Airplane carrying UFO

How is a disc attached to a plane a UFO, HOW?! Maybe a kind of Pacman UFO that bites the plane in the back?

Originally posted by JamesMcgaha
Classic example of humans being bad at indentifying things in the sky. Thats why UFO sightings & witness testimonies are unreliable.

Humans claim UFOs, its %100 of time down to earth interms of explaination

So dont blame Skeptics people because theres a reason they are skeptical

Oh so you tar everyone with the same brush including pilots, astronauts, doctors, air traffic controllers and high ranking military personnel. Not everyone has the life experience to know what these things are. However, I'd say that the above listed examples are some of the few people that you can trust not to misidentify obvious weather phenomena and / or military aircraft. I'd say that there are enough comparable witness testimonies from trusted sources that it alone can be used as evidence.

The argument of "there is no perceivable evidence except witness testimonies" can be used against any number of scientific theories that have been widely accepted as fact in modern science.

Originally posted by dodgygeeza
However, I'd say that the above listed examples are some of the few people that you can trust not to misidentify obvious weather phenomena and / or military aircraft.

A prominent UFO researcher came to a different conclusion about pilots.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

One of the world’s first genuine UFO investigators, Allen Hynek of Northwestern University, came to believe that some encounters really could have otherworldly causes. But he was much more skeptical about the reliability of pilot testimony. "Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses," he wrote in "The Hynek UFO Report."

Hynek found that the best class of witnesses had a 50 percent misperception rate, but that pilots had a much higher rate: 88 percent for military pilots, 89 percent for commercial pilots, the worst of all categories listed. Pilots could be counted on for an accurate identification of familiar objects — such as aircraft and ground structures — but Hynek said "it should come as no surprise that the majority of pilot misidentifications were of astronomical objects."

I've got an air traffic control recording of a pilot misidentifying Venus, it happens a lot more than people think. And the recording was promoted by UFO enthusiasts as evidence of a UFO. The same recording has pilots misidentifying a meteor as a UFO. And again on the same recording they identify a cloud as a UFO. According to Hynek pilots are relatively poor witnesses, and he's done way more UFO research than most people and believed some may not be earthly.

Originally posted by JamesMcgaha
Classic example of humans being bad at indentifying things in the sky. Thats why UFO sightings & witness testimonies are unreliable.

Humans claim UFOs, its %100 of time down to earth interms of explaination

So dont blame Skeptics people because theres a reason they are skeptical

How do you explain Trans-en-Provence? Or do you just ignore that kind of report?

reply to post by Arbitrageur


No, what you *do not* do is to question your powers of observation. You trust them. What you *question* is your interpretation of those observations. There is a *huge* difference there.

However, I know what I saw was not of terrestrial/human origin. I will not allow my certainty to be swayed until I see evidence to the contrary. My observation stands that it was indeed were crafts of off-planet origin.

People, always trust your eyes, your ears, your feelings, your mind, your heart. Ask questions freely without fear of people demanding absurd "proof" or "evidence". Ask, watch, be open and curious, like our OP. His description was accurate. It was unidentified by him. He asked for info and he got it, along with a lot of unkind and unconstructive criticism. You know who you are. Forshame.

reply to post by Arbitrageur



It seems to me that there are quite a few reports that are unlikely to be due to misidentification because of the proximity of the object. There are rather few reasonable explanations for such sightings. You have hoax, hallucination or actual occurrence.

Originally posted by JamesMcgaha
Classic example of humans being bad at indentifying things in the sky. Thats why UFO sightings & witness testimonies are unreliable.

Humans claim UFOs, its %100 of time down to earth interms of explaination

You can't back up that statement and you know it.

You could have said, "it's probably 100%", or, "it's likely 100%", and still maintained credibility. What you posted reveals a deep seated irrational belief and a subjective, unscientific agenda.

To all the people jumping down my throat

The point I'm trying to get across is very simple. Humans are bad observers, this goes for everyone doesnt matter whats your occupation. The poster above was kind enough to provide a few key notes that only strengthens my arguement.


