A question for UFO skeptics.

[Goggs Mackay]

Although scepticism is healthy in the field of ufology, it sometimes seems to me that skeptic/debunker types pick and choose their cases to debunk as carefully as some ufologists steer clear of certain cases.

I am interested to hear if there are any mundane explanations for cases like the Japan Airlines Alaska case or the English Channel case with Captain Ray Bowyer.

I have not heard any alternative explanations for these cases and I would like to hear from anyone who considers themselves as someone who thinks there is so far no evidence for non-human made UFOs.

 

[exo_doc]

Yeah, Tim Printy. Nice website, and has a few good things to say. But he's obviously like you Lance, a true non-beleiver.
I copied this excerpt from his website; "UFOlogy wants a special consideration from scientists to make up for their lackluster attempts to gather meaningful hard data. Despite numerous sightings, suspected crashed saucers, and alleged authentic photographs/videotape/film of true UFOs, UFOlogy has yet to provide anything convincing. It looks good in the media but mainstream science will always scoff at groups proposing theories that have no hard data or facts to support their conclusions."
No indication of anything close to an open mind. BUT, he is technically correct. After 60+ years and no evidence, no matter how compelling, has been looked at by mainstream scientists. He is definitly correct on that one.

 

[Randall]

Although scepticism is healthy in the field of ufology, it sometimes seems to me that skeptic/debunker types pick and choose their cases to debunk as carefully as some ufologists steer clear of certain cases.

I am interested to hear if there are any mundane explanations for cases like the Japan Airlines Alaska case or the English Channel case with Captain Ray Bowyer.

I have not heard any alternative explanations for these cases and I would like to hear from anyone who considers themselves as someone who thinks there is so far no evidence for non-human made UFOs.

Just head over to the JREF forum. They can come up with a mundane explanation for everything ... even if they need to change the story to do so. As for Tim's RB-47 writeup, I always give Tim credit where it's due, and I did respond to his writeup. It makes some valid points but falls short in other parts. What I like about Tim is that by enlarge, he makes a genuine and constructive effort, unlike others who claim to be skeptics, but rely mainly on offhanded dismissal and name calling.

 

[Muadib]

Anyone know what the current skeptical explanation for Rendlesham is? Are they still sticking to that lighthouse horseshit even after it was conclusively proven there's a large metal plate on the back of that lighthouse that's been there since the day it was built that would have prevented any light from it entering the forest or bouncing off the farmhouse or whatever that ridiculous theory was? Skepticism is essential but sometimes it's just as ridiculous as the stuff that comes out of true believers.

 

[Muadib]

Hi,

This page demonstrates evidence that what you say (often repeated by UFO enthusaiasts) about the lighthouse is simply not true.
Rendlesham UFO – Vince Thurkettle interviewed

Lance

Interesting site, I have alot of mistaken assumptions about the case apparently. Thanks. I always thought it was Halt who drew the craft and the symbols but it wasn't. Interesting. Still doesn't seem like the lighthouse matches up to me, the video looks nothing like a red object moving through the forest and blinking at you, but at least the guy does a good job on his site of presenting his case.

 

[Kieran]

The Halt tape is amazing, for me its prove positive this UFO incident happened. It wasn't a hoax how can anyone say it was after listening to that tape?

Do they sound like they are out of their minds to you?

Halt, describes beams coming down to the ground and objects were seen flying around up in the sky near the base. Lights with different colors were observed.

Lighthouse/a white light flashing doesn't match what they saw.

 

[Muadib]

The Halt tape is amazing, for me its prove positive this UFO incident happened. It wasn't a hoax how can anyone say it was after listening to that tape?

Do they sound like they are out of their minds to you?

Halt, describes beams coming down to the ground and objects were seen flying around up in the sky near the base. Lights with different colors were observed.

Lighthouse/a white light flashing doesn't match what they saw.

