# The Phenomenon: What is it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 20, 2025, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583 "2025-05-20T13:19:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2025, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/221 "2025-05-27T21:52:46Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > But if that’s true, the intellectually honest position isn’t “it’s just psychology” it’s “we don’t know.” Because uncertainty cuts both ways. It does. Nothing is 100% certain, either in life or in scientific inquiry. But there are probabilities, and the probabilistic weightings are often overwhelmingly on one side. And the determinants for a logical evaluation are based on evidence and logical deduction. The counter-determinants are based on simple credulity. Has science been wrong in the past? Well, certain **scientists** certainly were. When Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar proposed the basis of stellar collapse that would lead to white dwarfs and potentially neutron stars and black holes beyond a certain mass (for whom the Chandrasekhar limit is named) the famed British physicist Arthur Eddington vehemently disagreed and ambushed and publicly shamed him at a subsequent conference. But Chandrasekhar was relying on established principles he elucidated in math, while Eddington fell back to intuition (“there’s no way that a massive star can collapse into a point and became a black hole.”). Science can indeed show that extraordinary non-intuitive things are possible. Quantum mechanics is full of that stuff. But to have any credibility, it has to be premised on evidence and evidence-based principles, even if only theoretical, as Chandrasekhar’s proposal was, or even the flighty hypothetical of Everett’s “many worlds” idea of quantum decoherence. But what you’re proposing here is just is unsubstantiated credulity. This is why you’re getting so much pushback. You can accept it or not, but if you wanted feedback, you got it. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2025, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/222 "2025-05-27T22:39:25Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > I’m asking: why does the same type of weirdness keep showing up in credible contexts military cases, pilot encounters, sensor anomalies over and over again? If it’s all explainable, great show me how, case by case. Ok, I linked an explanation about your “best example”, but it did not work: Trying again: > **[The U.S. Government’s Top UFO Scientist Has an Open Mind about Alien Visitation](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-u-s-governments-top-ufo-scientist-has-an-open-mind-about-alien/)** > > Have you seen something inexplicable in the sky? Jon Kosloski, director of the U.S. Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, wants to hear from you > Video footage of an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon (UAP) event, captured by an infrared sensor onboard a U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft over the Rafael Hernandez Airport near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico on April 26, 2013. In the [full footage](https://www.dvidshub.net/video/944204/puerto-rico-objects), the UAP seems to move at high speed, split into two objects, and fly into and out of the ocean. A subsequent assessment by the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) found that the event can be explained as a trick of perspective, in which two slow-moving objects traveling linearly near to each other only appear to be a single object splitting in two, and do not enter the sea at any point. Others that looked at the wind data and other observations arrived to similar conclusions: > **[Aguadilla-Object-Analysis-Report-1.pdf](https://www.mysterywire.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/106/2021/02/Aguadilla-Object-Analysis-Report-1.pdf)** > > 11.04 MB Page 20 DRAWING CONCLUSIONS > Using the results shown in the preceding sections we can draw the following conclusions > form the result > • The object’s movement can be explained by linear motion > • The object’s speed over the likely linear path was 15.0255 mph > • The object’s direction over the likely linear path was 237°, which equates to a > back bearing of 57° or NNE. > • The object’s altitude varies from 1001 ft at the start of the event to 689 ft at the > end. > The last conclusion we can make regards the object’s movement compared to the weather > at the time. As stated previously the weather at the time of the event had “winds are out of > the E to ENE, forcing the balloon W or WSW, at a maximum speed of 18 mph up to 3200 > feet elevation”. The conclusions above calculate that the object moved at 15 mph, which is > within the limit of the forecast winds. As the contributor to the Joseph Campbell foundation reported in the past link: > Nevertheless, influenced as he was by Carl Jung, Campbell probably read and took for granted his monograph on UFOs, _Flying Saucers: a Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies,_ which is included in the 10th volume of Jung’s _Collected Works_ entitled _Civilization in Transition_ . In the “Preface to the First English Edition” Jung reflects back on the whole “moral of this story” with the realization that “news affirming the existence of Ufos is welcome, but that scepticism seems to be undesirable,”\* which is to say that the _belief_ in UFOs “suits the general opinion, whereas disbelief is to be discouraged.” (_CW_ 10 page 309) In other words, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the UFO myth stands in the place of an ideological fantasy used to maintain status-quo thinking and feeling. I would add in yet another “other words”: In the current state of things, were UFOs remain a bit popular, the skepticism is what it is tossed out, not the credulity. