10 principles for investigating UFO reports

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They're tailored specifically for the case of any ufo investigation. You know this don't you?

 

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Mansfield Ohio army helicopter/ufo encounter Oct. 18, 1973:



"Just after 11 p.m. on October 18, 1973 a U.S. Army reserve crew was flying a helicopter from Columbus to Cleveland, Ohio. They included Captain Lawrence Coyne (19 years flying experience), Lt. Arrigo Jezzi, Sergeant John Healey, and Sergeant Robert Yanacsek. At 2,500 feet and good visibility, the crew noticed a red light to the west, slowly moving south. They assumed it was probably an F-100 out of Mansfield. Very abruptly, however, the light changed course and began to head right at them. Captain Coyne put the helicopter into emergency evasion in a controlled descent. When he tried to confirm the existence of a craft out of Mansfield, his UHF and VHF frequencies went dead. (Mansfield later confirmed there were no aircraft in the area.) The red light continued to close, becoming brighter, while the helicopter descended at the rapid speed of 2,000 feet per minute.

At 1,700 feet above the ground, the crew saw the object streak in front of, then above, the helicopter. It stopped dead for about 10 seconds, filling the entire windscreen. All four crewmembers saw it clearly: it looked like a grey cigar with a small dome on top. One member thought he saw windows. The red light was still there, in the front of the object, and there was a white light on the side and green one on the bottom. The green light swung around like a searchlight and shone into the cabin, bathing it in green light. The object then accelerated to the west, soon appearing as nothing more than a white light. It made a sharp turn and moved northwest where it was lost above Lake Erie.

Meanwhile, the helicopter's magnetic compass had been spinning at a rate of four revolutions per minute. More seriously, and for no clear reason, the altimeter showed an altitude of 3,500 feet and a climbing ascent of 1,000 feet per minute. Yet the stick (for descent) still pointed down. Coyne had not attempted to ascend, but his aircraft climbed to an altitude of 3,800 feet before he regained control. A few minutes later, radio frequencies returned. A complete inspection the next day found nothing wrong, and the event received a thorough investigation.

By itself, it was an amazing story. It was strengthened, however, by the presence of ground witnesses. A woman while driving with her four children claimed to have seen the entire encounter, including the green beam, which she said lit the ground around her.

Philip Klass said the crew misidentified a meteor or fireball, and suggested the ground witnesses were lying. Jerome Clark dismissed Klass's theory as "fantastic," since none of the testimony was even remotely consistent with it."----http://www.ufoskeptic.org/mansfield.html

 

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

 

First, a minor criticism of the title, perhaps due to the context from the source: These are not principles to follow when investigating UFOs, but common pitfall characteristics of UFO reports. You dropped the word "report" in your title, but even the full label from the link isn't very good. You might call them "Principles for Interpreting Witness Testimony", but they are not overall principles for investigating reports of UFOs. With that in mind:

I think #5 is the most important problem with UFO investigation/reporting and it informs to #1. As Carl Sagan put it, human brains are pattern recognition engines. As a result, they are quick to deduce patterns and slow to allow logic to judge and reject them if they are wrong. Applied here, the knee-jerk reaction people have to a bright light in the sky is (usually): brighter = bigger and closer. After you've established that, you can spin an entire story around what you are seeing, all of it complete fantasy.

Probably the prototypical example of this was the Mexican Air Force FLIR UFO sighting ten years or so ago, which for a few weeks was considered a very compelling case until someone figured it out. The pilots thought they were maneuvering against close-in spaceships when in reality they were creating apparent/relative motion with their own maneuvering against stationary oil rigs a hundred miles away. But they were bright!

 

No doubt you bolded that because it is a common claim of yours that UFO skeptics don't believe UFOs are real. This is nonsense and you know it (which makes it a trolling lie), since you've been told probably hundreds of times by dozens of different skeptics that all of them accept that the vast majority of UFO sightings are real. And more to the point, the starting assumption of the analysis is always that the story is real (because you can't show it to not be real unless you examine how it fits reality).

Don't worry, MR, I won't ask you to come up with your own guiding principles; we've been down that road before and I know you don't want to trap yourself behind fact, logic and honesty. They are so restrictive!

 

Indeed, the 1952 incident is a great example of many of those principles, being a mismash of vague and unrelated "sightings" spun together as if they were a single (or small number of), coherent ones. I remember when we had a discussion of that incident with a fast-burning crackpot who flamed out and left quickly a few years ago. I pointed out that claims that radar and visual sightings were coincident were, in fact, false. He didn't like that very much.

 

I guess the unstated inference is I must also be a 'fast-burning crackpot'. Just like all those trained military personnel 'crackpots' (and many others) who honestly reported, and radars recorded, yes a series of rather dramatic incidents spanning iirc several weeks. Caught on video footage too.
I suggest the 'facts' you allude to are the BS cover story put out by the Airforce. All you have to do is go read the following section in that Wikipedia article. Of course if you have an ideological commitment to that UFO's are all hoaxes or misidentifications, nothing contrary to that will ever pass muster.

 

Quote just a few of those hundred times that skeptics have accepted that the vast majority of UFO sightings are real. I'll wait.

"An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon."----https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object

 

I'll be honest -- I skimmed so fast I initially thought your post was from MR and didn't read any of it past the link. So I initially thought so, but later realized you weren't MR and re-worded my post to remove reference to him. Since I still haven't read your post, I have no idea if you are a crackpot or not. It isn't really relevant to my post anyway.

 

Let's start with one:
"the vast majority of UFO sightings are real"

 

Which skeptic said that? What do you mean they're real? That they're ufos as defined above?

 

I did.

Of course. I know what "UFO" means -- you sure you do?

 

I just defined it for you. So out of those hundred of claimed instances of skeptics saying they think the vast majority of ufos are real, you only quote yourself. You're a lying troll. Get lost.

 

That doesn't answer my question.

I said for a start. I have more and I'm sure you know it because you've been told it on this site countless times. But before I post more, I need you to acknowledge the one you have gotten. Do you acknowledge that a certain harsh skeptic (me) agrees that "the vast majority of UFO sightings are real"? Or are you going to pretend you didn't see it? Or claim I'm lying and thus make it impossible to have a rational discussion with you? Or goalpost shift the definition even after posting it yourself?

 

Did I not make myself clear? Get lost troll..

 

Yes, I think you did. You never have been interested in actual discussion and you get really really angry when the flaws in your arguments are pointed out in a way that you can't weasel out of and this is more of the same. So I'll say it again:

No doubt you bolded that because it is a common claim of yours that UFO skeptics don't believe UFOs are real. This is nonsense and you know it...

You know it, I know it, everyone else knows it. Yep, crystal clear.

 

5. No human observer, including experienced flight crews, can accurately estimate either the distance/altitude or the size of an unfamiliar object in the sky, unless it is in very close proximity to a familiar object whose size or altitude is known.

I have never maintained anything differently.

 

Surely any object in the sky that is deemed to be flying is a UFO right up to the point it is identified as a known object or phenomenon? This includes something that is moments later identified as a bird, a frisbee, as ball-lightning, as a weather balloon, an aircraft, a cloud. Up to the point it is identified it is technically a UFO.
The issue that skeptics usually have with claims of UFO sightings is not with whether the evidence points to something currently unidentified or not but with regard interpretations that the UFO is of extraterrestrial origin.
There seems to be a jump from "it is unidentified" to "it is therefore extraterrestrial", and this is fuelled by some of the matters detailed in the OP.