"Why the ETH is not scientific"

[jca...@negia.net]

The following message was posted to sci.skeptic on June 14, and
elicited responses only from skeptics. I am reposting because
of frequent discussions about UFOs and science in the last 2
weeks:

Scientific hypothesis testing uses statistical analysis of data to
accept a null hypothesis or reject it in favor of an alternative. The
null/alternative hypothesis pair can almost always be represented as
A/Not A. The null/alternative suggested by Brian Zeiler (the
Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis or ETH) looks like A/B, where B is not
equivalent to Not A. If A is rejected, the result is messy:
possibilities C, D, E, etc. are left in addition to the designated
alternative B.

Scientific hypotheses should be stated carefully. Brian's null
hypothesis is that UFOs are "random, disparate misidentifications of
atmospheric or artificial terrestrial phenomena." Are
misidentifications of Venus atmospheric or artificial? Are they
terrestrial? Are retinal afterimages atmospheric or artificial?

Brian has said that a request to cite the best individual pieces of
evidence for ETH is a debunker's trick. In science the rule is put up
or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
good.

Data integrity is respected in science. If subjective interpretation
is required to generate data, blind designs are used. In UFOlogy, FOIA
material confirms the ETH (1) if it contains statements implying that
ETH is true, (2) if it should contain statements about the ETH, but
doesn't, or (3) if it contradicts ETH. Items 2 and 3 are evidence of a
coverup, which confirms the ETH. This way of handling data has been
called "Procrustean data torturing," after a character in Greek
mythology who had a bed that was always a perfect fit for his guests.
Procrustes' trick was that he stretched their legs if the victims were
short, or chopped off their legs if they were tall.

Choosing the best statistical analysis can be complicated, but
shopping around for a method that produces the desired interpretation
is not allowed. Why point to the advantages of a Bayesian approach
over a traditional method, while at the same time praising the results
of the BBSR chi-square analysis? The appropriateness of the analysis
and of the interpretation is what counts. A chi-square analysis of the
characteristics of apples and oranges might find significant
differences in color, number of seeds, and shape, but what new
information would be provided about the origins of the 2 classes?
Bayesian analysis sounds attractive, but requires estimation of prior
probability based on experience. UFOlogists and skeptics are likely to
disagree on the value of that probability for visits by
extraterrestrial vehicles.

Radar-visual correlations are cited as one of the strongest classes of
evidence for the ETH. There is one radar-wreckage correlation that is
seldom cited. A few years ago the crew of a guided missile cruiser
with state-of-the-art radar reported that a UFO was descending toward
the ship in a threatening manner, leading to the launch of a missile.
Shortly thereafter wreckage and bodies from a commercial airliner were
recovered from the sea. The radar recordings show a UFO climbing like
a commercial airliner. Human factors are important in UFO sightings
even when radar is involved.

What about photographic-visual correlations? Billions and billions
(apologies to one skeptic) of photographs are taken every year.
Extremely rare, brief, and unpredictable events are photographed, such
as commercial planes just seconds before crashing, with important
details visible (such as the DC-10 that lost an engine on takeoff from
Chicago, the PSA and Mexican planes that crashed in California after
colliding with small planes), but UFO photos are routinely out of
focus or lack details. Great tornado videos are taken every year. If
valid UFO sightings occur regularly, where are the comparable photos
and videos?

In science, fudging or being sloppy can ruin a reputation. Judging by
this newsgroup, many ETH believers tolerate hoaxers, bubbleheads, and
crackpots fairly well, and reserve their scorn for skeptics.

Brian has written, "We must accommodate the phenomenon by changing our
approach from the objective hypothesis falsification to the subjective
inference." In science, motions to suspend the rules are always out of
order. UFOlogists are free to believe what they wish, but if they want
scientific acceptance of their point of view, and if the body of UFO
evidence is as impressive as they think it is, then they should
generate testable hypotheses and evaluate them properly.

John Cason

"A beautiful theory, murdered by a gang of brutal facts."

Thomas Huxley

[Brian Zeiler]

jca...@negia.net wrote:

> Scientific hypothesis testing uses statistical analysis of data to
> accept a null hypothesis or reject it in favor of an alternative. The
> null/alternative hypothesis pair can almost always be represented as
> A/Not A. The null/alternative suggested by Brian Zeiler (the
> Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis or ETH) looks like A/B, where B is not
> equivalent to Not A. If A is rejected, the result is messy:
> possibilities C, D, E, etc. are left in addition to the designated
> alternative B.

This is incorrect, as will be explained below.

> Scientific hypotheses should be stated carefully. Brian's null
> hypothesis is that UFOs are "random, disparate misidentifications of
> atmospheric or artificial terrestrial phenomena." Are
> misidentifications of Venus atmospheric or artificial? Are they
> terrestrial? Are retinal afterimages atmospheric or artificial?

Uh, obviously Venus would fall under "atmospheric". The null hypothesis and
alternate hypothesis HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ALIENS, as will be explained
below. The null hypothesis is that physically solid disk-shaped vehicles do
NOT exist. The alternative hypothesis is that they DO exist. Note: this is
NOT the ETH. The ETH is dealt with only after the original null hypothesis
is rejected in favor of the alternative hypothesis that the vehicles exist.

> Brian has said that a request to cite the best individual pieces of
> evidence for ETH is a debunker's trick.

A distortive lie. I have said no such thing, and this is yet another example
of intentional deception and outright LIES by the self-styled skeptics. What
I *really* said is that demands for PHYSICAL PROOF are logical trickery
because it is quite likely that such a demand is unattainable when
conditional upon the presence of disk-shaped vehicles. Get your facts
straight and stop twisting my words. Resorting to such distortive tactics
only betrays the fundamental weakness of your ill-defended position.

> In science the rule is put up
> or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
> Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
> good.

This is patently false, since it presumes that such debunking efforts are
honest. When they rely on dogma-fueled logical trickery, then everything BUT
a dead alien can be "explained". For instance, when the debunkers
selectively alter and omit observations in order to impose conformance of the
data to a predetermined hypothesis, that is dogmatic logical trickery and
shoddy science. Observations should not be arbitrarily altered and omitted
to force conformance to a hypothesis to which the scientist is emotionally
attached.

You don't seem to understand the following:

1) Demanding unattainable evidential criteria is poor logic. Debunkers
demand physical proof, but they have not convinced me that such would be
available conditional upon the presence of unusual disk-shaped vehicles.
Therefore, I find such a demand logically specious. Furthermore, this
arbitrary criterion is defended by debunkers because of the "extraordinarity"
of the claim being made. Strangely, however, the debunkers have failed to
provide the world with a detailed, objective measurement system of the
extraordinarity of claims which, in turn, would lead to an equally objective
system of evidential demands consistent with the level of extraordinarity.
Because the debunkers failed on these two key aspects, their demand for
physical proof *instead* of the piles of direct and indirect observations is
logically unfit.

2) Arbitrarily altering and/or omitting observations to force conformance
with a preselected hypothesis is a misapplication of Occam's Razor. This
practice by debunkers further exposes the emotional, dogmatic basis of their
wish-based belief system.

> Data integrity is respected in science. If subjective interpretation
> is required to generate data, blind designs are used. In UFOlogy, FOIA
> material confirms the ETH (1) if it contains statements implying that
> ETH is true, (2) if it should contain statements about the ETH, but
> doesn't, or (3) if it contradicts ETH. Items 2 and 3 are evidence of a
> coverup, which confirms the ETH. This way of handling data has been
> called "Procrustean data torturing," after a character in Greek
> mythology who had a bed that was always a perfect fit for his guests.
> Procrustes' trick was that he stretched their legs if the victims were
> short, or chopped off their legs if they were tall.

This is the BIGGEST piece of BS strawman garbage that I've seen in some time.
First of all, you're still apparently confused about where aliens come into
this. Initially, they don't. See? The initial hypothesis test is the
alternative (that the vehicles exist) against the null (that the vehicles do
not exist).

Now let's look at your logic a little more deeply, and keep in mind that
we're testing against the null hypothesis that the VEHICLES do not exist; we
don't care about the possibly alien pilots at this point. We only care if
the OBJECTS exist. In your three above points, I presume you mean that FOIA
material is sufficient to adopt the alternative hypothesis that the OBJECTS
exist, subject to your three imaginary points that ufologists engage in.

Your first point is that it must contain statements implying that the null
hypothesis is untenable; it must imply that the alternate hypothesis, that
the objects exist, is true. By pointing this out as a flawed practice, it
seems to me that you are arbitrarily rejecting information in FOIA documents.

First of all, once again, by rejecting FOIA documents, you fail to provide
any objective criteria that constitute EVIDENCE in place of PROOF. The
pseudoreasoning is that evidence cannot exist without proof. Presumably the
intent of this is to preserve for yourself additional flexibility to reject
any evidence that may cross such a predetermined threshold. Once again, your
reasoning is specious and quite useless. Secondly, such FOIA information
exists in stunning abundance. All the early studies confirmed the existence
of the objects, such as the USAF's Project Sign. The scientists at Los
Alamos and White Sands had seen them frequently, as had the General Mills
balloon people. The scientific studies like the Condon Committee ruled that
certain radar-visual and photographic cases represented some seriously strong
evidence. We see a 1976 CIA document referring to "UFO propulsion".

We also see the following quotes, both inside and outside the FOIA by key
individuals (these may be new to you):

"I still do not know why the high order of classification has been given and
why the denial of the existence of these objects [has been perpetuated]."

Dr. Robert Sarbacher (on his involvement with secret government programs
dealing with UFOs), November 29, 1983

--------------

"Of course flying saucers are real -- and they are interplanetary."

Air Chief Marshall Lord Dowding, former head of Royal Air Force during World
War II; August 1954

--------------

"We find ourselves faced by powers which are far stronger than we had
hitherto assumed, and whose base of operations is at present unknown to us."

Dr. Werner von Braun (on the deflection from orbit of a United States
satellite, 1959)

--------------

"These objects are conceived and directed by intelligent beings of a very
high order. They probably do not originate in our solar system, perhaps not
even in our galaxy."

Dr. Hermann Oberth, 1954
--------------

"...highly secret government UFO investigations are going on that we don't
know about."

Senator Barry Goldwater
--------------

"The reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that
must have immediate attention."

H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, CIA;
December 2, 1952
--------------

"The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States
Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb. Flying saucers exist. Their
modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small
group headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush."

Wilbert Smith, in a formerly classified Canadian government memorandum dated
November 21, 1950
--------------

"The flying saucer situation is not all imaginary . . . Something is flying
around."

from July 1947 FBI/Army Intelligence Report (declassified by the United
States Freedom of Information Act in 1976)

--------------

"I am convinced that it was a flying saucer, and further, that these
disks are spaceships from another planet, ..."
-- US Navy Cmdr. R. B. McLaughlin, commanding at White Sands Missile Range,
quoted in 1950 after tracking a UFO through a telescope.

--------------

"Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned
about the UFO's. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens
are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. ... to hide
the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel."
-- Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of the CIA 1947-1950

--------------

"By this order, the Secretary of Air Force Office of Information must
delete all evidence of UFO reality and intelligent control, which would,
of course, contradict the Air Force stand that UFOs do not exist. The
same rule applies to A.F. press releases and UFO information given to
Congress and the public."
-- Chapter 4, Section B2.g (AFM 190-4) disclosed by USAF Major William
T. Coleman in 1962.

[end]

But like any good debunker well-schooled in the art of logical trickery, you
will find a way to demonstrate that such quotes do not at all give the
impression that the official government opinion is that the OBJECTS exist.
I'm sure it'll be no problem for you to dismiss the testimony of a former CIA
director and other high-ranking intelligence personnel. The logical trickery
here is that, unless such leaks are accompanied by physical proof, they shall
be presumed to be lies -- and I've already shown above how tremendously
absurd the demand for physical proof really is.

As for the second and third strawmen that basically revolve around the
obnoxious, cutesy wisecrack of debunkers that "absence of evidence is proof
of conspiracy", this is such a tired and useless line of reasoning that it
barely merits comment: no ufologist with any relevance or reasoning
abilities uses this logic. Only paranoid crackpots use this logic. I
suggest you debate real opponents, not imaginary ones.

> Choosing the best statistical analysis can be complicated, but
> shopping around for a method that produces the desired interpretation
> is not allowed.

You mean like demanding physical proof without establishing that such
physical proof is attainable, conditional upon the presence of disk-shaped
vehicles? Your above statement is rather self-indicting.

> Why point to the advantages of a Bayesian approach
> over a traditional method, while at the same time praising the results
> of the BBSR chi-square analysis?

The BBSR chi-square analysis, on the off chance you've read it and understand
it, is merely one observation. It has absolutely no relation whatsoever to
the methodology employed in the 'meta-analysis'. Secondly, the advantage of
a Bayesian approach over the 'traditional method' is quite clear if you can
read this without letting logical trickery get in the way. The FACT is that
I am simply NOT convinced that physical proof is a rational, attainable
demand conditional upon the presence of high-performance disk-shaped vehicles
in our skies. If I am correct, then your approach is useless and risks a
'false negative', or a rejection of a real phenomenon. But if am wrong about
the attainability of physical proof, then your approach is valid and I risk a
'false positive', or an acceptance of a nonexistent phenomenon. See
the thread I started called "Skeptical Incentive Structures" for detail on
the relative levels of risk-aversion in science toward these two types of
classification errors.

So, basically, your approach is invalid because of the following reasons.
First, you have failed to illustrate a 'mapping' that first measures the
extraordinarity of the claim and then provides appropriate evidential
criteria. Secondly, you have demanded evidence that is highly likely going
to be completely unattainable; evidential criteria must be attainable, but
you seem to think otherwise.

My approach deals with the unattainability of physical proof and seeks to
make an inference from the aggregate body of direct and indirect
observations, just the way the dinosaur hypothesis was inferred from the
observations of anomalous bone fragments. The UFO debunkers would have been
demanding an intact dinosaur back then, I suppose.

> The appropriateness of the analysis
> and of the interpretation is what counts. A chi-square analysis of the
> characteristics of apples and oranges might find significant
> differences in color, number of seeds, and shape, but what new
> information would be provided about the origins of the 2 classes?

You've obviously never read the analysis. Why not simply admit this
shortcoming of yours instead of pretending otherwise?

> Bayesian analysis sounds attractive, but requires estimation of prior
> probability based on experience. UFOlogists and skeptics are likely to
> disagree on the value of that probability for visits by
> extraterrestrial vehicles.

Yes, but boundary values can be tinkered with to show what the probabilities
must be in order to give a positive or negative output. And Bayesian
inference is not the only approach; I'm speaking more in the spirit of
Bayesian inference than in the actual application. I'm simply referring to
inductive, inferential reasoning from an aggregate body of observations.

> Radar-visual correlations are cited as one of the strongest classes of
> evidence for the ETH. There is one radar-wreckage correlation that is
> seldom cited. A few years ago the crew of a guided missile cruiser
> with state-of-the-art radar reported that a UFO was descending toward
> the ship in a threatening manner, leading to the launch of a missile.
> Shortly thereafter wreckage and bodies from a commercial airliner were
> recovered from the sea. The radar recordings show a UFO climbing like
> a commercial airliner. Human factors are important in UFO sightings
> even when radar is involved.

Thanks for illustrating yet another debunker logical trick: the strawman
argument which employs the tactic of a sweeping discrediting of a class of
observations by pointing out one possible MISclassification.

The first disturbing aspect here is the complete of any citation of any
person, document, or any other valid piece of identifying data that could
correlate your example with a known, verifiable source of information on the
case.

The second aspect is in the details of the case. Note that no observations
were made which featured maneuvers that were inconsistent with aircraft: you
said yourself that "the radar recordings show a UFO climbing like a
commercial airliner." Such conventional maneuvers are hardly characteristic
of those featured in radar-visual cases.

The third aspect is that there were no visual observations made that
correlated with the radar echoes. This increases the absurdity of your
supposed parallel between this case and a good radar-visual UFO case.

The fourth aspect is that the radar was correct in the determination of
physical solidity. That's another common feature of radar-visual cases: the
echoes cannot be attributed to any known stimuli of false echoes, and
furthermore, the echoes typically correlate with the visual contacts in
direction, speed, and maneuver. They also typically feature simultaneous
radar echoes on several channels, such as air and ground radar (along with
visual contact simultaneously). Further worthy of note is the fact that the
debunkers could never present a scientific counterargument to atmospheric
physicist Dr. James McDonald's analyses of radar-visual cases.

This is a very poor, misleading example because not only are you using the
strawman tactic of debunking a class of observations by illustrating one
possible misclassification, but your example has none of the qualitative
features that make radar-visual cases interesting. Thanks for illustrating
how logical trickery is so entrenched in the culture of debunkery that its
users are unaware of the extent of such usage.

> What about photographic-visual correlations? Billions and billions
> (apologies to one skeptic) of photographs are taken every year.
> Extremely rare, brief, and unpredictable events are photographed, such
> as commercial planes just seconds before crashing, with important
> details visible (such as the DC-10 that lost an engine on takeoff from
> Chicago, the PSA and Mexican planes that crashed in California after
> colliding with small planes), but UFO photos are routinely out of
> focus or lack details. Great tornado videos are taken every year. If
> valid UFO sightings occur regularly, where are the comparable photos
> and videos?

Thanks for illustrating *another* debunker logical trick! Your trick here is
the attitude "I have seen no such evidence; therefore, it cannot exist,
because surely I would know about it." It's kind of like your laughably
irrelevant criticism of the chi square analysis which betrays your lack of
familiarity with the analysis.

Apparently you have not seen the UFO photos that were taken in broad daylight
with background reference, multiple photographs, negatives available, and
clear focus. These are photos in which not only are there no signs of
hoaxing, but photometric measures also argue against hoaxing by showing how
the features are more consistent with a large disk at a distance from the
camera instead of a frisbee hung in front of the camera.

For instance, Dr. William K. Hartmann was a photographic analyst for the
USAF-commissioned Condon Report on Unidentified Flying Objects in
1969. Consider what Dr. Hartmann states about the Trent (McMinnville)
photos:

"This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated,
geometric, psychological, and physical appear to be consistent with the
assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic,
disc-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew
within the sight of two witnesses. It cannot be said that the evidence
positively rules out fabrication, although there are some factors such as
the accuracy of certain photometric measures of the original negatives
which argue against a fabrication."

Also consider what the astrophysicist Dr. Guerin says about the Lac Chauvet
photos:

Dr. Pierre Guerin is a professor at the Institut d'Astrophysique in
Paris. The Journal of Scientific Exploration is a peer-reviewed journal
published through Stanford. The editorial board consists of Dr. Robert
Jahn, Princeton; Dr. Peter Sturrock, Stanford University; and Dr. Ian
Stevenson, University of Virginia. Dr. Guerin's article follows.

Geurin, Pierre. "A Scientific Analysis of Four Photographs of a Flying
Disk Near Lac Chauvet (France)", Journal of Scientific Exploration,
Volume 8, Number 4, pp. 447 - 469, 1994.

Abstract: "A series of four photographs of a disk-shaped object
apparently flying in the sky was physically analyzed. Certain details
led us to develop a mathematical model of the supposed trajectory. The
model was validated by measurements on the photographs, which
demonstrated that the disk was distant from the camera, flying along a
straight and horizontal trajectory, and was not a fabrication."

Dr. Guerin discusses the negatives:

"Some years later, I obtained the original negatives [The photos are
from 1952.] There were actually four 24 x 36 [mm] images, taken
successively on a black and white negative film. They were preceded and
followed by images having no relation with the UFO photographs.
Therefore, there were no successive attempts to get 'good' photographs of
the objects, nor 'failures'. For me this was a strong argument against a
forgery, although it was not yet proof. I critically analyzed the four
negatives with a microscope, which made me certain of the absence of any
alteration or natural photographic artifact like a reflection,
development marks, etc. These were images of an outside object formed on
the film through the camera lens. Moreover, these images could not
result from intentional superposition (by use of a two-way mirror or
other means), because such a trick would not leave on the negatives dark
details of the foreground trees completely underexposed and the lower
side of the UFO partially underexposed. Hence, the photographs showed an
object in the sky, but what kind of an object?"

He eventually concludes after extensive quantitative treatment of the
trajectory and calculation of the size and distance:

"...We have demonstrated that the photographs showed a disk-shaped object
located at a large distance in the sky and, thus, having large
dimensions. This model is validated by good agreement between the
numerical results one can deduce from it, and the measurements on the
images. The disk was flying along a straight and horizontal trajectory,
keeping an inclination to the horizontal plane, about the axis
trajectory and at an angle which remained between about 5 degrees and 12
degrees. The eccentric spot remained aligned along this axis during the
observation, which makes unlikely the possibility of forgery by means of
a model hung at the end of a wire or thrown into the air."

So not only are you patently incorrect by advancing such a demonstrably false
assertion, but you have illustrated yet another logical trick by assuming
that evidence cannot exist if you have not heard of it. Other photos have
been taken with equally impressive analyses, and many were taken by on-duty
military personnel around the world.

> In science, fudging or being sloppy can ruin a reputation. Judging by
> this newsgroup, many ETH believers tolerate hoaxers, bubbleheads, and
> crackpots fairly well, and reserve their scorn for skeptics.

This is a rather morally repugnant strawman tactic which features a sweeping
generalization and almost ad hominem distortion that seeks to generalize the
opposition in order to debunk it. Serious ufologists have zero tolerance for
"hoaxers, bubbleheads, and crackpots".

> Brian has written, "We must accommodate the phenomenon by changing our
> approach from the objective hypothesis falsification to the subjective
> inference." In science, motions to suspend the rules are always out of
> order.

No rules are being suspended. The approach I suggest is already an accepted
method to deal with observations for which physical proof is unattainable,
such as early paleontological research into dinosaur fossils. This is yet
another logical trick (thanks for the illustration) in which you seek to
discredit the opposition's approach by pretending that they suggest an
invalid methodology. The truth is that the methodology of inference is
accepted. And recall my discussion above regarding the attainability of
physical proof and the lack of logic in demanding it.

> UFOlogists are free to believe what they wish, but if they want
> scientific acceptance of their point of view, and if the body of UFO
> evidence is as impressive as they think it is, then they should
> generate testable hypotheses and evaluate them properly.

I have shown that your entire post was full of constant logical tricks,
distortions, strawmen, generalizations, specious reasoning, and fallacious
logic. You have been extremely cooperative with my latest mission of
exposing the logical trickeries of the debunkers, and I thank you.

--
Brian Zeiler

[Peacemaker]

In article <NEWTNews.836347...@negia.net.negia.net>

jca...@negia.net writes:
>> Scientific hypothesis testing uses statistical analysis of data to
>> accept a null hypothesis or reject it in favor of an alternative. The
>> null/alternative hypothesis pair can almost always be represented as
>> A/Not A. The null/alternative suggested by Brian Zeiler (the
>> Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis or ETH) looks like A/B, where B is not
>> equivalent to Not A. If A is rejected, the result is messy:
>> possibilities C, D, E, etc. are left in addition to the designated
>> alternative B.

Good science is to take everything into account, and
not to start reasoning without any input.

All hypothesis should confine with ALL evidence.
If one contradicts the evidence, the hypothesis is wrong and
needs adaption.

Currently the most LOGIC explaination of the UFO phenomena is
that they DO EXIST. ALL phenomena can be explained by assuming
that they exist, with ALL their CONSEQUENCES.

These consequences are very clear in the abduction-phonomena,
and the governments secrecy.

The trouble is that we don't know everything, and that most
evidence is interfering with our current worldview.

It is not against SCIENCE to ADAPT your WORLDVIEW according
to EVIDENCE.

>>
>> Scientific hypotheses should be stated carefully. Brian's null
>> hypothesis is that UFOs are "random, disparate misidentifications of
>> atmospheric or artificial terrestrial phenomena." Are
>> misidentifications of Venus atmospheric or artificial? Are they
>> terrestrial? Are retinal afterimages atmospheric or artificial?

I agree that the null hypothesis should also include psychology and
religious phenomena.

Those who study these will actually a parallell between these areas
and UFO's, but not in the way of similarity, but that the
extra-terrestials may have a much better knowledge of these areas.

>>
>> Brian has said that a request to cite the best individual pieces of
>> evidence for ETH is a debunker's trick. In science the rule is put up
>> or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
>> Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
>> good.
>>
>> Data integrity is respected in science.

One point about data-integrity: the data is there, but we translate
it incorrectly.

>> If subjective interpretation
>> is required to generate data, blind designs are used. In UFOlogy, FOIA
>> material confirms the ETH (1) if it contains statements implying that
>> ETH is true, (2) if it should contain statements about the ETH, but
>> doesn't, or (3) if it contradicts ETH. Items 2 and 3 are evidence of a
>> coverup, which confirms the ETH.

One big mistake: EVEN without ANY evidence, extra-terrestials EXIST.

One may assume they live on different planets, but if life is here
it will (according to Darwin) exist elsewhere too!
The UFO phenomena has been evidence of it for thousands of years.
(possibly not in the full extend).

>> This way of handling data has been
>> called "Procrustean data torturing," after a character in Greek
>> mythology who had a bed that was always a perfect fit for his guests.
>> Procrustes' trick was that he stretched their legs if the victims were
>> short, or chopped off their legs if they were tall.

I see the parallel with Procrustes and Debunkers perfectly.

>>
>> Choosing the best statistical analysis can be complicated, but

sorry, ANYONE can conclude ANYTHING with STATISTICS.

Familliar with:
there is a 1 in million chance that there is live on mars,
but still the come...

>> shopping around for a method that produces the desired interpretation
>> is not allowed. Why point to the advantages of a Bayesian approach
>> over a traditional method, while at the same time praising the results
>> of the BBSR chi-square analysis? The appropriateness of the analysis
>> and of the interpretation is what counts. A chi-square analysis of the
>> characteristics of apples and oranges might find significant
>> differences in color, number of seeds, and shape, but what new
>> information would be provided about the origins of the 2 classes?
>> Bayesian analysis sounds attractive, but requires estimation of prior
>> probability based on experience. UFOlogists and skeptics are likely to
>> disagree on the value of that probability for visits by
>> extraterrestrial vehicles.
>>
>> Radar-visual correlations are cited as one of the strongest classes of
>> evidence for the ETH. There is one radar-wreckage correlation that is
>> seldom cited. A few years ago the crew of a guided missile cruiser

REFERENCES PLEASE!!!!!!

>> with state-of-the-art radar reported that a UFO was descending toward
>> the ship in a threatening manner, leading to the launch of a missile.

Soldiers should know that no UFO has ever been shot down by a bullet
or missile.

>> Shortly thereafter wreckage and bodies from a commercial airliner were
>> recovered from the sea. The radar recordings show a UFO climbing like

New radars are always tricky, the soldiers should have known that.
And, besides, UFO's act often very different from normal airplaines,
by going very fast, hanging still, and sudden change of direction/speed.
Very unlike a regular plane/helicopter/sattelite/meteorite.

>> a commercial airliner. Human factors are important in UFO sightings
>> even when radar is involved.

Did you know that there are no camera's at the radar-screens.
Good point for the cover-up hypothesis.

>> What about photographic-visual correlations? Billions and billions
>> (apologies to one skeptic) of photographs are taken every year.
>> Extremely rare, brief, and unpredictable events are photographed, such
>> as commercial planes just seconds before crashing, with important
>> details visible (such as the DC-10 that lost an engine on takeoff from
>> Chicago, the PSA and Mexican planes that crashed in California after
>> colliding with small planes), but UFO photos are routinely out of
>> focus or lack details. Great tornado videos are taken every year. If
>> valid UFO sightings occur regularly, where are the comparable photos
>> and videos?

Did you ever hear about the cover-up?
Due to that, we can't even tell how many has been observed.

There is some evidence of UFO's playing hide and seek,
interating with the observers.
Maybe they do see us recording and try to avoid it.
If they can do telepathy, as according to any abductee,
it is quite easy for them to avoid detection.

There is some similarity with ghosts. They also seem to know
when people try to record them. And often things happen just when
the camera is out of reach...

The out of focus pictures seem to suggest that there
is more than just plain physics here.
The best hypothesis for this is to assume that they can move
through dimensions or that they use gravity for propulsion.
Something usefull anyway, if they want to travel large distances.

The many dimensions hypothesis is already used in the super-string
theory.

>>
>> In science, fudging or being sloppy can ruin a reputation. Judging by
>> this newsgroup, many ETH believers tolerate hoaxers, bubbleheads, and
>> crackpots fairly well, and reserve their scorn for skeptics.

I see more skeptic crackpots, hoaxers ect. actually.

Do you expect that the newsgroups readers will still respect you if you
make statements like this...

Anyway, there is a lot of hatred in this newsgroup, and I think that
by coorporating we may come somewhere.
That means, if you don't agree with the hypothesis, don't break it,
but bring an alternative hypothesis which seems to fit the evidence better.

I think you have had enough disk-space used by now to come up with
something new !!!

>>
>> Brian has written, "We must accommodate the phenomenon by changing our
>> approach from the objective hypothesis falsification to the subjective
>> inference."

>> In science, motions to suspend the rules are always out of
>> order. UFOlogists are free to believe what they wish, but if they want
>> scientific acceptance of their point of view, and if the body of UFO
>> evidence is as impressive as they think it is, then they should
>> generate testable hypotheses and evaluate them properly.
>>
>> John Cason
>>

What do you mean by properly...
If I assume that we can contact aliens by deep meditation,
and I do actually contact them, does that mean that
I have PROVED my theory.

Or I could assume that most extra-terrestials near us live in
a different dimension.
Hard to prove/test, unless they contact me isn't it?

>>
>>
>> "A beautiful theory, murdered by a gang of brutal facts."
>>
>> Thomas Huxley

Like I said above I missed any facts or any alternative theory.

Whether or not you think this is all scientific,
what is actually your definition of science?

P.

--
-- Peace & freedom in all dimensions --
-- and in our minds too ---

[Bill Peterson]

In article <NEWTNews.836347...@negia.net.negia.net>,

<jca...@negia.net> wrote:
>
>The following message was posted to sci.skeptic on June 14, and
>elicited responses only from skeptics. I am reposting because
>of frequent discussions about UFOs and science in the last 2
>weeks:
>
>
>Scientific hypothesis testing uses statistical analysis of data to
>accept a null hypothesis or reject it in favor of an alternative. The
>null/alternative hypothesis pair can almost always be represented as
>A/Not A. The null/alternative suggested by Brian Zeiler (the
>Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis or ETH) looks like A/B, where B is not
>equivalent to Not A. If A is rejected, the result is messy:
>possibilities C, D, E, etc. are left in addition to the designated
>alternative B.
>

Right, so:
A = all reports and radar reports are of:
1) natural, perhaps rare, occurences
2) man-made technology of some kind
3) errors in reporting

Not A = some reports are of something outside the
conditions set forth in A. In other words, non-natural, non-human
causes.

>Scientific hypotheses should be stated carefully. Brian's null
>hypothesis is that UFOs are "random, disparate misidentifications of
>atmospheric or artificial terrestrial phenomena." Are
>misidentifications of Venus atmospheric or artificial? Are they
>terrestrial? Are retinal afterimages atmospheric or artificial?
>

I think these are covered; Venus and retinal afterimages are natural
occurences.

>Brian has said that a request to cite the best individual pieces of
>evidence for ETH is a debunker's trick. In science the rule is put up
>or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
>Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
>good.
>

Many investigations of UFO's have been done. Many scientists have
gone on record stating that the UFO phenomenon is Not_A. There are
many "best" cases, and the similarity of the cases is also significant.

>Data integrity is respected in science. If subjective interpretation
>is required to generate data, blind designs are used. In UFOlogy, FOIA
>material confirms the ETH (1) if it contains statements implying that
>ETH is true, (2) if it should contain statements about the ETH, but
>doesn't, or (3) if it contradicts ETH. Items 2 and 3 are evidence of a
>coverup, which confirms the ETH. This way of handling data has been
>called "Procrustean data torturing," after a character in Greek
>mythology who had a bed that was always a perfect fit for his guests.
>Procrustes' trick was that he stretched their legs if the victims were
>short, or chopped off their legs if they were tall.
>

FOIA documents include :
1) reports that appear to be Not_A
2) conclusions of officials that the reports are Not_A
3) investigations of sightings of concern to the military, again,
the conclusion by the scientist was Not_A.
4) reactions to invasions of air-space, and methods and sources of
gathering information

These reports, conclusions, investigations, and reactions all indicate
a strong possibility that Not_A holds.

>Choosing the best statistical analysis can be complicated, but
>shopping around for a method that produces the desired interpretation
>is not allowed. Why point to the advantages of a Bayesian approach
>over a traditional method, while at the same time praising the results
>of the BBSR chi-square analysis? The appropriateness of the analysis
>and of the interpretation is what counts. A chi-square analysis of the
>characteristics of apples and oranges might find significant
>differences in color, number of seeds, and shape, but what new
>information would be provided about the origins of the 2 classes?
>Bayesian analysis sounds attractive, but requires estimation of prior
>probability based on experience. UFOlogists and skeptics are likely to
>disagree on the value of that probability for visits by
>extraterrestrial vehicles.
>

Correct. The lack of a real probability is a hindrance. Some on these
threads will assert that ET visitation is "wildly improbable".

>Radar-visual correlations are cited as one of the strongest classes of
>evidence for the ETH. There is one radar-wreckage correlation that is
>seldom cited. A few years ago the crew of a guided missile cruiser
>with state-of-the-art radar reported that a UFO was descending toward
>the ship in a threatening manner, leading to the launch of a missile.
>Shortly thereafter wreckage and bodies from a commercial airliner were
>recovered from the sea. The radar recordings show a UFO climbing like
>a commercial airliner. Human factors are important in UFO sightings
>even when radar is involved.
>

Agreed. However, in another case, a Navy patrol plane was outmaneuvered,
and radar clocked the object at 1800 mph, in 1950.

>What about photographic-visual correlations? Billions and billions
>(apologies to one skeptic) of photographs are taken every year.
>Extremely rare, brief, and unpredictable events are photographed, such
>as commercial planes just seconds before crashing, with important
>details visible (such as the DC-10 that lost an engine on takeoff from
>Chicago, the PSA and Mexican planes that crashed in California after
>colliding with small planes), but UFO photos are routinely out of
>focus or lack details. Great tornado videos are taken every year. If
>valid UFO sightings occur regularly, where are the comparable photos
>and videos?
>

It appears that UFO's may ionize the atmosphere around them. This will
preclude good focus. However, some good films exist, and it seems
more are being taken. All are written off by skeptics.

>In science, fudging or being sloppy can ruin a reputation. Judging by
>this newsgroup, many ETH believers tolerate hoaxers, bubbleheads, and
>crackpots fairly well, and reserve their scorn for skeptics.
>

The "blue hair" UFO fringe is inevitable. It is the skeptics who
portray themselves as the beacons of sanity, while simultaneously
attacking.

>Brian has written, "We must accommodate the phenomenon by changing our
>approach from the objective hypothesis falsification to the subjective
>inference." In science, motions to suspend the rules are always out of
>order. UFOlogists are free to believe what they wish, but if they want
>scientific acceptance of their point of view, and if the body of UFO
>evidence is as impressive as they think it is, then they should
>generate testable hypotheses and evaluate them properly.
>

The problem here is that there is an organization that controls the
UFO data. This organization does not want to release the data, and
will definitely lie and delay. Some conclusive data could have been
gathered by this organization (through the use of gun camera films),
but none of these have been released. It will be difficult if not
impossible to test a hypothesis when the data has been confiscated.
Of what value are your statistical conclusions when you are denied
access to all the data?

