Is it possible to have Jacques Vallee back on the Paracast?

[Constance]

What have scientists found regarding Hessdalen & do these correlate to other high activity areas like Col de Vonce.

Taking pictures that show little or no detail, is there a way to combat this? He has commented that he feels the phenomena cloaks itself in a way that makes imaging of the object very difficult.

What is the role of consciousness on a sighting? Is it possible some sightings are witnessed through the 'minds eye' when our brain is perhaps in an altered state. . . . I don't think this initial study will be able to provide all the answers, I think Vallee accepts that. But what excites me is ANY ANSWERS!!

I agree that the study Vallee seems to be describing can't "provide all the answers" since it seeks to include soft data as well as hard data. To the extent that what Vallee proposes re soft data is what Burnt State and others want to pursue, the inquiry exceeds the limitations of our present understanding of human consciousness (i.e., the question concerning how much of what we perceive is entangled with subconscious ideation, which includes that which we somehow carry along in unconscious memory of human experience maintained in the collective unconscious). How much of that can be touched in the effort to 'categorize' ufo witnesses? How deep can interviews undertaken to 'categorize' these individuals go? How comprehensive can they be? And how will the interviewer’s presuppositions color his or her evaluation and interpretation of the validity and significance of what the witness describes of his or her experience? Ultimately, given all of the above, what can be established from this very soft data? I agree that such inquiry should begin, but how long it will take (and how extensive and coherent it can become) will depend on many factors.

Turning to the 'hard data', we also confront ambiguity involved in the limitations of our current understanding of the physics of the universe and of 'physicality' itself. The quantum substrate of physical forces and matter constituting the universe as we perceive it at this point in its evolution is also 'physical', but how it produces the macrophysical properties that constitute for us the sensible world we live in (whose properties we have so far measured in terms of classical physics) is another question for which we have as yet no answer(s). In recent years some physical experimentation and research has shown us that quantum processes persist and are measureable in some macrophysical 'objects' -- in plants, for example, where quantum processes are discernible in photosynthesis. I think what we have to recognize is that our 'hard data' are only somewhat harder than the 'soft data' we bring to the interpretation of our phenomenal experience in the environing world, within which we are limited by the always perspectival nature of consciousness. So what is 'real' in the sense of 'what-is' -- what we can determine to actually exist alongside us and around us in the world in which we find ourselves existing -- is yet an unanswered question for our species.

Naturally, in this situation, those scientists and other researchers who have attempted to understand the 'reality' behind ufo phenomena have had to rely on both human perception [itself a foundational capacity of consciousness and mind that is not yet fully understood] and the physical tools and measurements developed in classical physics, which, as we recognize, do not provide us with access to the whole of the physical world that has evolved out of the quantum substrate.

In my own take on all of the above, we are indebted to the various researchers who have performed the extensive gathering of phenomenological data in the many databases that Vallee recognizes and intends to integrate and expand in his proposed project, according to the paper he presented at the conference in France last year. We are further indebted to the studies of these phenomena undertaken by physicists such as Paul Hill within our present understanding of 'physics'. We have much more to learn regarding both hard and soft data involved in the effort to find out what ufo phenomena represent, and it is too soon to adopt any presuppositional thinking including the extraterrestrial hypothesis, which is, as @PCarr, says, only a conjecture at this point.

I agree, as I said above, with Mike Thoth's desire for any answers that can come out of ufo/UAP research. The research done at Hessdalen and similar locations on earth in particular shows promise in increasing understanding of the nature of phenomena similar to aerial UAP encountered in the atmosphere and in space. Massimo Teodorani, an Italian physicist involved for years in the work at Hessdalen, has published a number of papers based in his research there, at least one of which includes theoretical speculations on quantum processes likely in his view to be involved in what shows up for us in UAP. I'll look for the link to that paper for anyone who might want to read it.

