“The original investigation is missing any confirmatory evidence—but that also means it lacks any disconfirmatory evidence. This is exactly what you would expect to see in unexplained cases if there actually was nothing unexplainable going on.”
Apropos what one would expect to see, let me quote from Wikipedia on a US military study:
“35% of the excellent cases were deemed unknowns, as opposed to only 18% of the poorest cases. This was the exact opposite of the result predicted by skeptics, who usually argued unknowns were poorer quality cases involving unreliable witnesses that could be solved if only better information were available.”
35% of the excellent cases were deemed unknowns, as opposed to only 18% of the poorest cases
OK, this one’s tough to analyse—big interplay of factors here. Basic classification of events:
Hallucinations—only one observer. Likely to be classified as low quality/crackpot or low quality/unknown
Seeing the moon etc. and thinking it’s a spaceship—pretty much same as hallucination
Foreign military craft—Not clear whether these would be classified as “unknown” or “inconclusive”. Skew towards high quality as more likely to be flying around military bases & hence seen by military personnel (also more likely to be seen by radar)
Undiscovered weather phenomenon etc. - probably classified as “unknown”, no bias towards high or low quality reports
Alien spaceship—likely classified as “unknown”. Plausible bias towards high quality as again we might expect to find more of them around military bases.
Poor quality hoax—likely classified as poor quality and miscellaneous.
Elaborate hoax—plausibly classified as high quality (can get multiple witnesses) and unknown.
The following factors might further skew how many events get reported or how they are classified:
Military personnel more likely to report everything unexplained that they see, ordinary people more likely to only report really weird stuff. Bias towards low quality/unknown
Opposite effect may be in play—ordinary people get spooked by anything, military personnel more used to seeing odd stuff from time to time. Bias away from low quality/unknown
When UFO gets reported, a bunch of people phone in saying they’ve seen the same thing when really they haven’t. Increases apparent number of witnesses—so adds noise to high/low quality but doesn’t skew known/unknown classification
Self-disbelief: people won’t report very unusual sightings unless they are military or have other witnesses or have corroborating evidence. Bias towards high quality/unknown
Ridicule, refusing to accept reports etc. - same effect as self-disbelief
If motivated to do so, military personnel have greater ability to make up a convincing story about an unknown sighting than ordinary people. Bias towards high quality/unknown
So I don’t have time today to do a Bayesian calculation on this, but the line from Wikipedia seems to be evidence in favour of elaborate hoaxes, alien spacecraft with particular motivations, wacky unreliable reports getting filtered before they make it to the Blue Book, and possibly foreign military aircraft. Evidence is weaker if there was too much credence placed in military personnel.
Other things to bear in mind:
I don’t know about the methodology of the Blue Book project or Report 14. In particular I’m guessing they’re not Bayesians, and influential people may have particular prejudices (we don’t know which way those prejudices go, but that consideration certainly makes the results harder to analyse)
The Wikipedia article departs slightly from Wikipedia’s usual voice which may indicate it’s of lower quality and might be missing relevant information or presenting information incorrectly
•Alien spaceship—likely classified as “unknown”. Plausible bias towards high quality as again we might expect to find more of them around military bases.
I’m not sure why we would expect that. If I were constructing a model of what I would expect of alien visitations, I don’t think that would be part of it.
If I were constructing a model of what I would expect from alien visitations though, I doubt it would resemble any of the recorded observations at all; I suspect that they would be either completely open and unambiguous, or totally unnoticed (if a race with the technology for casual interstellar travel wanted to avoid attention, I expect that they could avoid it completely.)
What you just did is suggest a series of hypothesis as to what could explain the evidence. That is a part of the scientific method, but it is not all of the scientific method. The scientific method also includes testing the various hypothesis against the evidence, for each and every case. You forgot to do that.
You mean in the History channel documentary and other videos on Youtube, or something else? I don’t usually like consuming knowledge in documentary form because it’s 1. slower than reading and 2. much easier to make emotion-based/nonsensical arguments without your audience noticing. Perhaps you could provide us with a summary of what happened when people tested Giles’ explanations? If there’s good text-based discussion you can link to us then I’d also be interested in that.
“35% of the excellent cases were deemed unknowns, as opposed to only 18% of the poorest cases. This was the exact opposite of the result predicted by skeptics, who usually argued unknowns were poorer quality cases involving unreliable witnesses that could be solved if only better information were available.”
