I’m a social scientist with a high estimate of the power of social science (especially economics and sociobiology) to trace the outlines of a wide variety of social behavior. I even use social science to estimate our
I just wonder if any of you have done any research on the so called "UFO" phenomenon? To decide whether or not Aliens have visited earth should not be based on "WHY" they would be here, but more "if they were here, what would they look like?" I think most can agree that they should hold to the following:1: A) A craft looking object. (Objects that appear to be holding something or someone) B) An "organic-type" of Alien with anatomy unkown to Humans that may be able to survive the vacumn of space.2: Moving at speeds or accelerating at speeds that are beyond the technology of current day humans. Or "appearing and disappearing" (which could be cause by high speeds)3: Making aerial "tricks" at speeds that would flatten Humans if using conventional aircraft following our conception of modern day physics.
Using these broad but important guidelines while viewing some of the best "UFO" footage ( I would recommend "A history of UFO sightings") You will see alot of footage in which, yes very reasonable explanations can be used to dismiss many sightings but you will get a "golden" few caught on film that really fits the desciption for an intelligently controlled Alien areial craft. Further, besides the cases in which film or photos were involved, there are hundreds of cases in which these objects are viewed both visually and by radar near military installments. There are also quite a few uncontested military personell who have had top secret clearance in the military and claim to have been involved in projects that had relations to crashed "UFOs". ( see "The Disclosure Project") The grand question still remains: Are "UFOs" ALiens? I can confidently say that most of the cases of reported "UFOs" are indeed balloons or unidentified Human aircraft or other unknown natural occurance. Though should be considered that it only takes ONE case that fits the description of intelligently controlled craft to be Alien because the description LEAVES NO OTHER EXPLAINATION. So,I feel the true social problem is actually not the "crazies" seeing spacecrafts but why people reject the idea of "UFOs" being Aliens so much and ridicule (*ahem* Jason) those who take the subject not only seriously but also see it as the most important question of our time. It may be possible that ALL 100% of "UFO" cases are misunderstandings or hoaxes but I personally think that the topic is definetely worth the study as contact could take us further technologically than we ever imagined and perhaps assist us to develop our consciousness and understanding of the universe.
Thank you for your thoughtful article. Your are correct the UFO issue is one that should be examined more. Way to many people are biased and will not look at the facts. Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell has recently come forward with information. Other remarkable people have come forward as well. Please see:
Solid testimony from over 500 corporate and military witnesses has been accumulated by two disclosure initiatives. These disclosure witnesses have openly stated they are willing to testify, under oath and before Congress about their direct encounters with UFO crash site investigations, secret UFO documents, UFO photographic evidence, UFO radar reports and recovered crashed ET vehicles.
As an Attorney, I can attest that the jurisprudential evidence of this quality does not get any better, especially when witnesses possess the ranks of Brigadier Generals, Commander of ICBM Launch facilities, Senior FAA Crash Site Investigators, astronauts, pilots and officers with above top secret clearance.
Men have been executed in the U.S. with far less evidence. The evidence is really remarkable and the two sites I have listed are only the tip of the iceberg. I am not asking people to believe just examine the information before making a judgement.
But my main point is that such skepticism is only reasonable if we actually know enough social science (broadly conceived) to be able to say something about alien behavior. And if we know this much social science, we should also be able to make some progress using social science to estimate our distant descendants' future.
That social science can assign a probability to aliens' existing is one thing; but can we determine how likely it is that that estimate is correct? It seems to me that using the alien-prediction scenario to gauge the reliability of social science's predictions about the human future rests on the second condition's being met, not the first.
Norman, no it is not science. Your hypothesis is pseudoscience.
Just because I am looking in my closet every 30 minutes to test my "hypothesis" that a hobbit has materialized there, that does not make it science. If I devise new experiments such as looking into the closet with sunglasses on (I hypothesize hobbits are scared of eye contact), that still does not make it science. If I quantify things such as how many dogs are sleeping in the neighborhood at any given time (I hypothesize hobbits are afraid of dogs), that still does not make it science.
