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From: "Steven J. Powell" <sjpowell@access.digex.net>
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 11:30:44 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 13:59:06 -0500
Subject: Re: Philosophy of Science and UFOs

> From: Greg Sandow <GSANDOW@prodigy.net>
> Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: Re: Philosophy of Science and UFOs

> Call me radical, if you like, but the greatest mystery to me is why
> there <is> any UFO mystery. UFOs have been regularly reported -- and
> talked about, and talked about, and talked about -- for nearly 50
> years.  You'd think that by now we'd have arrived at some consensus.
> The problem doesn't seem all that difficult. Is anything flying around
> up there? Why can't science answer it?

More like 5,000 years.

I think its an open question as to whether science _can_ (and
_how_ it can) answer the question, which I think is really the point of
Jan's philosophy of science series of discussions.

There are examples of science trying in earnest and falling to explain
the problem and there are plenty of examples of science being made to
dance to someone else's tune and failing to answer the questions.

Personally, I don't think pure science has had an unencumbered chance to
try to study UFOs so the jury's out.

> If we think there clearly are unknown craft
> flying through our skies -- and that these craft have been seen by
> tens of thousands of people -- what's our elegant, parsimonious
> explanation for why the world at large doesn't acknowledge that? Is
> there a coverup?
> That's not a philosophically satisfying explanation at all. It
> introduces an extraneous element -- a whole layer of government
> involvement -- and raises extra questions of its own. Why is there a
> coverup? And why does the coverup work?

I don't know if we should ignore the gov't involvement/coverup angle as
it relates to the philosophy of science (as that relates to the
scientific study of UFOs) or not.

First, let's dispense with the "tens of thousands of people" issue
because there's no such thing.  Just about everybody makes this
mistake from time to time, I'm sure I've done it once or twice too,
even Keel made this mistake in one of his recent books, but we have to
always separate out of the total data population that which is really
important versus raw uninvestigated data.  There are tens and tens of
thousands of UFO sightings reported over the last 50 or so years and
that is our raw uninvestigated data population.  That is also the most
useless number in all of ufology.  Of the uninvestigated total we know
that easily from 80% (being very generous) to 95% are IFOs (and some, a
small percentage) are hoaxes.  We know statistically that 80% to 95%
will be retired as IFOs.  IFOs may be of interest to ifology and the
social sciences but they shouldn't concern us in this discussion.

The UFOs, the ones that are _U_FO _after_ having been investigated, are
the _only_ initial dataset we are concerned with here.  This is the
dataset that we need to explain, need to understand, need to have
science take an unencumbered look at, etc.  If we average 10,000
sightings worldwide per year that leaves from 250,000 (being
extremely generous) to 5,000 total sightings.  Most of the folks who
have been doing for decades prefer 90% to 95% which would give us a nice
and easily to handle dataset.

As regards gov't involvement/coverup I admit to being completely
wishy-washy on that.  Obviously, when we were dealing with the useless
pre-investigation sighting total, then one can instantly surmise that
the gov't had to have seen a few (or more <grin>) on missle tracking
radar or space-based tracking over the past few decades.  But when we're
dealing with the real investigated number of unknowns then that
surmising becomes illogical and impossible.  After all, the
misidentified bird, or lenticular cloud, or mylar ballon, or Venus
_DON'T_ lend themselves to being picked up on missle-tracking radar or
space-based tracking.

Taking the (assumptive) 5,000 investigated unknowns as a baseline
worldwide for 50 years we can probably drop that to half (2,500) for
alleged objects that could be picked up on our tracking and we could
probably drop that another 50% (1,250) for objects reported during
the latter period when we had such tracking capabilities.

Of that lower total how many are UFOs to us and IFOs to the folks who
build and test next-generation aircraft?

I think a truly scientific study of UFOs, completely unencumbered by
politics, has to ignore the gov't involvement/coverup angle to be
unbiased and objective.  Alternatively, perhaps the gov't would assist
that scientific effort and provide a log of every single flight of every
single classified R&D project plus a log of all
post-production classified flights?

Not gonna happen you say?  And that's why it has to be ignored for an
unbiased study.

> From a believer's point of view, what could that haze be? My theory
> is that it's denial. Or maybe I shouldn't put it so aggressively. The
> presence of mysterious flying craft (very likely from other planets)
> is presumed to be extraordinary. It's also presumed to be unlikely. So
> when somebody says they saw one, you don't quite know what to think.

I'm not sure how this relates to a discussion on the philosophy of
science as it relates to a scientific study of UFOs?

I don't think the likliness or unlikliness is particulary relevant to
the process of science.  It was considered impossible or at best
extraordinarily unlikely that any prehistoric creature would survive to
present day.  Yet, we have such creatures, completely identical to their
prehistoric relatives, alive and well today - and we _still_ properly
consider it unlikely simply because we only have a few such specimens.

> A classic example is Donald Menzel's "explanation" of the famous
> New Guinea case.

It was apparent then and its very apparent today that Menzel relied on
science only rarely when trying to explain (away) UFO sightings.  It
wasn't known then and it is known now that Menzel worked for the CIA at
the time and was almost certainly doing what he did to assist the goals
expressed by the Robertson Panel.

> The place to find this mental haze at its most pronounced is, I think,
> in the SETI literature. Here you have what I believe is the only
> (semi-) organized group of scientists who think or write much about
> aliens. And they've reached a definite consensus. There are alien
> races all over the galaxy, possibly millions of them, some a billion
> years more advanced than we are. But none of them can visit each
> other, because interstellar travel just isn't possible.
> I just smile when I read that stuff. Interstellar travel on any
> regular basis would be hard to imagine for us, right now -- there's no
> doubt about that. But for beings a billion years ahead of us? Who
> could possibly say? It's the height of antrhopomorphic arrogance to
> imagine we can say anything at all about beings a billion years ahead
> of us. So I'm not going to say they <do> travel between the stars. I
> have no idea. But neither does Frank Drake -- the leader of the SETI
> forces -- have any business thinking he knows, either.

Paraphrasing Dennis from an article he wrote years ago:  You can't use
one mystery to explain another.  Scientists work with the physics that
they knnow, not the physics they don't know or the physics they wish
they knew.  The physics that we know today tells us that FTL travel is
impossible.  Impossible in the past, impossible now, and impossible in
the future as well.  This type of strict scientific conservatism is part
of the scientific process.  It doesn't mean that we _know_ FTL will be
impossible forever, it just means that based on just what we know today
its impossible.

We don't have to make assumptions about what the core UFOs are, or why
they are, or how they got where they were when they were
(allegedly) observed.

--

Thanks, take care.
John.

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