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From: John Rimmer <jrimmer@magonia.demon.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 22:20:13 +0100
Fwd Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 15:56:20 -0400
Subject: Re: IFOs


 >Subject: Re: IFOs
 >From: Mark Cashman <mcashman@ix.netcom.com>
 >Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 10:38:28 -0400
 >To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>

 >>Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 16:37:59 +0100
 >>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
 >>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer@magonia.demon.co.uk>
 >>Subject: Re: Sheffield UFO Incident 2?

 >>We can play with statistics as long as we like. I could argue
 >>that if Jim Deardorff is only able to explain 50% to 75% of the
 >>UFO reports he comes across then he's not doing his job
 >>properly! Other investigators find they can explain 95%. Maybe
 >>they're being over-zealous in explaining cases, maybe they're
 >>just more thorough in getting the facts.

 >Or maybe the set of cases is not filtered toward paydirt cases,
 >but includes a lot of chaff like LITS, distant reflections, and
 >other small angular size, small strangeness events.

 >As investigators, I believe that if we have a 95% IFO rate, then
 >it is more likely we are investigating the wrong cases, not that
 >we aren't looking hard enough for the answers.

Unfortunately this introduces a very subjective element into the
gathering of statistical data. Any individual investigator's
view of "paydirt data" will vary. It is clear that many
researcher's view of paydirt is anything which will support the
idea that at least some UFO reports represent structured craft,
hence vague lights-in-the-sky type reports are of little
interest to them, and can be ignored when compiling statistics,
inflating the "unexplained" cases at the expense of the
"insufficient data" column.

But researchers with a different agenda, promoting the
earth-lights hypothesis for instance, will find the distant
star-like objects extremely interesting, and would want to
include them in any definition of a UFO worth studying.

Ultimately we have to accept that the figure on which we must
base our percentage of "unknowns" is the totality of events
which are reported by the percipients as UFO events, and not
just the ones we personally happen to find interesting.

--
John Rimmer, Magonia Magazine
www.magonia.demon.co.uk