In short, paradigms matter. The ufo cryptozoology paradigm is not science, and I discussed reasons why yesterday. No current methodology meets any reasonable criteria of demonstrating alien visitation. These varied witness methodologies trying to demonstrate such are pseudoscience.
There are plenty of peer-reviewed papers gauging witness reliability and the like, that are perfectly normal science. Examining the sociology and psychological of UFO belief/sighting/abduction is science as well.
> If he is just randomly making measurements from witness> reports without a hypothesis, it is not science. And if> he is making measurements in order to test an alien> visitor hypothesis, then this is simply not science.
Interesting. And when we talk to witnesses and people who know them to ascertain their credibility, this is not science? And when we plot the reliability of witnesses vs. the inexplicability of their reports, this is not science? And when we hypothesize that perhaps a sighting is due to sleep paralysis and disprove our hypothesis by finding 12 other people who saw the same thing at the same time, that's not science either?
I know I'm not explaining this very well, but to do science, you have to look at the EVIDENCE, then come to a conclusion BASED on that evidence. Despite what you may have learned from Condon, smugly putting your hands over your ears and going LALALA is not part of the scientific method.
Sounds like what I'd really be betting on is my faith in the press. The media in large part helped create this ufology mess.
There was a New York Times article just several weeks ago that accepted alien visitors as true. Apparently, Al Qaeda and the Martian men are in cahoots to spy on American military bases. A new Axis of Evil, if you will, that we should obviously all Take Very Seriously.
This article reveals the same high standards the New York Times requires in all its op-eds, and that they boasted about days earlier when refusing to publish an op-ed by presidential candidate John McCain.
Robin, How would you adjust the odds if we move the date much closer, to 1 year from now (September 1st, 2009)? 20 years from now seems like an unecessary long bet to me, since your hypothesis seems to me to be that the New York Times hasn't gotten lucky enough yet to acquire threshhold evidence that conventional UFO narratives are describing real intelligent aliens.
I believe I said, 1 in 100,000, even though I feel like that is reasonable, I don't think it is a betable ratio at any amount. I don't know if this means my p does not reflect my true belief, or if this just reflects that I am not purely an expected wealth maximizer. Getting true betting market odds on something like this might require robust bet insurance markets. Otherwise people could never make a bet that it would be worthwhile to win.
Alas my parenthetical comment, "I can't see how the chance goes much below 1%", seems to have overshadowed rest of the post. But since there is so much interest, I guess 0.1% would count as "much below 1%", for the chance that at least one UFO report really was an alien.
To choose odds for a bet on whether this is true and will become clear within say twenty years, I need to estimate the chance it would become clear (e.g., declared as such by three New York Times articles) in that period, given it was true. Unfortunately, I can't see how I could assign a chance over 1% to this, as the most likely scenario given the assumption is that they are trying to hide, with rare failures. So this makes me willing to bet up to $1000 at 100,000 to one odds that 3 NYT articles will accept UFOs as aliens by 2029 (with someone who can show an ability to pay if I won).
"How in the world would we settle a bet on the existence of saucer invaders unless Robin believed that evidence for them was forthcoming?"I'm eager to hear Robin's response to Hopefully, and the terms, clearing period, etc.
I interpret it as a statement like 'You should slow down on this turn, given that your car is an SUV'. His preceding statement challenging other posters to bet him on it, certainly does a lot to reinforce this interpretation. How in the world would we settle a bet on the existence of saucer invaders unless Robin believed that evidence for them was forthcoming?
Norman,
How can a HYPOTHESIS "not be science"?
I already discussed this.
Vallee's study of landing reports, in which he charts the size of the objects reported by witnesses, is an excellent example
If he is just randomly making measurements from witness reports without a hypothesis, it is not science. And if he is making measurements in order to test an alien visitor hypothesis, then this is simply not science.
Either way, this is not science.
I'm certainly not anymore willing to accept crowd reports of fantastical objects as evidence for aliens than I am to accept the previous centuries worth of crowd reports of Christian apparitions as "scientific" evidence for Catholicism.
In an age of ubiquitous cell phone video, let's reconvene here when one of these allegedly ubiquitous saucer landings gets captured clearly and many times independently in a way that leaves material proof. Perhaps then we would have the beginning of a phenomena scientists can actually try and study.