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/223 "2025-05-28T00:24:38Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > If this were “witnessing,” I wouldn’t be responding to criticism or acknowledging counterpoints I’d be preaching. Every example you have given, including your best and strongest case, has been explained. You continue to insist that they have not been explained, and/or that the pattern is real even if every example you have given fails to prove it. > [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > What I haven’t done is pretend that gaps in current explanations mean the conversation’s over. Who in this thread has done that? > [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > That’s not witnessing that’s what debate should be: holding space for unresolved questions. What, specifically and exactly, unresolved questions? Considering that every example you have given can and has been explained by known science, what questions are left? > [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > But let’s not pretend disagreement = disengagement Again, who is doing that? > [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > I’m still here, still listening, and still arguing the case. I agree that you are still here and still arguing the case. Again, every example you hav provided can and has been explained. **Why** are you still arguing that there is a pattern? Why are you still arguing that this pattern proves The Phenomenon? ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/224 "2025-05-28T01:34:29Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > You’ve done due diligence. Good. Then you know ‘difficult to explain’ doesn’t mean ‘doesn’t exist.’ > The real question isn’t whether we’ve proved aliens, it’s whether the data we do have violates known physics. > > Transmedium craft. Instant acceleration. No heat signature. Radar + visual confirmation. Military pilots trained to recognize threats can’t explain what they’re seeing—and neither can our tech. > This isn’t woo. It’s a persistent data set that refuses to conform. > > Demanding rigor is science. Refusing to follow where the data points because it’s inconvenient? That’s dogma. Scientists do accept data that violates known physics, and for the very reason that they follow the inconvenient data. That’s why we accept both general relativity and quantum mechanics, even though they contradict each other. It’s also why we accept dark matter and dark energy, even though we can’t see them. The data point to them existing, so we accept the hypotheses even if we can’t yet explain the details. The Phenomenon, however, doesn’t have the backing of science in the same way, because it isn’t serious science in the way that general relativity and quantum mechanics, or even dark matter and dark energy, are. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/225 "2025-05-28T05:58:54Z")
I found a book by Vallee (UFOs Anatomy of a Phenomenon) in my collection. It is from 1965. I’ve read about half of the thread and what Vallee said back then is very much like what is given in this thread. I haven’t found any predictions after a quick scan (though he did think the Tunguska event was a nuclear explosion.) Basically there has been no progress in this area in 60 years. And more. It might pay for the OP to read accounts of “unexplained” events which are not true. The great airship mystery of the 1890s was already mentioned. I have three volumes of unexplained events from Charles Fort. Fascinating and people used to believe in this stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/226 "2025-05-28T06:03:41Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > You’re not asking for data. You’re asking for certainty on your terms and anything that doesn’t fit cleanly into that box gets mocked as faith, fantasy, or conspiracy. No, you keep bringing up patterns. I am pointing out the patterns. You say there is some thing happening that is repeatably witnessed, both through eye-witnesses and multiple camera devices. Yet you haven’t presented a case of this, let alone several. The case you specified as an example had infrared imagery only. It did not have radar concurrence nor eye-witness outside the infrared scope. That’s not multiple sensors. You say there is a pattern of weird visual things across time and cultures. But you have yet to show there is anything actually consistent beyond human psychology. Take an example: there are stories of night visitations across cultures and times. They are interpreted differently based upon the ideas of the extant culture. They are ghosts, they are demons, they are incubi and succubi, they are aliens, they are home invaders. While appearances differ, some consistent points remain. The victim is lying in bed at night when awakened to find themself unable to move. Some eerie creature/being/person is present and begins to do strange things to them. Then the victim suddenly awakens and they are safe in their own bed. But it feels real! Now Sir Occam would suggest that there is some occurrence that is happening. But what stands out even more is that there is no independent corroboration, no third party witness to the event, and no physical evidence left behind. Scientists have studied it. It isn’t actually a visitation by any kind of being. There is a dream state that occurs during transition falling asleep or waking up. The victim is in a partial sleep state, so they begin to gather sensory data. But sleep paralysis is in place. That creates the very real feeling of being awake and of being unable to move/pinned/tied down. It’s terrifying, and the rest of the experience is drawn from cultural expectation. It’s a real phenomenon, but it’s not a real visitation. It’s a psychological experience. And I have experienced it on multiple occasions, I can testify it feels real and it is terrifying. But now that I recognize what it is, the clues to the dream nature are more observable. Some of the strangest things are the psychological things that occur. You say you want to “explain the core, recurring features not every outlier, but the patterns across credible cases:”. But for there to be core features across credible cases, there first have to be multiple credible cases. Yet you give is one, it gets explained, but somehow something you won’t state what is not yet explained in that case. There are other cases