The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis for the UFO phenomenon should be taken seriously.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. You brought up some good points, but I'm still not convinced. :) Just a few words re: your thoughts on the hypothetical missing dark age: First, if we were to represent the age of the universe with a wooly mammoth, the six hundred years in question would represent something like the eye on a flea on one of it's hairs (or if not that, something similarly small), so worrying over whether or not our civilization had a dark age, when we're talking about the odds being very good that other civilizations have been around for millions if not billions of years longer than we have, is, I think, kind of moot. Besides, the fact that we did have a dark age, makes it MORE likely that they're "ahead" of us " though by very, very little " not less. I take your meaning that it's about the age of a technology, not necessarily a species, but we're talking about a very long timescale and a (pardon the pun) potentially astronomical number of intelligent species. The data would seem to suggest that by now, the galaxy should be up to its armpits in star-faring cultures " or at least very well could be. I'm simply suggesting that in spite of not being able to detect them (or at least not reliably(1)) via electromagnetism, maybe it makes sense to examine reports of "ufos" more carefully than we have in the past. In response to your third paragraph, I would have agreed if you had said, "can be explained by war stress, oxygen deprivation or instrument failure," but when you add the word "easily" to that, I have to disagree. Experienced combat air crews deal with stress and even occasional O2 deprivation, I'm sure(though they wore masks for that(2)), but to suggest that this causes them to experience hallucinations of metallic or glowing balls that fly for miles in formation with their bombers and that they all share the hallucinations, pushes credibility more, in my opinion, than that they saw something that science is at a loss to easily explain. These were reported very commonly by Allied, German and Japanese crews(3), and each government believed (wrongly, all but conspiracists now believe) them to be a secret technology in use by their enemies. We can try to attribute it to St. Elmo's Fire or some such phenomenon, but we lack any solid evidence linking the two, and the reports from the airmen, in many cases seem to suggest intelligent behavior, or behavior/appearance inconsistent with this explanation. As for Haines, I would be skeptical of anyone who told me they knew of an unbiased scientist. I would not call Haines particularly biased though. Like all scientists, he operates from within a set of beliefs. Scientists spend years building careers and egos around their version of a story, and will fight dearly, even against logic, when anything contradicts that version. This is called cognitive dissonance(4). Everyone suffers from it. It is what you accuse Haines of, and, as you point out, it is what Haines accused the Deputy of Intelligence of (rightly, one might add, if one supposes that in his conclusion he states essentially: 1) the radar tracked an unexplainable phenomenon 2) the radar was functioning properly. 3) the radar must not have been functioning properly). Don't get me wrong. I'm all for being skeptical, but what I'm getting at when I say science should be taking these things seriously isn't "scientists should believe that without a doubt the radar set in question was functioning perfectly and they were chasing an extraterrestrial craft." What I'm saying is, scientists should not dismiss anything simply because it seems improbable based on their beliefs. Scientists should accept that the radar may have been at fault, but they should also accept that the crew may have actually witnessed a phenomenon worth considering, and worth looking at as part of a body of evidence. Making a judgement either way in a case like this, is unscientific. Pursuing possibilities until they have been exhausted is what should happen. If you don't reach a conclusion, fine. Add it to the pile. All of that said, Con makes a valid point that in this case, the ground radar operator apparently did not go on record or was not included in the investigation and report. Although I do not see any reason to doubt that the radar in fact tracked these objects, I will agree to dismiss the case on that basis. Which brings me to Con's argument against Haines, which I object to simply because in his book, Haines nowhere confines himself to reports that must conform to the criteria that I've set forth for this debate. Although, in my view, many of the reports in his book come from highly credible witnesses, we should remember that he is simply providing a catalog of reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena from the Korean War, which means they were reported as such, not that Haines necessarily believes they were all truly unexplainable, or that he necessarily expects readers to. Belgian sightings: I do not feel that the phenomena, as reported, match well with stealth aircraft beyond very general shape. In terms of commonly reported behavior and the specifics of shape, size, lighting, and surface detail, the triangular objects reported, are quite different from anything currently known to exist in any nation's air force. And let's not forget this was 24 years ago. These objects were reported in great detail by, as the linked report mentions, thousands of witnesses, including "military and police officers, pilots, scientists and engineers." When a professor of physics describes a "large triangular craft" hovering silently over a field with three powerful beams emanating from large circular surfaces near the corners of the triangle, then turning and silently flying along a road, and when this is confirmed by military police who followed the object and multiple civilians who all describe the same thing, a rational person shouldn't just dismiss it as a stealth fighter, because nothing about it sounds remotely like a stealth fighter. One should ask oneself what on earth these people may have seen. And if one cannot think of anything on earth that matches what has been described, one must consider the possibility that it may have originated elsewhere. Not accept it as fact mind you, but include it as a possibility (along with whatever else you want to include as a possibility: mass hallucinations, a conspiracy of liars, mind control, top secret fusion-powered anti-gravity devices, swamp gas). I'm saying that as far as we can ascertain, intelligent life may be ubiquitous, so dismissing that possibility as an explanation for a given report by credible witnesses (especially when there are thousands of similar reports from credible witnesses) is illogical, unless we conclusively show that the report did indeed have a more conventional explanation. Fairies: If fairies were tracked on radar and reported by thousands of pilots (or naturalists might be the appropriate analogy), and if it was logically consistent with current scientific thinking about how the universe works that we might very well logically expect fairies to be here, (even in spite of not having reliably detected them, and only having the word of a few thousand naturalists to go on) I might think that possibility was worth considering, too. As it is though, I agree with you that fairies are not a rational thing to assign any considerable likelihood to. Lakenheath: I'll agree that there is some inconsistency between both the official Blue Book and Condon Committee reports and the testimonies of the radar operator and watch supervisor and dozens of other witnesses on the ground and in the air on the one hand, and the recollections of Brady and Logan on the other, and there could be a number of reasons why Brady and Logan would either remember things differently or report them differently, 40 years later. One way or another, it seems someone is either misremembering or even misrepresenting the details of what happened after the aircraft encountered the UAP, and we don't know who or why. But Brady and Logan admit to at least observing an unknown object they were vectored to by radar. They disagree about what happened after that, which is interesting, but it is also interesting that a number of things happened prior to that which were observed by radar and simultaneously observed visually that don't seem explainable as meteors or anomalous propagation or other conventional factors. In short, I find the data collected immediately after the incident to be more interesting than what is recalled by two participants forty years later. I do think what they have to say should be a part of the discussion and should be considered, but we must also consider that what they are saying does not line up in some respects with the official reports, and could be in error somehow. And taken as a whole, I think the data we have, including the testimony of these RAF pilots, strongly suggests that something, although occasionally stationary, was in the sky, traveling at unconventional speeds and exhibiting unconventional maneuverability. Could there be another explanation? Sure. Is there? The fact is, we simply do not know, and are unable to present a reliable explanation that explains all the data (from multiple radar sets and multiple eye witnesses) in the case. It is therefore illogical to rule out that there was indeed something traveling at unconventional speeds and exhibiting unconventional maneuverability, that we are at a loss to explain. Again, it would be illogical to say that it certainly was that as well. The appropriate scientific stance is that, in this case, we are dealing with an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. Unless it is identified, well, it isn't. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org... (2) http://www.stelzriede.com... (3) http://en.wikipedia.org... (4) http://en.wikipedia.org...