Of course, this is never going to happen Norman, because alien saucer people narrative originates in folklore. I'm also equally and completely certain that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles won't ever pop out of the sewer and throw a bodacious pizza party. The probability of this bodacious pizza party is 0%. (or 5%-100% if you ask Robin. Place your bets.)
> There simply isn't a way to evaluate an alien visitor paradigm> scientifically, because it is not science
What are you saying here, that if there were actually aliens visiting our planet, science would simply fall apart in the face of it? How can a HYPOTHESIS "not be science"?
I would argue to the contrary that there are many ways the ET hypothesis can be evaluated scientifically. Vallee's study of landing reports, in which he charts the size of the objects reported by witnesses, is an excellent example:
But the strongest law will be found in another characteristic of the craft: the diameter of the machine itself. Here we should have a reliable estimate if the object is material, because it was seen on the ground, or very close to the ground, and against a familiar background of buildings and trees. It is much easier to estimate measurements in such circumstances than when the object is a celestial one. Here, we have observations of a motionless object on the ground. Let us consider all the reports which give both an estimate of the diameter and also the distance from the witnesses: do we obtain a coherent picture?
Indeed we do, and a most remarkable one! On figure 3 we have plotted these reports along with the average of each class. The result is extremely interesting. We find that the estimated diameter of the craft is a constant for all witnesses whose closest approach was between 5 and 200 metres. Witnesses who came very close give a slightly smaller figure, and witnesses very far give a much higher estimate. The latter phenomenon is well-known to psychologists and to astronomers: it is called the ‘Moon Illusion’. If the witnesses were liars, or the victims of a delusion, no such effect would appear.
The highlighted text looks like a counterfactual to me. If, counterfactually, Bigfoot existed, then I could use ordinary zoological techniques and find a specimen, bring it in for DNA analysis and study by independent biologists, etc. In a world (like ours) with no Bigfoot, the hunt will be fruitless and we won't find such evidence. If UFOs were aliens abducting people and the like, then analysis of forensic evidence, radar searches, etc, would find such evidence. In our reality such evidence has not been forthcoming, and the folk beliefs are well explained by sleep paralysis, hypnosis, etc, so we should go with the prior and be quite confident that no UFOs are aliens. But things could have been different.
You are grossly misreading Robin. He does not think that it is likely that any UFOs are aliens...
I quote: "Jason, I made no claim about anything being "a science." I'm sure I could find ways to profitably study this topic, given that UFOs actually were aliens."
Norman,
I'm just saying, making blanket statements about unscientific research and then appealing to the authority of Edward Condon is downright comical. Another excerpt from the article you linked to, which you rather obviously failed to read at all:
Oh, I read it all right, I just don't have the same bias as the Ufologists, so even the rambling, slanted Wikipedia article is just funny to me. I completely sympathized with Codon throughout, who was given an impossible task with a good purpose: a pro forma investigation to shut down a pointless and banal air force program poisoned by its own unnecessary sensationalism. There simply isn't a way to evaluate an alien visitor paradigm scientifically, because it is not science, so I don't fault the researchers for not really trying or caring to investigate it that way (and this underlies all the listed criticisms). But their conclusion that no useful science resulted from the program was obviously correct, and though I'm sure not going to dig through it, would have certainly followed from their 1000+ page report in a manner that was foregone, given the subject matter. So the NAS was in the right.
That's just the way it rolls, Norman, garbage in, garbage out. What is important though, is that all the sky monitoring programs which swiftly morphed into a magnet for public fantasy and paranoia did not identify aerial threats from a foreign country. That was the extent of their purpose and usefulness. Providing "scientific" evidence for Martian visitors? Not so much.
Robin, what exactly do you propose as the structure of the bet, in terms of how do we determine the winner? I am tempted to bet you, because I think it would be easy money for me if the terms were fairly constructed based on our apparent beliefs about the likelihood UFOs of the conventional sighting narratives are intelligent aliens.