you allude to, but they aren’t presented in front of us to look at the actual data to see if it fits your description. I’m not saying you’re lying, I’m saying that you have a mistaken impression of the incidents because they have been presented to you in an incomplete or conflated or credulist’s view. You are the one who describe the situation as if it is a coherent intention that wants us to see it, but just barely. That it messes with our perception intentionally. When I point out that if it messes with our perception we will never be able to study it. You say I’m dismissing it out of hand. No, I’m stating a fact. If it can distort out perception, distort our memory, distort reality, then we’ve already lost. Any attempt to understand is undercut by the thing’s desire to prevent us from understanding. And just like the religious mantra, ~~God~~ The Phenomenon works in mysterious ways. If that sounds like ridicule, I can only say that your argument is exactly the same. Similarly, it is pointed out that all of these cases occur at the limit of observation. Blurry photos from across the room when cameras take time to expose film. Glowing dots on CCDs from kilometers away when telecopes and video capture are available. This is characteristic of an observation that is not a real interpretation. It is the “thing that happens only when we can’t tell what’s happening”. Yet you then decide this means that whatever is behind these occurrences is detecting our limits and then intentionally staying there, instead of that whenever our detection improves, the previous things that would have been mystical now are not, because we now can see them clearly. It’s a standard feature of CT that anything that could disprove the CT is then claimed as a lie that is part of the CT. They can never be disproved because the conspiracists are somehow always able to fake the next level. Here is the same pattern. Evidence that the phenomenon is a misinterpretation of fuzzy data at the extremes of detection becomes evidence that the Phenomenon wants to stay at the extremes, not that what would have been fuzzy before is now easily seen and explained. You keep repeating descriptions of features of supposed patterns of behavior, but have yet to demonstrate that those descriptions match the actual events. The patterns of behavior, as far as have been shown, are that data is misrepresented by one person or groups, passed along as if it is correct, then held up as an incontrovertible pattern of weirdness because several distorted events seem to have similar traits. You know what else has similar traits? Fiction. It’s not as if these incidents are wholly independent. I mean, whatever happened may be a separate occurrence, but the information that a pattern exists comes from a concerted, coherent group trying to interpret the events similarly. They pass the events around within the group and look for the same patterns and propose the same explanations - aliens. It’s then the skeptic’s burden to show that the pattern wasn’t even inherently there in the first place, but projected onto the incidents. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/227 "2025-05-28T06:52:17Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > What I’m saying is: when multiple events, across time and context, share specific recurring features sensor anomalies, non-ballistic motion, pilot interaction, transmedium behavior that pattern deserves attention even if individual cases remain unresolved. If multiple events share these specific features, it should be easy to point to _some_ those features in _one_ of the events. If individual events do not have those features, neither does the collection. > [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > You’re asking me to “prove” each event in isolation, as if they exist in a vacuum. But phenomena don’t always show up as clean lab experiments. Sometimes the pattern itself is the signal especially when the same high strangeness shows up across decades, systems, and geographies. No, we’re asking you to show where any of the phenomena you’re talking about actually showed up. At all. At the moment (and this is not surprising) the bigger picture painted by the set of evidence you’ve presented is: _The real world is messy; recordings often lack the desired fidelity; people are not perfect at observing or remembering; equipment sometimes goes wrong._ ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/228 "2025-05-28T07:19:01Z")
Here’s what I mean: Imagine we’re presented with a collection of videos of horses - many videos, some of them showing very large herds containing hundreds of horses, galloping across plains and through forests and across rivers etc. Not all of the videos are the greatest quality. Someone(A) says they noticed unicorns in some of the videos; “Which videos?” asks the surprised skeptic (B). From there, the conversation goes like this: A: All I am saying is that _some_ of the videos contain unicorns, if you look carefully, you’ll see them everywhere! B: Can you show me _one_ video that contains _one_ unicorn? A: You’re not looking properly. You don’t want to see unicorns so you’ve shut your mind! B: I want to see unicorns. I am literally asking you to show me a unicorn. A: OK, in some of the videos in this list, there are unicorns somewhere. B: Can you just be specific and show me one video and give me the timestamp where the unicorn is on screen? A: In this list of 100 videos, there is a unicorn somewhere. B: ONE SPECIFIC EXAMPLE. A: OK, here’s a video where there is a unicorn at the 10 minute mark. B: That’s a white horse standing in front of a dead tree. You can see when the horse walks forward, the thing that at first appeared to be a horn, is just a sun-bleached branch and it stays where it is and eventually we see that’s just an ordinary horse. A: OK, but that was just one example - there are loads of unicorns in the footage. B: Can you show me ONE clear example? A: What about this one? B: That’s a horse that is being ridden in a jousting contest. The ‘horn’ is a lance - look, when the shot changes, you can clearly see that. Why are we looking at this? Did you even look at your own sources? A: OK, but unicorns! B: Please show me one. A: See this is the problem - you’re not willing to look at the bigger picture! ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/229 "2025-05-28T11:31:29Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Here’s what I mean: I That’s a clear analogy of how the argument is being presented. I hope @Ryan_Liam is able to follow and not declare it ridicule. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/230 "2025-05-28T14:30:20Z")
