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Originally posted by Lowneck
reply to post by UFO Partisan
Agree very much with what you say.
A little bit off topic, but I've always felt Socorro had a likely prosaic explanation. Would be very interested in your views on Socorro - I think Hynek's promotion of it had a baleful effect on the scientific study of UFOs.
Originally posted by JimOberg
This particular case is on my mind right now, because of what I see as missed opportunities to develop a plausible prosaic explanation. This issue bears on the question of -- what is the significance of pilots as a special class of UFO observers -- and also on the even more general question, "What does it signify when Bill Birnes swears HE can't find a prosaic explanation of a case he puts on his TV show?".
Originally posted by UFO Partisan
Honestly, you have to take the TV documentaries with a grain of salt . . . but I think you probably know that already.
Originally posted by Lowneck
Wonder if Jim has confused Ramda with Lambda?
1965 March 18 - . 10:07 GMT - . Launch Site: Kagoshima. Launch Complex: Kagoshima L. LV Family: Lambda. Launch Vehicle: Lambda 3. LV Configuration: Lambda 3 L-3-3.
But I don't think that's the whole story.
Originally posted by Lowneck
reply to post by JimOberg
Jim,
Looking through Amamiya's NARCAP paper - for which many thanks - and comparing it with the Lambda launch, without a detailed study, I think you are quite right to say that Lambda is the executive summary. Another flag for you.
Kiyoshi Amamiya clearly didn't do his homework. Perhaps Richard Haines should sack him, he should certainly think more carefully about what he publishes in future. I might add that I've caught out Richard Haines several times before. One I've posted on this website.
As pointed out by Peter Sturrock, the problem is that since Condon reputable peer-reviewed journals have not published material on UFOs. Thus papers like Amamiya's get published on the web and detract from NARCAP's reputation.
But there is a corollary to all this.
Amamiya's paper shows how good the pilot's descriptions of Lambda were.
So pilots' UAP reports are accurate after all.
Jim Oberg has scored a decisive victory over Jim Oberg.
Congratulations!
Originally posted by UFO Partisan
That's always been my opinion. People, pilots included, don't recognize what they don't recognize, but if they describe it well enough there's a better chance the UFO can be explained. They are quantitatively better witnesses.
Originally posted by JimOberg
That's a reasonable hypothesis to debate.
In this case, descriptions of direction and angular size were pretty good.
But aren't you overlooking the 800-pound-yeti in the room?
The pilot descriptions of RANGE and object SIZE and relative motion were crap.
The pilot reports of cause-and-effect EMI phenomena (including 'radar confirmation') were crap.
All but one of the top-quality UFO documentation reports dropped all mention of the contemporary newspaper claim that the people who launched the rocket said -- AT THE TIME -- that they thought it was what the people were seeing.
These report compilers -- sources of supposedly reliably and verified data used by Haines, and COMETA, and by Kean, and by others -- decided that they (and you) didn't need to be distracted by that inconvenient fact ["Ramda"] -- well, it might just have been careless, not deliberate. But they polluted the data base.
We have to guess -- HOW OFTEN HAVE THEY DONE THAT ON OTHER CASES? Call it the "ramda factor".
Are we approaching a consensus and, even better, a forward plan of action?
Originally posted by UFO Partisan
In my own experience at looking at a very limited number of cases very closely, the original source is always best. Once it goes through someone else's filter, you can have problems. Especially with the TV docs. Sometimes there's dramatic license, sometimes it works the other way and time constraints don't allow for the full story. That's the beautiful part about the internet. Yes, many cases do fall apart but often it's just the opposite and the closer I've looked, the more compelling the phenomenon is.