BP
--
Disclaimer: I only speak for myself, and sometimes I wish I hadn't!

[Michael Edelman]

Bill Peterson (bi...@io.com) wrote:

: It appears that UFO's may ionize the atmosphere around them. This will
: preclude good focus.

Here's an example of what the prvious poster was talking about. An ad-hoc
explaination is formulated to adapt the data to the hypothesis, rather
than the other way around. This is letting the hypothesis drive the data,
rather than the other way around. The claim of ionization is pulled out of
thin air to explain a data problem, with no other justification.

It doesn't help the argument that ionizing the atmosphere would *not*
"preclude good focus". That's a nosensical statement.

However, some good films exist, and it seems
: more are being taken. All are written off by skeptics.

So...do they, or don't they "ionize the air" and "preclude good focus"?
Again, note that additional causes are introduced and withdrawn as
required to fit the data to the hypothesis.

: The problem here is that there is an organization that controls the

: UFO data. This organization does not want to release the data, and
: will definitely lie and delay. Some conclusive data could have been
: gathered by this organization (through the use of gun camera films),
: but none of these have been released. It will be difficult if not
: impossible to test a hypothesis when the data has been confiscated.
: Of what value are your statistical conclusions when you are denied
: access to all the data?

Again, the claim that unseen data exists that would prove the theory. This
is not science.

--mike

[Michael Edelman]

Brian Zeiler (bdze...@students.wisc.edu) wrote:

: > In science the rule is put up

: > or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
: > Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
: > good.

: This is patently false, since it presumes that such debunking efforts are
: honest.

So...the debunkers are all dishonest, ergo no objections to the ETH
need be taken seriously?

This is a rather cute way of avoiding dealing with criticism. Of course,
most objections raised by critics are questions, and as such can stand
independantly of the purported honesty of the skeptical questioner. If
I say "why are most UFO photos out of focus?" then that question doesn't
depend on my honesty.

: shoddy science. Observations should not be arbitrarily altered and omitted

: to force conformance to a hypothesis to which the scientist is emotionally
: attached.

Interesting you should take that position.

: 1) Demanding unattainable evidential criteria is poor logic. Debunkers

: demand physical proof, but they have not convinced me that such would be
: available conditional upon the presence of unusual disk-shaped vehicles.

Whoa; tricky sentence construction. What Brian is saying in his roundabout
way is that the skeptics have not convinced him that physical proof would
be availible if flying saucers existed.

Ergo if skepics have not convinced Brian that physical proof could exist,
there's no need to demand it.

This all rests on his contentions that skeptics demand nothing short of
physical proof, which is nonsense for a couple of reasons. One is that
while physical proof would be nice, a good videotape would do wonders.

But what I find puzzling about this claim of Brian's is that while I've
not seen a lot of deman for physical proof in this forum, I have seen scores
of claims made of physical proof- names the fragments of Mg purported
to be of alien manufacture.

This puts Brian in a bit of a quandry: If he accepts that the Mg fragments
are of alien origin, then he *is* convinced that physical evidence
of alien spacecraft exists.

If he still maintains that he is unconvinced that physical evidence
exists, than he is denying the purported alien origins of the lumps
of Mg from Brazil.

So which is it?

: Therefore, I find such a demand logically specious. Furthermore, this

: arbitrary criterion is defended by debunkers because of the "extraordinarity"
: of the claim being made. Strangely, however, the debunkers have failed to
: provide the world with a detailed, objective measurement system of the
: extraordinarity of claims which, in turn, would lead to an equally objective
: system of evidential demands consistent with the level of extraordinarity.

"Extraordinarity"? Not in Webster's. This is one of the hazards of attempting
to use overly verbose language.

So he's trying to say that because skeptics haven't created an objective
measure of how extraordinary something is, the demand for extraordinary proof
for extraordinary claims is...."logically specious". I think he's really
grasping at straws here in making his marticularly extraordinary demand
for an objective measure of "extraordinarity". What Sagan meant when he
said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof is simply
something that we're all familiar with on an intuitive level. If someone
tells you he drove a Honda Accord to the office, you accept it without
questioning. If someone says he rode a horse, you might question this. If
he says he rode an elephant, you might want to demand to see the elephant.
And if he claims he was brought in a flying saucer, it would certainly seem
reasonable to ask for more than his simple testimony on the matter!

: Because the debunkers failed on these two key aspects, their demand for

: physical proof *instead* of the piles of direct and indirect observations is
: logically unfit.

"Logically unfit"? Brian does have a penchant for neologisms.

: > Data integrity is respected in science. If subjective interpretation

: > is required to generate data, blind designs are used. In UFOlogy, FOIA
: > material confirms the ETH (1) if it contains statements implying that
: > ETH is true, (2) if it should contain statements about the ETH, but
: > doesn't, or (3) if it contradicts ETH. Items 2 and 3 are evidence of a
: > coverup, which confirms the ETH. This way of handling data has been
: > called "Procrustean data torturing," after a character in Greek
: > mythology who had a bed that was always a perfect fit for his guests.
: > Procrustes' trick was that he stretched their legs if the victims were
: > short, or chopped off their legs if they were tall.

: This is the BIGGEST piece of BS strawman garbage that I've seen in some time.
: First of all, you're still apparently confused about where aliens come into
: this. Initially, they don't. See? The initial hypothesis test is the
: alternative (that the vehicles exist) against the null (that the vehicles do
: not exist).

I think it's becoming painfully clear that Brian doesn't understand much
of the methodology of science. Either that, or he's right, and western
scientific tradition has been completely misguided...`

Following were a number of quotes that establish, at beast, that some people
of good character believe in alien spacecraft, and that some government
agencies believed that the matter should be hushed up. I print a few, with
comments:
: --------------

: "The reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that
: must have immediate attention."

: H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, CIA;
: December 2, 1952

So "something" is proof that alien spacecraft eists?

: --------------

: "The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States
: Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb. Flying saucers exist. Their
: modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small
: group headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush."

: Wilbert Smith, in a formerly classified Canadian government memorandum dated
: November 21, 1950

i
This is Brian's strongest datum- a second hand report from a purported
Canadian government memorandum by an unknown functionary to an unrevealed
recepient. It's also not a FOIA document; Canada is a different country ;-)
--------------

: "The flying saucer situation is not all imaginary . . . Something is flying
: around."

: from July 1947 FBI/Army Intelligence Report (declassified by the United
: States Freedom of Information Act in 1976)

Again, "something" is interpreted by Brian as "flying saucers"
: --------------

: "I am convinced that it was a flying saucer, and further, that these
: disks are spaceships from another planet, ..."
: -- US Navy Cmdr. R. B. McLaughlin, commanding at White Sands Missile Range,
: quoted in 1950 after tracking a UFO through a telescope.

There's a *big* leap of faith in this statement!

: --------------

: "Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned
: about the UFO's. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens
: are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. ... to hide
: the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel."
: -- Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of the CIA 1947-1950

What facts?
: --------------

: "By this order, the Secretary of Air Force Office of Information must
: delete all evidence of UFO reality and intelligent control, which would,
: of course, contradict the Air Force stand that UFOs do not exist. The
: same rule applies to A.F. press releases and UFO information given to
: Congress and the public."
: -- Chapter 4, Section B2.g (AFM 190-4) disclosed by USAF Major William
: T. Coleman in 1962.

And this proves that...? There is no doubt that the USAF gave the UFO
question serious consideration, and that the inquiry was kept secret.
What does that prove?

: [end]

: > Choosing the best statistical analysis can be complicated, but

: > shopping around for a method that produces the desired interpretation
: > is not allowed.

: You mean like demanding physical proof without establishing that such
: physical proof is attainable, conditional upon the presence of disk-shaped
: vehicles? Your above statement is rather self-indicting.

No, Brian, not the same thing at all. He just explained to you why data
mining is unacceptible in science, and you blew it off by trying to change
the subject.

: > Why point to the advantages of a Bayesian approach

: > over a traditional method, while at the same time praising the results
: > of the BBSR chi-square analysis?

: The BBSR chi-square analysis, on the off chance you've read it and understand
: it, is merely one observation. It has absolutely no relation whatsoever to
: the methodology employed in the 'meta-analysis'.

Brian is now trying to distance himself from the claims he made of the
dubious X-square analysis he cited a while back, which "proved" that
pictues of alains look different from pictures of humans ;-)

Secondly, the advantage of
: a Bayesian approach over the 'traditional method' is quite clear if you can
: read this without letting logical trickery get in the way.

I.e., he can't really explain why it's better and he's hoping he can bluff
his way through this!

The FACT is that
: I am simply NOT convinced that physical proof is a rational, attainable
: demand conditional upon the presence of high-performance disk-shaped vehicles
: in our skies. If I am correct, then your approach is useless and risks a
: 'false negative', or a rejection of a real phenomenon.

Brian is trying to say that if you demand physical proof and physical
proof is impossible to get, then you'll never have proof.

As to why physical proff is impossible, who knows? Humans have left tons
of garbage in space, on the moon, mars and venus, and Brian himself
has stoutly defended the claims made for the Brazillian magnesium
chunks, so it would appear that not only is it reasonable to assume
that physical proof could exist, but that Brian believes this to be the case.

But if am wrong about
: the attainability of physical proof, then your approach is valid and I risk a
: 'false positive', or an acceptance of a nonexistent phenomenon.

: the thread I started called "Skeptical Incentive Structures" for detail on

: the relative levels of risk-aversion in science toward these two types of
: classification errors.

I don't think you're the one to be lecturing on signal detection theory,
given your misunderstanding of Type I/Type II errors in radar data.

: So, basically, your approach is invalid because of the following reasons.

: First, you have failed to illustrate a 'mapping' that first measures the
: extraordinarity of the claim and then provides appropriate evidential
: criteria.

NOw he wants a "mapping"?

BTW, for those put off by Brians's attept to hide his lack of knowledge
in scientific-sounding language, a "mapping" between to sets is just a
way of associating things from one list with things from another list.
He's asking that skeptics come up with a way of mapping "extraordinarity"
of claims to proofs. As noted earlier, Sagan's demand is simply a restatement
of a common convention that people implicitly use in ordinary discourse.
Brian is trying to obfuscaet his way aaround it.

: > The appropriateness of the analysis

: > and of the interpretation is what counts. A chi-square analysis of the
: > characteristics of apples and oranges might find significant
: > differences in color, number of seeds, and shape, but what new
: > information would be provided about the origins of the 2 classes?

: You've obviously never read the analysis. Why not simply admit this
: shortcoming of yours instead of pretending otherwise?

More noise. Brian thinks a chi-square "proves" that descriptions of
aliens prove that they're not humans. So what?

: > Bayesian analysis sounds attractive, but requires estimation of prior

: > probability based on experience. UFOlogists and skeptics are likely to
: > disagree on the value of that probability for visits by
: > extraterrestrial vehicles.

: Yes, but boundary values can be tinkered with to show what the probabilities
: must be in order to give a positive or negative output.

This is data mining, or what the original poster called Procrustean data
torturing. It's working backwards from conclusions to assumptions.

And Bayesian
: inference is not the only approach; I'm speaking more in the spirit of
: Bayesian inference than in the actual application.

Suddenly he's not defending the Bayesian approach any more; only
the *spirit* of the approach...! He doesn't seem very comitted to much of
anything...

: > Radar-visual correlations are cited as one of the strongest classes of

: > evidence for the ETH. There is one radar-wreckage correlation that is
: > seldom cited. A few years ago the crew of a guided missile cruiser
: > with state-of-the-art radar reported that a UFO was descending toward
: > the ship in a threatening manner, leading to the launch of a missile.
: > Shortly thereafter wreckage and bodies from a commercial airliner were
: > recovered from the sea. The radar recordings show a UFO climbing like
: > a commercial airliner. Human factors are important in UFO sightings
: > even when radar is involved.

: Thanks for illustrating yet another debunker logical trick: the strawman
: argument which employs the tactic of a sweeping discrediting of a class of
: observations by pointing out one possible MISclassification.

: The first disturbing aspect here is the complete of any citation of any
: person, document, or any other valid piece of identifying data that could
: correlate your example with a known, verifiable source of information on the
: case.

It was in all the newspapers, and the TV news, Brian ;-)

: Apparently you have not seen the UFO photos that were taken in broad daylight

: with background reference, multiple photographs, negatives available, and
: clear focus. These are photos in which not only are there no signs of
: hoaxing, but photometric measures also argue against hoaxing by showing how
: the features are more consistent with a large disk at a distance from the
: camera instead of a frisbee hung in front of the camera.

Supply them. All you've ever given us is your second-hand claims of
radar-visual data that you apparantly don't understand (and which
relies onm the testimony of a single individual) and out of context quotes
in which known individuals state their belief in the possibility of
UFOs, and unknown individuals claism to have seen tthings that they
assume were UFOs.

: For instance, Dr. William K. Hartmann was a photographic analyst for the

: USAF-commissioned Condon Report on Unidentified Flying Objects in
: 1969. Consider what Dr. Hartmann states about the Trent (McMinnville)
: photos:

: "This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated,
: geometric, psychological, and physical appear to be consistent with the
: assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic,
: disc-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew
: within the sight of two witnesses. It cannot be said that the evidence
: positively rules out fabrication, although there are some factors such as
: the accuracy of certain photometric measures of the original negatives
: which argue against a fabrication."

...and those photometric measurements were...?

Note that fraud was not ruled out.

: Also consider what the astrophysicist Dr. Guerin says about the Lac Chauvet
: photos:

More on this one when I track down the reference.

: > In science, fudging or being sloppy can ruin a reputation. Judging by

: > this newsgroup, many ETH believers tolerate hoaxers, bubbleheads, and
: > crackpots fairly well, and reserve their scorn for skeptics.

: This is a rather morally repugnant strawman tactic which features a sweeping
: generalization and almost ad hominem distortion that seeks to generalize the
: opposition in order to debunk it. Serious ufologists have zero tolerance for
: "hoaxers, bubbleheads, and crackpots".

...except when it serves their needs...

[Bill Peterson]

In article <4rdqt7$m...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,
Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>Bill Peterson (bi...@io.com) wrote:
>
>
>: It appears that UFO's may ionize the atmosphere around them. This will
>: preclude good focus.
>
>

>Here's an example of what the prvious poster was talking about. An ad-hoc
>explaination is formulated to adapt the data to the hypothesis, rather
>than the other way around. This is letting the hypothesis drive the data,
>rather than the other way around. The claim of ionization is pulled out of
>thin air to explain a data problem, with no other justification.
>

No sir, the proposal for ionization was arrived at by two rocket
scientists, after studying reports of ground traces, radiation burns,
and illumination characteristics. It *is* the data that drives this
proposal, and not the other way around.

>It doesn't help the argument that ionizing the atmosphere would *not*
>"preclude good focus". That's a nosensical statement.
>

I am just a microprocessor designer, but Paul Hill does an admirable
job of describing this effect.

> However, some good films exist, and it seems
>: more are being taken. All are written off by skeptics.
>

>So...do they, or don't they "ionize the air" and "preclude good focus"?
>Again, note that additional causes are introduced and withdrawn as
>required to fit the data to the hypothesis.
>

As discussed by Hill (have you read this?), the ionization is at
its greatest during high performance maneuvers. A UFO sitting at rest
does not have this effect. A film of a low performance UFO might indeed
be sharp and distinct, while a film of UFO's in high performance
might be indistinct. This is consistent with reports.

>: The problem here is that there is an organization that controls the

>: UFO data. This organization does not want to release the data, and
>: will definitely lie and delay. Some conclusive data could have been
>: gathered by this organization (through the use of gun camera films),
>: but none of these have been released. It will be difficult if not
>: impossible to test a hypothesis when the data has been confiscated.
>: Of what value are your statistical conclusions when you are denied
>: access to all the data?
>

>Again, the claim that unseen data exists that would prove the theory. This
>is not science.
>

No sir, the claim is that all the data is not available. This is beyond
question. Now, how do you perform statistical analysis when you
know you have only a partial sample? Any claim made either way will
be resting on incomplete data.

Let us say the discussion is about lasers, and which wavelengths are
easy to achieve (like red for diodes). Now, if you know that the
goverment has done extensive testing of diode lasers, but is witholding
the data, what is your approach?

[Bill Peterson]

In article <4rduru$m...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,

Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>Brian Zeiler (bdze...@students.wisc.edu) wrote:
>
>: > In science the rule is put up
>: > or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
>: > Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
>: > good.
>
>: This is patently false, since it presumes that such debunking efforts are
>: honest.
>
>So...the debunkers are all dishonest, ergo no objections to the ETH
>need be taken seriously?
>

Debunking and skepticism are absolutely critical to fully understand
any phenomenon. Case in point: cold fusion. However, witholding data, and
intentionally falsifying data is bad.

>This is a rather cute way of avoiding dealing with criticism. Of course,
>most objections raised by critics are questions, and as such can stand
>independantly of the purported honesty of the skeptical questioner. If
>I say "why are most UFO photos out of focus?" then that question doesn't
>depend on my honesty.
>

Agreed. However if you say that all UFO pictures are hoaxes, that assertion
has a different meaning.

>If he still maintains that he is unconvinced that physical evidence
>exists, than he is denying the purported alien origins of the lumps
>of Mg from Brazil.
>
>So which is it?
>

IMHO, the fragments are probably from a UFO. Please see the discussion
of these fragments in Paul Hill's book.

>
>So he's trying to say that because skeptics haven't created an objective
>measure of how extraordinary something is, the demand for extraordinary proof
>for extraordinary claims is...."logically specious". I think he's really
>grasping at straws here in making his marticularly extraordinary demand
>for an objective measure of "extraordinarity". What Sagan meant when he
>said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof is simply
>something that we're all familiar with on an intuitive level. If someone
>tells you he drove a Honda Accord to the office, you accept it without
>questioning. If someone says he rode a horse, you might question this. If
>he says he rode an elephant, you might want to demand to see the elephant.
>And if he claims he was brought in a flying saucer, it would certainly seem
>reasonable to ask for more than his simple testimony on the matter!
>

True. The thing to keep in mind is that what defines the "extraordinarity"
of an event is solely based on our past experience. For instance, we all
know what elephants, horses, and Hondas do, and what kind of properties
they have. We would question the use of elephants since we know about
elephants. We know nothing about UFO's however, so there is no way
to actually know how likely any behaviour is. UFO's might be rife, or rare.

>
>Following were a number of quotes that establish, at beast, that some people
>of good character believe in alien spacecraft, and that some government
>agencies believed that the matter should be hushed up. I print a few, with
>comments:
>: --------------
>
>: "The reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that
>: must have immediate attention."
>
>: H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, CIA;
>: December 2, 1952
>
>So "something" is proof that alien spacecraft eists?

No, only that there is some kind of phenomenon. It is not imagination.

>
>: "The flying saucer situation is not all imaginary . . . Something is flying
>: around."
>
>: from July 1947 FBI/Army Intelligence Report (declassified by the United
>: States Freedom of Information Act in 1976)
>
>Again, "something" is interpreted by Brian as "flying saucers"

Let us say that again, it is not imaginary. There is an actual
unknown phenomenon.

>: "I am convinced that it was a flying saucer, and further, that these
>: disks are spaceships from another planet, ..."
>: -- US Navy Cmdr. R. B. McLaughlin, commanding at White Sands Missile Range,
>: quoted in 1950 after tracking a UFO through a telescope.
>
>There's a *big* leap of faith in this statement!
>

Just a foremost missile researcher. His team witnessed several UFO's
and watched them with a telescope. His opinion is worth more than
the local grocer's.

>: "Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned
>: about the UFO's. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens
>: are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. ... to hide
>: the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel."
>: -- Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of the CIA 1947-1950
>
>What facts?

The facts that are not released. They are hidden.

>: "By this order, the Secretary of Air Force Office of Information must
>: delete all evidence of UFO reality and intelligent control, which would,
>: of course, contradict the Air Force stand that UFOs do not exist. The
>: same rule applies to A.F. press releases and UFO information given to
>: Congress and the public."
>: -- Chapter 4, Section B2.g (AFM 190-4) disclosed by USAF Major William
>: T. Coleman in 1962.
>
>And this proves that...? There is no doubt that the USAF gave the UFO
>question serious consideration, and that the inquiry was kept secret.
>What does that prove?
>

It proves that the USAF does not know what it is. They are concerned
enough to control the reporting information.

>
>: For instance, Dr. William K. Hartmann was a photographic analyst for the
>: USAF-commissioned Condon Report on Unidentified Flying Objects in
>: 1969. Consider what Dr. Hartmann states about the Trent (McMinnville)
>: photos:
>
>: "This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated,
>: geometric, psychological, and physical appear to be consistent with the
>: assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic,
>: disc-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew
>: within the sight of two witnesses. It cannot be said that the evidence
>: positively rules out fabrication, although there are some factors such as
>: the accuracy of certain photometric measures of the original negatives
>: which argue against a fabrication."
>
>...and those photometric measurements were...?
>
>Note that fraud was not ruled out.

Correct. It was noted that fraud is not indicated, due to the photometric
measures.

So, basically, we can point to many reputable scientists and officers
that consider UFO's as real, not imaginary. The USAF does not know what
they are, but they are concerned. Manipulation of the UFO information
is indicated, and some data has not been released. Whatever UFO's
are, they frequently appear as metallic disks, evidently artificial.
It is not stretching things to propose some kind of un-natural, non-human
origin for these reports, hence the ETH.

[Michael Edelman]

Bill Peterson (bi...@io.com) wrote:
: In article <4rdqt7$m...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,
: Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
: >Bill Peterson (bi...@io.com) wrote:
: >
: >
: >: It appears that UFO's may ionize the atmosphere around them. This will
: >: preclude good focus.
: >
: >
: >Here's an example of what the prvious poster was talking about. An ad-hoc

: >explaination is formulated to adapt the data to the hypothesis, rather
: >than the other way around. This is letting the hypothesis drive the data,
: >rather than the other way around. The claim of ionization is pulled out of
: >thin air to explain a data problem, with no other justification.
: >

: No sir, the proposal for ionization was arrived at by two rocket
: scientists, after studying reports of ground traces, radiation burns,
: and illumination characteristics. It *is* the data that drives this
: proposal, and not the other way around.

It's still nonsense, as we will see...

: >It doesn't help the argument that ionizing the atmosphere would *not*

: >"preclude good focus". That's a nosensical statement.

: I am just a microprocessor designer, but Paul Hill does an admirable
: job of describing this effect.

So share it with us.

: > However, some good films exist, and it seems

: >: more are being taken. All are written off by skeptics.

: >
: >So...do they, or don't they "ionize the air" and "preclude good focus"?

: >Again, note that additional causes are introduced and withdrawn as
: >required to fit the data to the hypothesis.
: >

: As discussed by Hill (have you read this?), the ionization is at
: its greatest during high performance maneuvers. A UFO sitting at rest
: does not have this effect. A film of a low performance UFO might indeed
: be sharp and distinct, while a film of UFO's in high performance
: might be indistinct. This is consistent with reports.

Ad-hocism, besides being nonsense.

When scientists formulate hypotheses, they try to create hypotheses that
explain knwon phenomena and predict yet-unseen phenomena. Kepler's
laws described not only the moltions of the known planets, but that
of the yet-undiscovered planets.

What we see here is almost the opposite. New hypotheticals are continuously`
invoked to explain failings in the hypothesis, and no predictions are
possible, given the ever-changing web of contentions.

This ain't science.

: >Again, the claim that unseen data exists that would prove the theory. This
: >is not science.
: >

: No sir, the claim is that all the data is not available. This is beyond
: question. Now, how do you perform statistical analysis when you
: know you have only a partial sample? Any claim made either way will
: be resting on incomplete data.

This reveals a basic misconception of the use of statistics. For one
thing, one of the uses of statistical analysis is making inferences
from incomplete data ;-)

[Jim Rogers]

Brian Zeiler wrote:
> jca...@negia.net wrote:
....

> > Scientific hypotheses should be stated carefully. Brian's null
> > hypothesis is that UFOs are "random, disparate misidentifications of
> > atmospheric or artificial terrestrial phenomena." Are
> > misidentifications of Venus atmospheric or artificial? Are they
> > terrestrial? Are retinal afterimages atmospheric or artificial?
>
> Uh, obviously Venus would fall under "atmospheric".

He just finished saying why hypotheses must be stated carefully, and here
you go with a very sloppy reading of his careful statement.
*Misidentifications* of Venus very may well be due to atmospheric causes:
clouds, refraction, haze, etc.

....

> > In science the rule is put up
> > or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
> > Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
> > good.
>
> This is patently false, since it presumes that such debunking efforts are
> honest.

Do you know what "to debunk" means? It doesn't mean throwing up a smoke
screen to confuse the issue. If a debunking is successful, the claim is
safely considered false. Another precise statement, sloppily interpreted.

....

> We also see the following quotes, both inside and outside the FOIA by key
> individuals (these may be new to you):

[ awe-struck authorities snipped ]

....

> "We find ourselves faced by powers which are far stronger than we had
> hitherto assumed, and whose base of operations is at present unknown to us."
>
> Dr. Werner von Braun (on the deflection from orbit of a United States
> satellite, 1959)

More precise citation of the source or situation, please.

....

> > Choosing the best statistical analysis can be complicated, but
> > shopping around for a method that produces the desired interpretation
> > is not allowed.
>
> You mean like demanding physical proof without establishing that such
> physical proof is attainable, conditional upon the presence of disk-shaped
> vehicles? Your above statement is rather self-indicting.

Of course it'd be unattainable if there are no interstellar craft visiting
us.

....

> My approach deals with the unattainability of physical proof and seeks to
> make an inference from the aggregate body of direct and indirect
> observations, just the way the dinosaur hypothesis was inferred from the
> observations of anomalous bone fragments. The UFO debunkers would have been
> demanding an intact dinosaur back then, I suppose.

The difference is that "anomalous bone fragments" are about as physical as
evidence gets.

....

> > Radar-visual correlations are cited as one of the strongest classes of
> > evidence for the ETH. There is one radar-wreckage correlation that is
> > seldom cited. A few years ago the crew of a guided missile cruiser
> > with state-of-the-art radar reported that a UFO was descending toward
> > the ship in a threatening manner, leading to the launch of a missile.
> > Shortly thereafter wreckage and bodies from a commercial airliner were
> > recovered from the sea. The radar recordings show a UFO climbing like
> > a commercial airliner. Human factors are important in UFO sightings
> > even when radar is involved.
>
> Thanks for illustrating yet another debunker logical trick: the strawman
> argument which employs the tactic of a sweeping discrediting of a class of
> observations by pointing out one possible MISclassification.

"Possible" misclassification? I think the Vincennes incident was quite
clearly a case of misidentification. A crew with the latest high-tech phased-
array radar system still blew it on the identification.

> The first disturbing aspect here is the complete of any citation of any
> person, document, or any other valid piece of identifying data that could
> correlate your example with a known, verifiable source of information on the
> case.

I can only surmise that you were hibernating at the time. I know exactly where
I was when I first heard of it (on a train in the UK, spotted a headline on
another passenger's Times), and read follow-up analyses in Spectrum (IEEE).

....

> This is a very poor, misleading example because not only are you using the
> strawman tactic of debunking a class of observations by illustrating one
> possible misclassification, but your example has none of the qualitative
> features that make radar-visual cases interesting. Thanks for illustrating
> how logical trickery is so entrenched in the culture of debunkery that its
> users are unaware of the extent of such usage.

....

It doesn't cover everything, and may not in fact cover any specific case
(unless there are radar-UFOs on the books that were tracked with Aegis systems).
The point was obviously just that misidentifications happen even with the very
best of technology and training.

Jim

[Brian Zeiler]

Michael Edelman wrote:
>
> Brian Zeiler (bdze...@students.wisc.edu) wrote:
>
> : > In science the rule is put up
> : > or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
> : > Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
> : > good.
>
> : This is patently false, since it presumes that such debunking efforts are
> : honest.
>
> So...the debunkers are all dishonest, ergo no objections to the ETH
> need be taken seriously?

Ah, thanks for illustrating ANOTHER logical trickery tactic! What you
have done is taken my completely valid point and twisted it into a wholly
unsubstantiated conclusion that I never suggested. Then you took your
distortion as a premise to a new argument that I never made, and advanced
it to a fallacious conclusion. You then presented this fallacious
conclusion as *my* conclusion. This is a strawman argument and
illustrates the depths of your dishonest argumentation tactics.

>
> This is a rather cute way of avoiding dealing with criticism. Of course,
> most objections raised by critics are questions, and as such can stand
> independantly of the purported honesty of the skeptical questioner. If
> I say "why are most UFO photos out of focus?" then that question doesn't
> depend on my honesty.

You're still arguing against your absurd strawman, not against me.
However, you're forgetting that many debunker arguments ARE dishonest.
Selectively altering and/or omitting key observations in order to force
conformance to a predetermined hypothesis is the height of dishonesty,
and debunkers do it with reckless abandon in the name of Occam's Razor.
In reality, Occam would not approve of such heavy filtering.

>
> : shoddy science. Observations should not be arbitrarily altered and omitted
> : to force conformance to a hypothesis to which the scientist is emotionally
> : attached.
>
> Interesting you should take that position.

I don't practice the tactic. This is another logical trick from you.
You suggest that I do this, yet you offer no evidence to support your
contention. However, I have repeatedly offered examples of debunkers
doing just this.

>
> : 1) Demanding unattainable evidential criteria is poor logic. Debunkers
> : demand physical proof, but they have not convinced me that such would be
> : available conditional upon the presence of unusual disk-shaped vehicles.
>
> Whoa; tricky sentence construction. What Brian is saying in his roundabout
> way is that the skeptics have not convinced him that physical proof would
> be availible if flying saucers existed.
>
> Ergo if skepics have not convinced Brian that physical proof could exist,
> there's no need to demand it.

Another logical trick, again based on intentional distortion. My point
which eludes you is that skeptics are claiming that physical proof is the
ONLY necessary and sufficient condition to establish that these vehicles
exist. But this argument is logically unsubstantiated because skeptics
have never been able to explain why physical proof is both expected and
attainable conditional upon the existence of these vehicles.

>
> This all rests on his contentions that skeptics demand nothing short of
> physical proof, which is nonsense for a couple of reasons. One is that
> while physical proof would be nice, a good videotape would do wonders.

Give me a break. There are countless EXCELLENT videotapes, many of which
are taken by military personnel around the world -- such as the KGB file
tape of the UFOs over the nuclear base -- yet skeptics will twist and
contort the analysis until their only argument is "that's not proof".
You obviously know NOTHING about these films. In fact, just 48 hours
ago, you knew nothing about photographs, either. I then showed you what
the analysts said about the negatives and the photometry, yet it's still
not good enough. With videotape it's the same arguments: it could have
been hoaxed, it could have been a lens flare, etc. No matter how good
the film is, no matter how credible was the person who took it, and no
matter how the analytical results turn out, the debunkers have a logical
trick to offer.

What videotapes have you seen, Mike? What analyses of them have you read?
None? I'm not surprised.

> But what I find puzzling about this claim of Brian's is that while I've
> not seen a lot of deman for physical proof in this forum, I have seen scores
> of claims made of physical proof- names the fragments of Mg purported
> to be of alien manufacture.
>
> This puts Brian in a bit of a quandry: If he accepts that the Mg fragments
> are of alien origin, then he *is* convinced that physical evidence
> of alien spacecraft exists.
>
> If he still maintains that he is unconvinced that physical evidence
> exists, than he is denying the purported alien origins of the lumps
> of Mg from Brazil.
>
> So which is it?

All I've said about the Brazilian fragments is that they offer
tantalizing physical evidence. But the fact that it's a fragment that
was retrieved coincident to a flying saucer sighting only bolsters my
prior statement that irrefutable physical proof is impossible. Look how
the skeptics ignore the Brazilian lab analyses and deride the coincident
saucer sighting and explosion that purportedly produced the fragment.
That's my point: the debunkers will accept nothing short of a solid
saucer with the alien occupants inside. In reality, any physical
evidence that MIGHT be available would logically be limited to VERY
sporadic incidents in which a debunkable chunk was recovered.

> : Therefore, I find such a demand logically specious. Furthermore, this
> : arbitrary criterion is defended by debunkers because of the "extraordinarity"
> : of the claim being made. Strangely, however, the debunkers have failed to
> : provide the world with a detailed, objective measurement system of the
> : extraordinarity of claims which, in turn, would lead to an equally objective
> : system of evidential demands consistent with the level of extraordinarity.
>
> "Extraordinarity"? Not in Webster's. This is one of the hazards of attempting
> to use overly verbose language.

Considering your very high concentration of spelling errors, it's pretty
poor taste to comment on one of mine -- if indeed you are correct, which
I doubt. "Extraordinarity" sounds a hell of a lot better than
"extraordinariness".

>
> So he's trying to say that because skeptics haven't created an objective
> measure of how extraordinary something is, the demand for extraordinary proof
> for extraordinary claims is...."logically specious". I think he's really
> grasping at straws here in making his marticularly extraordinary demand
> for an objective measure of "extraordinarity". What Sagan meant when he
> said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof is simply
> something that we're all familiar with on an intuitive level. If someone
> tells you he drove a Honda Accord to the office, you accept it without
> questioning. If someone says he rode a horse, you might question this. If
> he says he rode an elephant, you might want to demand to see the elephant.
> And if he claims he was brought in a flying saucer, it would certainly seem
> reasonable to ask for more than his simple testimony on the matter!

Wow, I'm glad it's so intuitive. Obviously I know what the little
heuristic MEANS, but you totally dodged my question about how it should
be consistently APPLIED. And THAT is why I have repeatedly said, with no
rational response from ANY debunker, that there must be a way to quantify
the extraordinarity and have it objectively lead to a proportionate
evidential criterion. You failed to provide such a method, and you
prefer to leave it at its present subjective, emotionally-charged state
where the label "extraordinary" can mean anything and lead to any
evidential criterion.

> : This is the BIGGEST piece of BS strawman garbage that I've seen in some time.
> : First of all, you're still apparently confused about where aliens come into
> : this. Initially, they don't. See? The initial hypothesis test is the
> : alternative (that the vehicles exist) against the null (that the vehicles do
> : not exist).
>
> I think it's becoming painfully clear that Brian doesn't understand much
> of the methodology of science. Either that, or he's right, and western
> scientific tradition has been completely misguided...`

BULLSHIT ALERT! Nice vague attack, Edelman! The logical trickery is
just in overdrive today, isn't it? What I'm saying is that we must
determine whether the OBJECTS exist BEFORE determining the ORIGIN of the
objects. Therefore the null hypothesis is that the OBJECTS DO NOT EXIST
and the alternative hypothesis is that the OBJECTS DO EXIST.

But, Edelman, all you did was offer vague ridicule with no particular
counterpoint to offer. You apparently think that my method is wrong, and
you would prefer a JOINT hypothesis test of both the existence of the
objects and the alien origin of the objects. And this, to you, makes
sense. You're a kook.

>
> Following were a number of quotes that establish, at beast, that some people
> of good character believe in alien spacecraft, and that some government
> agencies believed that the matter should be hushed up. I print a few, with
> comments:

Yes, people like a CIA Director who would know if they existed anyway.

> : "The reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that
> : must have immediate attention."
>
> : H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, CIA;
> : December 2, 1952
>
> So "something" is proof that alien spacecraft eists?

You're such a dimwit. The entire memo was in the context of flying
saucers, but you wouldn't know that because you never read the memo.
Right?