One of these might be that paper I recall reading some years ago:

http://scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_18_2_teodorani.pdf

http://www.angelfire.com/va/CIOVI/Physics_from_UFO_Data.htm

This search page of Teodorani’s papers provides links to much more of his practical and theoretical work concerning UAP and other phenomena:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Massimo+Teodorani&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C10&as_sdtp=

 

[Constance]

Here is NARCAP's extensive report on 'Project Sphere':

Spherical UAP and Aviation Safety:
A Critical Review

Dr. Richard F. Haines, Editor-in-Chief

with contributions from;
Kiyoshi Amamiya, Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, Rogerio Chola,
Kim Efishoff, John English, Carlos Guzman, Dan Lee, Larry Lemke,
Terry Osborn, Ted Roe, Alfonso Salazar, Martin Shough,
Richard Spalding, Massimo Teodorani, Dominique Weinstein

National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena

April 2010
Copyright All Rights Reserved


Table of Contents

Preface

1. Introduction Are Spherical UAP a Threat to Aviation Safety? (R. Haines)

2. Physical Characteristics and Hypotheses

2.1 Aerodynamics of Spheres (Larry Lemke)

2.2 An Electrical Hypothesis Regarding Spherical Luminosities at Aircraft Altitudes (Richard
Spalding)

2.3 Radar Detection of Spherical Targets (Martin Shough)

2.4 Spherical UAP: Scientific Observations and Physical
Hypotheses, Danger Evaluation for Aviation and Future
Observational Plans (Massimo Teodorani)

2.5 Geometric Relations of a Sphere (Richard Haines)

3. The Evidence

3.1 Pilot Sighting Reports

3.1.1 Brazil - Rogerio Chola NARCAP Research Associate

3.1.2 Canada-Donald Ledger, NARCAP Research Associate

3.1.3 France - Dominique F. Weinstein, NARCAP Int. Technical Specialist - France

3.1.4 Japan- Kiyoshi Amamiya, NARCAP Research Associate

3.1.5 Mexico - Carlos Guzman and Alphonse Salazar

3.1.6 USA - Ted Roe, NARCAP Executive Director

3.2 Aerial Photos

3.2.1 Spheres in Airborne UAP Imagery ~ Revised Oct. 2011
Vincent Juan Ballester Olmos & Martin. Shough

3.2.2 Additional In-Flight Photographs and Reports (R. Haines)

3.3 Ground Witness Reports

3.3.1 Analysis of Ground Witness Sightings: Spherical UAP Approaching
Airplanes and Airplanes Approaching Spherical UAP - Dan Lee, NARCAP Research Associate

3.3.2 Additional Ground Witness Photographs and Reports (R. Haines)

4. Possible Explanations for Sighting Reports

4.1 Weather and Other Types of Balloons (Kim Efishoff)

4.2 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Other Airborne Objects
(Terry Osborn and R. Haines)

4.3 Ball Lightning and Earthlights (R. Haines)

5. Miscellaneous Subjects

5.1 Spheres: A View from Above? (John English)

5.2 Foundations for a Taxonomy of UAP Shapes (R. Haines)

6. Some Challenging Questions, Conclusions, and Recommendations


http://www.narcap.org/Projsphere/narcap_ProjSph_2.4_MaxTeo.pdf

 

[Constance]

Reported two years ago, an encounter with a significant UAP shortly after take-off from LAX in 1996.

http://www.narcap.org/files/narcap_UC_MainText_9-27-96.pdf

 

[Burnt State]

Reported two years ago, an encounter with a significant UAP shortly after take-off from LAX in 1996.

http://www.narcap.org/files/narcap_UC_MainText_9-27-96.pdf

Thanks, Constance, that was just simply a stunning sighting. When asked about the rate of departure the co-pilot's response brought back strong memories. That incredible sudden shift of speed is just simply stunning and is the kind of thing you see that does seem to call out for ExtraTerrestrial visitors. Or where else they be going, out for take-out? It's very interesting commentary from an expert witness:

“I don't know that "infinite" acceleration would be the right word as that would seem to imply that it never stopped increasing its speed and that is not something I could attest to. A better word might be "instant" acceleration. I can remember that I recognized the instant it first began to move but that period was in my opinion so short a time that it was probably about as short a time as my eyes and brain are capable of processing. The speed ramped up instantly and as I said earlier it really was like a bullet leaving a gun. Even though a bullet is thrust by what is an explosion and obviously must still have some period of acceleration, that acceleration happens in an extremely short period of time. It was like that, an unbelievable short period of time. If they are not somehow bending space/time by use of some technology that at this point is way beyond our understanding of physics the G's experienced by this type of vehicle, whether manned or not, would be in the thousands! As I said it was an astonishing thing to witness.”

