Talk:Unidentified flying object/Archive 1

message: This article has serious NPOV problems.  It is important to note that the VAST majority of the scientific community, as well as governmental agencies, do not believe in the extraterrestrial hypothesis.  As such, in keeping with wikipedia's NPOV policy, the majority of this article should be explaining the position that the vast majority of the scientific community holds.  This article frequently mentions fringe conspiracy theories and theories which are not accepted at all within scientific/government circles at least on the same level as the scientific view.  And, when the non extraterrestrial evidence is presented, it is always intentionally undermined by immediate presentation of said fringe beliefs.  I am going to do a MAJOR edit of this article soon.
I acknowledge that the belief that UFOs are alien spacecraft is important and certainly worthy of being presented fairly here.  However, this article leans WAY too far to that side of the debate.  I am going to greatly strengthen the anti-alien side of things, while still keeping the major pro-alien arguments (trimming some as this page is getting long). --Krazikarl
----
Could you please cite the study or poll showing that literally the "VAST majority of the scientific community" does not believe in the extraterrestrial hypothesis?  References and numbers please.
Actually your assertion flies in the face of actual internal polls sometimes taken within the scientific community.  E.g., Dr. Peter Sturrock did an internal poll of 2600 members of the American Astronomical Society (half of whom responded).  Sturrock's summary of the results:
"Each respondent was asked to state his opinion on whether the UFO problem deserves scientific study: 23% replied "certainly", 30% "probably", 27% "possibly", 17% "probably not", and 3% "certainly not", which represents a positive attitude among 53% of the respondents, as against a negative attitude among 20%. Analysis of the returns shows that older scientists are markedly more negative to the problem than are younger scientists. One also finds that opinions correlate strongly with time spent reading about the subject. The fraction of respondents who think that the subject certainly or probably deserves scientific study rises from 29%, among those who have spent less than one hour, to 68% among those who have spent more than 365 hours in such reading."
In other words, the poll showed that ignorance of the subject matter resulted in skeptical attitudes.  The majority of the scientists, however, felt the subject at least merited further study.
Even if your statement about the "VAST majority" were correct, so what?  The history of science is replete with examples where the strongly held majority view turned out to be short-sighted and wrong, restricted by their own personal beliefs and scientific paradigms (not to mention ignorance of the evidence, as Sturrock's survey demonstrated).
E.g., it is fair to say that the theory of continental drift was not "believed" by the vast majority of the scientific community for over four decades after Wegner first laid out various lines of strong evidence pointing to it.  Why didn't they "believe" Wegner's evidence?  Was it because it was poor or they thought Wegner incompetent or dillusional?  No, it had nothing to do with that.  It was simply because they couldn't understand how entire continents could move, hence his evidence had to be wrong.
Another example is meteor sounds, heard instantaneously by people on the ground.  Consistently reported for hundreds of years by many thousands of eyewitnesses, the "vast majority" of the scientific community scoffed at the reports.  Why?  Because again they couldn't conceive of a physical mechanism that could account for such instantaneous sounds.  So they simply ignored the overwhelming evidence that people were in fact hearing them.
If you read "UFO's: A Scientific Debate" (1972), Frank Drake in his UFO debunking chapter brings up the subject of meteor sounds, acknowledges they have been consistently reported for hundreds of years, but then dismisses them because he personally can't understand how they could be generated.  Instead he postulates a "psychological" theory that would make a Psych 101 student wince with its obvious stupidity.  But the whole point of Drake's exercise was to debunk UFO's with the argument that eyewitnesses are all inherently unreliable.  He was also arguing, falsely, that since the phenomenon was purely psychological and not physical, there was nothing for physical scientists to study.  Sound familiar?
