witnesses. An eddy is a density inhomogeneity in the atmosphere which, in principle, might bend light by a very small fraction of a degree. However, for Hynek's explanation to work, the light would have to be bent five degrees or more, far beyond anything the atmosphere could do. Hynek's explanation is another failed prosaic explanation. Even Hynek realized this and repudiated his explanation years later (see "THE HYNEK UFO REPORT", Dell Pub. co, NY, 1977).

Another scientist with an excessive urge to explain was Dr. Howard Menzel. In his first book, entitled FLYING SAUCERS (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1953) Menzel offered a blanket explanation for sightings that occurred within the first 5 years of modern UFO sightings (1947-1952): misidentified atmospheric phenomena including the effects of the atmosphere on sunlight, unusual clouds caused by particular wind patterns and mirage effects (light ray bending in the atmosphere). He suggested several different atmospheric and cloud effects to account for the first widely reported sighting, that of Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. In later books ("THE WORLD OF FLYING SAUCERS, Menzel and Boyd, Doubleday and Company, Garden City, NY, 1963; THE UFO ENIGMA, THE DEFINITIVE EXPLANATION OF THE UFO PHENOMENON, Menzel and Taves, Doubleday and Company, Garden City, NY, 1977) he offered other atmosphere-related explanations and one non-atmospheric explanation (water drops on the windshield of the airplane). Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot, had reported seeing nine semicircular, thin (compared to the length), shiny objects in a line flying southward past the western flank of Mt. Rainier and then "in and out" of a chain of mountains south of Rainier. The objects were therefore about 20 miles east of him (he was about 20 miles west and 10 miles south of Mt. Rainier and flying east at the time). He timed their flight from Rainier, southward, to Mt. Adams, a distance of about 50 miles. They crossed this distance in 102 seconds. Hence the direct interpretation of Arnold's sighting is that these objects were traveling at about 1,700 mph. (This was about 4 months before Yaeger exceeded the speed of sound in a test aircraft (October, 1947)). In reporting the speed calculation Arnold arbitrarily reduced the speed considerably to account for possible errors in his measurements. He publicly stated that the objects were traveling at about 1,200 mph. Arnold reported that he first saw the objects as they flashed or reflected the bright afternoon sunlight when they were north of Mt. Rainier and last saw them (by their flashes) as they passed Mt. Adams. The total sighting duration was 2 1/2 to 3 minutes.

Dr. Hynek was the first scientist to try to explain Arnold's sighting. Hynek couldn't except the large size and high speed implied by Arnold's observation so he decided to ignore Arnold's claim that the objects went in and out of the mountain peaks south of Mt. Rainier. By ignoring this statement (essentially implying Arnold's had made a mistake in the observation) Hynek was able to assume the objects were closer to Arnold. Hynek settled on a 6 mile distance which meant that the speed could have been much lower, like about 400 mph. Since this speed was within the capability of fast military aircraft a the time Hynek identified the objects as "aircraft," thereby also ignoring Arnold's description of the objects.

Hynek's work was done secretly for the Air Force in 1948 (under "Project Sign"[1948], the first of three projects for UFO sighting analysis. The other two were Project Grudge [1949-1952] and Project Blue Book [1952-1969] ). About 4 years later Dr. Menzel tackled Arnold's sighting. In his first book, FLYING SAUCERS, Menzel summarized the sighting and then criticized the Air Force for accepting Hynek's explanation and went on to propose a much more "obvious" solution. Menzel wrote, "(Arnold) clocked the speed at about 1,200 miles an hour, although this figure seems inconsistent with the length of time that he estimated them to be in view. From his previous statement they could scarcely have traveled more than 25 miles during the three minutes that he watched. This gives about 500 miles an hour, which is still a figure large enough to be startling.." Note that Menzel did not tell the reader that Arnold had timed the flight of the objects between two points. Instead, Menzel invented a travel distance of 25 miles, and implied that this distance was covered in 3 minutes (180 seconds). Hence he was able to assign a much lower, although "startling," speed of 500 mph.

Menzel went on to "solve" the mystery of Arnold's sighting: "Although what Arnold saw has remained a mystery until this day (1953), I simply cannot understand why the simplest and most obvious explanation of all has been overlooked.... the association of the saucers with the hogback (of the mountain range south of Mt. Rainier).... serves to fix their distance and approximate size and roughly confirms Arnold's estimate of the speed." (Note that Menzel, unlike Hynek, accepted Arnold's distance estimate). Menzel then went on to suggest that Arnold saw "billowing blasts of snow, ballooning up from the tops of the ridges" caused by highly turbulent air along the mountain range. According to Menzel, "These rapidly shifting, tilting clouds of snow would reflect the sun like a mirror...and the rocking surfaces would make the chain sweep along something like a wave, with only a momentary reflection from crest to crest."