This confuses me. I’ll have a look at the report. Do you know what proportion of the unknowns are poor cases as opposed to excellent cases (I would guess there are far more poor cases than excellent cases).
“The original investigation is missing any confirmatory evidence—but that also means it lacks any disconfirmatory evidence. This is exactly what you would expect to see in unexplained cases if there actually was nothing unexplainable going on.”
Apropos what one would expect to see, let me quote from Wikipedia on a US military study:
“35% of the excellent cases were deemed unknowns, as opposed to only 18% of the poorest cases. This was the exact opposite of the result predicted by skeptics, who usually argued unknowns were poorer quality cases involving unreliable witnesses that could be solved if only better information were available.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book#Project_Blue_Book_Special_Report_No._14
OK, this one’s tough to analyse—big interplay of factors here. Basic classification of events:
Hallucinations—only one observer. Likely to be classified as low quality/crackpot or low quality/unknown
Seeing the moon etc. and thinking it’s a spaceship—pretty much same as hallucination
Foreign military craft—Not clear whether these would be classified as “unknown” or “inconclusive”. Skew towards high quality as more likely to be flying around military bases & hence seen by military personnel (also more likely to be seen by radar)
Undiscovered weather phenomenon etc. - probably classified as “unknown”, no bias towards high or low quality reports
Alien spaceship—likely classified as “unknown”. Plausible bias towards high quality as again we might expect to find more of them around military bases.
Poor quality hoax—likely classified as poor quality and miscellaneous.
Elaborate hoax—plausibly classified as high quality (can get multiple witnesses) and unknown.
The following factors might further skew how many events get reported or how they are classified:
Military personnel more likely to report everything unexplained that they see, ordinary people more likely to only report really weird stuff. Bias towards low quality/unknown
Opposite effect may be in play—ordinary people get spooked by anything, military personnel more used to seeing odd stuff from time to time. Bias away from low quality/unknown
When UFO gets reported, a bunch of people phone in saying they’ve seen the same thing when really they haven’t. Increases apparent number of witnesses—so adds noise to high/low quality but doesn’t skew known/unknown classification
Self-disbelief: people won’t report very unusual sightings unless they are military or have other witnesses or have corroborating evidence. Bias towards high quality/unknown
Ridicule, refusing to accept reports etc. - same effect as self-disbelief
If motivated to do so, military personnel have greater ability to make up a convincing story about an unknown sighting than ordinary people. Bias towards high quality/unknown
So I don’t have time today to do a Bayesian calculation on this, but the line from Wikipedia seems to be evidence in favour of elaborate hoaxes, alien spacecraft with particular motivations, wacky unreliable reports getting filtered before they make it to the Blue Book, and possibly foreign military aircraft. Evidence is weaker if there was too much credence placed in military personnel.
Other things to bear in mind:
I don’t know about the methodology of the Blue Book project or Report 14. In particular I’m guessing they’re not Bayesians, and influential people may have particular prejudices (we don’t know which way those prejudices go, but that consideration certainly makes the results harder to analyse)
The Wikipedia article departs slightly from Wikipedia’s usual voice which may indicate it’s of lower quality and might be missing relevant information or presenting information incorrectly
I’m not sure why we would expect that. If I were constructing a model of what I would expect of alien visitations, I don’t think that would be part of it.
If I were constructing a model of what I would expect from alien visitations though, I doubt it would resemble any of the recorded observations at all; I suspect that they would be either completely open and unambiguous, or totally unnoticed (if a race with the technology for casual interstellar travel wanted to avoid attention, I expect that they could avoid it completely.)
You forgot swamp gas.
What you just did is suggest a series of hypothesis as to what could explain the evidence. That is a part of the scientific method, but it is not all of the scientific method. The scientific method also includes testing the various hypothesis against the evidence, for each and every case. You forgot to do that.
If you want that to happen then you’re going to need to do it yourself. Nobody else here is interested enough in this subject.
They already did it! You just say “whatever” to their effort.
You mean in the History channel documentary and other videos on Youtube, or something else? I don’t usually like consuming knowledge in documentary form because it’s 1. slower than reading and 2. much easier to make emotion-based/nonsensical arguments without your audience noticing. Perhaps you could provide us with a summary of what happened when people tested Giles’ explanations? If there’s good text-based discussion you can link to us then I’d also be interested in that.
This confuses me. I’ll have a look at the report. Do you know what proportion of the unknowns are poor cases as opposed to excellent cases (I would guess there are far more poor cases than excellent cases).