Now I'm not denying anything, but simply going by witness sightings doesnt make it evidence. And A large portion of UFO cases are driven by witness testimonies. The testimonies are all unreliable, This is why disclosures mean nothing, its a bunch of people that are ''mostlikey'' misinterpreting these things & not looking into them properly

Thats all I have to say about that.

And assuming Aliens even are visiting Earth like the poster states in this thread is another reason why witness reports are unreliable. You see something you WANT to believe its a UFO/Alien because your mind is made up that these things exist & are here.

Originally posted by Orkojoker
It seems to me that there are quite a few reports that are unlikely to be due to misidentification because of the proximity of the object. There are rather few reasonable explanations for such sightings. You have hoax, hallucination or actual occurrence.

Hyneks statistics don't dispute that there are SOME which are not due to misidentification:


www.msnbc.msn.com...

Hynek found that the best class of witnesses had a 50 percent misperception rate, but that pilots had a much higher rate: 88 percent for military pilots, 89 percent for commercial pilots, the worst of all categories listed.

That leaves 12% and 11% that are not identified as misperception. Those numbers are relatively low but not zero and I didn't claim they were zero. But I certainly wouldn't ague with Hynek about pilots making relatively poor UFO witnesses due to their relatively high misperception rates. But apparently they are indeed accurate when it comes to identifying familiar objects like other known aircraft.

Originally posted by JamesMcgaha
To all the people jumping down my throat

The point I'm trying to get across is very simple. Humans are bad observers, this goes for everyone doesnt matter whats your occupation. The poster above was kind enough to provide a few key notes that only strengthens my arguement.


Now I'm not denying anything, but simply going by witness sightings doesnt make it evidence. And A large portion of UFO cases are driven by witness testimonies. The testimonies are all unreliable, This is why disclosures mean nothing, its a bunch of people that are ''mostlikey'' misinterpreting these things & not looking into them properly

Thats all I have to say about that.

And assuming Aliens even are visiting Earth like the poster states in this thread is another reason why witness reports are unreliable. You see something you WANT to believe its a UFO/Alien because your mind is made up that these things exist & are here.

Actually James, there are many cases out there in which it is extremely unlikely that the stimulus that provokes the report is something conventional but misinterpreted, the case I linked to above being just one example. I would be interested to hear what you think the object in that case could possibly be a misidentification of.

While witness testimony may not be spot on 100 percent of the time, a statement like "the testimonies are all unreliable" is just wrong. In fact, the only reason investigators are able to identify the stimulus that prompts a UFO report 90 percent of the time is that witnesses ARE relatively reliable when describing what they see. Most witnesses are simply unaware of the fact that the description they give matches the description of a known phenomenon or object.

As to your assertion that people generally see UFOs because they want to see is an alien spaceship, that does not seem to be the case with many of the unexplained reports. According to highly regarded investigators like J. Allen Hynek and James McDonald, witnesses of most of the puzzling UFO reports, in general, have no prior interest in UFOs - or are even hostile to the idea of their existence - before having their own sighting, at which point they often become very interested.

Dr. James McDonald - in his testimony before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics - explains that UFO observers, as a rule, do not jump to the conclusion that they are seeing ET spaceship:

Another characteristic in interviewing the witnesses is the tendency for the UFO witness to turn first not to the hypothesis that he is looking at a spaceship, but rather it must be an ambulance out there with a blinking red light or that it is a helicopter up there. There is a conventional interpretation considered first; only then does the witness get out of the car or patrol car and realize the thing is stopped in midair and is going backwards and has six bright lights, or something like that. Only after an economical first hypothesis does the witness, in these impressive cases, go further in his hypotheses, and finally realize he is looking at something he has never seen before. I like Dr. Hynek's phrase for this, "escalation of hypotheses." This tendency to take a simple guess first and then upgrade it is so characteristic that I emphasize it as a very important point.

This from a man who interviewed several hundred witnesses of unexplained UFOs. Where are you getting your information?

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Indeed, SOME are not due to misidentification. A small percentage of the total. No intelligent, informed person claims that it is any more than SOME. Unfortunately, many people choose to throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak, ignoring the truly interesting reports simply because most of the "unusual" things people report turn out to be nothing unusual at all.