I just wonder if any of you have done any research on the so called "UFO" phenomenon? To decide whether or not Aliens have visited earth should not be based on "WHY" they would be here, but more "if they were here, what would they look like?" I think most can agree that they should hold to the following:1: A) A craft looking object. (Objects that appear to be holding something or someone) B) An "organic-type" of Alien with anatomy unkown to Humans that may be able to survive the vacumn of space.2: Moving at speeds or accelerating at speeds that are beyond the technology of current day humans. Or "appearing and disappearing" (which could be cause by high speeds)3: Making aerial "tricks" at speeds that would flatten Humans if using conventional aircraft following our conception of modern day physics.
Using these broad but important guidelines while viewing some of the best "UFO" footage ( I would recommend "A history of UFO sightings") You will see alot of footage in which, yes very reasonable explanations can be used to dismiss many sightings but you will get a "golden" few caught on film that really fits the desciption for an intelligently controlled Alien areial craft. Further, besides the cases in which film or photos were involved, there are hundreds of cases in which these objects are viewed both visually and by radar near military installments. There are also quite a few uncontested military personell who have had top secret clearance in the military and claim to have been involved in projects that had relations to crashed "UFOs". ( see "The Disclosure Project") The grand question still remains: Are "UFOs" ALiens? I can confidently say that most of the cases of reported "UFOs" are indeed balloons or unidentified Human aircraft or other unknown natural occurance. Though should be considered that it only takes ONE case that fits the description of intelligently controlled craft to be Alien because the description LEAVES NO OTHER EXPLAINATION. So,I feel the true social problem is actually not the "crazies" seeing spacecrafts but why people reject the idea of "UFOs" being Aliens so much and ridicule (*ahem* Jason) those who take the subject not only seriously but also see it as the most important question of our time. It may be possible that ALL 100% of "UFO" cases are misunderstandings or hoaxes but I personally think that the topic is definetely worth the study as contact could take us further technologically than we ever imagined and perhaps assist us to develop our consciousness and understanding of the universe.
Thank you for your thoughtful article. Your are correct the UFO issue is one that should be examined more. Way to many people are biased and will not look at the facts. Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell has recently come forward with information. Other remarkable people have come forward as well. Please see:
http://www.disclosureprojec... (Stream the whole “Smoking Gun” news conference)http://www.freedomofinfo.org
Solid testimony from over 500 corporate and military witnesses has been accumulated by two disclosure initiatives. These disclosure witnesses have openly stated they are willing to testify, under oath and before Congress about their direct encounters with UFO crash site investigations, secret UFO documents, UFO photographic evidence, UFO radar reports and recovered crashed ET vehicles.
As an Attorney, I can attest that the jurisprudential evidence of this quality does not get any better, especially when witnesses possess the ranks of Brigadier Generals, Commander of ICBM Launch facilities, Senior FAA Crash Site Investigators, astronauts, pilots and officers with above top secret clearance.
Men have been executed in the U.S. with far less evidence. The evidence is really remarkable and the two sites I have listed are only the tip of the iceberg. I am not asking people to believe just examine the information before making a judgement.
But my main point is that such skepticism is only reasonable if we actually know enough social science (broadly conceived) to be able to say something about alien behavior. And if we know this much social science, we should also be able to make some progress using social science to estimate our distant descendants' future.
That social science can assign a probability to aliens' existing is one thing; but can we determine how likely it is that that estimate is correct? It seems to me that using the alien-prediction scenario to gauge the reliability of social science's predictions about the human future rests on the second condition's being met, not the first.
Norman, no it is not science. Your hypothesis is pseudoscience.
Just because I am looking in my closet every 30 minutes to test my "hypothesis" that a hobbit has materialized there, that does not make it science. If I devise new experiments such as looking into the closet with sunglasses on (I hypothesize hobbits are scared of eye contact), that still does not make it science. If I quantify things such as how many dogs are sleeping in the neighborhood at any given time (I hypothesize hobbits are afraid of dogs), that still does not make it science.
In short, paradigms matter. The ufo cryptozoology paradigm is not science, and I discussed reasons why yesterday. No current methodology meets any reasonable criteria of demonstrating alien visitation. These varied witness methodologies trying to demonstrate such are pseudoscience.