> : "The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States
> : Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb. Flying saucers exist. Their
> : modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small
> : group headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush."
>
> : Wilbert Smith, in a formerly classified Canadian government memorandum dated
> : November 21, 1950
> i
> This is Brian's strongest datum- a second hand report from a purported
> Canadian government memorandum by an unknown functionary to an unrevealed
> recepient. It's also not a FOIA document; Canada is a different country ;-)

It's from the FOIA equivalent called the "Access to Information Act".
It's as second-hand as ANY government must be by definition. Smith was
the one who was briefed by Dr. Robert Sarbacher, but you surely know
nothing about Sarbacher and Smith and their loose lips in their
intelligence capacities. Smith headed Canada's UFO investigation and
Sarbacher was involved with the Research and Development Board which also
had people like Dr. Vannevar Bush and Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.

In a talk on UFOs before the Illuminating Engineering Society, Canadian
Regional Conference, on January 11, 1959, Smith said that "Various items
of hardware are known to exist but are usually clapped into security and
are not available to the general public."

> : "The flying saucer situation is not all imaginary . . . Something is flying
> : around."
>
> : from July 1947 FBI/Army Intelligence Report (declassified by the United
> : States Freedom of Information Act in 1976)
>
> Again, "something" is interpreted by Brian as "flying saucers"

Yes, because you have a reading comprehension level above 2nd grade, you
can see that the phrase "something is flying around" was preceded by the
phrase "the flying saucer situation is not all imaginary". Learn how to
read at the adult level and you may just begin to learn something.

> : "I am convinced that it was a flying saucer, and further, that these
> : disks are spaceships from another planet, ..."
> : -- US Navy Cmdr. R. B. McLaughlin, commanding at White Sands Missile Range,
> : quoted in 1950 after tracking a UFO through a telescope.
>
> There's a *big* leap of faith in this statement!

Yes, he did make a leap when he called it a spaceship from another
planet. But when somebody in his official position views an object in a
telescope that he describes as a flying saucer, it merits more than a
shrug. What's telling is that MANY of the TOP scientists at Los Alamos
and White Sands were seeing them on a regular basis. The General Mills
balloon people also were, which is significant because obviously they can
identify weather balloons better than anybody.

> : "Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned
> : about the UFO's. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens
> : are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. ... to hide
> : the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel."
> : -- Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of the CIA 1947-1950
>
> What facts?

ROFLMAO. The former CIA Director reads a letter to Congress (which is
the origin of the quote) stating that there is indeed a UFO cover-up, and
you can only say "what facts?" You suffer from incurable myopia.

> : "By this order, the Secretary of Air Force Office of Information must
> : delete all evidence of UFO reality and intelligent control, which would,
> : of course, contradict the Air Force stand that UFOs do not exist. The
> : same rule applies to A.F. press releases and UFO information given to
> : Congress and the public."
> : -- Chapter 4, Section B2.g (AFM 190-4) disclosed by USAF Major William
> : T. Coleman in 1962.
>
> And this proves that...?

That there was a cover-up, genius.

> There is no doubt that the USAF gave the UFO
> question serious consideration, and that the inquiry was kept secret.
> What does that prove?

It proves that it was kept secret not because of general security
reasons, but BECAUSE THEY HAD REASON TO BELIEVE THEY WERE REAL. Get it
yet? If not, go up and read the cover-up recommendation once again, and
then read the CIA Director's statement to the US Congress.

> : > Choosing the best statistical analysis can be complicated, but
> : > shopping around for a method that produces the desired interpretation
> : > is not allowed.
>
> : You mean like demanding physical proof without establishing that such
> : physical proof is attainable, conditional upon the presence of disk-shaped
> : vehicles? Your above statement is rather self-indicting.
>
> No, Brian, not the same thing at all. He just explained to you why data
> mining is unacceptible in science, and you blew it off by trying to change
> the subject.

More vague ramblings. Your accusation of "data-mining" is totally
unsubstantiated, and neither you nor anybody has given a specific
example. Typical logical trick. I perfectly refuted the contention that
I was selecting Bayes over direct tests because it supports my
hypothesis. I refuted it by pointing out that lack of rational
expectation of irrefutable physical proof. Your argument thus
incinerates, combusts, and burns itself into a pile of ash.

>
> : > Why point to the advantages of a Bayesian approach
> : > over a traditional method, while at the same time praising the results
> : > of the BBSR chi-square analysis?
>
> : The BBSR chi-square analysis, on the off chance you've read it and understand
> : it, is merely one observation. It has absolutely no relation whatsoever to
> : the methodology employed in the 'meta-analysis'.
>
> Brian is now trying to distance himself from the claims he made of the
> dubious X-square analysis he cited a while back, which "proved" that
> pictues of alains look different from pictures of humans ;-)

LIAR! My conclusions have ALWAYS been that it ONLY that the
unclassifieds are likely NOT misclassified members of the categories of
"known". That is ALL I've EVER said.

Why are you such a liar? Every post of yours is packed to the brim with
intentional distortions, deceptive arguments, and BLATANT LIES LIKE THIS
ONE.

Tell you what, Mike. Go find a post of mine where I said the BBSR
"proves that pictues [sic] of alains [sic] look different from pictures
of humans." You won't, because you CAN'T, because you are a LIAR.

>
> Secondly, the advantage of
> : a Bayesian approach over the 'traditional method' is quite clear if you can
> : read this without letting logical trickery get in the way.
>
> I.e., he can't really explain why it's better and he's hoping he can bluff
> his way through this!

LIAR. More intentional distortion and deception. You're really outdoing
yourself, something I would have thought impossible. The very next
paragragh explains why it's better, but notice everybody how Edelman cuts
the paragraph in half to deceive the audience into thinking I failed to
substantiate my argument. What a slithery bastard.

>
> The FACT is that
> : I am simply NOT convinced that physical proof is a rational, attainable
> : demand conditional upon the presence of high-performance disk-shaped vehicles
> : in our skies. If I am correct, then your approach is useless and risks a
> : 'false negative', or a rejection of a real phenomenon.
>
> Brian is trying to say that if you demand physical proof and physical
> proof is impossible to get, then you'll never have proof.

Yes, that's what I'm saying, and this was the explanation that you
dishonestly pretended did not exist above.

>
> As to why physical proff is impossible, who knows? Humans have left tons
> of garbage in space, on the moon, mars and venus

This in no way substantiates your claim that "physical proff [sic]" would
be available if high-performance disk-shaped vehicles were flying around.

> and Brian himself
> has stoutly defended the claims made for the Brazillian magnesium
> chunks, so it would appear that not only is it reasonable to assume
> that physical proof could exist, but that Brian believes this to be the case.

No, I clarified my view on the Brazilian fragment above.

> But if am wrong about
> : the attainability of physical proof, then your approach is valid and I risk a
> : 'false positive', or an acceptance of a nonexistent phenomenon.
> : the thread I started called "Skeptical Incentive Structures" for detail on
> : the relative levels of risk-aversion in science toward these two types of
> : classification errors.
>
> I don't think you're the one to be lecturing on signal detection theory,
> given your misunderstanding of Type I/Type II errors in radar data.

What a LIAR! First of all, classification errors are NOT specific to
"signal detection theory", you raving idiot. ANY hypothesis test will
have to presume certain confidence levels against classification errors.
I have no idea why you brought up signal detection.

As for my alleged misunderstand of classification errors in radar data,
you are again a repugnant LIAR. I already told you that there are many
causes for anomalous false echoes, but then I also told you that Dr.
James McDonald, atmospheric physicist with credentials in analyzing radar
data that you could never hope to have, would illustrate several
radar-visual cases that could NOT be attributed to ANY type of anomalous
echo and that also gave ALL signs of physical solidity.

Yet you can't bother yourself with these cases. I posted these cases,
and you know that I did because you were here. You claim to have this
superior knowledge in radars, and you obviously have the time to analyze
these radar-visual cases. But you refuse to analyze them, instead
preferring to distort, deceive, and lie. Why are you such a liar, Mike?
Why do you distort everything, all while convincing yourself of the
merits of your decrepit position?

If you have the courage of your convictions, you would refute McDonald's
analyses -- the first debunker of all time to do so. But you won't,
because you lack the qualifications and you lack the ability and
confidence to do so. You're a pathetic bullshit artist.

> : So, basically, your approach is invalid because of the following reasons.
> : First, you have failed to illustrate a 'mapping' that first measures the
> : extraordinarity of the claim and then provides appropriate evidential
> : criteria.
>
> NOw he wants a "mapping"?
>
> BTW, for those put off by Brians's attept to hide his lack of knowledge
> in scientific-sounding language, a "mapping" between to sets is just a
> way of associating things from one list with things from another list.
> He's asking that skeptics come up with a way of mapping "extraordinarity"
> of claims to proofs. As noted earlier, Sagan's demand is simply a restatement
> of a common convention that people implicitly use in ordinary discourse.
> Brian is trying to obfuscaet his way aaround it.

I'm not trying to obfuscate anything, you deceptive liar. I understand
exactly what "mapping" means because that's what a neural net does. It
was a very appropriate analogy.

The problem you have failed to recognize is that without an OBJECTIVE
method of determining HOW extraordinary a claim is and HOW this
determination can objectively lead to evidential criteria, any demand
such as that for "physical proof" has absolutely no defensible
methodology. And you still don't understand that I agree with the
intuition -- just not with the implementation.

>
> : > The appropriateness of the analysis
> : > and of the interpretation is what counts. A chi-square analysis of the
> : > characteristics of apples and oranges might find significant
> : > differences in color, number of seeds, and shape, but what new
> : > information would be provided about the origins of the 2 classes?
>
> : You've obviously never read the analysis. Why not simply admit this
> : shortcoming of yours instead of pretending otherwise?
>
> More noise. Brian thinks a chi-square "proves" that descriptions of
> aliens prove that they're not humans. So what?

LIAR, LIAR, LIAR! You're such a bullshitter! Find wherever I've said
that, you lying weasel. All you'll EVER find is that I said that
unclassified residuum of cases are shown not to be misclassified types of
knowns. PERIOD.

>
> : > Bayesian analysis sounds attractive, but requires estimation of prior
> : > probability based on experience. UFOlogists and skeptics are likely to
> : > disagree on the value of that probability for visits by
> : > extraterrestrial vehicles.
>
> : Yes, but boundary values can be tinkered with to show what the probabilities
> : must be in order to give a positive or negative output.
>
> This is data mining, or what the original poster called Procrustean data
> torturing. It's working backwards from conclusions to assumptions.

No, genius. It's called a sensitivity analysis. You can easily peg an
arbitrary output and then see how the input boundaries affect it. You
can thus see what input probabilities lead toward 0% outcome and then
what probabilities lead toward 100% outcome. It's not a matter of fixing
the output PERMANENTLY, genius. It's a matter of seeing how the
probabilities of the inputs affect the probabilities of the outputs.
This is a common, accepted application of Bayesian inference.

>
> And Bayesian
> : inference is not the only approach; I'm speaking more in the spirit of
> : Bayesian inference than in the actual application.
>
> Suddenly he's not defending the Bayesian approach any more; only
> the *spirit* of the approach...! He doesn't seem very comitted to much of
> anything...

More distortive lies. I'm defending both, particularly the inferential
method and secondarily the Bayesian implementation of the method. You're
an incredible liar.

>
> : > Radar-visual correlations are cited as one of the strongest classes of
> : > evidence for the ETH. There is one radar-wreckage correlation that is
> : > seldom cited. A few years ago the crew of a guided missile cruiser
> : > with state-of-the-art radar reported that a UFO was descending toward
> : > the ship in a threatening manner, leading to the launch of a missile.
> : > Shortly thereafter wreckage and bodies from a commercial airliner were
> : > recovered from the sea. The radar recordings show a UFO climbing like
> : > a commercial airliner. Human factors are important in UFO sightings
> : > even when radar is involved.
>
> : Thanks for illustrating yet another debunker logical trick: the strawman
> : argument which employs the tactic of a sweeping discrediting of a class of
> : observations by pointing out one possible MISclassification.
>
> : The first disturbing aspect here is the complete of any citation of any
> : person, document, or any other valid piece of identifying data that could
> : correlate your example with a known, verifiable source of information on the
> : case.
>
> It was in all the newspapers, and the TV news, Brian ;-)

That is a worthless pseudo-citation.

>
> : Apparently you have not seen the UFO photos that were taken in broad daylight
> : with background reference, multiple photographs, negatives available, and
> : clear focus. These are photos in which not only are there no signs of
> : hoaxing, but photometric measures also argue against hoaxing by showing how
> : the features are more consistent with a large disk at a distance from the
> : camera instead of a frisbee hung in front of the camera.
>
> Supply them.

I have no scanner. But I did give you the references, so get off your
lazy debunker's ass and go to your campus library, i.e., one bigger than
Wayne State's.

> All you've ever given us is your second-hand claims

Yes, all research citations are second-hand. Apparently you have a
problem with that only with UFO articles?

> of
> radar-visual data that you apparantly don't understand (and which
> relies onm the testimony of a single individual)

No, you're delving ever deeper into your land of endless lies. I've
given you citations for the analysis of such cases, and despite your
claims of having the knowledge and despite your actual witnessing the
posting of these cases to the newsgroups, you've failed to address the
cases. Instead you choose to address ME, the messenger. I've already
told you that no debunker has offered a scientific refutation of
McDonald's analyses -- just logical tricks of the variety you display to
no end.

EITHER ADDRESS THE CASES or STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THEIR EXISTENCE.

> and out of context quotes

No, I gave you the context.

> in which known individuals state their belief in the possibility of
> UFOs, and unknown individuals claism to have seen tthings that they
> assume were UFOs.

No, and that's another lie. What I gave you was documented evidence of
USAF lies and deceptions as well as the testimony to Congress by a former
CIA Director. That's BIG.

>
> : For instance, Dr. William K. Hartmann was a photographic analyst for the
> : USAF-commissioned Condon Report on Unidentified Flying Objects in
> : 1969. Consider what Dr. Hartmann states about the Trent (McMinnville)
> : photos:
>
> : "This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated,
> : geometric, psychological, and physical appear to be consistent with the
> : assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic,
> : disc-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew
> : within the sight of two witnesses. It cannot be said that the evidence
> : positively rules out fabrication, although there are some factors such as
> : the accuracy of certain photometric measures of the original negatives
> : which argue against a fabrication."
>
> ...and those photometric measurements were...?

I'm not going to waste time typing up the article for an obvious fool
like you. I gave you the reference, so FIND IT like a rational
individual would do.

> Note that fraud was not ruled out.

Note that fraud can never logically be ruled out, genius. It's
impossible to disprove fraud. All that can be done is what WAS done:
show how the photometric measures and the analysis of negatives argue
heavily against fraud.

> : Also consider what the astrophysicist Dr. Guerin says about the Lac Chauvet
> : photos:
>
> More on this one when I track down the reference.

Yeah, right.

>
> : > In science, fudging or being sloppy can ruin a reputation. Judging by
> : > this newsgroup, many ETH believers tolerate hoaxers, bubbleheads, and
> : > crackpots fairly well, and reserve their scorn for skeptics.
>
> : This is a rather morally repugnant strawman tactic which features a sweeping
> : generalization and almost ad hominem distortion that seeks to generalize the
> : opposition in order to debunk it. Serious ufologists have zero tolerance for
> : "hoaxers, bubbleheads, and crackpots".
>
> ...except when it serves their needs...

Another vague attack with no substantiated. You are, without doubt, the
biggest LIAR that I've ever seen around here. You lie, distort, and
deceive everything that I say and that others say, and you have no
intention of doing any independent research -- and certainly no intention
of addressing McDonald's cases, despite your hollow claim of radar
knowledge. Instead you choose to attack the messenger.

You're not fooling anybody, and those who follow our conversations can
see what a distortive liar you've been.

--
Brian Zeiler

[J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl]

In article, m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu (Michael Edelman) wrote:

>: This is patently false, since it presumes that such debunking efforts are
>: honest.
>
>So...the debunkers are all dishonest, ergo no objections to the ETH
>need be taken seriously?

Notice how EdelTwit completely distorts Brian's statement. Taking de-
bunkers seriously, and the validity of their objections are two sepa-
rate things. Dishonest debunking efforts would be taking free liberty
to massage the data and mutilate the evidence to fit a preconceived
hypothesis.

> I say "why are most UFO photos out of focus?" then that question doesn't
> depend on my honesty.

EdelNut seems unable to distinguish between asking questions and giving
bizarre peusoscientific explanations for UFO incidents that do not hold
up under careful scrutiny. The former is considered normal. The latter
would be the a "dishonest debunking effort" Brian was talking about.

One more thing. Most UFO photos are not out of focus at all; The objects
photographed themselves are usually fuzzy.

> Whoa; tricky sentence construction. What Brian is saying in his roundabout
> way is that the skeptics have not convinced him that physical proof would
> be availible if flying saucers existed.

>Ergo if skepics have not convinced Brian that physical proof could exist,
>there's no need to demand it.

Again EdelNut engages in distortion. The existence of physical proof is
one thing. _Obtaining_ it is another. I don't expect extraterrestrial
excursion craft to be so poorly contructed that it looses major parts on
regular flights. Hence, the chance of obtaining a piece of saucer are
small at best. The criteria you set must be attainable. Do you understand
this EdelNut? The reason why demands for physical proof are logically spe-
cious is because there is no evidence that any given sighting would _neces-
sarily_ produce physical evidence.

> This puts Brian in a bit of a quandry: If he accepts that the Mg fragments
> are of alien origin, then he *is* convinced that physical evidence
> of alien spacecraft exists.

More EdelNut StrawMen. Brian has never said that physical evidence does
not or cannot exist. He _has_ said that it would be difficult to _obtain_.

> for an objective measure of "extraordinarity". What Sagan meant when he
> said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof is simply
> something that we're all familiar with on an intuitive level. If someone

Intuitive? Science is and should not be based on intuition because it
doesn't provide us with a precise metric by which we can discern the
merits of a claim. The fact is that no one knowns what Sagan means when
he uses "extraordinary," either with regard to a claim or the evidence
supporting that claim. It's a moving target.

> And if he claims he was brought in a flying saucer, it would certainly seem
> reasonable to ask for more than his simple testimony on the matter!

Someone being brought in a flying saucer would even be considered extra-
ordinary by me. But this doesn't negate the fact that "extraordinary
claims demand extraordinary proof" is nothing but a pseudorule, a think
cloak of principle over a body of arbitrariness.

A claim as to the origin of the universe? Not extraordinary at all. A
claim as to having seen a UFO last night? Extraordinary! Are there any
gaps in the evidence for the claim about the origin of the universe? No
problem; we'll of course find that in time. Are there gaps in the wit-
ness' claim to having seen a UFO? Hey, it's an extraordinary claim re-
quiring extraordinary proof; if you don't have a dead body and some
wreckage, you're lying, mistaken, or delusional.

>: This is the BIGGEST piece of BS strawman garbage that I've seen in some time.
>: First of all, you're still apparently confused about where aliens come into
>: this. Initially, they don't. See? The initial hypothesis test is the
>: alternative (that the vehicles exist) against the null (that the vehicles do
>: not exist).
>
> I think it's becoming painfully clear that Brian doesn't understand much
> of the methodology of science. Either that, or he's right, and western
> scientific tradition has been completely misguided...`

EdelNut asserts above that Brian does not understand much of the methodo-
logy of science. Yet, he provides no supporting rationale for it. Would
that be because his claims are usually *hollow* and devoid of any logical
reasoning? The important question here is why EdelTwit is unable to pro-
vide specific criticism, just vague rethoric?

[Smith Memorandum]

>This is Brian's strongest datum- a second hand report from a purported
>Canadian government memorandum by an unknown functionary to an unrevealed
>recepient.

No, Wilbert Smith isn't an "unknown functionary" to anyone familiar with
UFO history. Wilbert Smith was the head of Canada's UFO project called
"Project Magnet," and a member of Project Second Story, a special commit-
tee to consider the UFO problem. Of course Edelman, as ignorant as he is,
didn't know this given his response to Brian quoting the memo and mentio-
ning Smith's name. I still have yet to see evidence of EdelNut having read
anything on the subject.

[Some EdelNut Rants elided from view...]

[Bayesian approach]

> I.e., he can't really explain why it's better and he's hoping he can bluff
> his way through this!

No, unlike Mr. EdelTwit, Brian provides decent reasons for his point of
view. Something that cannot be said about EdelNut.

> As to why physical proff is impossible, who knows? Humans have left tons
> of garbage in space, on the moon, mars and venus, and Brian himself

That's because craft and debris was _intentionally_ left (mostly due to
the design of those craft sent in orbit).

> of claims to proofs. As noted earlier, Sagan's demand is simply a restatement
> of a common convention that people implicitly use in ordinary discourse.

Oh really? Then what is "extraordinary proof"? Something more than
"normal proof"? Hmm ... first, what's a "normal proof"? And how much
more than this undefined standard is enough to be "something more?"

> More noise. Brian thinks a chi-square "proves" that descriptions of
> aliens prove that they're not humans. So what?

Because they're aliens, EdelNut. Do you even know what a chi square
analysis tells us? It tells us the likelihood that the unknowns are
merely misclassified knowns versus the likelihood that the unknowns
are actually inherently different -- that is, whether or not they're
from the same distributions. As usual, EdelTwit's vague, worthless
dismissal of the statistical analysis speaks enormous volumes of his
ignorant apathy and propensity to dismiss nonconforming evidence.

[Some skeptic cited an unreferenced tale:]

: > Radar-visual correlations are cited as one of the strongest classes of
: > evidence for the ETH. There is one radar-wreckage correlation that is
: > seldom cited. A few years ago the crew of a guided missile cruiser
: > with state-of-the-art radar reported that a UFO was descending toward

[Brian then said:]

: The first disturbing aspect here is the complete of any citation of any
: person, document, or any other valid piece of identifying data that could
: correlate your example with a known, verifiable source of information on the
: case.

[EdelNut responded in haste:]

> It was in all the newspapers, and the TV news, Brian ;-)

More EdelTwit drivel. Apparently, Edelman has psychic powers if he can
determine, from an apparent contradicting description of an alleged in-
cident, which incident is being referred to, and when it occured. Please
refresh our minds, Mr. Psychic. Which incident is being referred to?

Let's first examine the contradictions contained in the original example.
First, it is stated that the radar showed a "UFO descending towards the
ship in a threatening manner." Then a few lines further we can read that
the "radar recordings show a UFO climbing." Which is it? Obviously, this
tale is worthless and, given that it has occured, which is doubtfull, has
been misrepresented by the clueless debunker who first brought it up.

> Supply them. All you've ever given us is your second-hand claims of
> radar-visual data that you apparantly don't understand (and which

I have seen no indication that Brian does not understand the radar-
visual data. I have seen, however, that Mr. EdelNut is usually the
one how is incapable of following discussion.

As for second-hand information, Mr. EdelNut is grossly mistaken as
usual. If we were to follow Mr. EdelNut's interpretatio of second-
hand data, about all scientific publications would fall into this
category since many, if not most, of them rely on references and
papers written by other scientists.

As has been stated by me previously, the data McDonald uses can be
readily accessed and analyzed since McDonald provides sources and
references. Something that EdelNut always seems to be _unable_ to
do. Nor do we get specific criticism from EdelNut; just "I don't be-
lieve this," and "the quotes must have been taken out of context."

> relies onm the testimony of a single individual) and out of context quotes

And finally we see the true character of EdelNut. He assumes that the
quotes _must_ have been taken out of context, because they 'just can't
be true' in EdelNut's world. But EdelTwit is overlooking something very
important; which is that he has the burdon of proof in proving that the
quotes were indeed taken out of context.

So EdelNut, will you put up or shut up?

>: For instance, Dr. William K. Hartmann was a photographic analyst for the
>: USAF-commissioned Condon Report on Unidentified Flying Objects in
>: 1969. Consider what Dr. Hartmann states about the Trent (McMinnville)
>: photos:

>....and those photometric measurements were...?

You can read all about the McMinnvile pictures in the Condon Report,
available at any good library. That's where you can find the complete
analysis. Not that we expect you to track it down though.

[Wm G. Smith]

Michael Edelman wrote:
>
>
>
> : Therefore, I find such a demand logically specious. Furthermore, this
> : arbitrary criterion is defended by debunkers because of the "extraordinarity"
> : of the claim being made. Strangely, however, the debunkers have failed to
> : provide the world with a detailed, objective measurement system of the
> : extraordinarity of claims which, in turn, would lead to an equally objective
> : system of evidential demands consistent with the level of extraordinarity.
>
> "Extraordinarity"? Not in Webster's. This is one of the hazards of attempting
> to use overly verbose language.

The standard of "extraordinariness" in this context is subject to what we lawyers call
an objective test. Would a reasonable person subject to all the circumstances
prevailing at the time find a particular statement or claim extraordinary? As a person
who gets his living by working with words, I do not believe modifiers add anything to
the word extraordinary. A thing is either extraordinary or not. Slightly extraordinary
is an absurdity and very extraordinary is redundant.

In the river near my home, if I see a duck, that would be a usual and ordinary event.
The appearance of a Canada goose at this time of year would be unusual but not
extraordinary. Great Blue Herons are rare but still among the ordinarily expectable
phenomena in this area. But if I saw a frigate bird, that would be extraordinary and,
absent strong proofs to the contrary, you would be entitled to doubt whether I had
identified the phenomenon correctly.

>
> So he's trying to say that because skeptics haven't created an objective
> measure of how extraordinary something is, the demand for extraordinary proof
> for extraordinary claims is...."logically specious". I think he's really
> grasping at straws here in making his marticularly extraordinary demand
> for an objective measure of "extraordinarity".

As I said above, I believe there is no problem with finding an objective measure of
extraordinariness, but as I am sure you understand, the measure is a qualitative rather
than a quantitative one.

> .... If someone

> tells you he drove a Honda Accord to the office, you accept it without
> questioning. If someone says he rode a horse, you might question this. If
> he says he rode an elephant, you might want to demand to see the elephant.
> And if he claims he was brought in a flying saucer, it would certainly seem
> reasonable to ask for more than his simple testimony on the matter!

Another good example of the principle is Thomas Jefferson's advice to his nephew, Peter
Carr in 1787:

"Fix Reason firmly in her seat and call to her trubunal every fact, every
opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one,
he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will
naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then, as you
would read Livy of Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature,
you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in
Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and
their not being against the laws of nature does not weigh against them. But those facts
in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and
under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to
inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and
whether that evidence is so strong as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a
change in the laws of nature."

>[BZ] The initial hypothesis test is the

> : alternative (that the vehicles exist) against the null (that the vehicles do
> : not exist).

And the former is clearly the more improbable of the two claims. For one thing, it
violates all the Laws of Nature as we understand them. Brian will now jump up and
shout, but our understanding could be wrong. This is certainly true. We MIGHT be wrong
about everything we believe about the laws of nature or the observer could be mistaken
or lying. One may be possible. The other surely is possible (we KNOW humans are often
mistaken, confused or duplicitous) As between the two, which is the more improbable?

--
Wm. G. Smith
Admiralty Lawyer
P.O. Box 3017
Framingham, Mass. 01705
(508)877-3119

Practicing in Admiralty, Environmental and Coastal Land Use Planning
Visit my web page at http://www.netcom.com/~w.smith/admiralty.html

[Brian Zeiler]

Wm G. Smith wrote:

> A thing is either extraordinary or not.

Learn "fuzzy logic"... though in the hands of a lawyer, I could see some
dangerous applications of the concept.

> Slightly extraordinary
> is an absurdity and very extraordinary is redundant.

Nice binary logic, Wm. So you think that there are no degrees of
extraordinarity; it's merely a binary classification with no gradation.
Very bizarre.

> But if I saw a frigate bird, that would be extraordinary and,
> absent strong proofs to the contrary, you would be entitled to doubt whether I had
> identified the phenomenon correctly.

Okay, I say that your sighting of a frigate bird is unusual, but not
extraordinary. Or, maybe I feel like saying it's INCREDIBLY
extraordinary. Is my opinion any more or less valid than yours? Of
course not. It's a matter of subjectivity because people view the term
"extraordinary" differently. Even with your absurd binary interpretation
of whether or not something is "extraordinary", it still lacks
objectivity.

For instance, if I claim that I saw a frigate bird, and that the bird
asked me if I had some spare change, is that more extraordinary than
merely seeing a frigate bird? Obviously, yes. In your deranged binary
scale, however, you would have to say no.

What you have failed to understand is the following:

THE MAIN POINT

Without a means to objectively apply a CONTINUOUS -- not binary, as you
seem to think -- classification scale to the extraordinarity of a claim,
and without providing evidential criteria proportionate to the
extraordinarity, there can be no subsequent objective means of applying
evidential standards to the claim in proportion to its extraordinarity.

Everybody understands and agrees with the intuition, Wm. The problem is
with the implementation of this heuristic. With no objective
implementation guidelines, the implementation will thus be self-serving
and wholly arbitrary. In short, it's a logical trick.

> As I said above, I believe there is no problem with finding an objective measure of
> extraordinariness, but as I am sure you understand, the measure is a qualitative rather
> than a quantitative one.

Right. That's why it's a logical trick. Qualitative = subjective.

> Another good example of the principle is Thomas Jefferson's advice to his nephew, Peter
> Carr in 1787:

Save it for misc.legal, please...

> >[BZ] The initial hypothesis test is the
> > : alternative (that the vehicles exist) against the null (that the vehicles do
> > : not exist).
>
> And the former is clearly the more improbable of the two claims.

Uh, the null hypothesis is that they do NOT exist. If you knew anything
about hypothesis tests, Wm, you would understand that a priori
probabilistic assumptions have zero relevance. It is evidence that has
relevance.

> For one thing, it
> violates all the Laws of Nature as we understand them.

Tell me, Wm: what laws of nature are violated by alien visitation?
Faster-than-light travel is not a necessary condition for alien
visitation.

Furthermore, you're committing the Big Skeptic Fallacy of assuming that
if the OBJECTS exist, they must therefore be extraterrestrial. I just
got done explaining that the first determination is whether the OBJECTS
exist -- INDEPENDENT of their origin. Your argument is enormously
fallacious, because the null/alternate hypotheses are that the OBJECTS do
not / do exist, respectively. Aliens and interstellar travel have
nothing to do with this determination.

I've noticed, Wm, that you never respond to my rebuttals to your
fallacy-saturated posts. Apparently you lack the courage of your
convictions to partake in a debate.

--
Brian Zeiler

[Lawrence E. McKnight]

bi...@io.com (Bill Peterson) wrote:

>In article <4rdqt7$m...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,
>Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>>Bill Peterson (bi...@io.com) wrote:
>>
>>

>>: It appears that UFO's may ionize the atmosphere around them. This will
>>: preclude good focus.
>>
>>

>>Here's an example of what the prvious poster was talking about. An ad-hoc
>>explaination is formulated to adapt the data to the hypothesis, rather
>>than the other way around. This is letting the hypothesis drive the data,
>>rather than the other way around. The claim of ionization is pulled out of
>>thin air to explain a data problem, with no other justification.
>>
>
>No sir, the proposal for ionization was arrived at by two rocket
>scientists, after studying reports of ground traces, radiation burns,
>and illumination characteristics. It *is* the data that drives this
>proposal, and not the other way around.

'Rocket Scientists'? If whoever proposed it identified themselves as
'rocket scientists', then there is a substantial probability that they
are kooks or charlatans. Of course, in FundieSpeak, 'rocket scientist'
might refer to engineers who worked on some phase of the space program,
with no particular qualification in the relevent areas.

>
>>It doesn't help the argument that ionizing the atmosphere would *not*
>>"preclude good focus". That's a nosensical statement.
>>
>
>I am just a microprocessor designer, but Paul Hill does an admirable
>job of describing this effect.

And he has become an expert on the optical effects of ionization? Geez,
why don't you make up something about McDonald?

>
>> However, some good films exist, and it seems
>>: more are being taken. All are written off by skeptics.
>>

>>So...do they, or don't they "ionize the air" and "preclude good focus"?
>>Again, note that additional causes are introduced and withdrawn as
>>required to fit the data to the hypothesis.
>>
>
>As discussed by Hill (have you read this?), the ionization is at
>its greatest during high performance maneuvers. A UFO sitting at rest
>does not have this effect. A film of a low performance UFO might indeed
>be sharp and distinct, while a film of UFO's in high performance
>might be indistinct. This is consistent with reports.

I see. Ionization depends of the level of performance. Kind of shoots
the hell out of your earlier claim about the evidence for ionization
coming from the 'ground traces', doesn't it?
>
>
>>: The problem here is that there is an organization that controls the

>>: UFO data. This organization does not want to release the data, and
>>: will definitely lie and delay. Some conclusive data could have been
>>: gathered by this organization (through the use of gun camera films),
>>: but none of these have been released. It will be difficult if not
>>: impossible to test a hypothesis when the data has been confiscated.
>>: Of what value are your statistical conclusions when you are denied
>>: access to all the data?
>>

>>Again, the claim that unseen data exists that would prove the theory. This
>>is not science.
>>
>
>No sir, the claim is that all the data is not available. This is beyond
>question. Now, how do you perform statistical analysis when you
>know you have only a partial sample? Any claim made either way will
>be resting on incomplete data.
>

>Let us say the discussion is about lasers, and which wavelengths are
>easy to achieve (like red for diodes). Now, if you know that the
>goverment has done extensive testing of diode lasers, but is witholding
>the data, what is your approach?
>

>BP
>--
>Disclaimer: I only speak for myself, and sometimes I wish I hadn't!

---------------
Larry McKnight
(this space unintentionally left blank.....

[Alan Douglas]

m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu (Michael Edelman) wrote:

> What Sagan meant when he said that extraordinary claims require
> extraordinary proof is simply something that we're all familiar with
> on an intuitive level. If someone tells you he drove a Honda Accord
> to the office, you accept it without questioning. If someone says he rode
> a horse, you might question this. If he says he rode an elephant, you
> might want to demand to see the elephant. And if he claims he was
> brought in a flying saucer, it would certainly seem reasonable to ask
> for more than his simple testimony on the matter!

The problem with Sagan's mantra is that the word "extraordinary"
connotes two different ideas:

1) Unusual, unlikely, implausible

2) Remarkable, interesting, important

This duality of meaning can cause problems, and I think a more precise
phrase would be "interesting claims require sufficient proof"

Consider Michael's example where the person (let's call him Bob)
claims to have driven an Accord to work. Bob's testimony proves
absolutely nothing. We take him at his word simply because we really
don't care whether or not he drove an Accord. It's not important or
interesting so we're not concerned with proof. It's plausibility is
irrelevant.

However, one could envision a situation in which it was important, say
for the investigation of a hit-and-run accident. Then Bob would have
to provide genuine proof that he drove an Accord. Even though it is a
perfectly plausible claim, it requires proof because it's important.

Alternately, there could be a case where the claim is implausible but
not interesting. Bob might claim he drove to work in an Accord
formerly owned by actor Jon Voight. An unlikely and even
extraordinary claim, and probably interesting to many. But if you
just don't give a rat's ass about Jon Voight, then you're not going to
demand proof.

Now it is certainly true that implausible claims require more
substantive proof than plausible ones. But that's implicit in my
choice of the phrase "sufficient proof". However Sagan's phrase
"extraordinary proof" isn't quite as clear; one might wonder how
extraordinary a proof has to be before it's extraordinary enough.

