This article makes a large claim about aliens. Someone please debunk this.
Where does it say anything about aliens?
OK Correct. UFOs. You are right. But a friend saw this on CNN live online and can’t find it replayed. She asked me if it was weird, so I came here to have it explained.
It’s going to be hard to debunk it until some specific claims are made, presumably at the press conference.
This is more about UFO sightings by military personnel coming from the recently publishedbook, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record, by Leslie Kean’s. There is no doubt these reports exist, but there has never been any evidence that the sightings were anything unexplainable. The people cited as making these reports have no particular expertise in identifying the source of lights or shapes in the sky. Their reports are often mixed with other anecdotal evidence to paint a picture of something more exotic than the facts indicate. The author of the cited article makes an outlandish claim that UFOs have monitored and observed US nuclear operations, though no such evidence exists.
The fact that military officers make reports of this nature have no bearing on the accuracy of their perceptions. In many cases from the recently published book, pilots are cited because of their experience in identifying aircraft. However, pilots may have experience in identifying known aircraft, but their ability to identify natural phenomena and reflections of light from unknown sources is no better than any other person’s. In addition, their training as pilots to avoid mid-air collisions may make them less credible as they react to perceived potential dangers without close examination.
Here’s an article that goes into more detail on what TriPolar discusses.
And in the interest of fairness, here is a rebuttle to that article by the author of the book.
Thanks. Will pass along.
I just saw this on metafilter. The main post linked to the video of the press conference and in the comments someone gave a breakdown of the video. IMO, it was pretty ho-hum. Should be just a few items from the top at metafilter.com
Honestly, I don’t see the big deal. Yes, pilots saw unidentifiable things. That’s fine. People see stuff they can’t identify all the time. Claiming that because they couldn’t identify them means that they’re piloted by aliens is something completely different. Just cause you can’t explain it, doesn’t mean you get to pick the explanation. If you want to claim it was aliens, you have to show that it actually was aliens, and not just throw your hands up and go ‘Well what else could it be?’.
Ever notice that the UFOs in older pictures look like the UFOs in older movies, and the UFOs in newer pictures look like the UFOs in newer movies? Wonder why that is.
I thought it was like cars. The aliens just change the style of models each year for marketing purposes. Who wants to cross the universe faster the speed of light in one of those old UFOs with big fins?
Alien engineers keep up with the latest Hollywood design trends? Maybe they have a mole at Industrial Light & Magic?
"Just cause you can’t explain it, doesn’t mean you get to pick the *explanation. If you want to claim it was/wasn’t aliens, you have to show that it actually was/wasn’t aliens, and not just throw your hands up and go ‘Well what else could it be?’
Negative claims also have the burden of proof on their shoulders.
And please don’t respond with the typical debunker response of, "I’m not saying there aren’t aliens, he’s saying there are, therefore the burden is on him. All that is is a convoluted version of:
"The Unicorn gambit: *When pressed to the wall with a close ended question. Example – “Do you think, believe or know that all UFO sightings from the dawn of man, up to and including the present, are all mundane, plausible explanations?” They will sarcastically say something to this effect: “Sure there might be a chance, about as much chance as Unicorns and Faries.
*
This is nothing more than a sarcastic way of saying, no, without, in their minds only, having to bear the burden of proof and maintain the semblance of objectivity. If you’re going to say or imply that it ain’t, then you better be able to say what it is without going into the mode of: “it could be…may it is, it might be…” that is guessing, stating your opinion. And, of course, we have all heard the old adage of: “Opinions are like…”
*List of Things Mistaken for UFOs
I don’t need to prove it wasn’t aliens, I’m not making any claims one way or another. I’m just pointing out that all they’ve shown is that they don’t know what they’ve, it’s ‘unidentified’.
Good thing I’m not making a claim.
Why not? I haven’t read the book, just skimmed the articles, I don’t even know if the author is claiming that those things were aliens. I made a statement related to the whole Unidentified = Aliens crap that tends to crop up. It’s not my fault that the burden of proof is on the claimant, and it doesn’t matter if you like it or not. I didn’t make a claim one way or another about the existence of aliens, I have nothing that needs to be supported. If someone wants to show me a blurry picture and claim that it’s obviously aliens, cuz what else could it be, then they have the burden of proof, not me. I don’t need to say anything for him to be wrong, but he definitely needs more than a shrug to be right.
What? This doesn’t make much sense. Not being 100% certain is perfectly acceptable. It works for science. Comparing the chances of something to the chances of there being unicorns or faeries might be sarcastic, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Just because I admit that there’s a non-zero chance that something exists doesn’t mean that chance has to be big.
The burden of proof isn’t on them, it’s on the claimant. If you ask your obviously leading question about absolutely all UFOs past & present then you are asking them to make a claim. They don’t need to. Not existing is the default, and not believing in something that hasn’t been shown to exist yet does not require evidence of any kind. Your question just tries to back them into a semantic corner. You’re trying to trap them into an absolute statement, and they have no need to make one.
Once something has been debunked a few thousand (million?) times, it kind of shifts the burden to the guy making the claim. In the cases from the book indirectly referenced by the OP, there is no evidence but anecdotes of events that the anecdoter has no explanation for. If nothing else, a claimant should supply some evidence of a claim that can be examined.
This is the old “in the absence of certainty, all possible explanations are equally valid” argument, and it’s as much of a fallacy (false equivalence) as it ever was. If I drop something and it hits the floor, I can think of about a thousand different ways it might have happened: but “gravity acted on it” is 99.999999% likely to be the right one, so I’m not required to present equal time to the “low-flying aircraft caught the ball in it’s wheels, carried it around the earth, then crashed into my kitchen floor” theory – especially in the absence of evidence of a crash.
I’m confused. Are you saying aliens are more likely or less likely to exist than unicorns?
[I say, they’re equally likely. See, either aliens exist, or they don’t. Same with unicorns. That’s two possibilities, so the chances are 50/50 for each].
I agree they’re equally likely, but two possibiities doesn’t mean each possibility has an equal probability. Those are very different things.
Ok, so if Monty Hall gives you a choice of 3 doors, one has a unicorn behind, another an alien, and third has a zonk, how likely is it that aliens have tampered with our nuclear facilities?
That depends. Is Monty Hall on a treadmill?
Well he’s in a UFO on the tread mill. The treadmill can move at the speed of light, but the UFO can exceed that.