I have to agree, I lived very close to a lighthouse for 3 years in my younger days and despite being stoned out of my mind 90% of the time, I never mistook it for anything more than a lighthouse and I certainly haven't been trained to observe things in the sky like an Air Force Base Commander with his finger on the nuclear button would be. The light in that video looks utterly and completely terrestrial, there's nothing remarkable about it at all, whatsoever.

 

[Muadib]

The idea that a Base Commander trained by the Air Force who was familiar with what airplanes, helicopters and things of that sort looked like at night could mistake a pulsing white light from a lighthouse off in the distance, or on the horizon, for a glowing red object that hurt his eyes and moved through the trees then shot up into space just sounds ridiculous to me. Is this the first time the man ever saw a lighthouse at night in his entire life? I might be able to believe it if that was the case, otherwise, once you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all and none of them look remotely strange and I've never seen any that I would get excited about.

Of course he could be wrong about what he saw, I just think the idea that he mistook the lighthouse for some kind of UFO is totally ridiculous, just as ridiculous as Penniston and his alien spacecraft shooting binary numbers into his head. Ok, maybe not that ridiculous, but still pretty ridiculous.

 

[Randall]

I saw a documentary where the investigators went to the site, took measurements of the distances and angles and even produced a scale mockup. They studied it all carefully and the results were convincing that the lighthouse could not have been the same lights that were observed.

 

[exo_doc]

I'll bet you can't specifically point to this super compelling evidence.

Lance

Sure....this will get you started.

Ted Phillips – UFO physical trace cases

 

[Kieran]

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Thanks Kieran. I've never bought the lighthouse theory and in the above video, the man who first proposed the theory, Vince Thirkettle, reveals his thinking was only related to another site. The sight Charles Halt brings him to could not possibly give a view to the lighthouse as the trees are too dense. Even back 30 years ago the forest would have been too thick.

Some think that a 3am meteor was seen initially and this put the men in a mindset that had them seeing UFOs everywhere! None of this explains the reported craft, it's movements or it's colour, nor does it explain when the men saw 5 lights moving wildly in the sky ABOVE them.

Often those interested in Ufology stop at the first explanation that suits them and of course that can be just as misguided as debunkers settling on ANY theory that gives an 'out'. Of course the only correct way to proceed is to consider ALL available evidence. I am aware I myself am often guilty of stopping once I see 'what I want to see/hear' and I know that is wrong. This is the biggest reason however why the skeptical view of people such as Lance is indeed important. UFO proponents are often not going to research contradictory evidence themselves so it falls on skeptics to do so. It is my hope that after wading through witness reports and also skeptical explanations that some kind of 'truth' might be found.

It is often said that the same witnesses whose UFO testimony is ignored would be otherwise excellent witnesses in court. But if someone cannot tell the difference between a lightsource fixed in space (lighthouse) and moving coloured lights WITHIN the same forest you are standing, then well maybe if they cannot tell the difference then they could not even be called to give evidence about a minor car accident?

(Lance, sorry but gonna use 'you' as an example but only cos you are a well known skeptic) - What I want to say is say for instance someone hurt a member of your family or a friend and the only witness to the incident was someone like Charles Halt and only his evidence can put the guilty person away - would you agree with the defence asking to dismiss his evidence because it 'has been shown' he mistook a fixed lighthouse for a multi-coloured craft inside a forest? Is he an unreliable witness - a 'ufo believer', or only in matters to do with lights and objects in the sky?
Even if this is a bad example I'm sure everyone can see where I am going with this?


Anyway, I had a look at the JREF forum - looking for skeptical explanations for two cases that really interest me but I found nothing there.

Skeptics - is there a site that looks at individual cases? I have been looking on and off for a while for any mundane explanation to Japan Airlines and the English Channel incident with no luck.
I'm starting to think that debunkers only pick cases to debunk when they feel they have good contradictory evidence/ideas. Perhaps nothing wrong with that but still, for those people who resolutely think there are no non-human craft flying in Earth's skies, I wish to hear their explanation for these two cases. Multiple witnesses (pilots at the time flying - which is important because to see something up at your height that maybe moves relative to you, is very different than just seeing lights from the ground. Passengers also saw the English case as well as another pilot in a different plane. There was more than one radar picking up the object(s) in the Japan Airlines case, one being a military radar.
In both cases, objects reported were of such a size they simply could not have been a human aircraft, weather balloons, just lights, or pretty much anything normally mistaken for a 'ufo'.