But this is all academic as far as I'm concerned. I've never been an
advocate of using UFOlogy to try and prove the ETH. I don't think
science should be leaving the discovery of the Universe's
extraordinary truths in the hands of non-scientists. So I propose yet
another catch-phrase:

Important claims that can't be proven implausible require
investigation.

with the added proviso (giving Sagan a taste of his own medicine):

Extraordinarily important claims require extraordinary proof
of implausibility.

I judge these two phrases to be far more in keeping with the
objectives of science than Sagan's over-used refrain.

Cheers,
Alan/

[SPHINX Technologies]

In article <NEWTNews.836347...@negia.net.negia.net>,
<jca...@negia.net> wrote:

>Brian has said that a request to cite the best individual pieces of
>evidence for ETH is a debunker's trick. In science the rule is put up
>or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
>Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
>good.

>Choosing the best statistical analysis can be complicated, but

>shopping around for a method that produces the desired interpretation
>is not allowed. Why point to the advantages of a Bayesian approach
>over a traditional method, while at the same time praising the results
>of the BBSR chi-square analysis? The appropriateness of the analysis
>and of the interpretation is what counts.

One of the concommitants of the ETH is that the Govt. knows about it,
and for some reason has classified the matter as extremely sensitive.
(See for example the Wilbert B. Smith memo.) Futher, goes the composite
hypothesis, the matter is considered *SO* sensitive that they've pulled
out all the stops and mounted an intensive counterintelligence effort,
including such standard counterintelligence tactics as well-funded
disinformation programs. (Standard when no holds are being barred, for
a matter deemed of utmost importance to try to protect.)

If in fact this is the case, then you are up against nnot a routine inquiry
of Mother Nature about what is true or what is false, but more like a
criminal investigation or perhaps a counter-counter-intelligence operation
of your own.

Thus a routine application of "The Scientific Method" is not going to be
the most productive approach to getting at the truth in this case. However,
the Bayesian approach, which has been used to good advantage in estimating
complex signal sequences in the presence of intersymbol interference and
noise, seems to be fairly well suited to this problem as a way of
"digging the signal out of noise" and intentional obfuscation.

If it *WERE* a simple scientific inquiry, I would basically agree with your
comments, which were thoughtful and clearly expressed. But since you can't
be sure of that conclusion a priori, it would be unscientific, or at least
unwise, to rely on a method which assumes you're oonly up against Mother Nature,
who basically plays a fair game, at least over the long term. If you don't
like the Bayesian conclusion, however, as you yourself said, it isn't fair
to shop around for another paradigm that gives you the answer you prefer.

-John Sangster
Wellesley Hills, MA

[Lawrence E. McKnight]

J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl (J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl) wrote:

>In article, m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu (Michael Edelman) wrote:
>
>>: This is patently false, since it presumes that such debunking efforts are
>>: honest.
>>
>>So...the debunkers are all dishonest, ergo no objections to the ETH
>>need be taken seriously?
>
> Notice how EdelTwit completely distorts Brian's statement. Taking de-
> bunkers seriously, and the validity of their objections are two sepa-
> rate things. Dishonest debunking efforts would be taking free liberty
> to massage the data and mutilate the evidence to fit a preconceived
> hypothesis.
>
>> I say "why are most UFO photos out of focus?" then that question doesn't
>> depend on my honesty.
>
> EdelNut seems unable to distinguish between asking questions and giving
> bizarre peusoscientific explanations for UFO incidents that do not hold
> up under careful scrutiny. The former is considered normal. The latter
> would be the a "dishonest debunking effort" Brian was talking about.

Sorry. 'Bizarre pseudoscientific explanations' only show up in
SaucerZealot posts, as far as I have seen.

>
> One more thing. Most UFO photos are not out of focus at all; The objects
> photographed themselves are usually fuzzy.

I see. You have photos where it has been established that the 'objects'
were the same distance from the focal plane as some reference objects,
which were clearly in focus? Or is it just a statement of belief?

[additional SaucerZealotBilge deleted....

[SPHINX Technologies]

In article <4rdqt7$m...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,
Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>Bill Peterson (bi...@io.com) wrote:
>
>

>: It appears that UFO's may ionize the atmosphere around them. This will
>: preclude good focus.
>
>

>Here's an example of what the prvious poster was talking about. An ad-hoc
>explaination is formulated to adapt the data to the hypothesis, rather
>than the other way around. This is letting the hypothesis drive the data,
>rather than the other way around.

You clearly don't understand how the scientific method operates. The data
doesn't "drive the hypothesis" in most cases. There is an *INDUCTIVE* or
creative step in which the scientist reaches out and *SYNTHESIZES* a
hypothesis, which is then tested against the data.

In fact, the single most important factor separating the really creative
scientists from the mediocre ones is an outstanding ability at reaching out
with their right brain and plucking a *REALLY INNOVATIVE* and probably
unprecendented hypothesis out of seemingly (to the likes of *YOU*, anyway)
thin air, sometimes to heaps of great criticism, only to be proven right
over time, as the data keeps confirming their brilliant hypothesis.

Thus, it is perfectly good science to generate a hypothesis that ionization
might be the cause of blurring. And it would be perfectly good science to
then design one or more experiments to see if this hypothesis is or is not
correct. If you can get a real UFO to test, that would be the best approach.
If not, you might have to settle for making up a disk of your own and
applying a high-voltage field to it to get ionization.

Just be careful that the field doesn't cause the disk to accelerate away
at alarming speed and hit something, due to the Biefield-Brown effect. :^)

-John Sangster
Wellesley Hills, MA

The claim of ionization is pulled out of
>thin air to explain a data problem, with no other justification.
>

>It doesn't help the argument that ionizing the atmosphere would *not*
>"preclude good focus". That's a nosensical statement.
>

> However, some good films exist, and it seems
>: more are being taken. All are written off by skeptics.
>

>So...do they, or don't they "ionize the air" and "preclude good focus"?
>Again, note that additional causes are introduced and withdrawn as
>required to fit the data to the hypothesis.
>

>: The problem here is that there is an organization that controls the

>: UFO data. This organization does not want to release the data, and
>: will definitely lie and delay. Some conclusive data could have been
>: gathered by this organization (through the use of gun camera films),
>: but none of these have been released. It will be difficult if not
>: impossible to test a hypothesis when the data has been confiscated.
>: Of what value are your statistical conclusions when you are denied
>: access to all the data?
>

>Again, the claim that unseen data exists that would prove the theory. This
>is not science.
>

>--mike

[Bill Peterson]

In article <4rebpp$8...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,

Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>Bill Peterson (bi...@io.com) wrote:

>: In article <4rdqt7$m...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,

>: Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>: >Bill Peterson (bi...@io.com) wrote:
>: >
>: >
>: >: It appears that UFO's may ionize the atmosphere around them. This will
>: >: preclude good focus.
>: >
>: >
>: >Here's an example of what the prvious poster was talking about. An ad-hoc
>: >explaination is formulated to adapt the data to the hypothesis, rather
>: >than the other way around. This is letting the hypothesis drive the data,

>: >rather than the other way around. The claim of ionization is pulled out of

>: >thin air to explain a data problem, with no other justification.

>: >
>
>: No sir, the proposal for ionization was arrived at by two rocket

>: scientists, after studying reports of ground traces, radiation burns,
>: and illumination characteristics. It *is* the data that drives this
>: proposal, and not the other way around.
>

>It's still nonsense, as we will see...

Ahh, so the rocket scientists are full of nonsense.

>
>: >It doesn't help the argument that ionizing the atmosphere would *not*

>: >"preclude good focus". That's a nosensical statement.
>

>: I am just a microprocessor designer, but Paul Hill does an admirable

>: job of describing this effect.
>

>So share it with us.
>

Would you judge Einstien's Theory based on my, admittedly inferior,
description of it?

>: > However, some good films exist, and it seems

>: >: more are being taken. All are written off by skeptics.
>: >
>: >So...do they, or don't they "ionize the air" and "preclude good focus"?
>: >Again, note that additional causes are introduced and withdrawn as
>: >required to fit the data to the hypothesis.
>: >
>

>: As discussed by Hill (have you read this?), the ionization is at

>: its greatest during high performance maneuvers. A UFO sitting at rest
>: does not have this effect. A film of a low performance UFO might indeed
>: be sharp and distinct, while a film of UFO's in high performance
>: might be indistinct. This is consistent with reports.
>

>Ad-hocism, besides being nonsense.
>

Nonsense again? I'm not following.

>When scientists formulate hypotheses, they try to create hypotheses that
>explain knwon phenomena and predict yet-unseen phenomena. Kepler's
>laws described not only the moltions of the known planets, but that
>of the yet-undiscovered planets.
>
>What we see here is almost the opposite. New hypotheticals are continuously`
>invoked to explain failings in the hypothesis, and no predictions are
>possible, given the ever-changing web of contentions.
>
>This ain't science.
>

It occurred to me that the UFO situation is more like discovering
a new animal. How could you prove the existence of a new animal based
solely on reports, some bad photos, and a few footprints?

>: >Again, the claim that unseen data exists that would prove the theory. This
>: >is not science.
>: >
>
>: No sir, the claim is that all the data is not available. This is beyond

>: question. Now, how do you perform statistical analysis when you
>: know you have only a partial sample? Any claim made either way will
>: be resting on incomplete data.
>

>This reveals a basic misconception of the use of statistics. For one
>thing, one of the uses of statistical analysis is making inferences
>from incomplete data ;-)
>

So, if you know that the data set has been culled for a certain type
of attribute (which attribute you don't know), you can still make
a proposal based on that data? What if all gun-camera films that
showed UFO's were culled out of your sample of gun camera films. What
kind of conclusion would you draw?

[Bill Peterson]

In article <31daeab3...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
Lawrence E. McKnight <mckn...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>bi...@io.com (Bill Peterson) wrote:
>
>>In article <4rdqt7$m...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,
>>Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>>>Bill Peterson (bi...@io.com) wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>: It appears that UFO's may ionize the atmosphere around them. This will
>>>: preclude good focus.
>>>
>>>
>>>Here's an example of what the prvious poster was talking about. An ad-hoc
>>>explaination is formulated to adapt the data to the hypothesis, rather
>>>than the other way around. This is letting the hypothesis drive the data,
>>>rather than the other way around. The claim of ionization is pulled out of
>>>thin air to explain a data problem, with no other justification.
>>>
>>
>>No sir, the proposal for ionization was arrived at by two rocket
>>scientists, after studying reports of ground traces, radiation burns,
>>and illumination characteristics. It *is* the data that drives this
>>proposal, and not the other way around.
>

>'Rocket Scientists'? If whoever proposed it identified themselves as
>'rocket scientists', then there is a substantial probability that they
>are kooks or charlatans. Of course, in FundieSpeak, 'rocket scientist'
>might refer to engineers who worked on some phase of the space program,
>with no particular qualification in the relevent areas.
>

Dr. Oberth and Paul Hill. Definitely rocket scientists by any
standard. Throw in Cmdr McLaughlin for evidence of ET UFO's. Definitely
a rocket scientist.

>>
>>>It doesn't help the argument that ionizing the atmosphere would *not*
>>>"preclude good focus". That's a nosensical statement.
>>>
>>
>>I am just a microprocessor designer, but Paul Hill does an admirable
>>job of describing this effect.
>

>And he has become an expert on the optical effects of ionization? Geez,
>why don't you make up something about McDonald?
>

I take it you haven't read the book? That explains your oblique attack on
the person, not the data.

>>
>>> However, some good films exist, and it seems
>>>: more are being taken. All are written off by skeptics.
>>>
>>>So...do they, or don't they "ionize the air" and "preclude good focus"?
>>>Again, note that additional causes are introduced and withdrawn as
>>>required to fit the data to the hypothesis.
>>>
>>
>>As discussed by Hill (have you read this?), the ionization is at
>>its greatest during high performance maneuvers. A UFO sitting at rest
>>does not have this effect. A film of a low performance UFO might indeed
>>be sharp and distinct, while a film of UFO's in high performance
>>might be indistinct. This is consistent with reports.
>

>I see. Ionization depends of the level of performance. Kind of shoots
>the hell out of your earlier claim about the evidence for ionization
>coming from the 'ground traces', doesn't it?

Since you are ignorant of these reports, I'm not sure what basis
you're speaking from?

>>
>>
>>>: The problem here is that there is an organization that controls the
>>>: UFO data. This organization does not want to release the data, and
>>>: will definitely lie and delay. Some conclusive data could have been
>>>: gathered by this organization (through the use of gun camera films),
>>>: but none of these have been released. It will be difficult if not
>>>: impossible to test a hypothesis when the data has been confiscated.
>>>: Of what value are your statistical conclusions when you are denied
>>>: access to all the data?
>>>

>>>Again, the claim that unseen data exists that would prove the theory. This
>>>is not science.
>>>
>>
>>No sir, the claim is that all the data is not available. This is beyond
>>question. Now, how do you perform statistical analysis when you
>>know you have only a partial sample? Any claim made either way will
>>be resting on incomplete data.
>>

>>Let us say the discussion is about lasers, and which wavelengths are
>>easy to achieve (like red for diodes). Now, if you know that the
>>goverment has done extensive testing of diode lasers, but is witholding
>>the data, what is your approach?
>>

Uh oh, no response on this? Perhaps it is too dense?

[Lawrence E. McKnight]

bi...@io.com (Bill Peterson) wrote:

Gee, I don't recall exactly what Oberth's qualifications were, but Hill
seems to be one of the 'engineers who worked on some phase of the space
program, with no particular qualification in the relevent areas'. Are
you trying to make my point? Do you know of _anyone_ who describes
himself as a 'rocket scientist'. (My ex-brother-in-law, a physicist
(with a real Ph.D.) at JPL had never heard the term applied to anybody
in the field.)

>
>>>
>>>>It doesn't help the argument that ionizing the atmosphere would *not*
>>>>"preclude good focus". That's a nosensical statement.
>>>>
>>>
>>>I am just a microprocessor designer, but Paul Hill does an admirable
>>>job of describing this effect.
>>
>>And he has become an expert on the optical effects of ionization? Geez,
>>why don't you make up something about McDonald?
>>
>
>I take it you haven't read the book? That explains your oblique attack on
>the person, not the data.

Are you saying that he _is_ an expert on the optical effects of
ionization?
>
>>>

>>>> However, some good films exist, and it seems
>>>>: more are being taken. All are written off by skeptics.
>>>>
>>>>So...do they, or don't they "ionize the air" and "preclude good focus"?
>>>>Again, note that additional causes are introduced and withdrawn as
>>>>required to fit the data to the hypothesis.
>>>>
>>>
>>>As discussed by Hill (have you read this?), the ionization is at
>>>its greatest during high performance maneuvers. A UFO sitting at rest
>>>does not have this effect. A film of a low performance UFO might indeed
>>>be sharp and distinct, while a film of UFO's in high performance
>>>might be indistinct. This is consistent with reports.
>>
>>I see. Ionization depends of the level of performance. Kind of shoots
>>the hell out of your earlier claim about the evidence for ionization
>>coming from the 'ground traces', doesn't it?
>
>Since you are ignorant of these reports, I'm not sure what basis
>you're speaking from?

Well, are you making the plea that the SaucerZealots are unable to
present the evidence here, and that all the confusion is caused by their
incompetence?

>
>>>
>>>
>>>>: The problem here is that there is an organization that controls the
>>>>: UFO data. This organization does not want to release the data, and
>>>>: will definitely lie and delay. Some conclusive data could have been
>>>>: gathered by this organization (through the use of gun camera films),
>>>>: but none of these have been released. It will be difficult if not
>>>>: impossible to test a hypothesis when the data has been confiscated.
>>>>: Of what value are your statistical conclusions when you are denied
>>>>: access to all the data?
>>>>
>>>>Again, the claim that unseen data exists that would prove the theory. This
>>>>is not science.
>>>>
>>>
>>>No sir, the claim is that all the data is not available. This is beyond
>>>question. Now, how do you perform statistical analysis when you
>>>know you have only a partial sample? Any claim made either way will
>>>be resting on incomplete data.
>>>
>>>Let us say the discussion is about lasers, and which wavelengths are
>>>easy to achieve (like red for diodes). Now, if you know that the
>>>goverment has done extensive testing of diode lasers, but is witholding
>>>the data, what is your approach?
>>>
>
>Uh oh, no response on this? Perhaps it is too dense?

No, I wouldn't call your statement 'dense'. I would call it incoherent.

>
>BP
>--
>Disclaimer: I only speak for myself, and sometimes I wish I hadn't!

---------------

[Wm G. Smith]

Among those wh believe in Life on Other Planets a number of unstated assumptions seem to
prevail. First, of course, is the assumption that life on other planets exists. This is
unremarkable enough. Astronomers have discovered the buildign blocks of life in gas
clouds millions of light years distant. Life, as we know it, then is possible somewhere
in the Universe. In an infinite Universe, some have said, whatever is possible is
mandatory. With an infinite number of chances for an event to occur, even the remotest
contingencies become all but certain. Or so it is said. We know life is possible
because we have observed it. What has happened may happen again. What may happen, must
happen.

Why am I unconvinced? The genesis of life by random collisions of organic molecules is
a very remote possibility. I don't know if anyone if anyone has calculated the odds of
such an event's occurring, or even if such a calculation is possible, but I'll bet it's
something on the order of several billion to one against. But there will be several
billion chances, the Pro-Lifers will argue. Maybe, but if the odds are 7,000,000,000:1
and there are 6,999,999,999 misses, the odds against a hit on the seven billionth try
are exactly the same as the odds against a hit on the first try -- 7,000,000,000:1
against.

But even if we accept the notion that what may happen must happen, remember we've
already had one hit. How do we know it's not the only hit? Buried within the slogan,
Whatever May Happen Must Happen is a paradox. One of the things that may happen is no
hits at all. One of the things that may happen is one, and only one hit. Even if Life
occurs elsewhere, it may only occur at one elsewhere. The Pro-Lifers assume it occurs
at millions of elsewheres. I am willing to concede that Life may exist elsewhere (it
really would be extraordinary if it didn't), but I am not convinced that it MUST exist.

Building on the assumption that Life MUST exist, the Pro-Lifers then go on to assume
that if Life exists, it must evolve into intelligent life. Here again the
possibilities are nearly infinite. It would be extraordinary if humans were the only
intelligent life forms in the Universe but it would also be extraordinary if we were
not. Human intelligence, for example, seems to depend as much on the fact that
Australopithecus Afarensis walked upright as on any other cause.

Humans are intelligent because of their large brains. In order to fit a brain large
enough to contain human intelligence down the birth canal of any reasonably sized female
mammal, tradeoffs have to be made. Human infants are the least developed animals at
birth of all the Animal Kingdom. We are born half-formed. We cannot walk, we cannot
talk, we cannot even hold our bladders. It takes nearly a year for a human baby to walk
and even then, our first toddling steps would be insufficient to enable our escape from
even the most unenterprising predator for another two to three years. And even at three
or four years of age we cannot travel any appreciable distance. But humans walk erect,
which means our hands are free, which means our mothers can carry us.

Now once intelligence begins to develop, it confers huge survival acvantages, else we
would never have developed so much of it. But it would not have started in the first
place without te pure accident of erect posture. I am not saying that intelligence must
necessarily go with erect posture, mammalian social life or any of the other acciedents
of human life, but that is how it happened for us, and this almost fantastic coincidence
of accidents is what made human intelligence possible. Intelligent alien life may
resemble us or it may resemble large snails or rainbow trout. The point is that however
alien intelligence may have evolved, it must have evolved from an equally fantastic
coincidence of accidents. Remove one accident from the chain of causation and evolution
takes an altogether different path. Intelligence on the almost fantastic order of human
beings is not a necessary evolutionary outcome; even fairly complex life may exist on
millions of planets without intelligence occurring on any one of them. Even here on
Earth intelligence did not evolve for more than a billion years of life.

The third unstated assumption builds on the first two. Assuming life exists on other
planets and assuming intelligent life to exist on at least some of these other
planets, the Pro-Lifers almost always go on to assume that these intelligent aliens
will necessarily have developed a highly advanced technological civilization on well
in advance of our own fantastic accomplishments.

For the first 3-million years of human evolution we gradually became tool users
and makers. Even with the appearance of homo sapiens, modern humans, 150,000 years
ago, we made few advances beyond simple stone tools, hides, tents, huts, etc. Only
about 10,000 years ago did we start to switch from nomadic hunter-gatherers, to
semi-nomadic pastoralists and finally to agriculturalists. Metal working has only
been with us for 6-7,000 years, followed by the first cities. To this day, there are
still larg numbers of humans who live as pastoralists and a dwindling, but still
significant number of hunter-gatherers.

Only in the Seventeenth Century, when Galileo first pointed his telescope at Jupiter
and saw its moons did the scientific revolution really begin; less than 400 years ago.
Out of 3.5 million. An eyeblink, really. What are the chances that an alien life form
coud have developed a technological civilization equal to or greater than our own?
Remember that our civilization came within an eyelash of destroying itself with atom
bombs and we're not out of danger yet. If such a civilization ever did exist in another
part of the Galaxy, our own experience should tell us that it is entirely possible that
they blew themselves to bits long before we discovered radio-- in other words, long
before it could have been possible for us to have detected them.

I am not saying that any of these claims is impossible, but I am asking reaonable
persons to consider the difficulties. Either there is life on other planet or ther is
not. Since there is no way of knowing (yet), the best guess as to the probability is no
better than 50/50. If there is life on other planets, either intelligent life will have
arisen or not. Again, no better than 50/50. If there is intelligent life on other
planets, it will either have produced an advanced civilization or not. Again, no better
than 50/50.

If I understand probability correctly, the odds of three consecutive hits in when the
odds on each try are one in two is eight to one against. Not bad odds, but most of the
Pro-Lifers I hear, claim, explicitly or implicitly, that, far from being 8:1 against,
the chances are all but certain FOR the proposition that intelligent life in an advanced
technological civilization exists, not just somewhere, but in a great many places.

[Matt Kennel]

SPHINX Technologies (sph...@world.std.com) wrote:

: One of the concommitants of the ETH is that the Govt. knows about it,

: and for some reason has classified the matter as extremely sensitive.
: (See for example the Wilbert B. Smith memo.) Futher, goes the composite
: hypothesis, the matter is considered *SO* sensitive that they've pulled
: out all the stops and mounted an intensive counterintelligence effort,
: including such standard counterintelligence tactics as well-funded
: disinformation programs. (Standard when no holds are being barred, for
: a matter deemed of utmost importance to try to protect.)

ETH hypothesis says nothing about the reasons why the government would
consider it 'utmost importance' to protect.

I do not believe that a mere 'et's are here' is sufficient reason for
a government coverup on the scale postulated, complete with insinuations
about utterly un-Constitutional and patently treasonous activities.

Why would the "Alien affair" be considered *SO* sensitive?

I cannot imagine that 'embarrasement' or 'fear of panic' is sufficient
reason.

Conclusion: If They're here, and there is a giant coverup which is keeping
all the good evidence away, the aliens are doing something really disturbing,
or told the authorities something really disturbing.

: -John Sangster
: Wellesley Hills, MA

--
Matthew B. Kennel/m...@caffeine.engr.utk.edu/I do not speak for ORNL, DOE or UT
Oak Ridge National Laboratory/University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN USA/
*NO MASS EMAIL SPAM* It's an abuse of Federal Government computer resources
and an affront to common civility. On account of egregiously vile spamation,
my software terminates all email from "interramp.com" and "cris.com" without
human intervention.

[Alan Dekok]

In article <4rensq$k...@tuegate.tue.nl>,
J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl <J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl> wrote:
>
> [ discussing proving/disproving hypotheses ]
>
> [...] The criteria you set must be attainable.

Why should they be? High energy particle physics discusses
hypotheses without attainable proof all of the time. There are
hypotheses which everyone agrees will be statistically proven after
collecting X amount of data.

The only problem is that X amount of data is 100 to 1000 years of
continuous running of a particle accelerator, so the hypothesis is
non-falsifiable in the short term. Eventually someone builds a better
accelerator, and collects physical proof.

Having requirements for proof which are _currently_ impossible
to fulfill doesn't make the demander of such proof an idiot.

> [...] The reason why demands for physical proof are logically spe-

> cious is because there is no evidence that any given sighting would _neces-
> sarily_ produce physical evidence.

Demands for physical proof are ALWAYS logically sound. If
alien-controlled UFOs exist, they must exist in the physical world,
and they must have physical presence. Therefore demanding physical
evidence is a logical necessity for proving their physical existence.

And the lack of physical proof does _not_ disprove the existence of
alien-controlled UFOs. The lack of physical evidence just means that
alien-controlled UFO's have not physically interacted with us in a way
we can measure or record. This, of course, puts them in the same
boat as the Coalecanth (until one was found), or angels dancing on the
head of a pin. Take your pick.

Alan DeKok.
--
"Even more like you, perhaps, than you are yourself."
http://www.physics.carleton.ca/~aland/

[Alan Dekok]

In article <31D9CA...@students.wisc.edu>,
Brian Zeiler <bdze...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:

> ... demands for PHYSICAL PROOF are logical trickery

>because it is quite likely that such a demand is unattainable when
>conditional upon the presence of disk-shaped vehicles.

Demands for physical proof are logically sound, and part of the
basis of science. If you reject the requirement for physical proof,
then you're not performing science, you're performing acts of faith.

>1) Demanding unattainable evidential criteria is poor logic. Debunkers
>demand physical proof, but they have not convinced me that such would be
>available conditional upon the presence of unusual disk-shaped vehicles.

If they have physical existence, physical proof of their existence
is obtainable. QED.

The fact that they don't leave garbage behind labelled 'McDonalds,
Saggitarius' makes obtaining physical proof more difficult, but not
impossible if they DO, in fact, exist.

>Strangely, however, the debunkers have failed to
>provide the world with a detailed, objective measurement system of the

>extraordinarity of claims [...]

Personally, I'd say anything not explicable by our current
scientific models, or which is not provably observed to happen
regularly, is extraordinary.

Note that this use of extraordinary includes the fringes of
scientific research in many fields.

e.g. The Z^o boson was extraordinary, until enough statistics were
collected to make it ordinary, and a mathematical description of it
formulated.

e.g. Life is ordinary. No one can explain why we're "alive" and
rocks are not, but life still is observed every day.

e.g. 'Unusual disk-shaped vehicles' are extraordinary because no one
has a scientifically verifiable explanation for what they are and how
they work, and these 'vehicles' are rarely observed, and are precisely
recorded even more rarely.

[Alan Douglas]

m...@caffeine.engr.utk.edu (Matt Kennel) wrote:

>I do not believe that a mere 'et's are here' is sufficient reason for
>a government coverup on the scale postulated, complete with insinuations
>about utterly un-Constitutional and patently treasonous activities.

>Why would the "Alien affair" be considered *SO* sensitive?

>I cannot imagine that 'embarrasement' or 'fear of panic' is sufficient
>reason.

Ok, how about 'loss of credibility'? Governments usually don't like
admitting that they've been lying for decades, especially if it's
involved "un-Constitutional and patently treasonous activities". Look
how much time and pressure it took before the officials admitted to
the Operation Mogul cover-up at Roswell.

Also, if they admit to UFO's then they'll be adding fuel to the fire
of every nutty conspiracy theory that can be conceived. A dangerous
can of worms, if you ask me, especially when we live in an age rife
with anti-government militia groups.

>Conclusion: If They're here, and there is a giant coverup which is keeping
>all the good evidence away, the aliens are doing something really disturbing,
>or told the authorities something really disturbing.

Perhaps, but I wouldn't discount the possibility that the authorities
themselves are just plain disturbed :-)

Cheers,
Alan/

[Rosie/Dan Truesdell]

m...@caffeine.engr.utk.edu (Matt Kennel) wrote:

>[...]

>ETH hypothesis says nothing about the reasons why the government would
>consider it 'utmost importance' to protect.

>I do not believe that a mere 'et's are here' is sufficient reason for

>a government coverup on the scale postulated, complete with insinuations
>about utterly un-Constitutional and patently treasonous activities.

>[...]

Actually, un-constitutionality and treason are quite strong motivation
for coverup, aliens or not.

Dan

[Ted Rosen]

Alan_D...@mindlink.bc.ca (Alan Douglas) wrote:

<snip>

>Also, if they admit to UFO's then they'll be adding fuel to the fire
>of every nutty conspiracy theory that can be conceived. A dangerous
>can of worms, if you ask me, especially when we live in an age rife
>with anti-government militia groups.

Seems to me that if the .gov confirmed the ETH, every nutty conspiracy
theory would be nullified. An immediate call for open communication
and inter-specie study would sprout forth from every scientist (and
skeptic) on the planet. The militia and libertarians would certainly
be proud to have another "I told you so" feather in their caps, but
they would also come to a startling realization that their
nationalistic plight is rather mundane in light of the New Age of
Galactic Brotherhood.

>>Conclusion: If They're here, and there is a giant coverup which is keeping
>>all the good evidence away, the aliens are doing something really disturbing,
>>or told the authorities something really disturbing.

IMHO, the .gov is doing something very disturbing, but anyone who
finds that surprising is seriously impaired.
I find 99 percent of "UFOlogy" crap, but that nagging 1 percent is an
alarming conundrum to all but the most reactionary skeptics.
It's unfortunate that to get a grasp on any viable confirmations of
the ETH one must wade through veritable oceans of muck, stupidity,
lunacy and ignorance.

- TR

[jca...@negia.net]

In Article<4rensq$k...@tuegate.tue.nl>, <J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl> wrote:

<big snip>

>Which incident is being referred to?
>
> Let's first examine the contradictions contained in the original example.
> First, it is stated that the radar showed a "UFO descending towards the
> ship in a threatening manner."

The full sentence from the original:

A few years ago the crew of a guided missile cruiser with

^^^ ^^^^

state-of-the-art radar reported that a UFO was descending

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
toward the ship in a threatening manner.
^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^

> Then a few lines further we can read that
> the "radar recordings show a UFO climbing." Which is it?

The answer is, it's both. The crew misinterpreted what they
saw on the radar screen. On other ships in the fleet, the
crews saw the contact climbing. Without the recording we would
think that some sort of malfunction occurred. Excited radar
operators make mistakes.

> Obviously, this
> tale is worthless and, given that it has occured, which is doubtfull, has
> been misrepresented by the clueless debunker who first brought it up.

Maybe it was misinterpreted by the reader.

The incident occurred in the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988,
when the U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian A300 Airbus
with 290 pewople on board.

John

[Michael Edelman]

jca...@negia.net wrote:

: In Article<4rensq$k...@tuegate.tue.nl>, <J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl> wrote:

: > Obviously, this

: > tale is worthless and, given that it has occured, which is doubtfull, has
: > been misrepresented by the clueless debunker who first brought it up.

:
: Maybe it was misinterpreted by the reader.

: The incident occurred in the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988,
: when the U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian A300 Airbus
: with 290 pewople on board.

Which also might cause us to consider:

If the well-trained radar crew of a a modern, state-of-the-art fleet
picket ship with phased array radar and a ton of computerized signal
analysis and display hardware and software could mistake an ascending
A300 for an F14 on an Exocet attack profile...

...what does that say about all the "data" that relies on operator
interpretation of 1950s radar technology? This was before doppler
radar, before anti-aliasing, before *any* of the modern processing.

--mike

--mike

[Bill Peterson]

In article <4rrge4$j...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,

Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>
>If the well-trained radar crew of a a modern, state-of-the-art fleet
>picket ship with phased array radar and a ton of computerized signal
>analysis and display hardware and software could mistake an ascending
>A300 for an F14 on an Exocet attack profile...
>
>...what does that say about all the "data" that relies on operator
>interpretation of 1950s radar technology? This was before doppler
>radar, before anti-aliasing, before *any* of the modern processing.
>

What it seems to say to me is that although the specifics might be wrong,
the radar *did* see something. To say that UFO's don't exist since the
data might be so far off is like saying the A300 didn't exist, since
the radar operators made a mistake. The fact is the radar showed an
object, an object was there. It was the interpretation that was in error.
Now, UFO radar tracks could also be mis-interpreted, but it still
indicates that an object wast there.

In cases where people on the ground, people in the air, and radar all say
something is there, something is probably really there. What it is is
open to question, but something *was* there.

[Jim Rogers]

Bill Peterson wrote:
> In article <4rebpp$8...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,
> Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
....

> >When scientists formulate hypotheses, they try to create hypotheses that
> >explain knwon phenomena and predict yet-unseen phenomena. Kepler's
> >laws described not only the moltions of the known planets, but that
> >of the yet-undiscovered planets.
> >
> >What we see here is almost the opposite. New hypotheticals are continuously`
> >invoked to explain failings in the hypothesis, and no predictions are
> >possible, given the ever-changing web of contentions.
> >
> >This ain't science.
>
> It occurred to me that the UFO situation is more like discovering
> a new animal. How could you prove the existence of a new animal based
> solely on reports, some bad photos, and a few footprints?

You can't. You might *suspect* the existence of a (particular) new animal, but
you can't, for instance, describe a chubacabra and tell me what family it
belongs in. Have you ever heard of biologists accepting the existence of new
animals based solely on public reports, some bad photos, and a few footprints?

Jim

[Alan Douglas]

ham...@nas.com (Ted Rosen) wrote:

>Alan_D...@mindlink.bc.ca (Alan Douglas) wrote:

>>Also, if they admit to UFO's then they'll be adding fuel to the fire
>>of every nutty conspiracy theory that can be conceived. A dangerous
>>can of worms, if you ask me, especially when we live in an age rife
>>with anti-government militia groups.

>Seems to me that if the .gov confirmed the ETH, every nutty conspiracy
>theory would be nullified.

Nothing personal Ted, but I think you may be insane :-). No matter
what the government tells us about aliens, there will always be those
who believe that the *real* truth is far more insidious. Don't you
watch the X-Files? You should read some of the nuttier and nastier
alien conspiracy theories that are out there. Very entertaining.

And if the government does admit that's it been lying all these years
about the *big one*, then that will only encourage all the JFK 2nd
gunman, Holocaust denial, fluoride mind control, hollow Earth (etc
etc) conspiracy theorists. And there'd be no arguing with them
because we'd all know that at least one super-massive government
cover-up had taken place. It would "prove" that the government can't
be trusted and that everything they tell us is a lie.

>An immediate call for open communication and inter-specie study
>would sprout forth from every scientist (and skeptic) on the planet.

Hee hee. Now I know you're insane :-)

If the government admitted that aliens were here, then I predict the
following sorts of arguments from the bulk of the sceptics (led by
CSICOP naturally):

1) There is nothing special about the government -- it is just a
collection of people, and people have been making false or misguided
claims about contact with aliens for decades.

2) The government states that it lied in the past about UFOs, and yet
now expects us to believe it is telling the truth. Since there is no
scientific evidence in support of the ETH, it is far more likely that
the government was telling the truth in the past, and is now lying.
(Insert standard Occam's razor argument if desired)

3) The government first said that a weather balloon crashed at
Roswell. Then it said it was a spy balloon. Now it says it was an
alien craft. Such inconsistencies completely undermine the
government's credibility and are exactly what one would expect from a
hoaxer.

4) The government's refusal to release material evidence for
scientific testing by reputable independent laboratories, claiming it
would violate "national security", is exactly what one would expect
from a hoaxer.

Other things that sceptics might do would include:

-produce endless "I can't imagine why" arguments. ie "I can't imagine
why the government wouldn't have told us about aliens sooner" or "I
can't imagine why aliens would care about our government". (Note that
a truly honest sceptic would always preface such an argument with the
phrase "I haven't really given this a moment's though, so..." or "I
have all the creativity of a disposable napkin, so..." :-)

-seize upon any minor inconsistency in the government's story and blow
it out of all proportion.