I think everybody would agree that the interesting reports are a very small portion of the total number of reports. So we should probably just focus on the ones that ARE interesting.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


en.wikipedia.org...

talking about crafts would you say this is a plane or something else, to prove not everything you see is alway to normal and can be contrary to the norm. contrary to the dissuasive.

Originally posted by OrkojokerActually James, there are many cases out there in which it is extremely unlikely that the stimulus that provokes the report is something conventional but misinterpreted, the case I linked to above being just one example. I would be interested to hear what you think the object in that case could possibly be a misidentification of.

I havent done enough research to comment on that but when I do I can reply.

While witness testimony may not be spot on 100 percent of the time, a statement like "the testimonies are all unreliable" is just wrong. In fact, the only reason investigators are able to identify the stimulus that prompts a UFO report 90 percent of the time is that witnesses ARE relatively reliable when describing what they see. Most witnesses are simply unaware of the fact that the description they give matches the description of a known phenomenon or object.

Majority are unreliable & thats been proven time & time again. Theres a trend with these UFO reports & that trend is misidentifying these objects & jumping to conclusions of what they saw.

You bring up a good point many people in the world as we know have limited knowledge of whats going on interms of technology. All the more reason that these witnesses are unreliable & testimonies hold no weight.

As to your assertion that people generally see UFOs because they want to see is an alien spaceship, that does not seem to be the case with many of the unexplained reports. According to highly regarded investigators like J. Allen Hynek and James McDonald, witnesses of most of the puzzling UFO reports, in general, have no prior interest in UFOs - or are even hostile to the idea of their existence - before having their own sighting, at which point they often become very interested.

Well Hynek & Mcdonald time is much different than things going on today. People were oblivious to many things in his era. Seeing whatever they saw could be explained mostlikley by your average joe today.

The media fascination with science fiction also effects humans. So even if they dont believe in the UFO/alien/phenomenon its always in the back of there mind. When they have an experience they immediately associate it with the phenomenon. Someone actually came forward & admitted they did this on a plane ride at night

Plenty of people dont believe in ghost but if they hear a noise or imagine for a second a ghostly figure, their mind starts to think immediately ''did i see a ghost''

reply to post by JamesMcgaha


When you say most witnesses are unreliable, you may be correct if you mean they themselves are unable to identify what they are looking at, but you are wrong if you mean they are not able to give a reasonably accurate description of what they saw - reasonable enough that their description, when analyzed by a person with the applicable knowledge or expertise, will usually lead to a probable explanation for the object or phenomenon observed.

It is only this group of reports - the ones that contain enough information and enough detail and consistency to rule out conventional explanations when analyzed by people with the necessary expertise and knowledge - that is worth looking into. Defining a true UFO has nothing to do with the ability of the observer to identify what the object is. Maybe we just need to define our terms so we're on the same page. Here's a good working definition from NARCAP:

The term UAP is defined as follows: An unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) is the visual stimulus that provokes a sighting report of an object or light seen in the sky, the appearance and/or flight dynamics of which do not suggest a logical, conventional flying object and which remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making both a full technical identification as well as a common-sense identification, if one is possible. (Haines, Pp. 13-22, 1980)

Originally posted by Mercurio
Has anyone seen something like this ? I have. I saw what looked like a plane with a disc shaped object on top of it. I have only seen that twice in my life, recently and when I was a kid. I'm not saying it was definitely a UFO but that's the only explanation I have.

edit on 19-3-2011 by Mercurio because: (no reason given)

Hi Mercurio! Its understandable that you saw something unfamiliar and postulated an explanation which made sense to you given your experiences so far in life.

Can I make a suggestion which helped me immensely 30 years ago when I was just 16 years old?

My Computer Studies teacher awarded me a prize for most innovative coding in my class. The prize was a copy of the book "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintainance." I was nonplussed: what the Hell did motorcycles have to do with computer programming?

Read the Wiki reference here.

What that book taught me was to logically deconstruct any problem (your plane carrying a UFO for example) and determine the most likely solution to that problem.

You did very well to ask the opinions of others on here (unfortunately you got a few rude answers) but if you read the book you may find yourself in a place where you can answer your own questions.