Since then a theory of how meteor sounds are generated has come out and they have actually been recorded in the field during meteor showers.  Apparently the tape recorders are also suffering from psychological aberrations.  Possibly the "vast majority" of scientists that didn't believe in meteor sounds simply because they didn't understand how they could be generated has disappeared.
Want yet another example from the history of science?  Lord Kelvin tried to debunk Darwinian evolution theory with a theoretical argument that the Earth and Sun couldn't be more than 100 million years old, not billions as the evolutionists were saying, based on then understanding of physics and chemistry.  Kelvin was arguing that theory trumped evidence.  Of course, Kelvin nor any other scientist back then knew anything beyond chemical energy sources.  Atomic and nuclear physics still lay a few decades in the future. (And that is a good example why evidence should normally take precedence over theories, which are almost always incomplete.)
Or how how about most scientists at the turn of the 19th century snickering at the notion of rocks falling from the sky, i.e., meteorites.  Those were the superstitions of the unwashed peasants who reported such things.
The point is that scientists are human beings and are encumbered by their own belief systems just like other human beings.  This often takes the form of putting their own internal models or understanding of reality above contradictory evidence, however strong.
If you want to put most scientific DISBELIEF in UFOs and the extraterrestrial hypothesis in a nutshell it is this:  most scientists personally don't understand how interstellar travel might be possible or practical within our current knowledge of physics (energy and distance arguments).  From this many of them jump to the unscientific conclusion that aliens couldn't get here because they personally don't understand how they could get here.  And if aliens can't get here, then UFOs must be bunk, and to hell with any evidence to the contrary.  With such illogical circular reasoning, most don't even bother to look at the available evidence (as is often the case with controversial theories in the history of science). 
Instead we get nonfactual and unscientific arguments that there is no physical evidence worthy of study and literally all UFO cases represent psychological delusions, hoaxes, or misidentifications of common things.  All could be explained if only more data were available, etc., etc.  Based on actual evidence and studies by our own government agencies, these contentions are false.  E.g., the massive Battelle Institute statistical study for the USAF in the 1950s thoroughly disproved the idea that unknown cases merely represented poor quality sightings and could all be explained if only more data were available as conventional phenomena.  It was also clear from the statistics that the unknowns had distinctly different characteristics than the knowns (thus, they represented something distinctly different from conventional phenomena used to explain the known cases).
The dividing line between scientists who don't _believe_ in UFOs as ET generated and those scientists who accept at least the possibility that they might be real ET craft is really nothing more than the "disbelievers" rejecting interstellar travel as possible while the "believers" accepting that interstellar travel might be possible even if we humans currently don't understand exactly how it might be done.  Note that a number of prominent scientists (e.g. astronomer [Clyde Tombaugh] who had numerous UFO sightings) have taken other scientists to task for being so narrow-minded in their thinking.
Please keep these points in mind before you take a meat axe to the current version.  I have already seen skeptics previously edit out material they obviously find uncomfortable to their own belief systems, such as the statistical results of the Battelle Institute study or early USAF studies concluding UFOs were real craft.  The rationalization, no doubt, was that the article as written had serious POV problems to their way of thinking.  Editing out certain material would slant the POV more in a direction to their own liking.  But is that really being more "scientific" or NPOV or just personally self-serving? --Dr Fil
: Your question can be answered by (1) realizing that if scientists say that UFOs "deserve study", that DOES NOT mean that they think that they are ET spacecraft, and (2) reading the rest of the report - only 3% of the scientists polled believe that UFOs are ET:
::23% - unfamiliar  natural  phenomenon
::22% - a  familiar  phenomenon  or  device
::21% - an  unfamiliar  terrestrial device
::12% - a hoax
::9% - an  unknown  natural phenomenon
::7% - some specifiable other cause
::3% - an alien device
::the report
 