Two other things: there is this incredible physical display, something that is obviously something that, like other pilot sightings, was just an awesome sight that they've never seen before. Now given how sight and sound works, where we record only a fraction of vision, and the brain has to fill in the missing information, and as we are associative creatures by nature, must fill in the gaps in what the eyes experience as fluid motion but is recording at a finite frame rate of a bunch of still images one has to wonder just what kind of associations the mind must be making? It makes those decisions rather quickly in such moments.

I have to also imagine that the survival instinct is in high gear and is busy sending all sorts of interesting chemistry through our mental CPU, affecting its processing and desperately trying to identify just what the hell it is and wat to do about it. The co-pilot has decided alien advanced technology, but really, it could be a pair of plasmoidal objects creating some pretty weird impressions and overall EMF effects on those watching who, like people gathered round the Ouija board, are co-creating a narrative that makes sense to them.

If they were all Christian it could have been reported as Jesus and His Dad doing their thing, looking to be prayed to perhaps. How are we really to know anything at all about this object outside of the associations we bring to it both as witness and then we receivers of the tale? We read into the story according to our own associations and the way the witness frames the story for those who want to hear.

Moses said the burning bush talked to him and Halley's Comet was a portent of absolute doom, disaster and gloom. What must strange moving bright lights communicate to people up in a cockpit - that as to be an entirely intense experience, an alteration of their reality in many ways. Its source remains plural, or certainly open to interpretation.

 

[mike_thoth]

Some great articles there & I have been a reader of the Journal for Scientific Exploration for several years, a good resource for seeing the thoughts of real researchers.

As with the complexity of the subject, I often come back to the fact that to get the real solid answers, we are going to have to get orthodox science involved at a global level, utilising technology & facilities the world over. But perhaps the start is this 'secret college' approach to get hard solid scientific data, identify patterns & replicate your results.

It will be when science in general can perhaps test the data themselves they may slowly start to accept what most people already accept. It sometimes annoys me to know how slowly offical science moves, they have much to answer for in my opinion, including the cults that have appeared over the years.

Mike

 

[Burnt State]

Some great articles there & I have been a reader of the Journal for Scientific Exploration for several years, a good resource for seeing the thoughts of real researchers.

As with the complexity of the subject, I often come back to the fact that to get the real solid answers, we are going to have to get orthodox science involved at a global level, utilising technology & facilities the world over. But perhaps the start is this 'secret college' approach to get hard solid scientific data, identify patterns & replicate your results.

It will be when science in general can perhaps test the data themselves they may slowly start to accept what most people already accept. It sometimes annoys me to know how slowly offical science moves, they have much to answer for in my opinion, including the cults that have appeared over the years.

Mike

Unlike other scientific investigations Ufology has many strikes against it. There is the social stigma that comes with a degree of dismissiveness making it very hard to mainstream outside of the cultural 'kooky' belief system that has been assigned to it. But it also is not something directly impacting us in any significant way. Unlike ideas about climate, pollution, viruses, energy etc. which prompt science to get in gear in a more rigorous and defined manner, the UFO has been mostly about a sociological impact on our civilization. That has been further reduced to entertainment and speculation. Is there even a need for science to get on board given those conditions?

 

[Constance]

Unlike ideas about climate, pollution, viruses, energy etc. which prompt science to get in gear in a more rigorous and defined manner, the UFO has been mostly about a sociological impact on our civilization. That has been further reduced to entertainment and speculation. Is there even a need for science to get on board given those conditions?

"the UFO has been mostly about a sociological impact on our civilization. That has been further reduced to entertainment . . . ."

I think that can be said, and thought, only from the perspective of 'consensual reality' as shaped politically and economically in our time by our era's PTB -- including in our time the military industrial complex, i.e., the most powerful corporations in their alliances and common goals extending to the mass media controlled by the same interests. The mass media by and large manipulate the general public in terms of what we think, what we value, and what we do with our time and resources, with our lives. By an unholy synchronicity, the computer revolution, at the core of a great deal of our contemporary technological 'progress', has persuaded many people (especially the young who have grown up within it) that 'virtual reality' is as good as, even better than, the actual reality within which our species has previously lived. AI enthusiasts seek to persuade us that we should be ready and even eager to slip out of our organic lives, downloading our 'consciousnesses' into computationally machined constructs that will then take over the management of our world. As if biologically evolved consciousnesses could be downloaded to an electronically supported computational substrate. There are by now a number of both educated and uneducated young people (and some strange and rather desperate older ones) who press to see this 'transformation' take place, not just for themselves but for the global earthworld as most of us still know it and live it.