There are plenty of peer-reviewed papers gauging witness reliability and the like, that are perfectly normal science. Examining the sociology and psychological of UFO belief/sighting/abduction is science as well.
> If he is just randomly making measurements from witness> reports without a hypothesis, it is not science. And if> he is making measurements in order to test an alien> visitor hypothesis, then this is simply not science.
Interesting. And when we talk to witnesses and people who know them to ascertain their credibility, this is not science? And when we plot the reliability of witnesses vs. the inexplicability of their reports, this is not science? And when we hypothesize that perhaps a sighting is due to sleep paralysis and disprove our hypothesis by finding 12 other people who saw the same thing at the same time, that's not science either?
I know I'm not explaining this very well, but to do science, you have to look at the EVIDENCE, then come to a conclusion BASED on that evidence. Despite what you may have learned from Condon, smugly putting your hands over your ears and going LALALA is not part of the scientific method.
Sounds like what I'd really be betting on is my faith in the press. The media in large part helped create this ufology mess.
There was a New York Times article just several weeks ago that accepted alien visitors as true. Apparently, Al Qaeda and the Martian men are in cahoots to spy on American military bases. A new Axis of Evil, if you will, that we should obviously all Take Very Seriously.
This article reveals the same high standards the New York Times requires in all its op-eds, and that they boasted about days earlier when refusing to publish an op-ed by presidential candidate John McCain.
Robin, How would you adjust the odds if we move the date much closer, to 1 year from now (September 1st, 2009)? 20 years from now seems like an unecessary long bet to me, since your hypothesis seems to me to be that the New York Times hasn't gotten lucky enough yet to acquire threshhold evidence that conventional UFO narratives are describing real intelligent aliens.
Robin,
I believe I said, 1 in 100,000, even though I feel like that is reasonable, I don't think it is a betable ratio at any amount. I don't know if this means my p does not reflect my true belief, or if this just reflects that I am not purely an expected wealth maximizer. Getting true betting market odds on something like this might require robust bet insurance markets. Otherwise people could never make a bet that it would be worthwhile to win.
Alas my parenthetical comment, "I can't see how the chance goes much below 1%", seems to have overshadowed rest of the post. But since there is so much interest, I guess 0.1% would count as "much below 1%", for the chance that at least one UFO report really was an alien.
To choose odds for a bet on whether this is true and will become clear within say twenty years, I need to estimate the chance it would become clear (e.g., declared as such by three New York Times articles) in that period, given it was true. Unfortunately, I can't see how I could assign a chance over 1% to this, as the most likely scenario given the assumption is that they are trying to hide, with rare failures. So this makes me willing to bet up to $1000 at 100,000 to one odds that 3 NYT articles will accept UFOs as aliens by 2029 (with someone who can show an ability to pay if I won).
"How in the world would we settle a bet on the existence of saucer invaders unless Robin believed that evidence for them was forthcoming?"I'm eager to hear Robin's response to Hopefully, and the terms, clearing period, etc.
Carl,
I interpret it as a statement like 'You should slow down on this turn, given that your car is an SUV'. His preceding statement challenging other posters to bet him on it, certainly does a lot to reinforce this interpretation. How in the world would we settle a bet on the existence of saucer invaders unless Robin believed that evidence for them was forthcoming?
Norman,
How can a HYPOTHESIS "not be science"?
I already discussed this.
Vallee's study of landing reports, in which he charts the size of the objects reported by witnesses, is an excellent example
If he is just randomly making measurements from witness reports without a hypothesis, it is not science. And if he is making measurements in order to test an alien visitor hypothesis, then this is simply not science.
Either way, this is not science.
I'm certainly not anymore willing to accept crowd reports of fantastical objects as evidence for aliens than I am to accept the previous centuries worth of crowd reports of Christian apparitions as "scientific" evidence for Catholicism.
In an age of ubiquitous cell phone video, let's reconvene here when one of these allegedly ubiquitous saucer landings gets captured clearly and many times independently in a way that leaves material proof. Perhaps then we would have the beginning of a phenomena scientists can actually try and study.
