Talk:Unidentified flying object

recent sighting

Should this be included?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/02/ufo.sighting.ap/index.html

regards,David

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.107.164.100 (talk) 08:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC).

Need for Skepticism

I have expanded the section on Explanations and Opinions to include broader skeptical views. I would also like to point out the possible misuse of the word 'inexplicable' in this article. It and 'unexplained' do not mean the same thing; concluding that something is inexplicable implies genuine and deserved bafflement. It is not clear whether the French government actually described about 14% of 5800 cases as "inexplicable" or whether they merely meant that there was simply a lack of data available to explain these incidents. Could this be clarified - and has there been similar possible misuse of these terms elsewhere? Rikstar 00:06, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

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The French GEPAN/SEPRA studies dumped cases with "lack of data" or insufficient information into a separate category. About half of the total cases could definitely or probably be identified, whereas about 14% of all cases with sufficient data could not be explained with any possible conventional explanation, i.e., they were indeed "inexplicable". Thus the cases with insufficient information formed about a third of all case and were not included in either the identified or unidentified categories.

Regarding your addition of more skeptical viewpoint, all I see is what I would describe as a totally irrelevant paragraph expressing your personal opinion there are too many books about the paranormal and people try to make money from them. What does this have to do with unidentified flying objects? People also try to make money writing badly written and popular accounts on WWII, astronomy, etc. So what? That doesn't somehow negate the core of information about these various subjects.

Frankly, I think the paragraph is totally off topic and NPOV and should be deleted ASAP. Dr Fil 00:32, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Heres a paragraph on the study that makes the French statistics a little clearer. Note that cases lacking data are around 41% of the cases and are in a separate category. About 46% have definite or probable explanations, and 12.5%, according to this article, (I previously saw 13.5% or ~14%) are considered unidentified and "inexplicable." Source: [1]

"Yet the statistics that Velasco has made public are eloquent. Since, 1977, Sepra has received some 6,000 reports of alleged UFO sightings. Of these, 110 are from civil or military aircraft crew, and the rest from ordinary French people who have almost invariably contacted their local gendarmerie. In 21.3 per cent of cases there is a clear, indisputable and banal explanation: a firework display, a novel lighting system involving a luminous balloon, a cloud above the Pyrenees that is shaped like a flying saucer. In 24.9 per cent there is a probable explanation, and in 41.3 per cent the information is too vague to be of use. But in 12.5 per cent of cases "about 750 sightings since 1977" the evidence is precise, detailed and inexplicable, and is thus categorised as an unidentified phenomenon." Dr Fil 00:39, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Dr Fil: The difference between WWII, astronomy, etc. and UFOs is... the former do or did really exist, whilst UFOs, as a paranormal entity, might not. The sociological, psychological and cultural implications of this are inevitably tied up with many things; like human needs and the nature and availability of information to meet those needs. Which is what some editors see as a legitimate point to make in offering alternatives to paranormal explanations. UFOs could be a cultural rather than a 'nuts-and-bolts' phenomenon, boosted and perpetuated by human vested interests. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung himself noted how the media seized on out-of-context quotes or misunderstood his theories about UFOs ("Jung believes in flying saucers!!"), but when he asked the media to publish corrections (which showed his real views were much more mundane), nobody was interested. This is a real example of cultural bias. IF UFOs 'do not exist', the existence of such a massive body of UFO works (especially the sensationalist stuff) becomes something of an enigma in itself, requiring an explanation of the socio-cultural variety. It is this that my contribution touched upon. I do wish I could have made this clearer without writing a thesis on the matter.

I am surprised any fair-minded editor would think such an observation "is totally off topic and NPOV and should be deleted ASAP" - I am disappointed by the rather impolite tone of your comments (please see Talk page guidelines). The same skeptical observations have appeared in other articles about controversial paranormal topics - without provoking such censure. Indeed, they have been welcomed for adding relevant and much needed depth to articles of this nature - however uncomfortable others may feel (I have seen the latest version of my edit and feel it is reasonable, in spite of editing).

I think the trick with all articles on controversial paranormal subjects is to reduce to a minimum how stupid a believer who writes such articles would look if it was shown that the mystery was just a load of bull. Likewise, skeptical contributors (in this case) need to minimise how dumb they would look if, say, a flying saucer landed on the White House lawn. Rikstar 09:53, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

If you read the article at present, I left in your cultural/social aspects comment, but deleted the comment about people supposedly making money off the topic, which is irrelevant and off-topic. The same could be said for all the debunking books written about UFOs. People writing books and making money on one side or the other has nothing to do with the validity of the various arguments or phenomenon.