 

[Constance]

Now given how sight and sound works, where we record only a fraction of vision, and the brain has to fill in the missing information, and as we are associative creatures by nature, must fill in the gaps in what the eyes experience as fluid motion but is recording at a finite frame rate of a bunch of still images one has to wonder just what kind of associations the mind must be making? It makes those decisions rather quickly in such moments.

It's not in fact the case that "we record only a fraction of vision." We record, and store in memory, not just the portion of the visual field available to us in our focus on one 'object' that calls our attention to it {always in the figure-ground relationship of what we see) but also sensually experience (not just visually but audially and with our senses of smell and touch) what we encounter as a whole in waking experience. Visual and our other means of perception involve awareness of the margins of our attentional focus, and this general awareness of what surrounds us accompanies us continually in our experience walking or flying about in the actual world. This is how we understand in the first place that our individual awareness bodies forth for our consciousnesses and minds the sense of our always=located situation in a real world extending to, and beyond, the horizons of what we can apprehend , a situation at any and every moment taken up from our available perspective(s) on that which we encounter. What I'm saying, offering, is the understanding of embodied consciousness and mind developed in phenomenological philosophy and neurophenomenology. Links to the philosophical, biological, and neuroscientific grounds of experience developed in phenomenology can be found in the 'Consciousness and the Paranormal' thread in this forum.

Re this:

"the gaps in what the eyes experience as fluid motion but is recording at a finite frame rate of a bunch of still images one has to wonder just what kind of associations the mind must be making? It makes those decisions rather quickly in such moments,"

Indeed, consciousness involves 'associations' with stored memory (both personal subconscious memory and memory immemorially recorded in the collective unconsciousness) as well as associations of what we see in the moment with what we know others in our own time have claimed to see and described. All brain scientists recognize that if we want to think of the brain as a computer, it is beyond question the most powerful computer in existence and perhaps might not ever be duplicable in a machined structure. The 'speed of thought' is beyond light speed in my opinion. What we can think in the moment of sighting a major anomaly such as the pilots in that NARCAP case encountered, is a minor and partial expression of what we can and do think subsequently, working over the physical data and details obtained by instruments such as radar and the moment-by-moment experience we've undergone and remember from that experience itself. As a species we are still, after 65 years of the modern ufo phenomenon, collecting and comparing data gathered by witnesses to ufo sightings (often a group of witnesses at several locations describing and collating their perspectives on a single sighting or event). and we are also incorporating data from the past in attempting to understand what humans in other eras have reported of phenomena they've witnessed in the sky. We're still only on the way to postulating hypotheses about that which is at the center of -- that which appears to be the cause of -- these kinds of experiences. But if we are to understand the nature of this phenomenon, we must also understand the nature of the beings that have experienced and reported it. And that requires that we understand the nature of consciousness and mind -- an inquiry still in its early stages.

 

[Constance]

I have to also imagine that the survival instinct is in high gear and is busy sending all sorts of interesting chemistry through our mental CPU, affecting its processing and desperately trying to identify just what the hell it is and wat to do about it. The co-pilot has decided alien advanced technology, but really, it could be a pair of plasmoidal objects creating some pretty weird impressions and overall EMF effects on those watching who, like people gathered round the Ouija board, are co-creating a narrative that makes sense to them.

If they were all Christian it could have been reported as Jesus and His Dad doing their thing, looking to be prayed to perhaps. How are we really to know anything at all about this object outside of the associations we bring to it both as witness and then we receivers of the tale? We read into the story according to our own associations and the way the witness frames the story for those who want to hear.

I don't think we're so lost as all that in making sense of the world we live in. If we could never sort out the parameters of actual things encountered in our vicinity from all of the perhaps-imagined things experienced and reported by our species in recorded history, I can't see how we could have survived our history. In short, if we were not in fact quite good at distinguishing the real from the unreal, I doubt our species would have survived to this point in our temporal existence on the planet.

 

[Burnt State]

I don't think we're so lost as all that in making sense of the world we live in. If we could never sort out the parameters of actual things encountered in our vicinity from all of the perhaps-imagined things experienced and reported by our species in recorded history, I can't see how we could have survived our history. In short, if we were not in fact quite good at distinguishing the real from the unreal, I doubt our species would have survived to this point in our temporal existence on the planet.