Well I see a pattern and recognize a phenomenon there. But @Mangetout, and others … you recognize that in a hundred videos of herds of horse galloping there _will be_ images that can be perceived as unicorns that do not have enough other images of that individual of sufficient quality seen to conclusively prove it isn’t a unicorn? I get that not being able to present even a single such case is a fish slap across the face, but so what when that challenge is met? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/231 "2025-05-28T14:57:10Z")
The debate is a bit ridiculous. It’s not my intention to ridicule @Ryan_Liam, but the situation happening in this thread is itself ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/232 "2025-05-28T15:02:24Z")
Indeed so - there could absolutely be cases where the video is too poor to be conclusive, but it’s quite unlikely to conclusively look like it has unicorns in that case - nobody gets to argue that the blurry assortment of five pixels in the top left must be a unicorn unless proven otherwise. But we didn’t even get that far, we’ve just got the repeated assertion that there are many pieces of compelling evidence, without any single piece of compelling evidence forthcoming, or the weird notion that is something like the evidence only presents itself when you stop looking closely at it. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/233 "2025-05-28T15:26:48Z")
How many pieces of bad evidence equal one piece of good evidence? ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/234 "2025-05-28T16:23:53Z")
Well, if there’s even a 1% chance a bad piece of evidence is actually a good piece of evidence in disguise, then–I don’t know–a hundred? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/235 "2025-05-28T16:52:14Z")
What if there’s a one in twenty octillion chances that a bad piece of evidence is actually a good piece of evidence? But far more importantly: how on earth can you establish that probability? I just finished a probability unit for my fifth graders, and the very intro version I taught them is that probability can be expressed as a fraction, where the denominator is the number of _equally likely_ outcomes, and the numerator is the number of outcomes matching your conditions. Key to this argument: if you don’t know the number of equally likely outcomes, you cannot establish probability. In your post–and in one of @Ryan_Liam’s posts earlier–there’s the implication that if there’s only a 1% chance that things are weird, we should be open to their weirdness. But we simply lack any means to establish that percentage. For all we know, the chances that things are weird aren’t 1%, they’re 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%, roughly the chances of randomly picking any atom in the universe and it being the atom at the tip of my nose. In which case we don’t need to spend much time being open to weirdness. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/236 "2025-05-28T16:54:15Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > That’s a clear analogy of how the argument is being presented. I hope @Ryan_Liam is able to follow and not declare it ridicule. And I’ll second this. Great analogy, @Mangetout! I asked @Ryan_Liam earlier how it’d change his thinking if his best evidence for an anomaly turned out to be easily explained through mundane means. He never responded as far as I can tell, but I think that’s a response itself: despite his exhortations to be open to evidence, I think he’s actively closed to evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/237 "2025-05-28T16:57:36Z")
He actively disregarded his own example when an explanation was given. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/238 "2025-05-28T16:58:16Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > But far more importantly: how on earth can you establish that probability? Well, I did say “if”. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/239 "2025-05-28T17:19:10Z")
Thank you. This is what I have been trying to say. I wasn’t sure how to say it in this forum. I made it 24 years without a thread ban and then got two this year. **Czarcasm** exactly. **Ryan Liam** you were asked for your best and strongest example. An explanation that fits all the data and does not violate our understanding of science was provided. Every other example you have given has been similarly explained. I ask sincerely, why do you continue to claim that a pattern exists when all the evidence for that pattern has been explained by other means? ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583/240 "2025-05-28T17:39:15Z")
You’re right, every example I’ve brought up has been challenged. That’s not proof of aliens. But it’s also not proof that the phenomenon doesn’t exist. What I’m pointing out is that the anomaly isn’t any single incident, it’s that events across decades, locations, and sensor systems keep almost breaching our frameworks of explanation, and then slipping just out of reach. Maybe that’s sensor noise. Maybe it’s human pattern-making. But the fact that these patterns persist, especially around sensitive military or nuclear sites, is worth asking questions about. I’m not preaching. I’m not asking for belief. I’m asking why, if it’s all explainable, we keep circling the same kinds of events again and again. You don’t have to agree. But let’s not pretend it’s all resolved, because no serious analysis says that. And if that bothers you, maybe ask why unresolved ambiguity feels so threatening. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-phenomenon-what-is-it/1018583.md?page=13)