Exactly. In a world with eight billion people, million-to-one coincidences occur multiple times per day. That can explain many or most of the stranger phenomena that have been seen and photographed over time.
Urologists are well known for fakery.
Oh, you said ufologists.
Nevermind.
Reported, because @Jackmannii accidentally attributed Crypto’s post to me.
It’s those dang urologists. 
Yep. Blighters! (not bladders)
Thanks for fixing it.
This makes me wonder if it could be calculated if, on a body of water with random ripples and waves averaging six inches or so high, how long you would wait on average before observing a random combination of turbulance sending up a spout of water three feet high.
Interesting idea. If there were no continents or islands on the Earth, then waves would flow freely around the world and probably rarely or never form high interference waves.
On a real planet waves interact and interfere all the time, forming all sorts of weird interference patterns. So higher waves would happen all the time, even of you discount the effects of wind and waterspouts.
… not that I am an oceanographer, but I suspect that the coriolis effect would cause interference and thus some ususually large waves.
Possible.
Look at the chaotic, turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter, for example; there are no oceans, continents or mountains to disrupt the motions of the fluids, but the planet has very distinct bands, zones and storm systems.
if the Pentagon did not find them convincing then they wouldn’t’ve made them part of the periodic files releases. unless the government has a disinfo campaign. but if so, that raises all sorts of questions about which ufologists serve a useful purpose in that we can try to figure it out.
earlier to talked about this guy on another forum who believed in the literal truth of the Bible (New Testament at least) but not in the supernatural. I asked him about Jesus walking on water. he said something about (as apparently has happened?) water increasing its saline content or freezing over… something like that. he had other explanations for other miracles but I remember that one specifically. but he wouldn’t allow himself to think that perhaps you couldn’t take the New Testament so literally.
and, yes, crazy things happen with eight billion people on Earth. but, I mean, when people start chucking around hubcaps for fun, you do tend to notice. “oh, they have a hubcap in their hands for some reason..they like playing with it, etc.”
Check out the studies of how inattentive people are when a gorilla walks by or when the person they are talking to changing into someone else mid-conversation, and you’ll have a different view on how much people notice things, right in front of them.
I prefer to think they are giving us the opportunity to examine the evidence, and in all honesty it is not compelling. Tiny spots in the sky (‘areas of contrast’ is the Pentagon’s neutral term) that are too small to show any detail, and which move like birds, balloons, distant planes and drones.
These are not movies that ‘the Pentagon find convincing’ but they are movies that the Pentagon can’t explain easily - for the simple reason they are in the Low Information Zone where there is insufficient data to be sure. There will always be phenomena too far away to identify.
Many ‘ufologists’ reject any reasonable explanation because they really want these ‘areas of contrast’ to be exotic. The evidence says otherwise.
More, for the simple reason that they’re too cheap to hire Mick West.
Yeah, this, which means we can’t really answer the OP’s question. If we knew what they were, they’d no longer be UFOs.
Another very good point. Also applies to any and all things supernatural. If we understand something and can place it in a context of other things we understand, it’s part of the normal and natural world that we understand. If we don’t, we can say very little about what it actually is.
That’s not the point. The point is that UFO does not automatically mean “alien spacecraft” despite the colloquial usage. It’s similar to the misunderstanding of “evolution is just a theory”.
I agree. Basically, if they release the information “experts” claim it as proof of their existence, and if they don’t release for any reason they claim that it is a cover-up and thus it is proof of their claims.
I’d just like to point out that this quick explanation pretty clearly shows that the term “Unidentified Flying Object” is itself misleading – if the sighting is due to a reflection, or to an optical phenomenon like a Sundog (parhelia) or other ice crystal effect, or an erroneously-interpreted sighting of the Moon or Venus or other astronomical body, the thing sighted is certainly not “flying” and may not even be an “object”. Calling such things “OFOs” is prejudicial at best. Better to call them “unidentified aerial phenomenon”
I’d like to register another complaint – investigators should ask people how large the thing sighted was. You can’t know how large something is unless you know how far away it is, and vice versa. And the history of investigation has shown that people are terrible at estimating how far away something is. They really ought to be asking how large an angle it subtended in their field of vision, although if you ask it that way you will more likely get confused stares than answers. Give an illustrative example instead (such as “Was it as big as a baseball held at arm’s length?” But be prepared to get a lot of bad answers.)