Incidentally, the so-called "Psychosocial Hypothesis" is already listed in the article under "Popular ideas for explaining UFOS", and there is a link to a separate Wiki article on the subject (Psychosocial_Hypothesis), so it hasn't exactly been ignored.

BTW, I don't know where you got the idea that Jung thought UFOs had a strictly cultural/psychological explanation. There are many direct quotes and writings by Jung where he did indeed think that SOME UFOs might very well be nuts-and-bolts craft, and cited such things as corroborating photographs and simultaneous radar contact. He was also impressed by the quality of many of the witnesses. Dr Fil 22:41, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't recall writing that Jung thought UFOs had a strictly cultural/psychological explanation. I was making the point that the press obviously went for simplistic, headline-grabbing interpretations - which just might have something to do with selling more newspapers which = making money!! I totally agree that: "People writing books and making money on one side or the other has nothing to do with the validity of the various arguments or phenomenon", but I am not talking about intellectual validity, I am talking about powerful factors that might add bias and create and perpetuate mystery where none exists. The main article itself includes the following reference:

"UFOs constitute a widespread international cultural phenomenon of the last half-century. Folklorist Thomas E. Bullard writes, “UFOs have invaded modern consciousness in overwhelming force, and endless streams of books, magazine articles, tabloid covers, movies, TV shows, cartoons, advertisements, greeting cards, toys, T-shirts, even alien-head salt and pepper shakers, attest to the popularity of this phenomenon.”"

If you agree with the inclusion of this quote, there's little to "suppose" about people making money off the topic. And I don't suppose any skeptical viewpoints make up a more than a tiny fraction of such sales (If you want know how hard it is in reality to get well-researched skeptical material published in a market swamped with pro-paranormal stuff I can oblige). And there's a "Psychosocial Hypothesis" link, too? Good. Rikstar 01:29, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Rikstar, I think you are confusing UFOs as entertainment vs. UFOs as a serious subject of study. Yes, there is much cultural material in movies, ads, etc. treating the subject as entertainment. But that is very different from the media treating it soberly and factually as something possibly real. Rather, the media bias is definitely towards either ignoring it altogether or ridiculing the topic. Incidentally, in the U.S., skeptics have their own publishing house called Prometheus Press that publishes anti-UFO books, controlled by the same people who put out the Skeptical Inquirer Magazine. There is no comparable "pro-UFO" publishing house.Dr Fil 18:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

WRT Rikstar's comment of "how dumb they (skeptics) would look if, say, a flying saucer landed on the White House lawn", I'd like to remind that in 1952 they came quite close to doing exactly that...

Quote I was fascinated by your account of the 1952 UFO flap around DC. I'm 68 now, but at age 13, I was there, living with my family - temporarily - in the sedate, colonial Alexandria home of my mother's sister and her husband. (My father was an Army officer. En route to Bogota, Colombia, Dad was going through Pentagon briefing.) What I recall as most striking about this flap was the ubiquitous excitement on local television, newspapers, and so forth. You didn't mention this in your piece, but individual sightings seemed to be all but continuous. Cars were piled up along the shoulders of the Mt. Vernon Parkway. Crowds gazing out across the Potomac toward DC and National Airport came and went. I remember my grown cousin - Jim (a broker in the family real estate business) - arriving at the house one day all but breathless with excitement over a sighting. As a sociologist I've long been fascinated by how civil authorities are able to virtually erase the direct experience (in this case) of literally hundreds of witnesses. Years would pass before my own inquiries would lead me to understand that UFOs represent a vital dimension of the human picture - hidden though it is behind smoke, mirrors, disinformation and sheer ignorance. Source —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dhatz (talk • contribs) 21:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC).

Mainstream science and Prozac explanations

This article still has "Flat Earth Society" comments such as "the general opinion of the mainstream scientific community is that all UFO sightings could ultimately be explained by prosaic explanations" which is clearly untrue (if you bother to read BlueBook Special Report 14 where Battelle Memorial Institute investigated 3201 cases you'll see why).

Also, if you read the content rather than just the title of many so-called "prosaic explanations", you'll understand why many humorously refer to them as Prozac-induced explanations.

On the issue of Science and UFOs, quotes by Dr. Peter A. Sturrock (Professor of Space Science and Astrophysics and Deputy Director of the Center for Space Sciences and Astrophysics at Stanford University; Director of the Skylab Workshop on Solar Flares in 1977 etc):

"The definitive resolution of the UFO enigma will not come about unless and until the problem is subjected to open and extensive scientific study by the normal procedures of established science. This requires a change in attitude primarily on the part of scientists and administrators in universities." (Sturrock, Peter A., Report on a Survey of the American Astronomical Society concerning the UFO Phenomenon, Stanford University Report SUIPR 68IR, 1977.)