:So 97% of the scientists DON'T believe that UFOs are alien spacecraft.  I'd call 97% a "vast majority". --Bubba73 (talk) 03:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  In addition, in 1969 a study by the National Academy of Science concluded that "the least likely explanation of UFOs is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitations by intelligent beings."  See page 93-94 of The Demon Haunted world: Science as a candle in the dark, by Carl Sagan. --Bubba73 (talk) 18:27, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Serious NPOV problem 

message: It seems to me that this entry violates the Wikipedia convention to spell out acronyms, and that Unidentified flying objects would be the correct site.  What makes it particularly important for this topic is the tendency when discussing the matter to forget the meaning of the word "unidentified". Eclecticology
What is more important than having an article reside on its spelled-out page, is the way the acronym is used in the English. The acronym UFO really no longer has the meaning of "unidentified flying object" in any modern context. 
:This claim is false, and is the same type of thinking that leads to preposterous assertions such as "We don't know what it is but it is not a UFO" (when they have excluded the possibility of its being a flying saucer but still don't know what else it is).  Isn't this facially absurd? --Daniel C. Boyer
::The issue here is with how the term is currently used in the English language – not on how it should be used. There is a presupposition in the average person’s mind nowadays that UFO is a term in and of itself that has a meaning beyond simply “unidentified flying object” – as I state right after you interjection. --maveric149
::I'll throw my weight in here as well - Wikipedia should be primarily descriptive, not prescriptive. Certain acronyms have gained ascendancy over their "spelt-out version", SCUBA, RADAR, UFO, LASER. 
:::But this is completely off-point!  These are typically used rather than the spelt-out versions but what maveric149 is talking about is using the acronym with a meaning other than its spelt-out meaning. --Daniel C. Boyer
::::Unfortunetely, that is the case. We report the way things are here, we don't try to change to common meanings of things. --maveric149
We should simply recognise that, not debate the philosphical legitimacy thereof (or else I'd have to start arguing against the appalling "spelled" - instead of the proper "spelt" - that you ghastly ermerikens insist on using :) Conversely the acronym "WHO" is far better under its full name "World Health Organisation". I can't think of any "grey area" examples where much debate would be necessary. --Manning Bartlett, Monday, June 17, 2002
What this term now means is "spaceships with little green men who make crop circles, mutilate cattle, have sex with trailer-park humans" etc. In addition, most people that believe this <stuff> don't know what the acronym means (well they don't know alot of things - but that is another story). This is the same reason why the NASA article resides at NASA and not National Aeronautics and Space Administration. What is important, is what the average visiter will most easily recognize as the right name of something - not whether an article title is an acronym or not. Redirects will do just fine in these cases. The article/redirect order should be reversed. --maveric149, Saturday, April 6, 2002
I think this discussion is a little pointless. The many diferent interpretations of the word Ufo might be inside the article, not in it's name. I vote to simply rename it to Unidentified flying objects, simply because i can't see any against. 
The real question would be if the UFO page should eb a redirect or a disambig.
--Zero00 15:08, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name of article 

message: Hoaxes are fair game for discussion; elimination of alternative views, particularly without discussion, are not, and pretty revealing.  NPOV requires acknowledging even the existence of alternative views.  Removing edits that did not undercut one view, they simply presented the alternative, is bad enough, but deleting even two links discussing the evidence is highly POV.  I've been studying this field for years (even subscribed to Skeptical Inquirer) and observed these non-delusional craft in flight.  Selective bias has no place in wiki.  Kindly practice civility and discuss first, but I do intend to revert it.  --Chris Rodgers 08:51, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: An article on known hoaxes (of all kinds) would be fun! --Mark Richards 22:59, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Does Wikipedia have an article on UFO hoaxes?

message: I just merged flying saucer, which was basically about the same stuff this article is about. The text will need a bit of digestion. Also, that article had a different inter-wiki link to ja: - someone who can read Japanese will need to check which is the right one. Assuming the ja: articles don't need a merge too! - David Gerard 11:52, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge [[flying saucer]]

message: I was appalled to read in the article that CSICOP was a group that "encourages critical investigation of the alien spacecraft hypothesis from a scientific point of view." That is a pure BS. CSICOP is a hardline debunking group, nothing else. They have postulated "explanations" for every conceivable UFO sighting in history without even conducting ANY investigation of their own. They slander researchers who they think might even hint at the idea that there could be something even remotely unexplainable about any UFO reports. Wikipedia articles are supposed to be written from a neutral point of view and such a gross deception as this is not becoming of such a perspective. I am not just talking nonsense here. If anyone needs evidence that CSICOP is exactly that, there is more than enough available.
I deleted that brief section from the article for this reason. It might be a good idea to have more critical investigation be conducted of ufo groups' true positions than simply looking at what's on their home page.
If people think there should be a section on different organizations and groups and what positions they hold, I think that would be a worthwhile addition. --truthseeker7 08:47, 7 July 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone has reinserted this garbage without any explanation. Sorry but that is unacceptable. This is the most ridiculous description of CSICOP's position I have ever heard. Despite their name they do not and have NEVER conducted ANY investigation, scientific or not. They make armchair conclusions without any supporting evidence. They are a travesty of science and most definitely not an objective investigative body. A false portrayal of this magnitude on such an important topic is very alarming and will continue to be deleted. Please respond here if you want to put it back or differ so we can work out something. --truthseeker7 17:54, 7 July 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Positions of UFO groups 