This first explanation by a scientist with the reputation of Dr. Menzel may seem slightly convincing, but only until one realizes that (a) blowing clouds of snow cannot reflect light rays from the sun (60 deg elevation angle) into a horizontal direction toward Arnold's airplane and thereby create the very bright flashes that Arnold reported in the same way that a polished metal surface or mirror would, (b) there are no 1,200 mph or even 500 mph winds on the surface of the earth to transport clouds of snow (fortunately!), (c) there are no winds that would carry clouds of snow all the way from Mt. Rainier to Mt. Adams (Arnold saw the objects pass Mt. Adams before they were lost to his view), (d) Arnold flew eastward along a path that took him south of Mt. Rainier minutes later and surely his plane would have been strongly buffeted (and perhaps destroyed!) by such high winds, but he reported, instead, very calm conditions, (e) an atmospheric oscillation wave can't bend or reflect light over an angle of nearly 60 degrees, which would be necessary to make it appear as if the sun had been reflected by objects nearly at Arnold's altitude, and (f) an atmospheric oscillation wave with a "phase velocity" of 1,200 mph is unlikely, but in any case, when traveling southward its crests would be oriented east-west, so if it reflected any sunlight at all (highly unlikely), the reflection would be in the north-south direction and not westward toward Arnold's plane. Furthermore, even if such amazing atmospheric phenomena had occurred, it is difficult to imagine how Arnold could have failed to realize that he was just seeing light reflected from snow blowing from the mountain tops, especially since he flew over the mountains about 12 miles south of Mt. Rainier on his way east to Yakima, Washington, just a few minutes after the sighting.

In case the first explanation wasn't sufficiently convincing, Menzel offered "another possibility:" he suggested that perhaps there was a thin layer of fog, haze or dust just above or just below Arnold's altitude which was caused to move violently by air circulation and which reflected the sunlight. Menzel claimed that such layers can "reflect the sun in almost mirror fashion." Menzel offered no substantiation for this claim. Perhaps he was thinking in terms of a "forward reflection" from an atmospheric layer when the sun is so low on the horizon (and nearly along the line of sight to the reflection) that the light rays make a "grazing angle" with the layer. If so, then that explanation as applied to the Arnold sighting makes no sense since the sun was at an elevation of 60 degrees and southwest of Arnold, who was looking east. Furthermore, layers form under stable conditions and violent air circulation would tend to break them up so there would be no "reflections" of sunlight. Again, one wonders how Arnold could have failed to notice that he was just seeing the effects of a haze layer.

Ten years after his first book, Dr. Menzel offered his third, fourth and fifth explanations in his second book, THE WORLD OF FLYING SAUCERS: mountain top mirages, "orographic clouds" and "wave clouds in motion". To support the third explanation he presented a photograph of mountain top mirages taken by a photographer many years earlier, and proposed by the photographer, as the explanation for Arnold's sighting. (This is the "official" Air Force explanation. It appears in the files of Projects Sign/Grudge/Blue Book along with Hynek's explanation.

Originally posted by karl 12

Originally posted by chiron613
No one has to "prove" that UFO's don't exist. The people who claim that they *do* exist need to back up their claims.

This quote has been posted a few times before but I think Bernard Haisch
makes a very good point about how debunkers have got 'an awful lot of explaining to do':

"I propose that true skepticism is called for today: neither the gullible acceptance of true belief nor the closed-minded rejection of the scoffer masquerading as the skeptic.
One should be skeptical of both the believers and the scoffers.The negative claims of pseudo-skeptics who offer facile explanations must themselves be subject to criticism. If a competent witness reports having seen something tens of degrees of arc in size (as happens) and the scoffer -- who of course was not there -- offers Venus or a high altitude weather balloon as an explanation, the requirement of extraordinary proof for an extraordinary claim falls on the proffered negative claim as well. That kind of approach is also pseudo-science. Moreover just being a scientist confers neither necessary expertise nor sufficient knowledge.
Any scientist who has not read a few serious books and articles presenting actual UFO evidence should out of intellectual honesty refrain from making scientific pronouncements. To look at the evidence and go away unconvinced is one thing. To not look at the evidence and be convinced against it nonetheless is another. That is not science."

Dr. Bernard Haisch
Director for the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
If your a skeptic or debunker that doesn't have any evidence against the proposition then maybe you need to change your position.