Is there any skeptic in this forum willing to take at the very least, an initial crack at debunking one of these cases? Not expecting the full works but maybe just a few off-hand ideas. If there is explanations for them I'd genuinely like to hear them.

Goggs

 

[Goggs Mackay]

The other day I received an email back from Stanton Friedman - I had asked him about why I thought the Mogul explanation could not explain the debris field at Roswell. I don't want to really get into Roswell, in fact, I am very unsure about that whole case.

What I am sure about though is that the MOGUL explanation is pants. In his reply, Stanton summarised the make-up of these balloon trains, and even if such a balloon train fell from a very great height, it just could not attain any kind of vertical velocity that would result in the reported debris. Not a chance in hell. In fact, I would bet that such a balloon would come down almost intact - not blown to smithereens over a quite wide and very long debris field.

It would be very easy to recreate a 'mogul crash' to see if there is even a chance of it coming apart into hundreds or thousands of pieces surely?

I am NOT a Roswell proponent, I am undecided. I am most certainly AGAINST the mogul explanation however.

 

[Randall]

The other day I received an email back from Stanton Friedman - I had asked him about why I thought the Mogul explanation could not explain the debris field at Roswell. I don't want to really get into Roswell, in fact, I am very unsure about that whole case.

What I am sure about though is that the MOGUL explanation is pants. In his reply, Stanton summarised the make-up of these balloon trains, and even if such a balloon train fell from a very great height, it just could not attain any kind of vertical velocity that would result in the reported debris. Not a chance in hell. In fact, I would bet that such a balloon would come down almost intact - not blown to smithereens over a quite wide and very long debris field.

It would be very easy to recreate a 'mogul crash' to see if there is even a chance of it coming apart into hundreds or thousands of pieces surely?

I am NOT a Roswell proponent, I am undecided. I am most certainly AGAINST the mogul explanation however.

On this case, one report I read indicated that the winds were not blowing in the direction ( at any altitude ) of the crash site from where the Mogul balloons were supposedly launched. So that ( if true ) pretty much rules out a Mogul balloon right then and there. Buy hey, there's one for the "Fact or Faked" paranormal files people. Have them test the theory and I suspect Stan's theory would be proven correct.

 

[pixelsmith]

once you see a UFO hovering, blinking, turning, moving around slowly, leaving the area, coming back, then being chased by a fighter jet, get told by local airport tower and FAA that nothing is in the area.... only then will someone know these things exist. i have no idea what was piloting what i saw nor what it was, but i did see it, and i did see it being chased out of sight by a small jet at a low altitude.

 

[Randall]

Jesus, this is why I have to try to not even participate in these discussions. The pronouncements are so uninformed that it takes forever just to correct the mistakes.

Even the most rabid anti-Mogul Roswell proponent, David Rudiak, using the known wind data still gets Mogul 4 as close as 30 miles from the ranch. And we are talking about the vagaries of the frigging wind, so this is a rather small difference and shows that the flight could well have made it to the Foster ranch.

Estimating this stuff is not an exact science, as it pains me have to point out what should be obvious.

The other stuff about the debris,etc is just as uninformed but I don't have time to correct that at the moment.