message: What do you consider the WORST UFO/Alien Encounter? --Martial Law 03:24, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the WORST UFO/Alien Encounter? 

message: What do you consider the BEST UFO/Alien Encounter? --Martial Law 03:24, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the BEST UFO/Alien Encounter? 

message: See http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ritson/scispi/roswell/ancient.htm
Some believe that UFOs are relics from our past.
:It's gibberish, full of typographical and spelling errors.  Make of it what you will, but it isn't an authoritative source. --QuicksilverT @ 05:21, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ancient Indian/Atlantian Technology Theory 

message: This article has strayed way off the subject, and needs a really severe edit. As the title states, the subject is unidentified flying objects as reported by various people around the world. Hopefully we can be charitable and assume that the reported sightings are genuine, not fictional. And yet, this article refers/links to works of fiction which feature "spaceships" that are described as UFOs but are in fact not Unidentifed FOs because the movie/book/TV actually identifies them. For instance in the Earth vs. the Flying Saucers movie we are told they are spaceships from Mars, IOW, they are identified. In UFO (TV series) they are identified as alien spaceships, so much so that we learn all about their seating capacity, survivability, what they sound like, their laser defences etc.  You get the picture - these things are not UFOs.  Another point is that the prevailing theme in various links from this article is that if something is not identified it then simply has to be an alien craft full of greys who are up to no good. So, if we can't identify an object why do we not simply say it is unidentified and not automatically assume it is a nasty from space. This article is supposed to be about UFO facts. If there is a case for UFOs in fiction, then someone should start such an article. But they shouldn't include objects that are identified by the author/s of that fiction. That's another issue. Anyone agree this article needs dealing to first? --Moriori 01:45, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Speak up now, or forever ... 

message: About some of the "natural explanations" given to explain UFO sightments (i.e. clouds, aircrafts, meteorological balloons...) you forgto the most plausible: it is stimated that around a 10% of the population has some kind of mental disease (some not very trascendental for a day to day life, of course), and teh willingness for seeking to be teh center of attention. Arent you telling me that (even if there would be real alien ships), there wouldnt be at least 1 of each million people enough idiot to lie about that??  then you there 1 thousand sightments per year in the occidental world...
Excuse my bad English, but I should its important to add the reference for "seeking attention" stuff.
And I miss a critic point speaking about the lack of more photographic/video proofs when the number of camaras has increased exponentially in last years. Millions of peoples has even a camara in their mobile phones. But there is not a huge increment of a wave of photoraphic proofs (well, at least I didnt listen about that).
I did not change anything for myself, to see if there is someone agrees --85.8.5.131 17:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Forgot to name one thing 

message: The "Recently, STS-48, and especially..." addition should be one or more of the following things:
moved to a different section, re-worded, formatted, or deleted. The "American media is silent" sentence seems completely unnecessary and unfounded. The edit wasn't made by a logged in user. --User:FSGuitarist
:Great minds think alike ):-. I had already reverted when I saw your message here. Cheers. --Moriori 00:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem With Recent Edit 

message: The reason this was initiated was the CIA intends to "reduce", even eliminate any
interset in UFOs. Even psychiatrists are utilized, so that people who has had seen these things/aliens are to be considered mentally unfit by the rest of society. This is NOT vandalisim, see the Robertson Panel article itself. --Martial Law 23:13, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reason for [[Robertson Panel]] 