-reject any evidence that fails to meet the preconceived expectations
of what the sceptics believe the genuine article should look like, on
the grounds that it "obviously looks fake".

-enlist special FX experts who would go on record saying that the
government's "evidence" was faked and that they could reproduce it
easily (although they will never actually prove their claim by doing
so)

-find randomly occurring patterns in the evidence which "prove" it was
hoaxed (example: the word "VIdEO" seen in the Alien Autopsy video
I-beam glyphs, which was actually the ancient Greek word for "freedom"
shown *upsidedown*)

Did I miss any?

Cheers,
Alan/

[Michael Edelman]

Brian Zeiler (bdze...@students.wisc.edu) wrote:

: Michael Edelman wrote:
: >
: > Brian Zeiler (bdze...@students.wisc.edu) wrote:
: >
: > : > In science the rule is put up
: > : > or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
: > : > Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
: > : > good.
: >
: > : This is patently false, since it presumes that such debunking efforts are
: > : honest.
: >
: > So...the debunkers are all dishonest, ergo no objections to the ETH
: > need be taken seriously?

: Ah, thanks for illustrating ANOTHER logical trickery tactic! What you
: have done is taken my completely valid point and twisted it into a wholly
: unsubstantiated conclusion that I never suggested.

Brian has suddenly discovered that his various claims, if logically
followed, lead to conclusions he will not endorse. So what does
he do?

He attacks logic.

--mike

[Michael Edelman]

J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl (J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl) wrote:

: In article, m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu (Michael Edelman) wrote:

: >: This is patently false, since it presumes that such debunking efforts are
: >: honest.
: >
: >So...the debunkers are all dishonest, ergo no objections to the ETH
: >need be taken seriously?

: Notice how EdelTwit completely distorts Brian's statement. Taking de-

: bunkers seriously, and the validity of their objections are two sepa-
: rate things. Dishonest debunking efforts would be taking free liberty
: to massage the data and mutilate the evidence to fit a preconceived
: hypothesis.

Note that J. Walter's best attempt at refuting a logical implication of
Brian's claim is....making fun of my surname.

Needless to say, I've seen better attempts rhetorical refutation ;-)

: > I say "why are most UFO photos out of focus?" then that question doesn't
: > depend on my honesty.

: EdelNut seems unable to distinguish between asking questions and giving
: bizarre peusoscientific explanations for UFO incidents that do not hold
: up under careful scrutiny.

And how are we to differentiate between your notion of bizarre pseudoscience
and the more admissible fantasies you accept?

: > This puts Brian in a bit of a quandry: If he accepts that the Mg fragments

: > are of alien origin, then he *is* convinced that physical evidence
: > of alien spacecraft exists.

: More EdelNut StrawMen. Brian has never said that physical evidence does
: not or cannot exist. He _has_ said that it would be difficult to _obtain_.

No, what he said was that he was not convinced that such evidence could
exist. *Do* try to keep your atories straight!

: > for an objective measure of "extraordinarity". What Sagan meant when he

: > said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof is simply
: > something that we're all familiar with on an intuitive level. If someone

: Intuitive? Science is and should not be based on intuition because it
: doesn't provide us with a precise metric by which we can discern the
: merits of a claim.

Try to follow: There is a difference between the standards of evidence required
for proof- and it does appear that the skeptics are ahead of you on this
particular demand for rigor- and what Sagan was talking about. To repeat,
Sagan was simply making explicit something that people do intuitive when
they require more substantive proof for more extraordinary claims.

Your argument is not to the point.

The fact is that no one knowns what Sagan means when
: he uses "extraordinary," either with regard to a claim or the evidence
: supporting that claim. It's a moving target.

Everyone knows what Sagan means. Well, *almost* everyone.

: > And if he claims he was brought in a flying saucer, it would certainly seem

: > reasonable to ask for more than his simple testimony on the matter!

: Someone being brought in a flying saucer would even be considered extra-
: ordinary by me. But this doesn't negate the fact that "extraordinary
: claims demand extraordinary proof" is nothing but a pseudorule, a think
: cloak of principle over a body of arbitrariness.

We may then assume you have no such guiding principle. You do not accept
any more proof for "Brian arrived in a flying saucer" than "Brian ate
a doughnut"?

: > More noise. Brian thinks a chi-square "proves" that descriptions of

: > aliens prove that they're not humans. So what?

: Because they're aliens, EdelNut. Do you even know what a chi square
: analysis tells us?

A bit more than you, I think! At least I passed a series of graduate exams
in stats.

It tells us the likelihood that the unknowns are
: merely misclassified knowns versus the likelihood that the unknowns
: are actually inherently different -- that is, whether or not they're
: from the same distributions. As usual, EdelTwit's vague, worthless
: dismissal of the statistical analysis speaks enormous volumes of his
: ignorant apathy and propensity to dismiss nonconforming evidence.

No, the supposed analysis says nothing other than that the distribution
of data for the two sets is different. It says nothing about the
validity of the samples, how the "experiment" was designed, and so forth.
It attempts to prove that the descriptions of aliens are not descriptuions
of humans, and frankly, ifg even an analysis was rigged ahead of time,
this one was. And if you can't see that, no wonder you didn't pursue a career
in science.

[Lawrence E. McKnight]

bi...@io.com (Bill Peterson) wrote:

>In article <4rrge4$j...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,

>Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>>
>>If the well-trained radar crew of a a modern, state-of-the-art fleet
>>picket ship with phased array radar and a ton of computerized signal
>>analysis and display hardware and software could mistake an ascending
>>A300 for an F14 on an Exocet attack profile...
>>
>>...what does that say about all the "data" that relies on operator
>>interpretation of 1950s radar technology? This was before doppler
>>radar, before anti-aliasing, before *any* of the modern processing.
>>
>
>What it seems to say to me is that although the specifics might be wrong,
>the radar *did* see something. To say that UFO's don't exist since the
>data might be so far off is like saying the A300 didn't exist, since
>the radar operators made a mistake. The fact is the radar showed an
>object, an object was there. It was the interpretation that was in error.
>Now, UFO radar tracks could also be mis-interpreted, but it still
>indicates that an object wast there.

You seem to be making the rather foolish claim that every blip on a
radar screen is the result of an 'object' being in the indicated
location. They must have awfully good radars in SaucerZealotLand.

>
>In cases where people on the ground, people in the air, and radar all say
>something is there, something is probably really there. What it is is
>open to question, but something *was* there.

Hmm. Here you have more 'evidence', but now have only a 'probability'
(In SaucerZealotMathematics, apparantly no probability is ever
quantified) that an object was there, but you earlier said a single blip
on a radar screen is proof positive that an object was there. Make up
your mind.

>
>BP
>--
>Disclaimer: I only speak for myself, and sometimes I wish I hadn't!

---------------

[Bill Smith]

In <4rrk04$r...@pentagon.io.com> bi...@io.com (Bill Peterson) writes:
>
>In article <4rrge4$j...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,
>Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>>
>>If the well-trained radar crew of a a modern, state-of-the-art fleet
>>picket ship with phased array radar and a ton of computerized signal
>>analysis and display hardware and software could mistake an ascending
>>A300 for an F14 on an Exocet attack profile...
>>
>>...what does that say about all the "data" that relies on operator

>>interpretation of 1950s radar technology?...

[Peterson]>What it seems to say to me is that although the specifics

might be wrong,
>the radar *did* see something. To say that UFO's don't exist since the
>data might be so far off is like saying the A300 didn't exist, since

>the radar operators made a mistake....

But most of the skeptics who have replied to this thread and all the
other Flying Saucer threads do not say this at all. Let me make it
absolutely clear:

UFOS EXIST.

With all the tens of thousands of objects that are flying around up
there every day all over the world every one of us skeptics would
consider it an astonishing fact if UFOs did not occur. SOME, perhaps
most, UFOs are not objects at all, but technical glitches with the
radar, optical illusions, observer misidentification of unusual optical
or atmospheric phenomena (aurora borealis, sun dogs, green flash, ball
lightning, fata morgana) but a great many UFOs are actual objects.

I'll say it again so you don't miss the point.

I BELIEVE UFOS EXIST.

Are the UFOs alien spacecraft from another star system? I'm afraid
there just isn't enough data to warrant such an astonishing conclusion.

> The fact is the radar showed an
>object, an object was there. It was the interpretation that was in
error.

Yes, our point exactly.

[Larry Doering]

In article <4rkb12$l...@fountain.mindlink.net>,
Alan Douglas <Alan_D...@mindlink.bc.ca> wrote:
:m...@caffeine.engr.utk.edu (Matt Kennel) wrote:
:
:>I do not believe that a mere 'et's are here' is sufficient reason for

:>a government coverup on the scale postulated, complete with insinuations
:>about utterly un-Constitutional and patently treasonous activities.

:
:>Why would the "Alien affair" be considered *SO* sensitive?
:
:[...]
:
:Also, if they admit to UFO's then they'll be adding fuel to the fire

:of every nutty conspiracy theory that can be conceived. A dangerous
:can of worms, if you ask me, especially when we live in an age rife
:with anti-government militia groups.

Wheee! The government can't admit it's been conspiring to
suppress evidence of UFOs because doing so would encourage nutty
conspiracy theories!

Is there an irony detector in the house?

ljd

[Cluster User]

In article <4rs4c1$p...@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>,
w.s...@ix.netcom.com(Bill Smith) wrote:
[...]

> UFOS EXIST.
>
> With all the tens of thousands of objects that are flying around up
> there every day all over the world every one of us skeptics would
> consider it an astonishing fact if UFOs did not occur. SOME, perhaps
> most, UFOs are not objects at all, but technical glitches with the
> radar, optical illusions, observer misidentification of unusual optical
> or atmospheric phenomena (aurora borealis, sun dogs, green flash, ball
> lightning, fata morgana) but a great many UFOs are actual objects.
>
> I'll say it again so you don't miss the point.
>
> I BELIEVE UFOS EXIST.
>
> Are the UFOs alien spacecraft from another star system? I'm afraid
> there just isn't enough data to warrant such an astonishing conclusion.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Why is this an "astonishing conclusion"? It is generally accepted amongst
scientist that there probably are other life forms in the universe. So,
while it might be "thrilling", it wouldn't actually be "astonishing" to
discover this to be true, since it is expected. So it boils down to a
problem of physics- can anything/anybody get here from there? There is a
tendency to believe we have in the past 100 years dredged up all the
fundamentals there are to know about the construction of our universe, and
that we only have a few more decades to go before physics is "done." This
isn't the first time; in fact, at any given period, we tend to think we're
almost "done."

I don't subscribe to the notion that physics will ever be done. I think
that a culture that has, say, 100,000 years (a "blink of the eye") of
advancement over where we are now probably lives in a real that we would
call impossible. And that includes having modes of transportation that to
us appear instantaneous.

I personally would consider it, to use your word, "astonishing" if no ET
has ever visited our planet. If you are going to travel, you probably
focus on places that can also evolve and sustain life, for many reasons I
or assumably you could think of. Put it this way, if there were another
planet in our solar system that had large amounts of liquid water, we
would probably be dying to go there- and any other technologically advance
biological form almost undoubtably comes from a planet with liquid water,
since we know how relatively easily the basic building blocks of our own
biology can assemblre themselves in H2O. We have, after all, found simple
biological building blocks in meteor fragments (but no actual evidence of
life).

So there are two ways of looking at this: if life is rare in the universe,
it probably searches for (like us) and would cherish in some abstract way
(like us) any other planet that sustains life. If life is common, then
there must be a huge number cultures that have taken the steps we have and
have started exploring outward. Either way earth has probably been
identified as a place that can sustain life.

> >The fact is the radar showed an
> >object, an object was there. It was the interpretation that was in
> >error.
>
> Yes, our point exactly.

How about a case where pilots verify something radar is seeing? Many such
cases are alledged to exist. I think there was even a recent one near
Kennedy Airport, in January, I believe- but I don't know the details, I
could be wrong about the visual verification. But the point is, these such
cases (w/radar and visual confirmation) should obviously be the focus of
attention, since the likelihood of there being a mirage and a false radar
return simultaneously at the very least make for a much greater need to
understand the phenomenon.

[Bill Peterson]

In article <31e16bed...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,

Lawrence E. McKnight <mckn...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>bi...@io.com (Bill Peterson) wrote:
>

>>In article <4rrge4$j...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,
>>Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>If the well-trained radar crew of a a modern, state-of-the-art fleet
>>>picket ship with phased array radar and a ton of computerized signal
>>>analysis and display hardware and software could mistake an ascending
>>>A300 for an F14 on an Exocet attack profile...
>>>
>>>...what does that say about all the "data" that relies on operator

>>>interpretation of 1950s radar technology? This was before doppler
>>>radar, before anti-aliasing, before *any* of the modern processing.
>>>
>>

>>What it seems to say to me is that although the specifics might be wrong,
>>the radar *did* see something. To say that UFO's don't exist since the
>>data might be so far off is like saying the A300 didn't exist, since

>>the radar operators made a mistake. The fact is the radar showed an

>>object, an object was there. It was the interpretation that was in error.

>>Now, UFO radar tracks could also be mis-interpreted, but it still
>>indicates that an object wast there.
>
>You seem to be making the rather foolish claim that every blip on a
>radar screen is the result of an 'object' being in the indicated
>location. They must have awfully good radars in SaucerZealotLand.
>

Of course I'm not saying *every* blip. What a load.

>>
>>In cases where people on the ground, people in the air, and radar all say
>>something is there, something is probably really there. What it is is
>>open to question, but something *was* there.
>
>Hmm. Here you have more 'evidence', but now have only a 'probability'
>(In SaucerZealotMathematics, apparantly no probability is ever
>quantified) that an object was there, but you earlier said a single blip
>on a radar screen is proof positive that an object was there. Make up

You are not worth responding to.

[Ted Rosen]

Alan_D...@mindlink.bc.ca (Alan Douglas) wrote:

>ham...@nas.com (Ted Rosen) wrote:

>>Alan_D...@mindlink.bc.ca (Alan Douglas) wrote:

>>Seems to me that if the .gov confirmed the ETH, every nutty conspiracy
>>theory would be nullified.

>Nothing personal Ted, but I think you may be insane :-). No matter
>what the government tells us about aliens, there will always be those
>who believe that the *real* truth is far more insidious. Don't you
>watch the X-Files? You should read some of the nuttier and nastier
>alien conspiracy theories that are out there. Very entertaining.

>And if the government does admit that's it been lying all these years
>about the *big one*, then that will only encourage all the JFK 2nd
>gunman, Holocaust denial, fluoride mind control, hollow Earth (etc
>etc) conspiracy theorists. And there'd be no arguing with them
>because we'd all know that at least one super-massive government
>cover-up had taken place. It would "prove" that the government can't
>be trusted and that everything they tell us is a lie.

In retrospect, I relent .(A *first* on Usenet, thank you very much).

Even if the .gov rolled out a saucer for the cameras and it was
declared authentic by some head-scratching scientists at MIT, most of
the kooks would probably claim to be the "only true" harbingers of
this fantastic discovery and lay claim to having proved the .gov to be
lying conspirators.
The general public, however, would (hopefully) be persuaded by such
hard evidence and would look to the affirmations of the scientific
community for insight into the wheres and whys of ET, ignoring the
kooks. (Then again, maybe that's just me . . . maybe the populace
truly is witless and daft . . . )

>>An immediate call for open communication and inter-specie study
>>would sprout forth from every scientist (and skeptic) on the planet.

>Hee hee. Now I know you're insane :-)

>If the government admitted that aliens were here, then I predict the
>following sorts of arguments from the bulk of the sceptics (led by
>CSICOP naturally):

>1) There is nothing special about the government -- it is just a
>collection of people, and people have been making false or misguided
>claims about contact with aliens for decades.

>2) The government states that it lied in the past about UFOs, and yet
>now expects us to believe it is telling the truth. Since there is no
>scientific evidence in support of the ETH, it is far more likely that
>the government was telling the truth in the past, and is now lying.
>(Insert standard Occam's razor argument if desired)

>3) The government first said that a weather balloon crashed at
>Roswell. Then it said it was a spy balloon. Now it says it was an
>alien craft. Such inconsistencies completely undermine the
>government's credibility and are exactly what one would expect from a
>hoaxer.

>4) The government's refusal to release material evidence for
>scientific testing by reputable independent laboratories, claiming it
>would violate "national security", is exactly what one would expect
>from a hoaxer.

I disagree. Surely, folks like Mr. Fun would refuse to believe their
eyes, but if the .gov trotted out a flying saucer and preserved alien
corpse and dumped it all at CSICOP's glass doors, even Phil Klass
would be hard-pressed to continue his lip-puckering.
Despite the oft-hurled accusations of dogmatic fervor hurled at
skeptics, not all of them are truly reactionary ostriches (no offense,
Mr. Kettler. Please don't call my ISP.).

<rest snipped>

BTW, Alan, you're being too nice to me. This is Usenet! You should be
calling me a "hopelessly deluded dork without one centilla of common
sense or cultural awareness" so I can call you a "crackpot negativist
know-it-all who wouldn't know a higher calling if it wriggled its way
down your briefs".
Isn't that better?
Now this thread can continue for 70 or 80 more headers . . .

- TR :-)

[Unknown]

Are the UFOs alien spacecraft from another star system? I'm afraid
there just isn't enough data to warrant such an astonishing conclusion.

> The fact is the radar showed an

>object, an object was there. It was the interpretation that was in
error.

Yes, our point exactly.

In 1952 (I think it was '51' or '52') what was headline news throughout the
country, when UFOs were seen all over Washington DC by scores of eyewitnesses,
the U.S. government sent in fighter planes to intercept them, and I believe
they were over the Capital building. As they closed in, they disappeared.
And after the jets turned turned back, they reappeared. UFOs have been seen
to disappear all over the world, and including on radar on dozens of
instances. The case in Washington DC demonstrates that we are dealing with
intelligent life far superior to us. There is no error.

-Bob Tarantino

[jca...@negia.net]

This was posted several days ago, but seems to have drifted into
the Bermuda Triangle. I apologize to anyone who sees it twice.

In Article<NEWTNews.836699...@negia.net.negia.net>,
<jca...@negia.net> wrote:
> Path: news.negia.net!news
> From: jca...@negia.net
> Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.alien.visitors,alt.alien.research
> Subject: Re: "Why the ETH is not scientific"
> Date: Sat, 06 Jul 96 17:32:40 PDT
> Organization: North East Georgia Internet Access, Inc. (NEGIA)
> Lines: 322
> Message-ID: <NEWTNews.836699...@negia.net.negia.net>
> References: <NEWTNews.836347...@negia.net.negia.net>
<31D9CA...@students.wisc.edu>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: temppp3.negia.net
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
> X-Newsreader: NEWTNews & Chameleon -- TCP/IP for MS Windows from NetManage
> Xref: news.negia.net sci.skeptic:51181 alt.alien.visitors:52424
alt.alien.research:17828
>
>
> Brian Zeiler wrote:
> >>jca...@negia.net wrote:
>
> >> Scientific hypothesis testing uses statistical analysis of data to
> >>accept a null hypothesis or reject it in favor of an alternative. The
> >>null/alternative hypothesis pair can almost always be represented as
> >>A/Not A. The null/alternative suggested by Brian Zeiler (the
> >>Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis or ETH) looks like A/B, where B is not
> >>equivalent to Not A. If A is rejected, the result is messy:
> >>possibilities C, D, E, etc. are left in addition to the designated
> >>alternative B.
>
> >This is incorrect, as will be explained below.
>
> >> Scientific hypotheses should be stated carefully. Brian's null
> >>hypothesis is that UFOs are "random, disparate misidentifications of
> >>atmospheric or artificial terrestrial phenomena."
>
> That is Null #1, copied from Brian's response to Kenneth Almquist's
> request for a statement of the ETH.
> <snip>
>
> >The null hypothesis is that physically solid disk-shaped vehicles do
> >NOT exist. The alternative hypothesis is that they DO exist.
>
> That is Null #2 and its associated alternative. Null #2 is very different
> from Null #1. If #2 is now the operative hypothesis, then Brian got
> past the A/Not A problem. However, the Do Not Exist/Do Exist form
> causes all sorts of new problems. It requires only 1 observation of a
> physically solid disk-shaped vehicle to reject the null hypothesis, so
> there won't be any statistical analysis. We can observe, but can't do
> any experiments. And what do we do if we find a cigar-shaped
> vehicle? I repeat: scientific hypotheses should be stated carefully.
>
> > Note: this is
> >NOT the ETH. The ETH is dealt with only after the original null
> >hypothesis is rejected in favor of the alternative hypothesis that the
> >vehicles exist.
>
> Brian's reply to Kenneth Almquist established the precedent of discussing
> the starting point as a lead-in to the ETH.
>
> >>Brian has said that a request to cite the best individual pieces of
> >>evidence for ETH is a debunker's trick.
>
> >A distortive lie...
> >...intentional deception...
> >...outright LIES...
> >...logical trickery...
> >...twisting my words...
> >...distortive tactics...
>
> <snips marked ...>
>
> I was thinking of a thread several months ago where someone asked Brian
> to specify several make-or-break, best-case UFO sightings, and he refused.
> Brian can specify those best cases in his next post, proving that I am
> mistaken.

>
> >> In science the rule is put up
> >> or shut up, and it applies to everyone from Einstein to Bill Nye
> >> Science Guy. Data and hypotheses have to withstand debunking to be any
> >> good.
>

> >This is patently false, since it presumes that such debunking efforts are

> >honest....
> >...dogma-fueled logical trickery...
> >...dogmatic logical trickery...
> >...shoddy science.
>
> Brian may not like it, but exposing data and hypotheses to debunking is the
> rule in science.
>
> >Observations should not be arbitrarily altered and omitted to force
> >conformance to a hypothesis to which the scientist is emotionally
> >attached.
>
> I like that sentence. Let's put "person" in place of "scientist," and it
will
> be even better.
>
> <snipped comments about "extraordinary" and Occam's Razor.>
>
> >> Data integrity is respected in science. If subjective interpretation
> >> is required to generate data, blind designs are used. In UFOlogy, FOIA
> >> material confirms the ETH (1) if it contains statements implying that
> >> ETH is true, (2) if it should contain statements about the ETH, but
> >> doesn't, or (3) if it contradicts ETH. Items 2 and 3 are evidence of a
> >> coverup, which confirms the ETH. This way of handling data has been
> >> called "Procrustean data torturing," after a character in Greek
> >> mythology who had a bed that was always a perfect fit for his guests.
> >> Procrustes' trick was that he stretched their legs if the victims were
> >> short, or chopped off their legs if they were tall.
>
> >This is the BIGGEST piece of BS strawman garbage that I've seen in
> >some time.
>
> If we define "data" as "information which can lead to accepting or
> rejecting a null hypothesis," then FOIA material is not data. It can
> lead only to rejecting the null hypothesis. Can anyone imagine
> anything from FOIA leading a UFOlogist to decide that UFOs are
> just misperceptions and not real at all? I have seen UFO-negative
> FOIA statements described as disinformation, lies, etc. Any
> association with the government goes through the same filter: the
> status of persons making pro-UFO statements is enhanced if they
> have CIA or NASA ties, but those same ties reduce the status of
> persons who make anti-UFO statements (example: Menzel).
>
> <lot of snips in a section quoting military, government, and science
> figures making pro-UFO or pro-ETH statements, again marked ...:>
>
> >1976 (CIA)...1983...1954...1959 (NASA)...1954 (NASA)...1952 (CIA)
> >1950...1947...1950...1947-50 (CIA)...pre 1962....
> >...like any good debunker well-schooled in the art of logical trickery...
> >...logical trickery...
>
> Actually I don't think that FOIA stuff is completely useless. It could be
> used to generate testable hypotheses, not that Brian has shown much interest
> in that sort of thing.
>
> >> Choosing the best statistical analysis can be complicated, but
> >> shopping around for a method that produces the desired interpretation
> >> is not allowed.
>
> >You mean like demanding physical proof without establishing that such
> >physical proof is attainable, conditional upon the presence of disk-shaped
> >vehicles? Your above statement is rather self-indicting.
>
> That sentence means that once data are acquired, pre-selected statistical
> analysis should be applied rather than looking for a method that will
> produce desired results.
>
> >>Why point to the advantages of a Bayesian approach
> >>over a traditional method, while at the same time praising the results
> >>of the BBSR chi-square analysis?
>
> >...logical trickery...
>
> Brian praised chi-square (a traditional statistical method) in the same
> post where he talked about how Bayesian analysis is better than traditional
> statistical methods.
>
> <snipped comments about risk-aversion, false negatives and false positives>
>
> >First, you have failed to illustrate a 'mapping' that first measures the
> >extraordinarity of the claim and then provides appropriate evidential
> >criteria.
>
> I did not mention "extraordinary" in my post and I have no interest in
> defining the concept.
>
> > Secondly, you have demanded evidence that is highly likely going
> >to be completely unattainable;
>
> I haven't demanded anything.
>
> >[E]vidential criteria must be attainable, but you seem to think otherwise.
>
> No, I agree with that. I think that the standard for evidence often flows
> out of the null hypothesis, not from the nasty old skeptics. A silly null
> hypothesis such as, "Physically solid disk-shaped vehicles do not exist,"
> can be rejected only by finding one. And small fragments won't do,
> because it has to be possible to rule out cubic, spherical, and cigar-
> shaped vehicles that might cause mistaken rejection of the true null.
>
> <silly dinosaur hypothesis snipped>
>
> >> The appropriateness of the analysis
> >>and of the interpretation is what counts. A chi-square analysis of the
> >>characteristics of apples and oranges might find significant
> >>differences in color, number of seeds, and shape, but what new
> >>information would be provided about the origins of the 2 classes?
>
> >You've obviously never read the analysis. Why not simply admit this
> >shortcoming of yours instead of pretending otherwise?
>
> Who needs to pretend? I used the standard method for dealing with an
> area of minor interest: I read a review article. It was written by one B.
> Zeiler, who discussed how the cases were rated as "known" or "unknown"
> and how the analysis was done. He listed the characteristics that were
> included in the analysis, and provided the associated probabilities. He
> mentioned some of the conclusions of the people involved, and several
> further statistical manipulations. He also tossed in some of his own
> interpretations.
>
> Suppose for a moment that I have a copy of the BBSR #14 data, and
> that I am a raving saucer nut. My calculations of the dimensions of the
> structures at Cydonia convince me that the true saucers visit Earth
> only on Thursdays, with all of the Friday-Wednesday UFO sightings
> being simple misidentifications . I quickly type in the commands for a
> chi-square analysis. Damn, the results say no significant difference in
> known-unknown frequencies between Thursday and Friday-Wednesday.
> How can I save my theory? Well, maybe the 4 classifiers handed out the
> known-unknown designations with a random number table, then spent
> the rest of their shift playing poker. I can test that possibility by
picking
> some sighting characteristic that should have influenced how easily the
> sighting could be explained away by the skeptical classifiers. I do an
> analysis based on the types of observers, knowledgeable observers such
> as pilots versus everyday, man-in-the-street sort of observers. Damn, it
> came out significant, with more unknowns in the skilled observer
> category, so maybe the classifiers were using some rational system for
> assigning the known-unknown designation. How can I save my theory?
> I'm using the 5% probability level as a cutoff for rejecting the null of
> no difference, so 1 out of every 20 chi-squares might be significant
> just by chance. Maybe it was significant just by luck. I quickly run
> another analysis, this time using numbers of objects sighted. If there are
> 11 objects, I want to see the skeptics pin *that* on Venus. Damn, it
> came out significant, with more unknowns in the multiple object category.
> Maybe the classifiers did their job. This science stuff isn't as much
> fun as I thought it would be.
>
> This is what it boils down to: if you classify your data according to some
> plan, you can learn about the data by running analyses on characteristics
> independent of the classification. If you analyze based on characteristics
> related to the classifications, then you are testing the classifiers and the

> classification scheme, not the data.
>
> <snip>
>
> >> Radar-visual correlations are cited as one of the strongest classes of
> >> evidence for the ETH. There is one radar-wreckage correlation that is
> >> seldom cited. A few years ago the crew of a guided missile cruiser
> >> with state-of-the-art radar reported that a UFO was descending toward
> >> the ship in a threatening manner, leading to the launch of a missile.
> >> Shortly thereafter wreckage and bodies from a commercial airliner were
> >> recovered from the sea. The radar recordings show a UFO climbing like
> >> a commercial airliner. Human factors are important in UFO sightings
> >> even when radar is involved.
>
> >...debunker logical trick: the strawman argument...
>
> >The first disturbing aspect here is the complete [lack] of any citation...
>
> Well, I didn't include the citation because I thought that everyone would
> recognize the incident. In the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988, the Aegis-
> class guided missile cruiser U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian
> A300 Airbus with 290 people on board.
>
> What this incident has in common with radar-visual cases is that human
> factors must be considered in interpreting radar sightings. Atmospheric
> physics is not the only discipline that counts in analyzing radar contacts.
> What this incident does *not* have in common with the usually cited
> radar cases is the recording of the incident.
>
> <snip>
>
> >...strawman tactic of debunking...
> >... logical trickery....
>
> >> What about photographic-visual correlations? Billions and billions
> >> (apologies to one skeptic) of photographs are taken every year.
> >> Extremely rare, brief, and unpredictable events are photographed, such
> >> as commercial planes just seconds before crashing, with important
> >> details visible (such as the DC-10 that lost an engine on takeoff from
> >> Chicago, the PSA and Mexican planes that crashed in California after
> >> colliding with small planes), but UFO photos are routinely out of
> >> focus or lack details. Great tornado videos are taken every year. If
> >> valid UFO sightings occur regularly, where are the comparable photos
> >> and videos?
>
> >Thanks for illustrating *another* debunker logical trick! Your trick here
is
>
> >the attitude "I have seen no such evidence; therefore, it cannot exist,
> >because surely I would know about it."
>
> No, my attitude was, "I have seen no such evidence, but if it exists, Brian
> will surely know about it. I'll ask him."
>
> <big snips>
>
> >Consider... the Trent (McMinnville) photos...
>
> >Also consider... the Lac Chauvet photos...
>
> I cited recent plane crash photos and tornado videos, and I then asked for
> comparable UFO photos.
>
> Brian came back with photos from *1950* and *1952*!!!!! What???
>
> >> In science, fudging or being sloppy can ruin a reputation. Judging by
> >> this newsgroup, many ETH believers tolerate hoaxers, bubbleheads, and
> >> crackpots fairly well, and reserve their scorn for skeptics.
>
> >...morally repugnant strawman tactic...
> >...sweeping generalization...
> >...almost ad hominem distortion...
> >...generalize the opposition in order to debunk it. Serious ufologists
have
> >zero tolerance for "hoaxers, bubbleheads, and crackpots".
>
> I think that Brian has agreed that the MJ-12 documents and the autopsy
> film are hoaxes. Why does he not find it "morally repugnant" to use
> these hoaxes to attack Klass?
>
> >> Brian has written, "We must accommodate the phenomenon by
> >>changing our approach from the objective hypothesis falsification
> >>to the subjective inference." In science, motions to suspend the rules
> >>are always out of order.
>
> >No rules are being suspended. The approach I suggest is already an
> >accepted method...
>
> I am not referring to methods such as Bayesian analysis or meta-analysis.
> I am referring to the proposal to get away from "objective hypothesis
> falsification." That is equivalent to getting away from science.
>
> >> UFOlogists are free to believe what they wish, but if they want
> >> scientific acceptance of their point of view, and if the body of UFO
> >> evidence is as impressive as they think it is, then they should
> >> generate testable hypotheses and evaluate them properly.
>
> >I have shown that your entire post was full of constant logical tricks,
> >distortions, strawmen, generalizations, specious reasoning, and
> >fallacious logic...
> >--
> >Brian Zeiler
>
> I think that Brian should give serious consideration to that recent
> invitation to move over to alt.stupidity.
>
> John
>
>

[Alan Douglas]

ham...@nas.com (Ted Rosen) wrote:

>Surely, folks like Mr. Fun would refuse to believe their eyes, but
>if the .gov trotted out a flying saucer and preserved alien corpse
>and dumped it all at CSICOP's glass doors, even Phil Klass
>would be hard-pressed to continue his lip-puckering.

Absolutely. However this assumes:

a) the .gov has such extraordinary evidence in the first place.

b) the .gov would admit that it has such evidence (as opposed to
keeping it top secret so their military can continue studying alien
technology and biology undisturbed and without having to share it with
anyone else)

c) the .gov would freely release the evidence to the scientific
community (excuse me while I die laughing).

Frankly, I have difficulty enough seeing (a) as being plausible. I
think that if aliens are here then they're keeping a low profile.
However if anyone on Earth is in a position to gather good evidence of
alien presence, it would be the US government, because they, and not
the scientists, have the equipment and infrastructure set up to detect
and track unknown objects in orbit and entering the atmosphere.

(BTW, anyone catch the NOVA episode on asteroids colliding with Earth?
Interesting how almost all astronomical equipment is designed and used
to study far off objects. The number of astronomers actively looking
for nearby earth-crossing asteroids is minimal. So there could be
giant alien motherships all over the place, and the scientists
wouldn't have a clue)

If aliens are here, and if the .gov knows about it, and if they decide
to tell us, then I sincerely doubt they will provide anything like the
level of evidence that the average sceptic would require. If we're
lucky we might get to see archival footage similar to the Alien
Autopsy video. But more likely it would be declassified documents
describing a number of incidents, observations, and conclusions. In
fact much of the actual evidence would probably remain classified as
it may involve the more sensitive intelligence gathering capabilities
of the military and NSA.

> BTW, Alan, you're being too nice to me. This is Usenet! You should be
>calling me a "hopelessly deluded dork without one centilla of common
>sense or cultural awareness" so I can call you a "crackpot negativist
>know-it-all who wouldn't know a higher calling if it wriggled its way
>down your briefs".

Ahh, you see I'm posting from sci.skeptic, and of course such
unscientific behaviour is not tolerated in the sci.* domain. I'm
certain that all examples of such "trash talk" in this group are the
results of crossposts from the alt.* domain. ;-)

Cheers,
Alan/

[M]

>
>In 1952 (I think it was '51' or '52') what was headline news throughout the
>country, when UFOs were seen all over Washington DC by scores of eyewitnesses,
>the U.S. government sent in fighter planes to intercept them, and I believe
>they were over the Capital building. As they closed in, they disappeared.
>And after the jets turned turned back, they reappeared. UFOs have been seen
>to disappear all over the world, and including on radar on dozens of
>instances. The case in Washington DC demonstrates that we are dealing with
>intelligent life far superior to us. There is no error.
>
>-Bob Tarantino

This sounds interesting. I'd like to read about this in the original
newpaper articles. could you provide one citation (newspaper, date),
preferably from an easily-obtainable microfiched paper (e.g., NY Times)
so that I could see these headline articles of alien spacecraft persued
by fighter planes, and the subsequent disapearence of said alien spacecraft?

[Brian Zeiler]

M wrote:

> This sounds interesting. I'd like to read about this in the original
> newpaper articles. could you provide one citation (newspaper, date),
> preferably from an easily-obtainable microfiched paper (e.g., NY Times)
> so that I could see these headline articles of alien spacecraft persued
> by fighter planes, and the subsequent disapearence of said alien spacecraft?