Lance

Oh Lance ... Lance ... Lance: Relax. After I read about the winds not blowing in the direction of the crash site, I went on and looked up weather data on the area using basic Google searches. I could only get some general prevailing wind data, and it confirmed that from the Mogul launch site, the wind would not normally carry a balloon to the crash site. But who knows with absolute certainty that it could never happen? Nobody. So save your slights for the JREF. I don't see anyone here calling you "uninformed" because you post up some conflicting information.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Lance - I dont know about the wind re: Roswell. The following is a cut n paste of an email from Stanton Friedman:

"Mogul balloon trains consisted of 20-24 standard neoprene weather balloons at 20 foot intervals separated by string with a few smal devices also tied in. In my first conversation with Jesse Marcel he said he thought there had to have been an above ground explosion. There was no crater which there would have been if an airplane had gone in. Secondly the wreckage was spead out over a huge area.. no balloon wreckage was found and no string and Cavitt lied about a small pile of wreckage covering an area of 20 feet square. If that was all there had been ,Brazel would have taken it in to town and there would have been no need for Marcel and Cavitt to follow the rancher out to his place. The rancher had recovered balloons.They were a danger to sheep and cattle and so were gathered and stored.
Dr. David Rudiak has written about Moguls.They don't fit at all."
I am not a 'fan' or the Roswell case, mainly cos it is so old we will never learn anything new now short of official papers which may or may not exist.
However, the reported debris did not resemble a wrecked Mogul balloon train but more importantly, a balloon obviously is designed to be as light as possible - there isn't much in a Mogul train to create a huge wreckage area.
It would not matter if a Mogul balloon was dropped from 200ft or 20,000ft - because the balloons and string etc are not going to fall so fast that they would be obliterated on impact. How was the mogul balloon supposed to achieved such a speed (vertical and horizontal)? If we were to recreate a mogul balloon and drop it out of an aircraft I can pretty much guarantee it would not create a wide and very long field of debris. I think it would be near enough intact because the drag alone would limit it's terminal velocity to such an extent that it could never attain a high enough speed to smash into pieces. Try 'smashing' a balloon and string!
Anyway, forget Roswell - I am interested to hear a mundane explanation for the Japan Airlines or the English channel case with Capt. Bowyer. Multiple witnesses, some pilots, multiple radar hits and ATC being informed as the events unfolded.
Capt. Bowyer admitted it was hard to judge the size of the objects he and his passengers saw, though that was only in as much as he thinks he underestimated the size. 'A mile across' was touted but regardless, it was mighty big in both cases - with several pilots watching and reporting as it happened.
I haven't heard any alternative explanations for those cases, good or bad. I go crazy thinking about cases like these and I am more than willing to hear any explanations.

 

[trainedobserver]

I have never had an encounter myself that I can remember, however I have spoken to a few people personally over the years who convinced me that they had observed something outside of common experience which for all practical purposes fit the criteria for UFOs and paranormal interaction. In full disclosure, I have to say that I also bought an MGB and attempted to drive it daily as though it were a real car while maintaining it myself.

 

[Randall]

Observe the back pedaling now:

Would you please share this data?

Thanks,

Lance

This is an informal forum and all I've done is post a casual comment about some information I ran across. So don't go getting all hard core and demanding scientific reports. But just for your reference here is just one example of some information I ran across located at this URL:

Section Quote ( Bolded parts mine ):

"30 out of 32 balloons that passed out of the state went east or south. Thus the Foster Ranch was well off the beaten path. Prevailing winds took the flights in a different direction about 95% of the time and none are documented as crashing near there.

Winds for June 4, 1947, were also wrong to take a balloon from Alamogordo to the debris field site. Nonetheless the Air Force and Mogul engineer Charles Moore tried to make it case that a totally undocumented balloon launch on this date was the Roswell crash object. Moore also created a hoaxed trajectory to take this imaginary balloon "exactly" to the Foster Ranch crash site, claiming the winds were "exactly right."

In reality, the winds were too strong and too easterly. See above links dissecting Moore's hoaxed Mogul trajectory and redone calculations showing where any balloon, if it existed, would likely have ended up given the actual winds."

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Lance, cheers for the answer on mogul. There is still something decidedly fishy about Roswell although of course, that can be explained by the Air Force keeping normal military secrets.

I still don't get how the RAAF did not realise it was a mogul balloon. At the very least it is weird that they initially gave a press release about a saucer?

The full truth of Roswell will never be known and that is the only sure thing about the case!