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25 Years of Canadian UFO Reports

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Sentry

Sentry

Paranormal Adept
Chris Rutkowski has a new article introducing Ufology Research's study, "UFOs Over Canada: 25 Years of UFO Reports." The report itself is very interesting and it makes excellent point about the value of data collection and analysis, as well as the shortcomings of present efforts.

"If UFOs are not 'real,' then why are tens of thousands of Canadians (and others worldwide) seeing unusual objects in the sky?"

25 Years of Canadian UFO Reports (introductory article) Ufology Research

The "25th Anniversary Written Report" (in pdf format) http://www.canadianuforeport.com/survey/UFOsOverCanada.pdf
 
Another exceptional document from Rutkowski et. al. with highly detailed information, wonderful graphs and charts detailing everything from the shapes and colours of craft to their lights, time of appearance, duration and strangeness factor. I thought his highly detailed and hardlined approach to studying the phenomena to be refreshing even though this makes good data difficult to confirm and work with:

"For the first few years of the Canadian UFO Survey, it was practical for UFOROM associates to meet together and examine each and every case reported that particular year. The reports were assessed on content, possible explanations and the degree to which they had been investigated. In later years, in order to gain a greater understanding of cases classified as Unknown, UFOROM members and associates met to study and discuss those reports. Available information about each of the cases originally listed as Unknown was discussed in detail and the cases re-assessed. Original classifications of Strangeness and Reliability were also re- examined for each case. Through this process, the identification of only higher-reliability and higher-strangeness cases was made.

It was the consensus of the group that this process was most revealing in that a better appreciation of the difficulties in using UFO data was gained. Many reports were good as "stories" but seemed to have possible or probable explanations. Some witnesses' descriptions were deemed less than accurate and a significant fraction of cases appeared to need more investigation.

In short, such exercises showed that the analysis of UFO reports is a very tricky procedure, relying heavily upon mere text of subjective estimates and interpretations of witnesses' less- than-accurate observations. Members of the group recommended that accounts of UFO sightings should not be taken at face value and that caution be used in interpreting what was "really" seen.

In later years, the sheer number of cases combined with an attrition of investigators and researchers made such meetings to examine every report problematic."

It seems to me that what Ufology suffers from is not enough boots on the ground and no real financial support or shared passions to continue the level of detailed investigation that the phenomenon gave birth to. It seems to me that there is a generational transformation taking place in the field, as while sightings appear to be on the rise, the number of people needed to critically study them are waning. There just does not seem to be the same degree of interest in the field and that contemporary interests are more pacified with watching vine videos and typing out snappy twitter responses.

Seeing a UFO just doesn't have the same cache that it used to. Maybe it's just a common feature of life in the 21st century?

This report closes with some brief snapshots of some excellent Canadian cases that you never heard of before.
 
25 years! That's an impressive body of data, and they've stuck with it longer than Project Blue Book. I really like that they stand firm on collecting and presenting the data without offering speculating on just what is being seen.

One thing that troubles me about the study (and UFO studies in general) is that we only get data from people who choose to report them. Apparently only about 1 in 10 people will actually report ther sightings, so we're relying on random data. I think it would be interesting to launch a network of volunteer skywatchers spread across a continent, each taking short shifts on an organized basis. They'd be bound to see something interesting, even if it was just common meterological events. I think something could belearned from running such an experiment, even if not much was seen.
 
Hi Sentry and Burnt State:

Over the 25 years of the Survey, we saw a lot of researchers come and go. The UFO field really likes to chew up and spit out people over time. People go all hard core but then burn out and disappear. This made collecting reports from across the country challenging at times, and has also likely skewed the data, at least in the early years. There were times when we didn't have a single active researcher in an entire province for people to report their sightings to. On the other hand, there would be times where you would have a province like BC where there would be multiple active researchers. This at least partially explains why BC has had so many sightings. With the internet, this effect maybe isn't as important now as it was back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when people had to actively search out an investigator to report a sighting to. Now they just go online.

The fact that it is easier now to report a sighting begs the question of whether or not the old one in ten rule still applies. From the handful of statistical surveys that were conducted here in Canada over the years, as well as in the U.S., and if I remember correctly the (admittedly unscientific) survey UFOROM did years ago do seem to suggest that at least in the past, the rule seemed to be roughly true. With the advent of the internet, and how easy it is to not only report a sighting but to do so relatively anonymously, could we not be seeing a much larger percentage of sightings actually being reported. From 154 in 1989 to almost 2,000 in 2012 is quite a change. I can't help but think some of that is due to a greater percentage of people reporting. But who knows without some new polls being done. Perhaps around Halloween we will see something new, since that seems to be the time when the pollsters like to trot out the UFO, ghost, and Sasquatch questions.

Geoff Dittman
 
I got a request from a reporter to send him a copy of the database for him to play around with. It is great to see a reporter take that much interest in the subject. Very rare.

Geoff
 
It's always the probing that gets the easy laughs. Ironically, there's no real conviction expressed in the report that it's all about aliens.
 
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