First, they were called "flying saucers", not "alien spacecraft". I
would recommend the Washington Post from July 18 through July 28, with
the big headlines around the 25th or 26th, can't remember when. I
retrieved them myself from the UW State Historical Archives last summer.
Very interesting, especially the big banner headline that screamed
"SAUCER OUTRUNS JET, PILOT SAYS", referring to the fighter jets scrambled
from Andrews AFB.

--
Brian Zeiler

[Sean Bragger]

"Wm G. Smith" <w.s...@ix.netcom.com> writes:

>For the first 3-million years of human evolution we gradually became tool users
>and makers. Even with the appearance of homo sapiens, modern humans, 150,000 years
>ago, we made few advances beyond simple stone tools, hides, tents, huts, etc. Only
>about 10,000 years ago did we start to switch from nomadic hunter-gatherers, to
>semi-nomadic pastoralists and finally to agriculturalists. Metal working has only
>been with us for 6-7,000 years, followed by the first cities. To this day, there are
>still larg numbers of humans who live as pastoralists and a dwindling, but still
>significant number of hunter-gatherers.

Listen to this.... You can't use this part as evidence of anything
because you can't prove that it took all homosapiens that long to discover
the joys of division of labour. Try to bear in mind that there is a lot of
evidence piling up that civilization has been around for more than 10,000
years. Perhaps a lot more. Otherwise the rest makes a resonable amount of
sense. This paragraph makes it look like you're making a LOT of really big
assumptions in your arguement eg everything you've been told about human
development over your life is one hundred percent true.

If you want to start picking arguements apart by the assumptions that
were made during the reasoning then try to bear in mind that using science
as a reasoning tool you're already adopting 200 years of assumptions. Most
of them are based on observation and experimentation... some of them
aren't. For example... didn't Einstien assume that the speed of light was
a constant when he began the diferential calculus to derive E=mc^2 ? What
evidence did he have that this was the case? Why assume that civilization,
for this species (or whatever), is 10,000 years old simply because 50
years ago we hadn't found any evidence of older civilizations?

>I am not saying that any of these claims is impossible, but I am asking reaonable
>persons to consider the difficulties. Either there is life on other planet or ther is
>not. Since there is no way of knowing (yet), the best guess as to the probability is no
>better than 50/50. If there is life on other planets, either intelligent life will have
>arisen or not. Again, no better than 50/50. If there is intelligent life on other
>planets, it will either have produced an advanced civilization or not. Again, no better
>than 50/50.

You're right. This is a really simplified arguement and actually some
of it is well reasoned, but some of it isn't. I would say that if you make
it all the way, through coincidence, to an intelligent life form, that
civilization (or something like it) is not just a possibility.. it's a
certainty. Think about it, what use is intelligence against a more
powerful predator? Intelligence allows communication, which allows
cooperation, which will (sooner or later) lead to the concept of division
of labour... which, as you know, is the key to civilization.
One more point. The "building blocks of life" that you mentioned are
amino acids. Here's an interesting point.. these amino acids could be
considered a galactic virus. It is entirely probable that anywhere you get
the right concentration of amino acids, at the right temperature range, in
the right medium (namely aqueous), life is gauranteed to begin. Amino
acids have been found in minute amounts on meteors that impact on this
planet and probably every planet in the galaxy.

Prowler

[SPHINX Technologies]

In article <4rvl7c$i...@barad-dur.nas.com>, Ted Rosen <ham...@nas.com> wrote:
>
>>3) The government first said that a weather balloon crashed at
>>Roswell. Then it said it was a spy balloon. Now it says it was an
>>alien craft.

This is incorrect. The government's *FIRST* explanation was that a flying
disk had crashed and the wreckage had been recovered. It was only after
damage control got started that the "weather balloon" fabrication got
launched by Gen. Ramey.

[Mark O'Leary]

In article <31DB1F...@students.wisc.edu>,
Brian Zeiler <bdze...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:

>> Slightly extraordinary is an absurdity and very extraordinary is
>> redundant.
>
>Nice binary logic, Wm. So you think that there are no degrees of
>extraordinarity; it's merely a binary classification with no gradation.
>Very bizarre.

One wouldn't normally comment on word-usage, but since someone has already
pointed out to you that "extraordinarity" is not in any dictionary and is
not part of the English language, and since further this whole discussion is
aimed at clarifying the meaning of the word extraordinary, I'd suggest that
you restrain your urge to make up words and stick to ones we can agree on
the meanings of through dictionaries. It's been noticed in the past that you
seem to have a rather Humpty-Dumpty approach to language, and it often makes
holding a rational debate with you rather difficult, but I doubt you really
want to make it so blatantly obvious that so many crucial words (like
'extraordinary', 'proof', 'evidence', 'probability' etc) have a meaning to
*you* which is seldom accessible to outsiders.

Back to the point in hand: you express surprise that someone might consider
extraordinary vs ordinary to be a binary state. I find that to be quite
strange, but I'm willing to listen to your case: for instance, can you refer
me to a single event or object that is neither ordinary nor extraordinary? I
would suggest not, so we have defined that everything falls into one of
these two sets. Now, can you point to something that is simultaeniously both
ordinary and extraordinary? Again I would suggest not, so we have
established that these sets do not overlap. Now, to where I think you might
try and make your case: Can you show any pair of objects or phenomena where
one is "more ordinary" than the other (but neither is extraordinary)? I'd
suggest that you look at the dictionary definition of ordinary before
answering. I'd also suggest that you can't, because "degrees of
ordinariness" is a nonsense concept. Event A might be ordinary and very
unusual, whilst Event B might be ordinary and utterly commonplace, but A is
not 'less ordinary' than B - the word simply can't be used that way. Exactly
the same argument applies to extraordinary events or objects. Uri Geller
bending a spoon without cheating would be extraordinary but not
earth-shattering, whereas the moon leaving earth orbit and heading out of
the plane of the solarsystem would be both extraordinary and (perhaps
literally) earthshattering - but it is not a valid english sentence to say
that the moon event is "more extraordinary" than the spoon event. You simply
cannot have degrees of extraordinariness. You *can* have degrees of
likehood, unusualness, or other similar terms, but ordinaryness is indeed a
binary characteristic - a thing is either extraordinary or ordinary.

Now hopefully the word itself is clearer to you, perhaps we can look at the
application of it, which also seems to trouble you.

>> But if I saw a frigate bird, that would be extraordinary and,
>> absent strong proofs to the contrary, you would be entitled to doubt whether I had
>> identified the phenomenon correctly.
>
>Okay, I say that your sighting of a frigate bird is unusual, but not
>extraordinary.

Where you to say such a thing, it would imply either that you had more data
on the case (i.e. that a nearby zoo had had a frigate bird escape the day
before), or that you were ignorant of the environmental requirements and
migratory habits of the bird such that its presence in the area was indeed
extraordinary. The best way to judge would be to get a consensus of
ornithologists - If 99% of them say that it is very unlikely to find the
bird in that place at that time, then it's sensible to call the sighting
extraordinary... and therefore to require more than just the single
eyewitness testimony before, say, planning a rescue to get it to more
appropriate climes before it dies.

> Or, maybe I feel like saying it's INCREDIBLY extraordinary.

As we've discussed above, such a statement is bad english and means no more
than saying "it's extraordinary". Extraordinariness cannot be used
comparatively.

>Is my opinion any more or less valid than yours? Of course not.

That depends on whether your opinion is based on evidence and supported by
the consensus of experts in the field. If you said "Of course its a frigate
bird, we get them here all the time", then without lots of robust evidence
to back your claim, your opinion would indeed be just as extraordinary as
the initial sighting itself. If you said the same and offered the phone
number of a university department that had been studying a breeding colony
of frigatebirds in the area for the last 8 years, then your opinion would be
a lot more valid.

>It's a matter of subjectivity because people view the term
>"extraordinary" differently. Even with your absurd binary interpretation
>of whether or not something is "extraordinary", it still lacks
>objectivity.

But there *are* clearly defined objective criteria for deciding whats
ordinary and whats extraordinary - namely, consensus of experts in the field
backed by robust scientific evidence.

>For instance, if I claim that I saw a frigate bird, and that the bird
>asked me if I had some spare change, is that more extraordinary than
>merely seeing a frigate bird? Obviously, yes.

No! It's much more unusual, and much more unlikely, but it is exactly as
extraordinary as just seeing the bird because the word 'extraordinary' does
not allow degrees! It is poor english to write as if it does.

> In your deranged binary scale, however, you would have to say no.

You wouldn't be the first to find the English language illogical (I find
Russian-speakers particularly tend to despair), but your opinion that it is
deranged has no impact on what is correct English and what is gibberish. The
phrase 'binary scale' is clumsy, but it is descriptive. Things can't be
'more extraordinary than', 'less ordinary than' other things in the same
class (obviously you could say that an ordinary event is less extraordinary
than an extraordinary event, but it would be pretty redundant to do so).

>What you have failed to understand is the following:
>
>THE MAIN POINT
>
>Without a means to objectively apply a CONTINUOUS -- not binary, as you
>seem to think -- classification scale to the extraordinarity of a claim,
>and without providing evidential criteria proportionate to the
>extraordinarity, there can be no subsequent objective means of applying
>evidential standards to the claim in proportion to its extraordinarity.

1) Extraordinariness, please - unless you are inventing a new word of your
own that *can* have degrees.

2) The classification *is* objective: Something can only be 'ordinary' if
robust scientific evidence supports a consensus opinion among those with
relevant expertise that it is not highly unusual.

3) The continuous scale you require does exist, and is applied in making the
classification - it is 'probability'. You are using "extraordinary" as a
synonym for "improbable", which is incorrect.

>Everybody understands and agrees with the intuition, Wm.

Is this an assertion that intuition is infallible? That it should be the
standard by which the label 'extraordinary' is applied? I hope not.

>The problem is with the implementation of this heuristic. With no
>objective implementation guidelines, the implementation will thus be
>self-serving and wholly arbitrary. In short, it's a logical trick.

The guidelines *are* objective. However, as your pet hobbyhorse falls foul
of those guidelines in the sense that they require evidence about it that
you cannot supply, resulting in your favorite topic not receiving the
acknowledgement that you seem to crave for it, you *have* to belittle those
guidelines, as you are doing.

Just another instance of the same attitude shown when you challenge the
validity of logic itself when the logical consequences of things you assert
are so ludicrous that you can't stand by them without looking foolish, as a
previous poster noted.

M.
--
-=-=-=-=-=- -.-. .- .-.. .-.. -- . -.-. --- --- ... .-.-.- -=-=-=-=-
Mark O'Leary, Voice: Extn. 6201
Network & Communications Group. Email: mol...@dmu.ac.uk
De Montfort University, UK.

[Mark O'Leary]

In article <4rfl5k$e...@fountain.mindlink.net>,
Alan Douglas <Alan_D...@mindlink.bc.ca> wrote:

>The problem with Sagan's mantra is that the word "extraordinary"
>connotes two different ideas:
>
> 1) Unusual, unlikely, implausible
>
> 2) Remarkable, interesting, important

Really? I would say that everything you describe in (2) is part of the way
we *react* to the thing described by the word, which connotes *only* the
stuff you list under (1).

For instance, say a stamp collector finds an extraordinary stamp. Do I, as a
non-collector, find this remarkable, interesting or important? I don't. Yet
I'm quite willing to agree that getting a rare and valuable stamp in a cheap
selection pack is indeed extraordinary... just boring to me, too.

Equally, say a bona fide ET craft lands on the whitehouse lawn and opens
diplomatic relations with us. I might find this both extraordinary and
remarkable, interesting and important - but my stamp collecting friend might
be so obsessed with his new stamp that he shrugs it off and ignores it.

>This duality of meaning can cause problems, and I think a more precise
>phrase would be "interesting claims require sufficient proof"

You think that *interesting* is a more *precise* term?! Thats crazy!
My stamp collector finds his stamp interesting, but that doesnt mean the
existance of the stamp he has is in itself anything other than ordinary.

The phrase 'sufficient proof' is in itself just another way of saying
"extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" - because extraordinary
proof is the only kind of proof that is *sufficient* for an extraordinary
claim!

>Consider Michael's example where the person (let's call him Bob)
>claims to have driven an Accord to work. Bob's testimony proves
>absolutely nothing. We take him at his word simply because we really
>don't care whether or not he drove an Accord. It's not important or
>interesting so we're not concerned with proof. It's plausibility is
>irrelevant.

You seem to be attempting to build a case for a subjective standard of
evidence, where how we *feel* about an event determines how hard we look
into it. You feel that murder is a bad thing? Fine, then we don't have to
look hard at the evidence we can just convict this guy cos he looks guilty,
and I've got this feeling about him... It's the absolute antithesis of the
scientific method, and also, in my opinion, utterly crazy.

[Mark O'Leary]

In article <4s2ioj$t...@zen.dmu.ac.uk>, Mark O'Leary <mol...@dmu.ac.uk> wrote:
>>Is my opinion any more or less valid than yours? Of course not.
>
>That depends on whether your opinion is based on evidence and supported by
>the consensus of experts in the field. If you said "Of course its a frigate
>bird, we get them here all the time", then without lots of robust evidence
>to back your claim, your opinion would indeed be just as extraordinary as
>the initial sighting itself. If you said the same and offered the phone
>number of a university department that had been studying a breeding colony
>of frigatebirds in the area for the last 8 years, then your opinion would be
>a lot more valid.

Oops - just noted a slip on my part here. I forgot to put quotes around the
last two words. The final sentence was intended ironically, because for exactly
the same reasons as ordinary/extraordinary is a binary category, so too is
'valid/invalid', so the phrase "more or less valid" is nonsense - a point I
intended to underline in my post (got distracted by a phonecall).

[Patrick Juola]

Really, Mr. O'Leary. Replace "ordinary" and "extraordinary" with
"short" and "tall" below. Haven't you ever heard of fuzzy logic?
It's only been around for at least thirty years.

In article <4s2ioj$t...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:
>Back to the point in hand: [BZ] express surprise that someone might consider

>extraordinary vs ordinary to be a binary state. I find that to be quite
>strange, but I'm willing to listen to your case: for instance, can you refer
>me to a single event or object that is neither ordinary nor extraordinary?

Sure. Anything "unusual." It's ordinary for my ex- to drive a VW,
since that's the car that she owns. It would be extraordinary for
her to drive a flying saucer. It wouldn't be that out of line for
her to drive a Ford, but that's certainly not the way I'd bet.

>I would suggest not, so we have defined that everything falls into one of
>these two sets. Now, can you point to something that is simultaeniously both
>ordinary and extraordinary?

See above. Where's the line between
VW --> Ford --> Porsche --> Piper Cherokee --> MIG-29 --> Starship Enterprise

that her driving starts to become "extraordinary"?

A standard dictionary definition (yech, ptui) of ordinary reads :
regular or customary condition or course of things

And, just as there are degrees of commonness, degrees of custom, and
degrees of regularity, so also there are degrees of extraordinary.

>You *can* have degrees of
>likehood, unusualness, or other similar terms, but ordinaryness is indeed a
>binary characteristic - a thing is either extraordinary or ordinary.

Bullshit.

Patrick

[Michael Edelman]

M (anon...@nyx10.cs.du.edu) wrote:
: >
: >In 1952 (I think it was '51' or '52') what was headline news throughout the

: >country, when UFOs were seen all over Washington DC by scores of eyewitnesses,
: >the U.S. government sent in fighter planes to intercept them, and I believe
: >they were over the Capital building. As they closed in, they disappeared.
: >And after the jets turned turned back, they reappeared. UFOs have been seen
: >to disappear all over the world, and including on radar on dozens of
: >instances. The case in Washington DC demonstrates that we are dealing with
: >intelligent life far superior to us. There is no error.
: >
: >-Bob Tarantino

: This sounds interesting. I'd like to read about this in the original

: newpaper articles. could you provide one citation (newspaper, date),
: preferably from an easily-obtainable microfiched paper (e.g., NY Times)
: so that I could see these headline articles of alien spacecraft persued
: by fighter planes, and the subsequent disapearence of said alien spacecraft?

What you see in examining the historical record is that as radar technology
improved, such "sightings" became increasingly rare. Of course, you could
always argue that government security simply became tighter about such
events, if you were of a conspiritorial state of mind...

--mike

[Michael Edelman]

SPHINX Technologies (sph...@world.std.com) wrote:

A favorite myth.

NOte that the suggestion is that the government announced the crash of a
flying disk. But that's at best misleading, and at worst, a lie.

What Roswell *did* release was a press report that said:

1. There had been rumors of a "flying disk" that had landed on a ranch
near Roswell.

2. The "flying object" had been stored by the rancher on whose property
it landed.

3. The rancher called the sheriff's office when he was able to get to a
phone, and the sheriff called Maj. Marcel, the base intel officer.

4. The object waspicked up and taken to Roswell where it was photographed
and then loaned to higher headquarters.

Nowhere did the Army state that they had a spaceship, that there were bodies,
or anything of the sort. All these details were later added my Jesse Marcel,
intel officer in question, who has been caught in countless lies
and fabrications.

There's an excellent analysis of this on:

www.eznet.com/~sm3527/nonsense.html

--mike

[Matt Kennel]

Ted Rosen (ham...@nas.com) wrote:
: Alan_D...@mindlink.bc.ca (Alan Douglas) wrote:

: <snip>
: >Also, if they admit to UFO's then they'll be adding fuel to the fire

: >of every nutty conspiracy theory that can be conceived. A dangerous
: >can of worms, if you ask me, especially when we live in an age rife
: >with anti-government militia groups.

: Seems to me that if the .gov confirmed the ETH, every nutty conspiracy
: theory would be nullified. An immediate call for open communication

: and inter-specie study would sprout forth from every scientist (and

: skeptic) on the planet. The militia and libertarians would certainly
: be proud to have another "I told you so" feather in their caps, but
: they would also come to a startling realization that their
: nationalistic plight is rather mundane in light of the New Age of
: Galactic Brotherhood.

What 'New Age of Galactic Brotherhood'??????

All we know is that we're here minding our own business, and "Aliens" are
coming and buzzing aircraft and poking redneck's bums and don't bother to
talk to us.

'Galactic Brotherhood' my ass.

Maybe it's like the fraternity "brotherhood" as in _Animal House_?

``Toga party! Earth! Saturday Night!''

Or maybe I missed the dripping sarcasm....sorry.

:
: - TR

--
Matthew B. Kennel/m...@caffeine.engr.utk.edu/I do not speak for ORNL, DOE or UT
Oak Ridge National Laboratory/University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN USA/
*NO MASS EMAIL SPAM* It's an abuse of Federal Government computer resources
and an affront to common civility. On account of egregiously vile spamation,
my software terminates all email from "interramp.com" and "cris.com" without
human intervention.

[Brian Zeiler]

Patrick Juola wrote:
>
> Really, Mr. O'Leary. Replace "ordinary" and "extraordinary" with
> "short" and "tall" below. Haven't you ever heard of fuzzy logic?
> It's only been around for at least thirty years.

Yup -- that's my point. Claims should have 'fuzzy set membership' to
certain degrees in the sets of 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary'. To label
a claim arbitrarily as either extraordinary as ordinary, especially
without objective criteria, is the height of weirdness.

--
Brian Zeiler

[Brian Zeiler]

Michael Edelman wrote:

> What you see in examining the historical record is that as radar technology
> improved, such "sightings" became increasingly rare.

That's not at all true. Do you have any data or references to back up
this claim, or is this simply your opinion? It's obviously your opinion,
because it's patently false. If you look at the National UFO Reporting
Center's sightings, you'll see that many of the sightings have people
from the FAA or USAF confirm radar contact. But, I suppose you don't
want facts to get in the way of your debunkery.

--
Brian Zeiler

[Jim Rogers]

Patrick Juola wrote:
> Really, Mr. O'Leary. Replace "ordinary" and "extraordinary" with
> "short" and "tall" below. Haven't you ever heard of fuzzy logic?
> It's only been around for at least thirty years.
>

> In article <4s2ioj$t...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:

....

> >You *can* have degrees of
> >likehood, unusualness, or other similar terms, but ordinaryness is indeed a
> >binary characteristic - a thing is either extraordinary or ordinary.
>

> Bullshit.

It's a highly subjective call where each person will draw the line, but I
don't recall having heard anyone express *degrees* of ordinariness or
extraordinariness. Each person declares a thing to be either ordinary or
extraordinary, in my experience.

But this is all just semantic diversion, anyway. For the purposes of this
discussion, it's the *spirit* of the adage "Extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence" that matters.

If you claim something that goes contrary to accepted wisdom, which has
been developed over history and backed up with repeated observation with
no exceptions, you have to demonstrate why the world was so much *not*
what it seemed to be. People are properly not inclined to easily throw
away a lifetime (or generations) of experience and careful modelling of
reality on some crackpot idea. It's merely a statement about the
*convincing* one must do. You don't have to convince people (well, most
people, anyway) that the world is as "ordinary" as they'd always thought
it was. "Ordinary" evidence (the same mundane things we've always seen)
will do fine for that. Bring me the head of a chupacabra; that would be
an extraordinary feat, wouldn't it?

Jim

[Alan Douglas]

mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) wrote:

>In article <4rfl5k$e...@fountain.mindlink.net>,
>Alan Douglas <Alan_D...@mindlink.bc.ca> wrote:

>>The problem with Sagan's mantra is that the word "extraordinary"
>>connotes two different ideas:
>>
>> 1) Unusual, unlikely, implausible
>>
>> 2) Remarkable, interesting, important

>Really? I would say that everything you describe in (2) is part of the way
>we *react* to the thing described by the word, which connotes *only* the
>stuff you list under (1).

A matter of opinion perhaps. My OED defines extraordinary as "unusual
or remarkable" but your distinction between the intrinsic meaning of
the word and how we react to what it describes is perfectly valid. We
must keep in mind though that we are discussing how one *reacts* to
extraordinary claims, so how one then reacts to the extraordinariness
is of paramount importance. This fact however is not made explicit in
Sagan's mantra, which I believe to be its weakness.

>For instance, say a stamp collector finds an extraordinary stamp. Do I, as a

>non-collector, find this remarkable, interesting or important? I dont. Yet

>I'm quite willing to agree that getting a rare and valuable stamp in a cheap
>selection pack is indeed extraordinary... just boring to me, too.

So would you then require extraordinary proof of this extraordinary
claim, or would you simply take him at his word because you really
didn't care? Sagan's mantra requires you do the former, while the
phrase I have proposed would suggest the latter.

>>This duality of meaning can cause problems, and I think a more precise
>>phrase would be "interesting claims require sufficient proof"

>You think that *interesting* is a more *precise* term?! Thats crazy!

Of course "interesting" is no more precise a term than
"extraordinary"; if anything it's more subjective. What I am trying
to say though is that my above *phrase* is more precise than Sagan's
*phrase* because it explicitly states that we are only concerned with
proving interesting claims.

>My stamp collector finds his stamp interesting, but that doesn’t mean the

>existance of the stamp he has is in itself anything other than ordinary.

Yes. And because he thought it was interesting he would require
sufficient proof, say, that the stamp was genuine. You however would
not care if sufficient proof was given.

>The phrase 'sufficient proof' is in itself just another way of saying
>"extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" - because extraordinary
>proof is the only kind of proof that is *sufficient* for an extraordinary
>claim!

Exactly. My phrase contains everything that Sagan's does, while
explicitly underlining the importance of a claim being interesting
which is often ignored using Sagan's phrase. My phrase also avoids
the use of the controversial term "extraordinary" .

>>Consider Michael's example where the person (let's call him Bob)
>>claims to have driven an Accord to work. Bob's testimony proves
>>absolutely nothing. We take him at his word simply because we really
>>don't care whether or not he drove an Accord. It's not important or
>>interesting so we're not concerned with proof. It's plausibility is
>>irrelevant.

>You seem to be attempting to build a case for a subjective standard of
>evidence, where how we *feel* about an event determines how hard we look
>into it. You feel that murder is a bad thing? Fine, then we don't have to
>look hard at the evidence we can just convict this guy cos he looks guilty,
>and I've got this feeling about him... It's the absolute antithesis of the
>scientific method, and also, in my opinion, utterly crazy.

No of course I'm not proposing anything as crazy as that. Allow me to
clarify:

Claim: Bob drove an Accord to work
Evidence: His testimony.
Extraordinariness: None -- a very ordinary claim
Interest Level: None -- a very boring claim.

You said: " If someone tells you he drove a Honda Accord to the
office, you accept it without questioning"

Now I agree with that statement but I believe my reasons are
different. I assume (given the context in which you stated it) that
you feel one would accept the claim without question because it was so
ordinary. You were after all giving a list of claims of increasing
extraordinariness in support of Sagan's mantra.

I however feel that the evidence is not sufficient proof -- Bob could
be lying. However because the claim is uninteresting we simply don't
care about it being proven or not. We will simply accept his claim as
a given, realizing it has not been proven, because there is no
negative consequence for us if the claim is actually false. That it
is ordinary is irrelevent.

Note that because this claim is neither interesting nor extraordinary,
neither my phrase nor Sagan's is strictly applicable. However it does
serve to illustrate the difference in philosophy between the two
phrases. I leave it to the reader to decide which is the more
correct.

Cheers,
Alan/

[Alan Douglas]

mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) wrote:

>One wouldn't normally comment on word-usage, but since someone
>has already pointed out to you that "extraordinarity" is not in any dictionary

Yes "extraordinariness" is the correct term. I would hope that Brian
will adopt this word if for no other reason than to demonstrate that
at least one of the principals in this debate is capable, in some
small measure, of actually being able to learn from what others have
to say instead of merely trying to always prove the other guy wrong.

>it is not a valid english sentence to say that the moon event is
>"more extraordinary" than the spoon event. You simply cannot
>have degrees of extraordinariness.

So you honestly don't believe that degrees of extraordinariness exist
in proper usage in the English language?

That's the *most* extraordinary thing I've ever heard.

Cheers,
Alan/

[Jim Rogers]

Brian Zeiler wrote:
> Patrick Juola wrote:
> >
> > Really, Mr. O'Leary. Replace "ordinary" and "extraordinary" with
> > "short" and "tall" below. Haven't you ever heard of fuzzy logic?
> > It's only been around for at least thirty years.
>

> Yup -- that's my point. Claims should have 'fuzzy set membership' to
> certain degrees in the sets of 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary'. To label
> a claim arbitrarily as either extraordinary as ordinary, especially
> without objective criteria, is the height of weirdness.

You're making far too much out of a simple heuristic. You actually
expect objective criteria for a rule of thumb?

Your dichotomy gene is showing again-- there is a vast range of qualities
between "arbitrariness" and "objectivity." Subjectivity comes to mind.

Jim

[Bill Peterson]

In article <4s2s9l$k...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,

Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>SPHINX Technologies (sph...@world.std.com) wrote:
>: In article <4rvl7c$i...@barad-dur.nas.com>, Ted Rosen <ham...@nas.com> wrote:
>: >
>: >>3) The government first said that a weather balloon crashed at
>: >>Roswell. Then it said it was a spy balloon. Now it says it was an
>: >>alien craft.
>: This is incorrect. The government's *FIRST* explanation was that a flying
>: disk had crashed and the wreckage had been recovered. It was only after
>: damage control got started that the "weather balloon" fabrication got
>: launched by Gen. Ramey.
>
>A favorite myth.
>
>NOte that the suggestion is that the government announced the crash of a
>flying disk. But that's at best misleading, and at worst, a lie.
>
>What Roswell *did* release was a press report that said:
>

The headlines are "RAAF Captures a Flying Disk".

>1. There had been rumors of a "flying disk" that had landed on a ranch
>near Roswell.
>

The paper carries the story of one of the most respected citizens of
Roswell, Mr. Wilmot, also witnessing a saucer.

>2. The "flying object" had been stored by the rancher on whose property
>it landed.
>

Crashed is the word the paper uses.

>3. The rancher called the sheriff's office when he was able to get to a
>phone, and the sheriff called Maj. Marcel, the base intel officer.
>

Correct.

>4. The object waspicked up and taken to Roswell where it was photographed
>and then loaned to higher headquarters.
>

Right, the "crashed flying disk" was taken to higher headquarters while
the USAF *substituted* a weather balloon. The USAF admits the swap, and
now says it was only a Mogul balloon.

>
>Nowhere did the Army state that they had a spaceship, that there were bodies,
>or anything of the sort. All these details were later added my Jesse Marcel,
>intel officer in question, who has been caught in countless lies
>and fabrications.
>

Have you read the Roswell paper from that day? The USAF said it had nothing
that could be mistaken for the disk; and another article quotes another USAF
official describing the gun camera squadrons detailed to take footage of
UFO's.

[M]

In article <4s2r95$k...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,

Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>M (anon...@nyx10.cs.du.edu) wrote:
>: >
>: >In 1952 (I think it was '51' or '52') what was headline news throughout the
>: >country, when UFOs were seen all over Washington DC by scores of eyewitnesses,
>: >the U.S. government sent in fighter planes to intercept them, and I believe
>: >they were over the Capital building. As they closed in, they disappeared.
>: >And after the jets turned turned back, they reappeared. UFOs have been seen
>: >to disappear all over the world, and including on radar on dozens of
>: >instances. The case in Washington DC demonstrates that we are dealing with
>: >intelligent life far superior to us. There is no error.
>: >
>: >-Bob Tarantino
>
>: This sounds interesting. I'd like to read about this in the original
>: newpaper articles. could you provide one citation (newspaper, date),
>: preferably from an easily-obtainable microfiched paper (e.g., NY Times)
>: so that I could see these headline articles of alien spacecraft persued
>: by fighter planes, and the subsequent disapearence of said alien spacecraft?
>

>What you see in examining the historical record is that as radar technology

>improved, such "sightings" became increasingly rare. Of course, you could
>always argue that government security simply became tighter about such
>events, if you were of a conspiritorial state of mind...
>
>--mike

That may be, but my point is that the events Bob Tarantino are describing
(alien spacecraft clearly visible over the capitol building, seen by
dozens of witnesses, fighther jets, alien spacecraft vanishing, and so on)
must have been front-page news, or, at least, must
have been in the newspaper. I'm just wondering if he (or someone else)
could provide an actual citation of this event.

[Brian Zeiler]

Jim Rogers wrote:

>
> Brian Zeiler wrote:
> > Yup -- that's my point. Claims should have 'fuzzy set membership' to
> > certain degrees in the sets of 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary'. To label
> > a claim arbitrarily as either extraordinary as ordinary, especially
> > without objective criteria, is the height of weirdness.
>
> You're making far too much out of a simple heuristic. You actually
> expect objective criteria for a rule of thumb?

Yes, because otherwise people will have free license to make
unsubstantiated proclamations about how extraordinary a claim is.

>
> Your dichotomy gene is showing again-- there is a vast range of qualities
> between "arbitrariness" and "objectivity." Subjectivity comes to mind.

Obviously if I had a "dichotomy gene" I wouldn't be recommending a fuzzy
approach to approximating extraordinariness (I still think that's a
stupid sounding word). What you fail to understand is that I'm trying to
*eliminate* subjectivity. The claim's extraordinariness should be assess
objectively -- not subjectively or arbitrariliy. Furthermore, this
extraordinariness should *objectively* lead to a rational evidential
criterion. The rabid, frothing debunkers, however, in their boundless
zeal, seek to instead *declare* that the claim is the height of
extraordinariness and that this extraordinariness means only physical
proof is acceptable; piles of circumstantial evidence are thus worthless.

Among the more balanced segments of our society, however, people realize
that the foaming debunkers do not own the truth. They have no free reign
to make unilateral declarations of extraordinariness and evidential
value. They only speak to each other, not to the much saner broad
population.

--
Brian Zeiler

[Brian Zeiler]

M wrote:

> I'm just wondering if he (or someone else)
> could provide an actual citation of this event.

I did. I said to find the Washington Post between July 18 and July 28,
1952.

--
Brian Zeiler

[Unknown]

==========Bill Smith, 7/8/96==========

In <4rrk04$r...@pentagon.io.com> bi...@io.com (Bill Peterson) writes:
>
>In article <4rrge4$j...@cwis-20.wayne.edu>,
>Michael Edelman <m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu> wrote:
>>
>>If the well-trained radar crew of a a modern, state-of-the-art fleet
>>picket ship with phased array radar and a ton of computerized signal
>>analysis and display hardware and software could mistake an ascending
>>A300 for an F14 on an Exocet attack profile...
>>
>>...what does that say about all the "data" that relies on operator
>>interpretation of 1950s radar technology?...

[Peterson]>What it seems to say to me is that although the specifics
might be wrong,
>the radar *did* see something. To say that UFO's don't exist since the
>data might be so far off is like saying the A300 didn't exist, since
>the radar operators made a mistake....

But most of the skeptics who have replied to this thread and all the
other Flying Saucer threads do not say this at all. Let me make it
absolutely clear:

UFOS EXIST.

With all the tens of thousands of objects that are flying around up
there every day all over the world every one of us skeptics would
consider it an astonishing fact if UFOs did not occur. SOME, perhaps
most, UFOs are not objects at all, but technical glitches with the
radar, optical illusions, observer misidentification of unusual optical
or atmospheric phenomena (aurora borealis, sun dogs, green flash, ball
lightning, fata morgana) but a great many UFOs are actual objects.

I'll say it again so you don't miss the point.

I BELIEVE UFOS EXIST.

Are the UFOs alien spacecraft from another star system? I'm afraid
there just isn't enough data to warrant such an astonishing conclusion.

> The fact is the radar showed an
>object, an object was there. It was the interpretation that was in
error.

Yes, our point exactly.

Of the numerous cases of UFOs seen on radar, I believe their are two
casualties besides the Mantell case that I know of. One case I believe around
1961 in which a jet was sent from Muroc Air force Base over lake Superior (I'm
doing this from memory) to intercept a blip over the lake. The jet was seen
to merge with the object on the radar screens since at that time altitude
could not be determined by a radar blip. According to the witnesses the blip
got larger and disappeared. The pilot was never found. In another case, in
Australia, a young pilot in the late 70's was flying his airplane towards the
shore when he saw a metallic disk. The audio tape of the conversation still
exists. The man can be heard to suddenly screen in fright and just then
disappeared from the radar screen. A man living near by took a picture of a
flying saucer in the exact same area at the same time the event occured and
matches the description given by the pilot upon photograghic analysis. These
cases are well documented and information concerning them should be easy to
dig up. The young man's father returns on the date of his disappearance every
year to the shore where he disappeared.

-Bob Tarantino

[Bill Smith]

In <4s2ioj$t...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:
>
>In article <31DB1F...@students.wisc.edu>,
>Brian Zeiler <bdze...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>>> Slightly extraordinary is an absurdity and very extraordinary is
>>> redundant.
>>
>>Nice binary logic, Wm. So you think that there are no degrees of
>>extraordinarity; it's merely a binary classification with no
gradation.
>>Very bizarre.
>
>One wouldn't normally comment on word-usage,

Thank you for writing, Mark.

I had planned a response to Brian's extraordinary message, but by the
time I got around to looking for it again, it had expired from my
queue.

>... clarifying the meaning of the word extraordinary, I'd suggest that

>you restrain your urge to make up words and stick to ones we can agree
on
>the meanings of through dictionaries.

When it comes to usage, Mark, I think I probably subscribe to a more
permissive school than you. You seem to hold to the prescriptive
school of thought that holds that dictionaries prescribe correct usage.
I am more of a descriptive guy; i.e., that dictionaries describe how
good writers use words. But even my more liberal standards will not
admit Brian's Humpty-Dumptyism. If word meanings change over time, at
any particular point in time, they still mean SOMETHING.