Of course, this is never going to happen Norman, because alien saucer people narrative originates in folklore. I'm also equally and completely certain that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles won't ever pop out of the sewer and throw a bodacious pizza party. The probability of this bodacious pizza party is 0%. (or 5%-100% if you ask Robin. Place your bets.)
"How can a HYPOTHESIS "not be science"?"
I'm probably going to regret this, but here you go:
http://www.overcomingbias.c...http://www.overcomingbias.c...http://www.overcomingbias.c...
> There simply isn't a way to evaluate an alien visitor paradigm> scientifically, because it is not science
What are you saying here, that if there were actually aliens visiting our planet, science would simply fall apart in the face of it? How can a HYPOTHESIS "not be science"?
I would argue to the contrary that there are many ways the ET hypothesis can be evaluated scientifically. Vallee's study of landing reports, in which he charts the size of the objects reported by witnesses, is an excellent example:
But the strongest law will be found in another characteristic of the craft: the diameter of the machine itself. Here we should have a reliable estimate if the object is material, because it was seen on the ground, or very close to the ground, and against a familiar background of buildings and trees. It is much easier to estimate measurements in such circumstances than when the object is a celestial one. Here, we have observations of a motionless object on the ground. Let us consider all the reports which give both an estimate of the diameter and also the distance from the witnesses: do we obtain a coherent picture?
Indeed we do, and a most remarkable one! On figure 3 we have plotted these reports along with the average of each class. The result is extremely interesting. We find that the estimated diameter of the craft is a constant for all witnesses whose closest approach was between 5 and 200 metres. Witnesses who came very close give a slightly smaller figure, and witnesses very far give a much higher estimate. The latter phenomenon is well-known to psychologists and to astronomers: it is called the ‘Moon Illusion’. If the witnesses were liars, or the victims of a delusion, no such effect would appear.
Jason,
The highlighted text looks like a counterfactual to me. If, counterfactually, Bigfoot existed, then I could use ordinary zoological techniques and find a specimen, bring it in for DNA analysis and study by independent biologists, etc. In a world (like ours) with no Bigfoot, the hunt will be fruitless and we won't find such evidence. If UFOs were aliens abducting people and the like, then analysis of forensic evidence, radar searches, etc, would find such evidence. In our reality such evidence has not been forthcoming, and the folk beliefs are well explained by sleep paralysis, hypnosis, etc, so we should go with the prior and be quite confident that no UFOs are aliens. But things could have been different.
Carl,
You are grossly misreading Robin. He does not think that it is likely that any UFOs are aliens...
I quote: "Jason, I made no claim about anything being "a science." I'm sure I could find ways to profitably study this topic, given that UFOs actually were aliens."
Norman,
I'm just saying, making blanket statements about unscientific research and then appealing to the authority of Edward Condon is downright comical. Another excerpt from the article you linked to, which you rather obviously failed to read at all:
Oh, I read it all right, I just don't have the same bias as the Ufologists, so even the rambling, slanted Wikipedia article is just funny to me. I completely sympathized with Codon throughout, who was given an impossible task with a good purpose: a pro forma investigation to shut down a pointless and banal air force program poisoned by its own unnecessary sensationalism. There simply isn't a way to evaluate an alien visitor paradigm scientifically, because it is not science, so I don't fault the researchers for not really trying or caring to investigate it that way (and this underlies all the listed criticisms). But their conclusion that no useful science resulted from the program was obviously correct, and though I'm sure not going to dig through it, would have certainly followed from their 1000+ page report in a manner that was foregone, given the subject matter. So the NAS was in the right.
That's just the way it rolls, Norman, garbage in, garbage out. What is important though, is that all the sky monitoring programs which swiftly morphed into a magnet for public fantasy and paranoia did not identify aerial threats from a foreign country. That was the extent of their purpose and usefulness. Providing "scientific" evidence for Martian visitors? Not so much.
Robin, what exactly do you propose as the structure of the bet, in terms of how do we determine the winner? I am tempted to bet you, because I think it would be easy money for me if the terms were fairly constructed based on our apparent beliefs about the likelihood UFOs of the conventional sighting narratives are intelligent aliens.