"Although... the scientific community has tended to minimize the significance of the UFO phenomenon, certain individual scientists have argued that the phenomenon is both real and significant. Such views have been presented in the Hearings of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics [and elsewhere]. It is also notable that one major national scientific society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, set up a subcommittee in 1967 to gain a fresh and objective perspective on the UFO phenomenon.

In their public statements (but not necessarily in their private statements), scientists express a generally negative attitude towards the UFO problem, and it is interesting to try to understand this attitude. Most scientists have never had the occasion to confront evidence concerning the UFO phenomenon. To a scientist, the main source of hard information (other than his own experiments' observations) is provided by the scientific journals. With rare exceptions, scientific journals do not publish reports of UFO observations. The decision not to publish is made by the editor acting on the advice of reviewers. This process is self-reinforcing: the apparent lack of data confirms the view that there is nothing to the UFO phenomenon, and this view works against the presentation of relevant data." (Sturrock, Peter A., "An Analysis of the Condon Report on the Colorado UFO Project," Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1987.)"

Recently Dr. Sturrock reported that the journal SCIENCE has agreed to publish "well penned" papers on UFOs.

To be frank, it's simply been a "your soul or your job" situation.

Dhatz 19:16, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Length of the article

This article is getting very long eh? Maybe someone should divide it up into different articles

Ongoing scientific research and opinion polls

We should mention ongoing scientific research such as Project Hessdalen in Norway, an monitoring of UFOs (UAP) by teams from Norway and Italy, using CCD cameras, magnetometers etc

There should also be a correction to the section on public opinion, because all polls I've seen sofar (CNN/Time 1997, BBC etc) in the 1990s and this decade show that over 50% think UFOs are ET craft (and percentages go up with level of education). This is quite a bit more than the 24% claimed by "Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion - American Piety in the 21st Century" cited now. Some ideas can be had from http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/publicopinionpolls.htm (I'll add if I find time)

Feel free to take ideas from my page at http://www.hyper.net/ufo.html

Dhatz 02:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Astronomers and UFOs

The part of the article on astronomers, starts quoting Plait that "amateur astronomer's don't report UFO sightings to HIM", this is an old issue, answered even in McDonald's testimony in 1968, but here are a few more relevant items:

1/ comments on astronomers and UFOs and Plait's comments that others don't report UFOs to him

2/ Haisch, a professional astronomer (who has actually studied the UFO subject, unlike Plait who merely states that "most UFOs are probably due to mundane causes" which is pretty obvious) gives a perspective on astronomers and requests help from aviation professionals http://www.ufoskeptic.org/aviation.html Dhatz 22:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Link virtual Library UFO

Hello, it Would be possible to place this link of a library in line concerning the UFOS and which presents rare books on the subject? Well cordially Adama

Link :

http://ufolibrarykoloborder.blog4ever.com/blog/index-77783.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.253.226.43 (talk) 16:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC).

It's non-English, and I'm not sure if it adds much anyways (I see a few photos, and scattered quotes?). It might be more suited to the French article, but I don't know. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 16:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Ufo Library reponse

Yes the library is in French, but it comprises consultable whole books and not that quotations!!! Moreover I must place some English books on the subject. Cordially Adama

can this be added?

Can this link to a discussion form be added?

Group51 discussion forum

Basically it is only starting out, and may be a matter of interest. btw, this info is very informative.

Darth_Viperous 17:10 15 Jan 2007 (GMT)

Web-forums are rarely appropriate. Especially ones that are just starting out. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 17:13, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Vimanas - ancient flying machines

http://www.dark-truth.org/okt222006-4-vimanas.html Vimanas - Ancient Indian flying machine

Suggest adding the above article in the external links section of UFO topic, as its an important piece of UFO history in ancient times, and very well documented.

-DB —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.188.150 (talk) 02:52, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

UFO Pix and NEW case

Links are: UFO cases incl. Pix of O' Hare UFO, Ark UFOs viewed AS "The Devil", Ark UFO Case: Ark UFOs seen AS "Of The Devil". The former link has a pix of the UFO seen over the O' Hare Airport in Chicago. The latter links refer to a possibly still ongoing UFO incident in Arkansas. The explanation there by locals is that they believe that "The Devil" is in the area, while a primary witness, who is a former USAF noncom says that the incident was that either a military exercise was going on OR that a hoax is being perpetrated by pilots in aircraft. Can this be placed in the "

Main article: List of major UFO sightings

" article ? I'm still investigating the latter case. Martial Law 21:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)