I would be willing to admit, without comment, intensifiers to the word
"extraordinary" in ordinary conversation, where one ought not to expect
too much rigor. Phrases such as "quite extraordinary," and "I saw
something so extraordinary..." are common and usual in everyday speech
and ought not to be condemned. But in writing, one has time to be more
careful in one's word choice and in the context of discussing the
likelihood of various explanations of phenomena occurring in the
physical universe, one should not throw words like extraordinary around
without being certain that one actually does mean "extraordinary."

>
> for instance, can you refer
>me to a single event or object that is neither ordinary nor
extraordinary?

Oh, well played, Mark.

> You simply
>cannot have degrees of extraordinariness. You *can* have degrees of
>likehood, unusualness, or other similar terms, but ordinaryness is
indeed a
>binary characteristic - a thing is either extraordinary or ordinary.

Are you listening, Brian?

>[Me]>> But if I saw a frigate bird, that would be extraordinary and,

>>> absent strong proofs to the contrary, you would be entitled to
doubt whether I had
>>> identified the phenomenon correctly.
>>

>[Brian]>Okay, I say that your sighting of a frigate bird is unusual,

but not
>>extraordinary.
>
>Where you to say such a thing, it would imply either that you had more
data
>on the case (i.e. that a nearby zoo had had a frigate bird escape the
day
>before), or that you were ignorant of the environmental requirements
and
>migratory habits of the bird such that its presence in the area was
indeed
>extraordinary. The best way to judge would be to get a consensus of
>ornithologists - If 99% of them say that it is very unlikely to find
the
>bird in that place at that time, then it's sensible to call the
sighting
>extraordinary... and therefore to require more than just the single
>eyewitness testimony before, say, planning a rescue to get it to more
>appropriate climes before it dies.

Here's the point that seems to be lost on Brian and the Saucer People:
The apperance of a man-of-war bird hovering over the Sudbury River near
my house, at 42 degrees North Latitude would be extraordinary but not
impossible. As Mark says, perhaps one has recently escaped from a
nearby zoo. Perhaps a hurricane blew the poor fellow up here from his
home more than a thousand miles away in the Bahamas. These things
would be possible, but HIGHLY unlikely.

I had offered a quote from Thomas Jefferson that was on point, but
Brian ruled it out of his court. The gist of it was that if, in the
ordinary course of events, it would be more improbable to believe a
claim than to disbelieve it, one ought to consider such a claim to be
extraordinary and refuse to lend credence to it until some very strong,
indeed evidence is produced.

>> Or, maybe I feel like saying it's INCREDIBLY extraordinary.

Like the word extraordinary, the word incredible does not need any
help. It can stand alone. The terms are mutually exclusive because
while "extraordinary" implies a thing highly unlikely it is still
possible. An incredible thing is a thing that cannot be believed, i.e.
an impossible thing. An example from Brian's own message will suffice
to make the distinction clear.

>>For instance, if I claim that I saw a frigate bird, and that the bird
>>asked me if I had some spare change, is that more extraordinary than
>>merely seeing a frigate bird? Obviously, yes.

No. The claim that one saw a frigate bird in a New England river is
extraordinary because highly unlikely but still within the realm of the
possible. The claim that one was importuned by this bird for some
spare change is incredible because it is incapable of being believed.

>> In your deranged binary scale, however, you would have to say no.
>
>You wouldn't be the first to find the English language illogical (I
find
>Russian-speakers particularly tend to despair),

English only seems illogical. Once you understand its history it
begins to make sense. It starts with Dark Ages Low German just like
modern Dutch, gets a heavy overlay of medieval French in 1066 and takes
copious borrowings from Latin and Greek throughout the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, and then adds smaller, but still significant bits from
every language that English explorers, colonists and buccaneers
encountered in their building of the British Empire.

Ordinary, for example, is from a Latin word having to do with the order
of things. Extraordinary, then, is outside (extra) the order of
things. Incredible is from a Latin word, credere, meaning to believe
and the prefix "in" meaning NOT, so incredible is not to be believed.
Brian doesn't know or care about this history or even why we call him
Humpty Dumpty. I'll bet he doesn't even know how to find out what we
mean by it and, if no one tips him to it, he will never figure it
out;->

>>Without a means to objectively apply a CONTINUOUS -- not binary, as
you
>>seem to think -- classification scale to the extraordinarity of a

>>claim, ... extraordinarity,... in proportion to its extraordinarity.

>
>1) Extraordinariness, please - unless you are inventing a new word of
your
> own that *can* have degrees.

But that, of course, would not be the word that *I* used.

>3) The continuous scale you require does exist, and is applied in
making the
> classification - it is 'probability'. You are using "extraordinary"
as a
> synonym for "improbable", which is incorrect.

PRECISELY.

>[BZ]>In short, it's a logical trick.

Coming from Brian, this should be read as meaning only that Brian finds
logic tricky.

Thank you for writing, Mark. It was a delight responding to your
message.

[Brian Zeiler]

Bill Smith wrote:

> > You simply
> >cannot have degrees of extraordinariness. You *can* have degrees of
> >likehood, unusualness, or other similar terms, but ordinaryness is
> indeed a
> >binary characteristic - a thing is either extraordinary or ordinary.
>
> Are you listening, Brian?

Yes, and I think you both have absolutely no logic whatsoever. First of
all, neither of you provided any logical rationale for your *declaration*
that extraordinariness is a binary category. Secondly, the claim is
itself patently absurd, because some claims are more extraordinary than
others. If I claim to see a flying saucer, you would call that
extraordinary. What if I claim that I saw a flying saucer AND was taken
on board for wild sex with some Pleiadian women? The rationale person
would say that the second claim is a touch more extraordinary -- it's
more bizarre, more outlandish, more unusual, more incredible, more
extraordinary. But no, in your legal la-la land, they're both simply
"extraordinary", period.

The more logical approach is to have a continuous scale of
extraordinariness -- or, as I said earlier, a function of 'fuzzy set
membership' that illustrates the degree of membership of the claim in the
set 'extraordinary'. That is more appropriate logic.

It seems that you debunker freaks are illogically defending your silly
binary classification because it helps you to defend your absurd mantra
of "give me a dead alien for proof, all other evidence is useless".
Typical debunker illogic.

--
Brian Zeiler

[rud...@garnet.berkeley.edu]

taranr <> wrote:

>Yes, our point exactly.

>Of the numerous cases of UFOs seen on radar, I believe their are two
>casualties besides the Mantell case that I know of. One case I believe around
>1961 in which a jet was sent from Muroc Air force Base over lake Superior (I'm
>doing this from memory) to intercept a blip over the lake. The jet was seen
>to merge with the object on the radar screens since at that time altitude
>could not be determined by a radar blip. According to the witnesses the blip
>got larger and disappeared. The pilot was never found.

The case you are remembering occurred Nov. 23, 1953 over Lake Superior. An F-89
jet interceptor was scrambled from Kinross Field, Michigan (not Muroc, now
Edwards AFB in California) to intercept a UFO over Soo Locks [Wisconsin/Ontario

border]. After the plane merged with the UFO on radar and disappeared, a
massive search was launched, but no trace (no wreckage or even an oil slick) of
the F-89 or the pilot and navigator was ever found. The USAF tried to explain
the UFO as being a Canadian military plane, but the Canadian government denied
they had any planes in the area. One write-up of the case in in Kevin Randle's,
"UFO Casebook"

>In another case, in
>Australia, a young pilot in the late 70's was flying his airplane towards the
>shore when he saw a metallic disk. The audio tape of the conversation still
>exists. The man can be heard to suddenly screen in fright and just then
>disappeared from the radar screen. A man living near by took a picture of a
>flying saucer in the exact same area at the same time the event occured and
>matches the description given by the pilot upon photograghic analysis. These
>cases are well documented and information concerning them should be easy to
>dig up. The young man's father returns on the date of his disappearance every
>year to the shore where he disappeared.

This was the Frederick Velentich case, Oct. 21, 1978.

Yet another case is the Cuban jet incident of March 1967. This was monitored by
the 6947th Security Squadron at Homestead AFB, Florida, whose function was to
listen to Cuban military radio messages. Two MIGs were scrambled to intercept a
UFO in Cuban air space. The pilots reported seeing a bright metallic sphere
with no visible markings or appendages. They were ordered to arm their missiles
and destroy the object. Then the leader confirmed having a radar lock and that
his missiles were armed. Seconds later, the wingman screamed to the ground
controller that the leader's jet had exploded. He then said there was no smoke
or flame -- the plane had simply disintegrated. Cuban radar then reported that
the UFO quickly accelerated and climbed to 98,000 heading towards South America.
The incident is described in the "The UFO Cover-up by Lawrence Fawcett & Barry
Greenwood. There is also an interesting follow-up about visits by FBI agents
and veiled threats when their organization (CAUS) attempted to investigate in
1978.

[Mark O'Leary]

>Patrick Juola <pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

>>Really, Mr. O'Leary. Replace "ordinary" and "extraordinary" with
>>"short" and "tall" below. Haven't you ever heard of fuzzy logic?
>>It's only been around for at least thirty years.

You miss the entire point. Tall and short are points on a gradual scale. Its
valid to say "very tall" or "less tall than" etc. Likely and improbable are
likewise points on a gradual scale, where its valid to say "fairly unlikely"
or "more improbable than".

Ordinary and extraordinary are not parts of a graduated scale. They
represent a binary characteristic. It is not valid to say "slightly
ordinary" or "extraordinary event A is less extraordinary than
extraordinary event B". The words should not be used that way in correct
english.

Fuzzy logic has nothing to do with this, its just appropriate word choice.

You can misuse the words, as BZ has done, and presumably most of the time an
intelligent reader will be able to make a good guess at what you meant to
say. However, if you used the right word in the first place, no-one would
have to guess.

Since Brian is disputing the rule of thumb that "extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence" on the mistaken basis that things can have
'degrees' of extraordinariness so the line must therefore be arbitrary,
actually clearing up his misconception of what the word means is fairly
central to the discussion. At least BZ seems to have stopped using
"extraordinarity" so *some* progress is being made.

[Mark O'Leary]

In article <4s2mvm$9...@news.ox.ac.uk>,

Patrick Juola <pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>Really, Mr. O'Leary. Replace "ordinary" and "extraordinary" with
>"short" and "tall" below. Haven't you ever heard of fuzzy logic?
>It's only been around for at least thirty years.
>

>In article <4s2ioj$t...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:
>>Back to the point in hand: [BZ] express surprise that someone might consider

>>extraordinary vs ordinary to be a binary state. I find that to be quite
>>strange, but I'm willing to listen to your case: for instance, can you refer
>>me to a single event or object that is neither ordinary nor extraordinary?
>

>Sure. Anything "unusual."

No - something 'unusual' is either ordinary or extraordinary. Its ordinary
for a car to exist, unusual to see one in a lake (but still not
extraordinary), highly unusual and extraordinary to see one hovering in mid
air.

> It's ordinary for my ex- to drive a VW,
>since that's the car that she owns. It would be extraordinary for
>her to drive a flying saucer. It wouldn't be that out of line for
>her to drive a Ford, but that's certainly not the way I'd bet.

So what you're saying is seeing her in a ford would be unusual but
'ordinary' in that it doesnt require violations of her abilkities, the
abilities of ford cars, the distribution of both, or the laws of physics.
yes fine.

You havent shown a case that is neither ordinary nor extraordinary.

>>I would suggest not, so we have defined that everything falls into one of
>>these two sets. Now, can you point to something that is simultaeniously both
>>ordinary and extraordinary?
>

>See above. Where's the line between
>VW --> Ford --> Porsche --> Piper Cherokee --> MIG-29 --> Starship Enterprise

Thats defined by the consensus of people who know something about your ex.
If its known she works as a flying doctor and owns a Piper Cherokke, it
would be both usual and ordinary to see her flying such a plane. If she
doesnt have a pilots license, it would unusual (probably highly unusual),
but still ordinary because such planes are common and it is not beyond most
humans capabilities to learn to pilot such a plane. The Mig29 instance would
almost certainly be extraordinary - unless she was known to be a russian
fighter pilot.

I guess the point I'm making is best shown thus:

<----------ordinary---------------> <----------extraordinary-------------->
<-likely-> <-uncommon-> <-unusual-> <-improbable-> <-highly improbable->

Basically, theres a graduated scale of probabilities, with words that
reflect the degree of probability. But ordinary and extraordinary arent
part of that scale, they are a basic divide, a binary characteristic. Where
the line between ordinary and extraordinary is set is determined by the
consensus of those who know something about the event under discussion.

>A standard dictionary definition (yech, ptui) of ordinary reads :
> regular or customary condition or course of things
>
>And, just as there are degrees of commonness, degrees of custom, and
>degrees of regularity, so also there are degrees of extraordinary.

Why didnt you quote the definition of extraordinary if that is what you
wanted to make a point about?

What is customary if not that which is defined by consensus?

What is a degree of 'customariness'? Surely its either a custom to shake
hands or it isnt. It can't be 'slightly customary'. The custom might define
times when its approporiate and when it isnt, and certain people might be
unaware of the custom, or know a variant of it, but customary vs
non-customary is in fact another instance of a binary characteristic!

>
>>You *can* have degrees of
>>likehood, unusualness, or other similar terms, but ordinaryness is indeed a
>>binary characteristic - a thing is either extraordinary or ordinary.
>

>Bullshit.

Well you seem very certain, but you havent made the case to support your
assertion. Its commonly seen used in the way you prefer, but that is simply
bad english. The ordinary / extraordinary classification is seldom the one you
should choose if trying to compare likelihoods of events that both fall into
the same class.

M.

> Patrick

[Patrick Juola]

In article <4s5ac1$q...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:
>In article <4s2mvm$9...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
>Patrick Juola <pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>In article <4s2ioj$t...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:
>I guess the point I'm making is best shown thus:
>
><----------ordinary---------------> <----------extraordinary-------------->
><-likely-> <-uncommon-> <-unusual-> <-improbable-> <-highly improbable->
>
>Basically, theres a graduated scale of probabilities, with words that
>reflect the degree of probability. But ordinary and extraordinary arent
>part of that scale, they are a basic divide, a binary characteristic. Where
>the line between ordinary and extraordinary is set is determined by the
>consensus of those who know something about the event under discussion.

This is bullshit, guy. Words don't fall into binary classifications
like that. Even your weasel-worded "determined by consensus" phrasing
gives that away -- what's a consensus but an opinion held by most-but-
not-necessarily-all of a group? A group, I add, which you have already
stipulated to be unrepresentative, e.g. "those who know something
about the event under discussion." So you're admitting that the
judgement of whether or not an event is "extraordinary" isn't something
that can be made reliably. Even in the best case, where you can come
up with a firm numerical statement ("the probability of Q happening is
X, with confidence Y"), you've still got to face the possibility that
Dr. Alphar may consider the event to be "extraordinary," while both
Dr. Bethe and Dr. Gamow merely consider it to be "unlikely," based on
differences in their credibility threshhold.

>>>You *can* have degrees of
>>>likehood, unusualness, or other similar terms, but ordinaryness is indeed a
>>>binary characteristic - a thing is either extraordinary or ordinary.
>>
>>Bullshit.
>
>Well you seem very certain, but you havent made the case to support your
>assertion.

Well, you haven't made a case, either. If you want me to go digging
around in the corpora for usage statistics for English, I can, but I
suggest that that's not a productive use of either of our times.

>Its commonly seen used in the way you prefer, but that is simply
>bad english. The ordinary / extraordinary classification is seldom the one you
>should choose if trying to compare likelihoods of events that both fall into
>the same class.

"Class"? What the hell do you mean, "class"? How are you going to divide
event-space in to "classes" based on probability when the metric that
you're using is a consensus?

Patrick

[Patrick Juola]

In article <4s5b37$q...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:
>>Patrick Juola <pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>>Really, Mr. O'Leary. Replace "ordinary" and "extraordinary" with
>>>"short" and "tall" below. Haven't you ever heard of fuzzy logic?
>>>It's only been around for at least thirty years.
>

>You miss the entire point. Tall and short are points on a gradual scale. Its
>valid to say "very tall" or "less tall than" etc. Likely and improbable are
>likewise points on a gradual scale, where its valid to say "fairly unlikely"
>or "more improbable than".
>
>Ordinary and extraordinary are not parts of a graduated scale. They
>represent a binary characteristic. It is not valid to say "slightly
>ordinary" or "extraordinary event A is less extraordinary than
>extraordinary event B". The words should not be used that way in correct
>english.

Mr. O'Leary, I don't know where you get your notion of "correct english";
but I haven't seen a single shred of evidence in support of this ludicrous
notion -- not have you presented a single argument that ordinary
and extraordinary are not points on a gradual scale. I remind you that
repeated assertion does *not* consitute evidence, and I can easily put
"ordinary" and "extraordinary" into a meaningful graduated scale by
simply asserting that the degree to which an event is "extraordinary"
is exactly the probability to which a randomly-chosen person would
characterise the event as being "extraordinary."

Patrick

[twi...@hub.ofthe.net]

cluste...@yale.edu (Cluster User) wrote:

<snip>
>Why is this an "astonishing conclusion"? It is generally accepted amongst
>scientist that there probably are other life forms in the universe.

To say that this is generally accepted is a overstatement. Many
scientists do think it likely, based on probabilities, that other life
forms may exist. Others think that the Strong Anthropic Principle
makes this unlikely. But whether or not anyone thinks it is likely,
doesn't make it less astonishing if it is true.

>So,
>while it might be "thrilling", it wouldn't actually be "astonishing" to
>discover this to be true, since it is expected. So it boils down to a
>problem of physics- can anything/anybody get here from there? There is a
>tendency to believe we have in the past 100 years dredged up all the
>fundamentals there are to know about the construction of our universe, and
>that we only have a few more decades to go before physics is "done." This
>isn't the first time; in fact, at any given period, we tend to think we're
>almost "done."

>I don't subscribe to the notion that physics will ever be done. I think
>that a culture that has, say, 100,000 years (a "blink of the eye")

You are obviously far more optimistic than I am about the chances of
an intelligent race to survive and to continue to thrive and to
advance.

<snip>

Enjoy

[Unknown]

==========Brian Zeiler, 7/10/96==========

M wrote:

> This sounds interesting. I'd like to read about this in the original
> newpaper articles. could you provide one citation (newspaper, date),
> preferably from an easily-obtainable microfiched paper (e.g., NY Times)
> so that I could see these headline articles of alien spacecraft persued
> by fighter planes, and the subsequent disapearence of said alien
spacecraft?

First, they were called "flying saucers", not "alien spacecraft". I
would recommend the Washington Post from July 18 through July 28, with
the big headlines around the 25th or 26th, can't remember when. I
retrieved them myself from the UW State Historical Archives last summer.
Very interesting, especially the big banner headline that screamed
"SAUCER OUTRUNS JET, PILOT SAYS", referring to the fighter jets scrambled
from Andrews AFB.

--
Brian Zeiler

Thanks, for this info.. I believe that the explaination given by the
government was temperature inversions which I have read would only be seen as
a "blotch" and not clear hits as these were seen to be. Also radar technology
has improved greatly but as I understand still picks up mainly the tail
section of the aircraft. Thus one of the keys to stealth technology. I seems
that the UFOs in this case and in the Edwards Air Force base incident shows
clearly that the UFOs wanted to be seen. If we can have stealth, I'm sure
they can.

-Bob Tarantino

[Brian Zeiler]

Patrick Juola wrote:

> Mr. O'Leary, I don't know where you get your notion of "correct english";
> but I haven't seen a single shred of evidence in support of this ludicrous
> notion -- not have you presented a single argument that ordinary
> and extraordinary are not points on a gradual scale.

Thanks for saving me from typing -- that's exactly what I was going to
say. Nothing but repeated assertion and declaration from O'Leary with no
logical defense nor theoretical support for his strange binary
classification.

--
Brian Zeiler

[rud...@garnet.berkeley.edu]

anon...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (M) wrote:

>>
>>In 1952 (I think it was '51' or '52') what was headline news throughout the
>>country, when UFOs were seen all over Washington DC by scores of eyewitnesses,
>>the U.S. government sent in fighter planes to intercept them, and I believe
>>they were over the Capital building. As they closed in, they disappeared.
>>And after the jets turned turned back, they reappeared. UFOs have been seen
>>to disappear all over the world, and including on radar on dozens of
>>instances. The case in Washington DC demonstrates that we are dealing with
>>intelligent life far superior to us. There is no error.
>>
>>-Bob Tarantino

>This sounds interesting. I'd like to read about this in the original

>newpaper articles. could you provide one citation (newspaper, date),
>preferably from an easily-obtainable microfiched paper (e.g., NY Times)
>so that I could see these headline articles of alien spacecraft persued
>by fighter planes, and the subsequent disapearence of said alien spacecraft?

This was front-page news throughout the country. Here are the UFO stories
carried by the NY Times for 1952. This is taken directly from the N.Y. Times
Index, available in most libraries. You might also want to get "The Report on
Unidentified Flying Objects," by Ed Ruppelt, former head of USAF Project Blue
Book, and read Chapters 11 ("The Big Flap") and 12 ("The Washington
Merry-Go-Round").

Note how the initial flurry of UFO reports is followed, after the July 29
Washington news conference, by numerous debunking articles. These headlines are
a pretty good mini-history of how UFOs are reported by a major newspaper like
the NY Times.

[Numbers refer to date, page number, and column; Roman numerals refer to Sunday
section.]

Feb. 20, 3:1 - USAF bomber crewmen reort seeing orange globes over Korea.

Apr. 12, 10:2 - Editorial on Life's (pub) account of saucers. [debunking; says
all UFO reports caused by experimental Skyhook balloons]

Apr. 12, 13:3 - GM balloon project representatives report seeing strange "aerial
objecs" over Minn. and Wisc. [very ironic - these were the Skyhook people
themselves reporting UFOs flying around their manned balloons; these were 2
famous Project Blue Book unknown cases.]

Apr. 13, IV, 9:6 - W. Kaempftert comment; disputes views. [debunking]

June 24, 26:4 - USAF cap't reports seeing several saucers and 'cigar-shaped'
objects over Jersey Shore, Pa.

July 4, 29:8 - USAF O'Hare base, Ill., gets reports; no alert ordered.

July 6, 51:4 - Four pilots report seeing saucer over Hanford, Wash., atomic
plant.

July 17, 4:5 - USAF probes report by 2 airline pilots of 8 discs flying in
formation, 150 miles South of Washington. [Famous case]

July 18, 5:3 - USAF representative says 60 reports received in last 2 weeks.
[The representative was Ed Ruppelt]

** July 22, 27:6 - USAF reports unidentified objects, 'perhaps saucers,' picked
up on radar over Washington; held traveling 100-130 mph; airline pilots report
objects, Washington vicinity; 2 on Staten Island, N.Y., and 3 in NY City report
objects.

July 24, 29:8 - USAF gets reports of objects from NJ to New England.

July 25, 19:2 - E.C. Johnston reports saucers hovered over area in California 4
nights; says 25 persons saw objects; 6 jets chase object over Ohio; USAF holds
its a weather balloon.

** July 28, 1:2 - USAF reports jet interceptors outstripped by objects spotted
second time in week by radar over Washington; pilot reports 4 lights; sighting
by radar held to mean objects have substance; Iowa Univ. astronomer C. C. Wylie
holds objects sighted over Iowa to be planet Jupiter.

July 29, 20:2 - Editorial

** July 29, 23:6 - USAF cites 24-hour readiness to challenge unidentified
objects; explains 2-hour lag in chasing objects over Washington; objects seen
over Tarrytown, N.Y.

** July 30, 1:2 - USAF calls objects natural phenomena; to continue to probe
reports; Maj. Gen. Samford [head of air intelligence] views summarized; cites
radar inaccuracies; says measurement method needed; objects again spotted by
radar over Washington; NYS Air Raid Filter Center reports rise in 'sightings;'
USN probes reports of objects off Florida; sighted over Bahamas.

July 30, 10:2 - W. L. Laurence explains mirages on radarscope; cites '51
explanation of Dr. U. Liddel. [debunking]

** July 31, 22:3 - Editorial on USAF statement.

Aug. 1, 19:7 - Pentagon representatives report getting 432 written reports of
'sightings' in '52.

Aug. 2, 3:2 - USCG releases daytime photo of 4 light flashes in sky taken by S.
R. Alpert at Salem, Mass., air station; 2 USAF pilots checking reports spot
object; hold it not reflection; objects reported, upper NY State.

Aug. 3, 7:1 - Canadiation destroyer sights 2 objects over Korea; records them on
radar; objects sighted over Tokyo and Calif; Prof. D. H. Menzel doubts value of
USCG photo; Illinois Water Survey radar station explains "flying river" as
Illinois River reflection. [debunking]

Aug. 3, IV, 2:5 - Comments

Aug. 3, IV, 7:1 - Theories cited; illus.; cartoons.

Aug. 3, IV, 8:5 - Prof. J. A. Browning letter holds ball-lightning may be object
reflected on radar. [debunking]

Aug. 4, 3:4 - Maj. Gen. Ramey [of 1947 Roswell infamy] reports none of 1,500
reports to USAF since '47 shows evidence of material objects; says no pattern
established. [debunking]

Aug. 7, 3:8 - N. Scott creates colored and other alleged saucer shapes by
injecting ionized air into partial vacuum of Bell jar; says shapes have enough
substance to be picked up by radar; explains high speeds and quick turns; holds
low air pressure balanced against static electricity main factors for
'sightings;" Army Engineers representative says findings explain some of
saucers; [debunking} **objects spotted by radar over Washington D.C.,
unsuccessfully chased by jets**

Aug. 8, 16:6 - Letter cites ionization of upper air by gamma rays from sun spots
as cause. [debunking]

Aug. 9, 15:6 - R. R. Coles sees rise in 'sightings' during annual Perseid meteor
display; [debunking] object with flashing lights spotted near mouth of Niagra
River, N.Y.

Aug. 17, 35:3 - Navy plans series of cross-country balloon flights to forestall
saucer reports. [debunking]

Aug. 18, 5:1 - Saucers reported in Venezuela and Columbia.

Aug. 21, 3:5 - USAF releases details of talk between jet pilot and airport
control tower just before he crashed while chasing unidentified object near
Godman Base, Ky. [famous Thomas Mantell case]

Aug. 24, IV, 8:3 - Editorial on Dr. Otto Struve's on life possibilities on other
planets and solar systems as debunking belief that saucers are space ships from
other worlds. [debunking]

Sept. 3, 48:5 - Two jets fly directly through spot in Chicago sky whee
radarscopes on ground register reflections from unexplained object; see or hit
nothing; CAA ascribes reflection to atmospheric conditions. [debunking]

Sept. 5, 18:6 - Scientists at International Congress on Astronautics, Stuttgart,
not interested in saucers; do not believe they originiate in USSR or on another
planet. [debunking]

Sept. 13, 15:5 - Flame flashing over Washington, D.C., believed meteor.

Sept. 21, V, 9:8 - CAA representative says moving white object seen over Montana
probably Venus. [debunking]

Sept. 22, 17:7 - Willy Ley [rocket scientist] holds saucers not space ships;
doubts other-planet origin. [debunking]

Oct. 15, 34:4 - "Big blue flame" noted by Idlewild Airport personnel.

Nov. 7, 6:3 - Deputy Premier Pervukin (USSR) links saucers to US "war jitters,"
[debunking]

Dec. 11, 35:8 - CAA reports saucers are reflections caused by temperature
inversions; says cold air breaking out from layers of hot air cause radar beams
and ground lights to rebound. [debunking]

Dec. 16, 33:8 - 6-foot disk found atop cliff, W. Orange, N.J.

Dec. 17, 52:1 - Was dance decoration. [debunking]

[Mark O'Leary]

In article <4s5jbe$2...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
Patrick Juola <pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

>In article <4s5b37$q...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:
>>>Patrick Juola <pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>>Really, Mr. O'Leary. Replace "ordinary" and "extraordinary" with
>>>>"short" and "tall" below. Haven't you ever heard of fuzzy logic?
>>>>It's only been around for at least thirty years.
>>

>>You miss the entire point. Tall and short are points on a gradual scale. Its
>>valid to say "very tall" or "less tall than" etc. Likely and improbable are
>>likewise points on a gradual scale, where its valid to say "fairly unlikely"
>>or "more improbable than".
>>
>>Ordinary and extraordinary are not parts of a graduated scale. They
>>represent a binary characteristic. It is not valid to say "slightly
>>ordinary" or "extraordinary event A is less extraordinary than
>>extraordinary event B". The words should not be used that way in correct
>>english.
>

>Mr. O'Leary, I don't know where you get your notion of "correct english";

Well, I guess it is from my education, supplemented by reading.
Where do you get yours? How can you account for their differences?

> I can easily put "ordinary" and "extraordinary" into a meaningful
>graduated scale by simply asserting that the degree to which an event is
>"extraordinary" is exactly the probability to which a randomly-chosen
>person would characterise the event as being "extraordinary."

I'm sure you can invent all kinds of scenarios for yourself under which what
you want to beleive is true, particularly about the meanings of words. Ever
since Lewis Carrol parodied just such an exercise, it has been known as
'Humpty-Dumptyism'.

However, there is a baseline against which such flights of fancy are judged.

Your particular 'graduated scale' for extraordinariness is pointless - how
could you ever say whether an event was extraordinary or not if you had to
ask a statistically significant sample of random people to find out where on
the scale it should sit? But even if you'd presented the most logical
argument for a graduated scale, the words themselves can't be used in that
way. There are already words for a gradual scale of likelihood - such as
'likelihood' or 'probability' or 'unusualness'. There is no benefit in
degrading the menaing of 'extraoridnariness' to be yet another label for the
same scale, because we already have enough labels, and it would cost us the
only binary label appropriate to distinguish these two sets.

> Patrick

M.

[Brian Zeiler]

taranr wrote:

> Thanks, for this info.. I believe that the explaination given by the
> government was temperature inversions which I have read would only be seen as
> a "blotch" and not clear hits as these were seen to be.

Yes, true. Furthermore, if you read _The Report on Unidentified Flying
Objects_ by Captain Edward Ruppelt, head of USAF's Bluebook at the time
of the DC incident, you will see that the inversion nonsense was just a
big cover-story.

--
Brian Zeiler

[Patrick Juola]

In article <4s5t90$v...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:
>In article <4s5jbe$2...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
>Patrick Juola <pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>In article <4s5b37$q...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:
>>>>Patrick Juola <pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>Really, Mr. O'Leary. Replace "ordinary" and "extraordinary" with
>>>>>"short" and "tall" below. Haven't you ever heard of fuzzy logic?
>>>>>It's only been around for at least thirty years.
>>>
>>>You miss the entire point. Tall and short are points on a gradual scale. Its
>>>valid to say "very tall" or "less tall than" etc. Likely and improbable are
>>>likewise points on a gradual scale, where its valid to say "fairly unlikely"
>>>or "more improbable than".
>>>
>>>Ordinary and extraordinary are not parts of a graduated scale. They
>>>represent a binary characteristic. It is not valid to say "slightly
>>>ordinary" or "extraordinary event A is less extraordinary than
>>>extraordinary event B". The words should not be used that way in correct
>>>english.
>>
>>Mr. O'Leary, I don't know where you get your notion of "correct english";
>
>Well, I guess it is from my education, supplemented by reading.
>Where do you get yours? How can you account for their differences?

I think I get mine from approximately the same spot; my education
and reading. I suspect the difference is that I'm a professional
linguist. Shall we stop the credentials fight now and get on to the
point at hand?

>> I can easily put "ordinary" and "extraordinary" into a meaningful
>>graduated scale by simply asserting that the degree to which an event is
>>"extraordinary" is exactly the probability to which a randomly-chosen
>>person would characterise the event as being "extraordinary."
>
>I'm sure you can invent all kinds of scenarios for yourself under which what
>you want to beleive is true, particularly about the meanings of words. Ever
>since Lewis Carrol parodied just such an exercise, it has been known as
>'Humpty-Dumptyism'.

True. And, if, in fact, my scenarios were confined to myself alone, then
that would be a valid point. However, they're demonstrably not, since
this whole thread started with your criticism of Mr. Zeiler for his
use of "extraordinary" in just such a fashion.

The graduated scale that I suggested is, in fact, the standard scale by
which any population of speakers determines the use of an informally
defined word. You have yet to present a formal definition, and I
submit that there's no way that you can present one which will meet
with general agreement of even the small population here represented,
any more than you could present a formal definition of "tall" that
would reach general agreement. The fact that to formally apply
that criterion would require an unreasonable amount of lab work shouldn't
bother you, since normally people can approximately agree on where the
word applies.

I don't see how you can state in one breath that something is extraordinary
if a consensus of people agree that it's extraordinary, and at the same
time criticise a simple numericization of the notion of "consensus."

Read my lips, Mr. O'Leary. Outside of a very limited domain, usually
almost exclusively mathematical, word use is NOT determined by
dictionary definitions. The difference between the words "improbable"
and "extraordinary" is almost purely one of connotation; their denotations
are near-identical. If you disagree, I challenge you to produce a
subtantive difference. The *connotative* difference, which I agree is
significant, can best be illustrated by the Roget's _Thesaurus_
classification; "extraordinary", like "abnormal" (its classmate) is
pejorative.

So the fundamental difference between "extraordinary" and "improbable"
is simple that something "extraordinary" is an improbable event that
you don't want to rely on having happened.

>But even if you'd presented the most logical
>argument for a graduated scale, the words themselves can't be used in that
>way. There are already words for a gradual scale of likelihood - such as
>'likelihood' or 'probability' or 'unusualness'. There is no benefit in
>degrading the menaing of 'extraoridnariness' to be yet another label for the
>same scale, because we already have enough labels, and it would cost us the
>only binary label appropriate to distinguish these two sets.

Sorry, guy, language isn't like that. People don't select words to
maximize their usefulness.

Patrick

[J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl]

In article, Brian Zeiler <bdze...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:

>>Bill Smith wrote:
>>a thing is either extraordinary or ordinary.
>

>Yes, and I think you both have absolutely no logic whatsoever. First of

Brian, you're wasting your time trying to convince someone who denies the
possibility in the first place. Mr. Smith has admitted that he does not
believe that extraterrestrial life exists. Thus he will apply an arbitrary
ranking of likelihood based on his personal ideas. Wether they are correct
or incorrect doesn't matter.

What is weird though is that he perceives his ideas as being shared by the
majority of people and scientists. Apparently. Mr. Smith is under the illu-
sion that all people think like he does. I'm glad they don't.

[Bill Smith]

In <4s5ac1$q...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:

>>
>>See above. Where's the line between
>>VW --> Ford --> Porsche --> Piper Cherokee --> MIG-29 --> Starship
Enterprise
>
>Thats defined by the consensus of people who know something about your
ex.
>If its known she works as a flying doctor and owns a Piper Cherokke,
it
>would be both usual and ordinary to see her flying such a plane. If
she
>doesnt have a pilots license, it would unusual (probably highly
unusual),
>but still ordinary because such planes are common and it is not beyond
most
>humans capabilities to learn to pilot such a plane. The Mig29 instance
would
>almost certainly be extraordinary - unless she was known to be a
russian
>fighter pilot.

Precisely. The extraordinariness of a claim is not an absolute
measure: X amount of Strangeness = Extraordinary in every case.
A thing is either ordinary or extraordinary in accordance with all the
circumstances prevailing at the time the claim is made. These
circumstances include all the knowledge then available to informed
opinion.