message: I don't know if U.F.O.s are extraterrestrial alien related, but I have had experiences that relate to the U.F.O. and abduction phenomenon. When I was about 10, I was standing on the back porch when I saw an oval light move across the sky above my house in the direction from the back porch to the front porch. Alone that didn't mean much, but about that time I had a strange experience with my brother of having been asleep for 24 hours. My brother and I went to bed one evening and woke up the following evening. My mother wanted to know where we had been, but all we could tell her was that we were sleeping. She probably thought we were lying. Likewise when I was child my mother had related a story of seeing a ghost by her bed when she was pregnant. She tried to wake my father but couldn't wake him. She described the ghost as a man-sized cat. She didn't like it's eyes. As a child, I thought this was just superstition. She didn't believe our story and we didn't believe hers. Looking back through the prism of the abduction phenomenon, did my mother see a classic grey alien and were my brother and I abducted for those missing 24 hours? Since the time from when I was a pre-teen, I remember having a small circular object embedded in my left thigh. I would always through the years try to pick it out. I was able to remove it sometime in my mid 30's and flushed it down the toilet. Soon after I got a serious nosebleed for several days. That was the only nosebleed I have ever had during my adulthood. I normally don't remember my dreams, but two that I remember are one that I am on an operating table surrounded by figures which I can't make out. In the second dream the figures are classic grey aliens and I'm a little boy coming down the stairs of my old house and there are two aliens sitting on the old couch in the living room. All this could be coincidences, but there is a small percentage of people who have these coincidences and the abduction phenomenon is the most convincing explanation for some. --User:68.160.212.241 17:21, December 19, 2005 (User never signed. Added by Moriori) --Barney Hill 00:51, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Theoretically I can imagine that 'greys' maybe probably can exist. What I have big difficulty believing is WHY they may possibly need to abduct people. Whatever they want to know, can be learned far more clandestinely by examining dead humans, reading our medical literature, listening to radio and TV signals. Second, why do they even need to do anything clandestinely? Today's Earth civilization is most probably poses no threat to any civilization able of interstellar travel. For the comparison: are you afraid of present-day Amazonian tribe people? Will you hide from them?
The consensus among the Budd Hopkins-David M. Jacobs crowd is that they are here to create hybrids (human-grey). For what reason? Who knows? Maybe to repopulate a planet. Lets hope its not to repopulate the Earth. Lets hope its to repopulate some other planet and when they're done with their project, maybe they'll leave and will never know that they've been here. They'll have left the inhabitants of Earth as undisturbed as possible. --Barney Hill 03:10, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  My U.F.O. and abduction experiences 

message: Please sign your statements. --Martial Law 09:22, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Theoretically I can imagine that 'greys' maybe probably can exist. What I have big difficulty believing is WHY they may possibly need to abduct people. Whatever they want to know, can be learned far more clandestinely by examining dead humans, reading our medical literature, listening to radio and TV signals. Second, why do they even need to do anything clandestinely? Today's Earth civilization is most probably poses no threat to any civilization able of interstellar travel. For the comparison: are you afraid of present-day Amazonian tribe people? Will you hide from them?
The consensus among the Budd Hopkins-David M. Jacobs crowd is that they are here to create hybrids (human-grey). For what reason? Who knows? Maybe to repopulate a planet. Lets hope its not to repopulate the Earth. Lets hope its to repopulate some other planet and when they're done with their project, maybe they'll leave and will never know that they've been here. They'll have left the inhabitants of Earth as undisturbed as possible. --Barney Hill 03:10, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please sign statements. 

message: ... I just made an important editorial change, ascribing "Calling Occupants (of Interplanetary Craft)" to Klaatu, "made popular by" Karen Carpenter. Charlie (CO) ChasRMartin 04:41, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  In the mean time 

message: The point of this article is not to prove the existance of aliens, nor to prove that this is all hot air either. Failure to observe this will' result in a Edit War. thus locking the article from further edits. --Martial Law 01:54, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note 

message: DreamGuy I cannot understand why you deem it 'unencyclopedic'.
--Obaidr 19:25, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why was the Furthur reading topic removed from the Article?