Take care.
MiTS.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Without any research or statistical data, (although I did read your linked article) couldn't the higher than average misperception rate be exacerbated by the increased exposure that pilots spend in the air? In short a pilot who flies regularly would have a higher chance to observe a UFO than a casual observer who spends a majority of their daily life on the ground working indoors and basic commuting etc.

Just wondering if that might skew the data?

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Sounds very much like an attempt to ruin the credibility of pilots as reliable witnesses to me. I think that most pilots wouldn't be willing to put their careers on the line for something that looks like a meteor. An Air-traffic Controller Misidentifying Venus for a UFO is beyond moronic on so many levels, so much so that I doubt the authenticity of the story unless the ATC was under the influence of drugs at the time. Having been involved in ATC, it sounds like a deliberate attempt to ruin this guy's career and credibility.

Believe me, you don't get to control thousands of people's lives in the sky if you make mistakes like that, and just as easily throw your entire career down the drain without thinking it through.

Of course there will be a few misidentifications, but 89% is laughable.

Originally posted by dodgygeeza
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

Of course there will be a few misidentifications, but 89% is laughable.

edit on 21-3-2011 by dodgygeeza because: (no reason given)

Actually, if you look at just about any evaluation of a body of UFO reports from a given period, the vast majority are indeed misidentifications, or at least not true unknowns. Reports that continue to defy explanation generally account for no more than about 25-30 percent of the total. Nick Pope cites the figure of 5 percent for the UK. The percentage that remain unknown is irrelevant as long as we have them.

Originally posted by Orkojoker
I think everybody would agree that the interesting reports are a very small portion of the total number of reports. So we should probably just focus on the ones that ARE interesting.

Agreed. I think we're basically on the same page.

Originally posted by kinda kurious
Without any research or statistical data, (although I did read your linked article) couldn't the higher than average misperception rate be exacerbated by the increased exposure that pilots spend in the air? In short a pilot who flies regularly would have a higher chance to observe a UFO than a casual observer who spends a majority of their daily life on the ground working indoors and basic commuting etc.

Just wondering if that might skew the data?

I'm not 100% sure what skews the data but it's probably not what you suggest because those statistics are percentages. More frequent observations would increase the total UFO count for pilots if that was your point, I'd agree, but that's not the statistic cited. Jim Oberg has what I consider a speculative psychological theory to explain this statistic, and I'm not sure if it's right but I don't know of a better one so I'll try to paraphrase it.

Oberg suggests that pilots rightfully have a tendency to err on the side of caution. Unlike a ground observer which may not perceive an unidentified object in the sky as a direct threat, a pilot may have a tendency to identify unidentified things in the sky as a possible threat to the safety of their aircraft, and this may skew their perception. Since I fly as a commercial airline passenger frequently, I'm actually happy if this is correct, as I'd like the pilot to err on the side of caution. I don't have all of Hynek's research either, but on three anecdotal cases of ATC recordings I'm aware of, I'd say Oberg's theory is plausible. The planet, the meteor, and the cloud misidentified as UFOs by pilots on the ATC recordings were all perceived as potential threats (moreso with the meteor and the cloud) and the pilot who thought the cloud was a UFO even requested a course change to fly around the "UFO" (which an infrared satellite photo later revealed was a cloud). It was nighttime so he really couldn't see too well. I actually have more confidence in pilots as a result of this type of precautionary bias, not less. But I'm not sure Hynek had an explanation and I'm not sure if Oberg's theory explains the statistics or not, all I can say it it seems plausible and I don't have a better explanation.

Originally posted by Orkojoker

Originally posted by dodgygeeza
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

Of course there will be a few misidentifications, but 89% is laughable.

edit on 21-3-2011 by dodgygeeza because: (no reason given)

Actually, if you look at just about any evaluation of a body of UFO reports from a given period, the vast majority are indeed misidentifications, or at least not true unknowns. Reports that continue to defy explanation generally account for no more than about 25-30 percent of the total. Nick Pope cites the figure of 5 percent for the UK. The percentage that remain unknown is irrelevant as long as we have them.

I'm talking about pilots, not the general population

I'd say 90% of the population wouldn't be credible witnesses at all.