The correct measure, then, is whether, under all the circumstances
prevailing at the time the claim is made, including the best knowledge
then available to informed opinion on the matter, it would be more
improbable to believe the claim than to disbelieve it.

>Well you seem very certain, but you havent made the case to support
your
>assertion. Its commonly seen used in the way you prefer, but that is
simply
>bad english. The ordinary / extraordinary classification is seldom the
one you
>should choose if trying to compare likelihoods of events that both
fall into
>the same class.

I would be more forgiving of a careless use of the terms in ordinary
conversation. But in the context of debate, one should choose one's
words more carefully and it is in this context that the maxim,
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proofs, is offered.

[Bill Smith]

In <4s5jbe$2...@news.ox.ac.uk> pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk (Patrick
Juola) writes:

>
>Mr. O'Leary, I don't know where you get your notion of "correct
english";

Probably from the Oxford English Dictionary. I rely on American
Heritage, Webster's Unabridged (the conservative 2d ed.) and many years
experience reading and practicing good writing. Mr. O'Leary seems to
have access to this final source as well.

>but I haven't seen a single shred of evidence in support of this
ludicrous
>notion

It is not so much a question of evidence, though the history of the
English language and a nodding acquaintance with the latinate roots of
the term will be relevant to the discussion. Rather, it is the
fundamental problem with argument: you must define your terms. Brian
has suggested, and you seem to support him on this, that without an
objective definition of extraordinary, the principle that holds that
extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs is a mere tautology
and he has further suggested that no such objective definition is
possible. Is this your position as well?

Mr. O'Leary and I have been trying to show that an objective definition
is possible and have offered, through deductive arguments primarily,
just such a definition.

>-- not have you presented a single argument that ordinary

>and extraordinary are not points on a gradual [sic] scale.

Then you have ignored the arguments he has made.

> I remind you that
>repeated assertion does *not* consitute evidence,...

This is not a discussion about evidence; this is a discussion about
terms. We insist that, in the context of this discussion, we use the
term in a particular way and we are confident that many of the skeptics
who post here regularly and Dr. Sagan and the Amazing Randi are all
using the term in the same way.

> and I can easily put

>"ordinary" and "extraordinary" into a meaningful graduated scale by
>simply asserting that the degree to which an event is "extraordinary"
>is exactly the probability to which a randomly-chosen person would
>characterise the event as being "extraordinary."

Then you would be using the term wrongly.

[Brian Zeiler]

Bill Smith wrote:

> Mr. O'Leary and I have been trying to show that an objective definition
> is possible and have offered, through deductive arguments primarily,
> just such a definition.

It's still profoundly senseless to say that extraordinary is an either/or
binary term, and that there are no degrees of extraordinariness. Go make
a post to comp.ai.fuzzy and see how quickly you'll get shredded. I'm
done with this moronic discussion, which is obviously getting nowhere.

--
Brian Zeiler

[dmc]

w.s...@ix.netcom.com(Bill Smith) wrote:

[miscellaneous semantic and syntactic discussions edited]

>Coming from Brian, this should be read as meaning only that Brian finds
>logic tricky.

>Thank you for writing, Mark. It was a delight responding to your
>message.

Sheesh! I thought I was a stickler for clear writing...

dmc

[Bill Smith]

In <4s627e$9...@tuegate.tue.nl> J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl

(J.Wa...@stud.tue.nl) writes:
>
>
> Brian, you're wasting your time trying to convince someone who denies
the
> possibility in the first place. Mr. Smith has admitted that he does
not
> believe that extraterrestrial life exists.

I have never said any such thing. I did write a message about a week
ago attacking the widespread assumption that not only MUST
extraterrestrial life exist, but that it MUST have evolved into
intelligent life. Let me make it clear what I DO believe (and don't
demand evidence for these 'claims' -- I am merely stating, for the
record, what my actual beliefs are, as opposed to what my opponents
caricature them as):

1. I believe it is probable that life exists on other planets.
2. I believe that it is possible that some of this life has
evolved to a high degree of complexity.
3. I believe that, if complex life has developed, it is possible
that some of this complex life has evolved into an intelligent form.
4. I believe that, if some of this life has evolved into an
intelligent form, some of those intelligent life forms may have
developed a complex civilization.
5. I believe that, if one or more complex civilizations has
developed elsewhere in the Universe, it may have achieved technology
equal to or surpassing our own.
6. I believe that if there is a complex and advanced technological
civilization out there, it is highly improbable that it will ever be
able to accomplish a journey to Earth.
7. I believe that I could be mistaken about anything contained in
items 1-6.

>Thus he will apply an arbitrary
> ranking of likelihood based on his personal ideas.

Thus, your argument collapses back into the steaming pile of bullshit
from which it arose.

> Apparently. Mr. Smith is under the illu-

> sion [sic] that all people think like he does.

Well, all reasonable people do, yes.

[Ted Rosen]

m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu (Michael Edelman) wrote:

>SPHINX Technologies (sph...@world.std.com) wrote:
>: In article <4rvl7c$i...@barad-dur.nas.com>, Ted Rosen <ham...@nas.com> wrote:
>: >
>: >>3) The government first said that a weather balloon crashed at
>: >>Roswell. Then it said it was a spy balloon. Now it says it was an
>: >>alien craft.
>: This is incorrect. The government's *FIRST* explanation was that a flying
>: disk had crashed and the wreckage had been recovered. It was only after
>: damage control got started that the "weather balloon" fabrication got
>: launched by Gen. Ramey.

Excuse me folks, but I did not pen either of these posts. You can tell
by the blatant lack of gratuitous adjectives.
Feel free to continue this little conversation, but get my name off
it, alright?

Geez, you'd think all these "geniuses" around here would know how to
edit their news readers . . .

- TR

Ted "Get 'Free Agent' for chrissakes" Rosen
ham...@nas.com

[Ted Rosen]

Alan_D...@mindlink.bc.ca (Alan Douglas) wrote:

>ham...@nas.com (Ted Rosen) wrote:

>>Surely, folks like Mr. Fun would refuse to believe their eyes, but
>>if the .gov trotted out a flying saucer and preserved alien corpse
>>and dumped it all at CSICOP's glass doors, even Phil Klass
>>would be hard-pressed to continue his lip-puckering.

>Absolutely. However this assumes:

>a) the .gov has such extraordinary evidence in the first place.

>b) the .gov would admit that it has such evidence (as opposed to
>keeping it top secret so their military can continue studying alien
>technology and biology undisturbed and without having to share it with
>anyone else)

>c) the .gov would freely release the evidence to the scientific
>community (excuse me while I die laughing).

<snip>
>If aliens are here, and if the .gov knows about it, and if they decide
>to tell us, then I sincerely doubt they will provide anything like the
>level of evidence that the average sceptic would require. If we're
>lucky we might get to see archival footage similar to the Alien
>Autopsy video. But more likely it would be declassified documents
>describing a number of incidents, observations, and conclusions. In
>fact much of the actual evidence would probably remain classified as
>it may involve the more sensitive intelligence gathering capabilities
>of the military and NSA.

I did say "if" above. My point being that *if* high-level confirmation
of the ETH was produced, most skeptics would study the evidence and
accept it. Most UFOlogists aver that the .gov has a fairly intact
saucer and some pickled aliens out at Roswell. This would be rather
compelling evidence, even for Klass. Only Mr. Fun would shake his
nay-saying head in disbelief.

>> BTW, Alan, you're being too nice to me. This is Usenet! You should be
>>calling me a "hopelessly deluded dork without one centilla of common
>>sense or cultural awareness" so I can call you a "crackpot negativist
>>know-it-all who wouldn't know a higher calling if it wriggled its way
>>down your briefs".

>Ahh, you see I'm posting from sci.skeptic, and of course such
>unscientific behaviour is not tolerated in the sci.* domain. I'm
>certain that all examples of such "trash talk" in this group are the
>results of crossposts from the alt.* domain. ;-)

>Cheers,
>Alan/

Yes, indeed, those "other" (nudge-nudge) NG's contain some pretty
rough characters. Despite the ego battles intrinsic in sci.skeptic, I
always post from it because it feels . . . quieter. When I look at
the *.alt list, it sometimes strikes me as a gurgling horde of
drunken, yammering Visigoths. And spammers.
What a waste.

- TR

[Michael Edelman]

Brian Zeiler (bdze...@students.wisc.edu) wrote:

: It's still profoundly senseless to say that extraordinary is an either/or

: binary term, and that there are no degrees of extraordinariness. Go make
: a post to comp.ai.fuzzy and see how quickly you'll get shredded. I'm
: done with this moronic discussion, which is obviously getting nowhere.

This has been one of Brian's more amazing canards. He began by attempting
to ridicule Sagan's simple statement about extraordinary claims
requiring extraordinary proof- something that any reader could easily
grasp the intent of- by claiming it wasn't "objective" or some such.

Now he claims it's not an either/or choice, which is just adding noise
to the discussion.

A reasonable man, as they say in the law, understands perfectly what
Sagan said. I fI tell you that I saw a '94 Ford pickup drive by,
you'd accept that on my word. If I told you it was '54 Borgward Isabella,
you'd probably still believe me. If I told you the Isabella was driven
by a Grey in evening clothes, you just might want some proof beyond my
simple say so ;-)

--mike

[jca...@negia.net]

BP wrote:
> <jca...@negia.net> wrote:

<snip>

>>What about photographic-visual correlations? Billions
>>and billions (apologies to one skeptic) of photographs
>>are taken every year. Extremely rare, brief, and
>>unpredictable events are photographed, such as
>>commercial planes just seconds before crashing, with
>>important details visible (such as the DC-10 that lost
>>an engine on takeoff from Chicago, the PSA and Mexican
>>planes that crashed in California after colliding with
>>small planes), but UFO photos are routinely out of
>>focus or lack details. Great tornado videos are taken
>>every year. If valid UFO sightings occur regularly,
>>where are the comparable photos and videos?

>It appears that UFO's may ionize the atmosphere around
>>them. This will preclude good focus.

This seems to be a rational explanation for poor detail
in UFO photos, but at the same time I understand Mike
Edelman's complaint about this. Because UFO Theory is
a belief system that has not been rigorously described,
its form is something like silly putty. It doesn't
have hard edges and is always changing its shape.
Arguments are proposed and then quietly dropped without
ever exploring the consequences. If ionization around
UFOs is the reason for lousy pictures, okay, I can
accept that for the sake of argument. However, it seems
to me that such ionization would make UFOs much easier
to detect at other wavelengths. For instance, several
years ago I think there was a project studying micro-
meteorites by looking for ionized trails in the upper
atmosphere. If the UFOs are more ionized at higher
speeds, that should make them even easier to detect.
Has this ever been tested?

Another example is Brian's interpretation of the BBSR
#14 analysis that leads him to believe that the "unknown"
UFO sightings are significantly longer in duration than
the "known" sightings. The planes-about-to-crash photos
mentioned above were taken in the few seconds between
structural damage occurring and the planes hitting the
ground. If Brian is right about the length of sightings,
and MUFON is right about thousands of UFO sightings in
the US every year, there shouldn't just be a few
successful photographs as for commercial plane crashes,
we should be waist deep in UFO photos.

Posts by Kenneth Almquist and Barry Williams were
interesting to me because they suggested that
UFOlogists become more scientifically rigorous. If
amateurs in astronomy and many other fields can do it,
why can't UFO proponents get serious?

Here are some problems that UFOlogy has to deal with to
become more scientific:

1. Lack of testable hypotheses
2. Low signal-to-noise ratio
3. Lack of methodology
4. Conspiracy theory
5. Lack of focus due to 1,2,3,4

1. Lack of testable hypotheses

Scientists break big problems down into little ones.
"UFOs are extraterrestrial vehicles" doesn't offer much
in the way of testable possibilities. "UFOs are
surrounded by ionized air," however, should have
testable consequences if UFOs should ever pass by.
Various posters have said that UFOs are interested in
nuclear facilities, uranium and boron mines, military
bases, power lines, Hungarians, cows and other domestic
animals, strawberry ice cream plants, and many other
things. UFOlogists can add to the list. Each
possibility should be examined for real-world
implications for sampling or detection. How far UFOlogy
has to go, or at least how far the Internet branch has
to go, may be shown by the fact that the only recent
suggestions for testable hypotheses seem to have come
from skeptics.

2. Low signal-to-noise-ratio

Depending on the authority, 70-90% of UFO reports are
due to prosaic causes, and do nothing but confound the
potentially interesting sightings. Instead of hanging
on to the boomerang UFO sightings just after a new moon,
or denying that a UFO chase going right toward Venus
might have involved Venus, the UFOlogists should code
those cases so that they can be dropped out of the data
when desired. A smaller data set with higher confidence
should give much better information.

3. Lack of methodology

Paul Hill and James McDonald seem to be the gurus of
current UFOlogy, but an engineer and an atmospheric
physicist could have done much more to move UFOlogy away
from the fringe. The field needed methods to detect and
study UFOs back when Hill and McDonald were working, and
20+ years later it seems that nothing has changed to
improve the situation.

In the Hudson Valley UFO report posted a few days ago,
the investigator stated that reporters often ask UFO
researchers, "After all these years, what have you found
out?" The rest of the narrative (described by Brian as
a "good piece") shows why the answer is, "Nothing." The
investigator had been researching the Hudson Valley UFOs
for 5 years when a pattern of sightings led to the
prediction of a UFO appearance with a full 2 weeks of
lead time to get ready for the big event. With 2 weeks
to get ready, what did they take along? Four cars with
CB radios, 1 police scanner, binoculars, and video and
still cameras. They were disappointed with the camera
results, so basically they got absolutely nothing out
of a potential observing time of 35 minutes.

What sort of equipment would have been useful? A tape
recorder could have been running continuously with a
radio tuned to the shortwave time signal. One of the
observers could have called out significant events
during the sighting. A second tape recorder with a
parabolic antenna could have recorded any UFO sounds.
Simple surveying equipment could have been used to get
azimuths and elevations during the sighting, with times
noted on the tape. Some angular measurement of the UFO
could have been recorded. Other possibilities: a range
finder for distance measurement, a magnetometer, night
vision equipment, some way of recording a spectrum,
portable radar, etc. I bet that skeptics can add to
this list, even though an experienced UFO researcher
who worked with Hynek didn't think of any of it.

4. Conspiracy theory

Conspiracy theories will never be part of science. The
best that can be done with existing FOIA material is use
it for deriving testable ideas or sampling information.
Money spent for new FOIA material is almost certainly
wasted. In any scientific context, Roswell is a waste
of time.

5. Lack of focus due to 1, 2, 3, and 4

UFOlogists are too much distracted by conspiracies,
debates, faces, circles, spoons, stars, and psi.
Consider the Face: How can some believers of a concept
documented with dozens of low resolution photos allow
itself to be distracted by a belief system with only
2 such photos?

Science is a way of doing things, not just something
done by scientists. Why can't UFOlogists get serious?

[Bill Smith]

In <4s7d3u$6...@cwis-20.wayne.edu> m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu (Michael

Edelman) writes:
>
>Brian Zeiler (bdze...@students.wisc.edu) wrote:
>
>: It's still profoundly senseless to say that extraordinary is an
either/or

>: binary term, and that there are no degrees of extraordinariness. I'm

>: done with this moronic discussion, which is obviously getting
nowhere.

Oh good. Does that mean we won't be hearing from you again?

>
[Mike]>This has been one of Brian's more amazing canards. He began by

attempting
>to ridicule Sagan's simple statement about extraordinary claims
>requiring extraordinary proof- something that any reader could easily
>grasp the intent of- by claiming it wasn't "objective" or some such.
>
>Now he claims it's not an either/or choice, which is just adding noise
>to the discussion.
>
>A reasonable man, as they say in the law, understands perfectly what

>Sagan said....

Yes, and I am sure that Brian and his allies, despite their
demonstrable unreasonableness (unreasonablarity?) know exactly what is
meant by the aphorism. But they don't like its implications and
therefore reject it as an operating principle. Otherwise they would be
required to produce extraordinarily convincing evidence rather than the
extraordinary volume of unconvincing rubbish they seem to be capable of
summoning up on almost a moment's notice.

[Brian Zeiler]

Bill Smith wrote:

> Yes, and I am sure that Brian and his allies, despite their
> demonstrable unreasonableness (unreasonablarity?) know exactly what is
> meant by the aphorism.

I've already said that I understand and AGREE with the "spirit" of the
extraordinary claim / extraordinary evidence heuristic. However, I only
disagree with the arbitrary implementation that has absolutely no
objective criteria.

> But they don't like its implications and
> therefore reject it as an operating principle.

Wrong. I don't reject it. I only ask for specific, defensible demands
for evidential criteria along with a more rigorous structure in the
relationship between extraordinariness and evidence. I'd also like to see
more attempts to determine extraordinariness without emotional, arbitrary
guidelines that skeptics use. When you fallaciously declare that there
are no degrees of extraordinariness with absolutely no attempt at logical
explanation, all you're doing is making it more convenient for yourself
to avoid my above points.

> Otherwise they would be
> required to produce extraordinarily convincing evidence rather than the
> extraordinary volume of unconvincing rubbish they seem to be capable of
> summoning up on almost a moment's notice.

Wrong, but if you would follow MY recommendations, you would get what you
wanted instead of demanding the impossible and continuously moving the
goalposts.

As for your claim that the evidence is "unconvining rubbish", perhaps you
could explain why every scientific study of UFOs reached a markedly
different conclusion, whether it was the USAF's Condon Committee or the
studies by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics or
individual academics like McDonald. Tell me, Bill -- what is it about
these studies that you object to? What do you know that they didn't, or
what advanced knowledge do you possess that they didn't? When you
directly contradict every scientific study, surely you must be an
unrecognized genius. Please tell me how you reached these conclusions of
yours.

Oh, wait, I forgot. You've already said that you've never looked at any
UFO evidence because you can recognize an unpromising field when you
smell it without having to really look at the data. So it's really your
phenomenal powers of discernment that refute the scientific studies, not
anything factual. Right?

Somehow, this amazingly unscientific, arrogant, ignorant approach to
"science" and "skepticism" doesn't bother you. That's very disturbing,
yet it certainly illustrates how debunkers don't mind behaving at the
heights of absurd logic.

--
Brian Zeiler

[rud...@garnet.berkeley.edu]

m...@pookie.pass.wayne.edu (Michael Edelman) wrote:

>SPHINX Technologies (sph...@world.std.com) wrote:

>: This is incorrect. The government's *FIRST* explanation was that a flying
>: disk had crashed and the wreckage had been recovered. It was only after
>: damage control got started that the "weather balloon" fabrication got
>: launched by Gen. Ramey.

>A favorite myth.

>NOte that the suggestion is that the government announced the crash of a
>flying disk. But that's at best misleading, and at worst, a lie.

>What Roswell *did* release was a press report that said:

>1. There had been rumors of a "flying disk" that had landed on a ranch
>near Roswell.

>2. The "flying object" had been stored by the rancher on whose property
>it landed.

>3. The rancher called the sheriff's office when he was able to get to a
>phone, and the sheriff called Maj. Marcel, the base intel officer.

>4. The object waspicked up and taken to Roswell where it was photographed
>and then loaned to higher headquarters.

As usual Edelman doesn't know what he's talking about. Here's the ACTUAL story
that appeared in the Roswell Daily Record the afternoon of July 8, 1947, the
same day as the Army Air Force press release.

ARMY AIR FORCE CAPTURES FLYING DISK IN ROSWELL REGION
No Details of Flying Disk are Revealed

The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Air

Force Base announced at noon today that the field had come into possession of

a flying saucer.

According to information released by the department, over authority of Maj.
Jesse Marcel, intelligence officer, the disk was recovered on a ranch in the

Roswell vicinity, after and unidentified rancher had notified Sheriff Geo.
Wilcox, here, that he had found the instrument on his premises.

Major Marcel and a detail from his department went to the ranch and recovered

the disk, it was stated.

After the intelligence office here had inspected the instrument it was
loaned to "higher headquarters."

The intelligence office stated that no details of the saucer's construction
or it's appearance had been revealed.

There's nothing here about mere "rumors" of a landing, the object is clearly
called a "flying disc" and "flyhing saucer," not a Edelman's nondescript "flying
object," and the rancher calling the Sheriff's office by phone (he went directly
to the Sheriff's office with some debris). While these might be considered
nitpicks by some, it's typical of the way Edelman distorts things to suit his
purposes.

>Nowhere did the Army state that they had a spaceship,

No, they stated they had recovered a flying disc or flying saucer.

> that there were bodies or anything of the sort.
>All these details were later added my Jesse Marcel,

Edelman is either a liar or ignorant of the FACTS. Marcel NEVER said anything
about alien bodies or seeing an intact spaceship. This is based on the
testimony of OTHERS. Marcel said only that he examined and recovered crash
debris. The debris had highly unusual physicall properties that led him to
believe that it wasn't manufactured on earth..

>intel officer in question, who has been caught in countless lies
>and fabrications.

Sounds more like a description of Michael Edelman who generally fabricates just
about everything, like things that Marcel never said.

No doubt Edelman is referring to the hatchet job done by Robert Todd on Marcel
by going over the minutiae in his military record. The only thing Todd clearly
established was that Marcel's record shows that he had only two air combat
metals during WWII instead of the five he claimed.

But if you go over Marcel's actual testimony regarding the Roswell events, you
find that his story is amply backed up by the testimony of numerous other
witnesses, including two Air Force generals, and another intelligence officer in
his office at the time. He is also backed up by documented evidence, such as
Gen. George Schulgen's air intelligence memo four months later detailing the
construction of flying saucers (which he called real and possibly
interplanetary). By some amazing "coincidence," Schulgen also mentions that
they are constructed of thin foils and balsa-wood like material of unusual
structural stability, the same description given by Marcel and other civilian
and military witnesses BEFORE the Schulgen memo was declassified in 1985.

>There's an excellent analysis of this on:

> www.eznet.com/~sm3527/nonsense.html

And mostly nonsense it is. I've read it. Has Edelman bothered to read any of
the Roswell evidence that doesn't fit into his narrow view of things?

[Rosie/Dan Truesdell]

Brian Zeiler <bdze...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:

>Bill Smith wrote:

>[delightful discussion of the E word...]

The *output* of the neural ganglia that result in choosing
the E word for a specific *input* sensor array is independent
of the reality of whether something deserves the E word or not.

The E word may be binary, but the sensory stimuli are not.
This whole discussion stems from the unfortunate position
that many scientists take, that they do not like to touch
"dirty data", and want nice, clean "antiseptic data".

Is the scientific method so fragile that it can't deal with
dirty data? Even the cesium clocks are averaged to obtain
the "accurate time". The Universe happens to be dirty. Screw
all this E word stuff, it's a cop out.

Dan

[Michael Edelman]

rud...@garnet.berkeley.edu wrote:

: As usual Edelman doesn't know what he's talking about. Here's the ACTUAL story

: that appeared in the Roswell Daily Record the afternoon of July 8, 1947, the
: same day as the Army Air Force press release.

: ARMY AIR FORCE CAPTURES FLYING DISK IN ROSWELL REGION
: No Details of Flying Disk are Revealed
:
: The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Air

: Force Base announced at noon today that the field had come into possession of

: a flying saucer.

Note that I stated that despite hysterical claims to the contrary, the USAF
never released (and subsequantly denied) a report saying that a UFO
had crashed.

"rudiak", to refute this, posts a newspaper article. Sorry, the bizarre
claims of a newspaper article are not the same as a press release from
the army base. I already gave you a reference; here it is again:

www.eznet.com/~sm3527/nonsense.html

As for Marcel, he's a pthological liar, and his various lies and fantasies
are documented in:

www.eznet.com/~sm3527/major.html

[Bill Peterson]

In article <31EAF2...@ix.netcom.com>,
Wm G. Smith <w.s...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>Bill Peterson wrote:
>>
>> >A reasonable man, as they say in the law, understands perfectly what

>> >Sagan said. I fI tell you that I saw a '94 Ford pickup drive by,
>> >you'd accept that on my word. If I told you it was '54 Borgward Isabella,
>> >you'd probably still believe me. If I told you the Isabella was driven
>> >by a Grey in evening clothes, you just might want some proof beyond my
>> >simple say so ;-)
>>

>> This is off track, however.
>
>It seems to me that Mr. Edelman's discussion above is precisely on point.

I would have wished that you had retained my examples.

> Claim #1: an example of a usual and ordinary thing

I said #1 is taking a car to work.

> Claim #2: an example of an unusual thing, but still
>within the realm of ordinary experience.

I said #2 was riding an elephant to work.

> Claim #3: an example of a thing completely outside the realm
>of ordinary experience and hence, extraordinary.

I said #3 was taking XXXXX to work. Now, it seems you've defined
extraordinary as something you consider un-ordinary. Kind of circular.
UFO's are not completely outside the experience of ordinary people,
but nothing is known about the UFO's. There is a difference. One is
not experienced; the other is experienced, but remains unknown.

Let's talk about ET life. It is not within the normal daily experience
of humans to perceive ET life. Does that make ET life "extra-ordinary"
or somehow more unlikely? Only from our admittedly limited knowledge
base. Gasoline engines are common, now, but most African Pygmies
probably don't use one every day. Does that make gasoline engines
somehow less likely to exist? Or only less likely to exist in the
Pygmies' daily life?

How could a Pygmy's guess at the likelihood of the existence of the
gasoline engine have any real bearing on the actuality of gasoline
engines? UFO's could be very common, seen occasionally, and not be
even very rare, except in the human Pygmy's viewpoint.

Of course, this open acceptance of the unknown swings both ways. It
*could* be all kinds of things being reported, and not ET UFO's at all.
The inability to ascribe a real probability to ET visitation does not
help the UFO proponent's case, any more than the skeptic's. It has to
be viewed as an unknown.

BP
--
Disclaimer: I only speak for myself, and sometimes I wish I hadn't!

[Mark O'Leary]

In article <31E541...@students.wisc.edu>,
Brian Zeiler <bdze...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:

>Patrick Juola wrote:
>>
>> Really, Mr. O'Leary. Replace "ordinary" and "extraordinary" with
>> "short" and "tall" below. Haven't you ever heard of fuzzy logic?
>> It's only been around for at least thirty years.
>

>Yup -- that's my point. Claims should have 'fuzzy set membership' to
^^^^^^^^^^^
>certain degrees in the sets of 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary'.

I'm sure thats how you feel that the english language *should* work, just as
you felt that the word *ought* to be 'extraordinarity' rather than
extraordinariness.

In the latter case, you seem to have accepted that the word you made up
actually obstructs debate: why can't you accept that the *usage* of the word
that you have made up (and got someone to agree with it seems) is equally
obstructive to debate.

> To label a claim arbitrarily as either extraordinary as ordinary,
>especially without objective criteria, is the height of weirdness.

We arent discussing whether the giving of the label is arbritrary (although
in the course of this discussion its come up several times that the
classification is based on consensus of experts - not arbritrary unless you
have an idiosyncratic menaing for that wordd too), simply the fact that in
the english language this classification *can only be* binary. If you want
'fuzzy' designations, talk about likelihood or unusualness, or any of the
other words that *do* permit a graduated scale.

>--
>Brian Zeiler

[Mark O'Leary]

In article <4s5j07$2...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
Patrick Juola <pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

>>Basically, theres a graduated scale of probabilities, with words that
>>reflect the degree of probability. But ordinary and extraordinary arent
>>part of that scale, they are a basic divide, a binary characteristic. Where
>>the line between ordinary and extraordinary is set is determined by the
>>consensus of those who know something about the event under discussion.
>
>This is bullshit, guy. Words don't fall into binary classifications
>like that.

Really? So you think that there is a graduated scale between true and false?
Valid and invalid? Dead and alive? Logical and illogical?

I'd love to see you apply your all-embracing fuzzy logic and show me a
'slightly dead' person or a 'mostly valid' conclusion.

>Even your weasel-worded "determined by consensus" phrasing
>gives that away -- what's a consensus but an opinion held by most-but-
>not-necessarily-all of a group?

Wow. You know what consensus means.

How does that "give away" that certain words don't describe binary
conditions? Looks like a bit of a non-sequitur to me.

Try and understand. Ordinariness and its opposite are social constructs.
What is ordinary to one subset of humanity (6 months of darkness to the
Inuits), might be fantastically extraordinary to another subset (some
Amazonian tribe, say). All you can do is identify a relevant group to make
the designation, and scientists acting by objective rules are a good
approximation to that ideal group. It's unlikely that any human group will
be in perfect agreement even within the realms of the sciences (there are
still one or two PhD Biochemists who beleive in 7-day creation and a global
flood), but the consensus is strong (since it derives from the evidence) and
it makes a good standard to place the dividing line between ordinary and the
extraoridnary.

> A group, I add, which you have already
>stipulated to be unrepresentative, e.g. "those who know something
>about the event under discussion."

Unrepresentative of what? Who would be a *better* group to consult?

> So you're admitting that the judgement of whether or not an event is
>"extraordinary" isn't something that can be made reliably. Even in the
>best case, where you can come up with a firm numerical statement ("the
>probability of Q happening is X, with confidence Y"), you've still got to
>face the possibility that Dr. Alphar may consider the event to be
>"extraordinary," while both Dr. Bethe and Dr. Gamow merely consider it to
>be "unlikely," based on differences in their credibility threshhold.

Absolutely. And if they were the only 3 people in the world who knew enough
to have a meaningful opinion then we'd have to say it was an ordinary event
- going with the consensus of the experts. Of course in this case, the
consensus is only 66% and the sample is small, so we wouldnt be as confident
that the classification was correct as we would be if Drs Deltax through
Omegant also agreed with Bethe and Gamow.

>>>>You *can* have degrees of
>>>>likehood, unusualness, or other similar terms, but ordinaryness is indeed a
>>>>binary characteristic - a thing is either extraordinary or ordinary.
>>>
>>>Bullshit.

>>
>>Well you seem very certain, but you havent made the case to support your
>>assertion.
>

>Well, you haven't made a case, either. If you want me to go digging
>around in the corpora for usage statistics for English, I can, but I
>suggest that that's not a productive use of either of our times.

Actually at this point I think it *would* be productive. BZ has been
bitching about "extraordinary claims require extraoridnary evidence" for a
long time. He's tried every other reason to disagree with this (it seems he
sees this rule of thumb as a skeptical way of 'ganging up' on his pet
subject), and he's now finally reduced to arguing over what the word
extraordinary means to try and dismiss the saying. Sad but true.

However, the stats may well reflect the words *misuse*. English is a living
language. I don't know whether the majority of modern usage is correct or
not - eventually if the majority usage continues to be incorrect, the
definitions will change. At present, we have a sole word pair for the binary
distinction, and a whole slew of words for the fuzzy graduated scale
between. If the language continues to degrade, we'll lose the only words we
have for that binary character, and (for instance) it will no longer be
possible to phrase the skeptics rule of thumb as a pithy phrase and it will
have to be a paragraph spelling out what degree of consensus, among whom
etc. There are many examples of such degradations and even meaning reversals
(such as empathy vs sympathy). I personally don't like seeing the language
eroded in such a way. I find it worth opposing. If BZ and co. want to
contribute to this process solely because the word they undermine is often
used by people they disagree with, thats an even better reason to oppose it.

>>Its commonly seen used in the way you prefer, but that is simply
>>bad english. The ordinary / extraordinary classification is seldom the one you
>>should choose if trying to compare likelihoods of events that both fall into
>>the same class.
>

>"Class"? What the hell do you mean, "class"?

As was spelled out in the subsequent parenthetical comment which you have
deleted, the two classes in question are 'ordinary events' and
'extraordinary events', and the sentence is simply saying that the phrase
"extraordinary event A is more extraordinary than extraoridnary B" is poor
english, as is "ordinary event A is more ordinary than ordinary event B". It
had to be phrased as it was because it *is* valid to say "Extraordinary
event A is more extraordinary that *ordinary* event B", but that is a
comparison across the 2 classes rather than within a single class. Clear
now?

[Patrick Juola]

In article <4sd4eh$6...@zen.dmu.ac.uk> mol...@dmu.ac.uk (Mark O'Leary) writes:
>In article <4s5j07$2...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
>Patrick Juola <pat...@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>>Basically, theres a graduated scale of probabilities, with words that
>>>reflect the degree of probability. But ordinary and extraordinary arent
>>>part of that scale, they are a basic divide, a binary characteristic. Where
>>>the line between ordinary and extraordinary is set is determined by the
>>>consensus of those who know something about the event under discussion.
>>
>>This is bullshit, guy. Words don't fall into binary classifications
>>like that.
>
>Really? So you think that there is a graduated scale between true and false?
>Valid and invalid? Dead and alive? Logical and illogical?

This is a turkey shoot. At what point does death occur? Is it when
the heart stops beating? Is is when brain activity ceases? The
question of the definition of death has been one of the most important
question of medical ethics of the second half of the twentieth
century, in part because we are learning just how fuzzy the line can
be in light of some of the "heroic measures" we are now capable of,
and of the need for human parts for organ transplants and so forth.
Remember that a major barrier to the development of heart transplant
technology was the old (legal) standard of heart death, meaning that
the removal of a functioning heart from a no longer functioning body
constituted murder.

True and false? These words can only be defined with respect to
a model. Is it "true" that there is a unique parallel to a given
line through a given point? Is it "false"? Statements can easily
be "mostly true" in colloquial speech, meaning that they're true
for most but all applications -- and by extension, good enough for
reasoning purposes as long as you don't hit an exception. It's
mostly true that physicists are good mathematicians, so reasoning
will tell you that if you need help with a math problem, you're better
off going to your physics teacher for help than to your French
teacher.

>I'd love to see you apply your all-embracing fuzzy logic and show me a
>'slightly dead' person or a 'mostly valid' conclusion.

Ask and ye shall receive.

>>Even your weasel-worded "determined by consensus" phrasing
>>gives that away -- what's a consensus but an opinion held by most-but-
>>not-necessarily-all of a group?
>

>How does that "give away" that certain words don't describe binary
>conditions? Looks like a bit of a non-sequitur to me.

Funny, you seem to have no problem dealing with it below.

>>[Alphar says extraordinary, Bethe and Gamow don't.]

>Absolutely. And if they were the only 3 people in the world who knew enough
>to have a meaningful opinion then we'd have to say it was an ordinary event
>- going with the consensus of the experts. Of course in this case, the
>consensus is only 66% and the sample is small, so we wouldnt be as confident
>that the classification was correct as we would be if Drs Deltax through
>Omegant also agreed with Bethe and Gamow.

So right there's your fuzziness. I'm impressed; you can even do
fourth grade math to determine to what degree we can apply the
word "extraordinary."

The hell with it. I've got better things to do than argue with people
who can't even read their own posts, let alone mine.

>>Well, you haven't made a case, either. If you want me to go digging
>>around in the corpora for usage statistics for English, I can, but I
>>suggest that that's not a productive use of either of our times.
>
>Actually at this point I think it *would* be productive. BZ has been
>bitching about "extraordinary claims require extraoridnary evidence" for a
>long time. He's tried every other reason to disagree with this (it seems he
>sees this rule of thumb as a skeptical way of 'ganging up' on his pet
>subject), and he's now finally reduced to arguing over what the word
>extraordinary means to try and dismiss the saying. Sad but true.
>
>However, the stats may well reflect the words *misuse*.

Meaning it would be productive for me to waste my time showing you
statistics that you will disregard. My only response to that would
offend.

The BNC corpus is commonly available. I recommend you to it. I
also recommend you to an introductory course in linguistics.

Patrick