UFO UpDates Mailing List
From: Jenny Randles <nufon@currantbun.com> Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 20:54:23 +0100 Fwd Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 09:08:33 -0400 Subject: Re: British Ufology Has Been Reborn! >Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 21:55:06 +0100 >To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net> >From: Sean Jones <tedric@tedric.demon.co.uk> >Subject: Re: British Ufology Has Been Reborn! >>Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 13:48:38 -0400 >>From: Andy Roberts <Brigantia@compuserve.com> >>Subject: Re: British Ufology Has Been Reborn! >>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net> >>Sean Jones wrote: >Good Afternoon Andy >><snip> >Andy, yes _we_ have learned a heck of a lot _BUT_ have _we_ got an >answer that satisfies all? No! Why's that? Because some UFO's have >not, or can not be explained to anyone. But when I was speaking about >solving the riddle that is ufology, I was talking generally Andy, not >individual cases. Hi, I think the point is that all UFO cases are potentially explicable. There is an answer to everything in the universe. We just have not found all these answers yet. That answer might be a simple thing or an exotic solution but all UFOs will in the end be IFOs by the process of identifying them. Its also highly unlikely that any UFO solution will please everyone for two key reasons. 1: UFOs are not a single phenomenon. There are multiple and different UFO phenomena with a range of explanations. 2: Most people accept this but believe 'some' UFOs are - substitute whatever your own pet theory is. There are many pet theories and most (ETH, Time Travellers, All UFOs are IFOs) are quite unprovable. It can only ever be a value judgement and these can never please everyone. What Andy is saying - and I agree with him - is that all UFOs have the potential to be mundane IFOs - with none any exotic phenomenon at all. You cannot, as you quote from Sherlock Holmes, eliminate all the possibles and thus leave an impossible (i.e. aliens or whatever). The reason is that new types of IFO are always feasible and may simply never have been thought of before now. When they are thought of they can suddenly solve a potentially baffling case. This is the nature of the investigation process in ufology. Our book 'The UFOs that Never were' makes this apparent. But its easy to see by, for instance, the Williamette Pass case. Here you can eliminate all the obvious possibilities. Its not a plane, balloon, meteor, etc. So does that mean by your argument it must be some exotic form of UFO? Many ufologists argued so for years. I felt it did. But clearly it does not. The case remained a UFO for 30 years until Irwin Weider solved it. He solved it as an IFO nobody in the world had dreamed of as a way to explain a UFO case (a road sign). This conclusively shows that the Sherlock Holmes quote does not work in UFO terms and that potentially any UFO case can become an IFO. You may feel some cases never will have mundane causes. I actually agree with you. But its an opinion that we cannot prove and the position Andy adopts (that ultimately all cases will fall in down to earth terms) is perfectly defensible and at least as plausible as the ETH, Time Travellers or any exotic theory. This is not, as you seem to suggest, scepticism or debunking. In fact its just another theory of UFO origin vying like all the others for evidence to back it up. Best wishes, Jenny Randles
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