I'm not suggesting that we are traveling blind for we are exceptional predators and strategists, especially when working with the familiar. But when we encounter the unfamiliar situtaion or new stimulus I would suggest that all bets are off. We might be able to fight our way out of a sudden fight with a bear or we might be at a total loss and be dead in seconds. It's not a matter of it being real or not. But in the paranormal & ufo cases where there is a real stimulus, I'm suggesting that our interpretations may be way off target and much more dependent on who the experiencer of that event is as no two brains are alike, but may have similar cultural training. See my post below on brain speed.

 

[Burnt State]

In this article brain speed is considered to be faster than a bird but slower than sound. A tenth of a second though, can produce results....

"High speed is also crucial to the way we perceive the world. Three or four times a second, our eyes dart in a new direction, allowing us only about a tenth of a second to make sense of what we see in each spot. And we make remarkably good use of that time. Recently, neuroscientists Michelle Greene and Aude Oliva of MIT ran an experiment in which they briefly showed people a series of landscapes and then asked questions about the scenes. For example, was there a forest in the picture? Did it look like a hot place? People did well on these tests even when they glimpsed each of the pictures for less than one tenth of a second."

Different colors here are mapping different speeds as the brain throttles the throughput depending on the task.

"Sometimes our brains actually need to slow down, however. In the retina, the neurons near the center are much shorter than the ones at the edges, and yet somehow all of the signals manage to reach the next layer of neurons in the retina at the same time. One way the body may do this is by holding back certain nerve signals—for instance, by putting less myelin on the relevant axons. Another possible way to make nerve impulses travel more slowly involves growing longer axons, so that signals have a greater distance to travel.

In fact, reducing the speed of thought in just the right places is crucial to the fundamentals of consciousness. Our moment-to-moment awareness of our inner selves and the outer world depends on the thalamus, a region near the core of the brain, which sends out pacemaker-like signals to the brain’s outer layers. Even though some of the axons reaching out from the thalamus are short and some are long, their signals arrive throughout all parts of the brain at the same time—a good thing, since otherwise we would not be able to think straight."
The Brain: What Is the Speed of Thought? | DiscoverMagazine.com

But this character's response is a little more illuminating and specific in terms of what's the nature of a calculation in terms of conscious thought - about two thoughts per second:

How fast is the brain?

But what does repeat over and over again in the brain studies I looked at is that genetics plays a major role in speed and so does training, as we can exercise our brain to work very fast, and I would think people like pilots do work very fast. However, in that same article posted above that responds to Vallée ideas for data strategies in the bibliography is an article that examines the failures of pilot sightings and their own miscalculations and misidentifications of mundane re-entries appearing to to them as objects under intelligent control. It seems that when we see something very different, depending on the associations of that brain, a specific narrative might get selected too quickly and then form sensory impressions that are not accurate. Again this does not mean we should throw out all pilot sightings of UAP's but that the filtering methods used by researcher may need to be fine tuned more rigorously. Pilots are certainly people most likely to encounter strange visuals in their field and even some are quite experienced with seeing re-entries up above, but that doesn't stop them from misidentifying meteorites skipping across the atmosphere as air transport carriers or as alien craft.

Case Studies In Pilot Misperceptions Of "UFOs"

 

[Burnt State]

And from that same bibliography comes this really excellent JSE article that is a revisit of the Wilamette Oregon UFO photo from 1966. Is is just an exceptional article as it explores how not only are things not as they seem, but even the story itself as reported by the witness was not as it seemed at all. But the original photo certainly produced the impression of a UFO saucer rising above a forest at a speed that original science explained in a very unique way, giving incredible properties to an incredible object with a vapor trail underneath. This is a low res version - see the article for better photography.

It was a compelling photo with a lot of history. Rigorous science though provided multiple inversions to the original tale and found a mundane solution. What's also quite interesting here is how memory and its faulty methodologies creates its own narratives - or essentially we will remember what we want to remember or perhaps innocently confabulate memory, as it's just what the brain does - unlike a CPU it processes original data in a way that may embellish or just be entirely inaccurate. But of more interest to the UFO researcher and afficianado is how science can also create its own faulty narratives to support non-existent claims. This brings back shades of the BLT crop circle team whose science around the crop nodes supposedly proved something extraordinary was at work. We write the story we want with the tools we have sometimes methinks.

http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_07_2_weider.pdf

I think most people will be shocked to see the journey of this photo's identity as the original source is just entirely unpredictable.

 

[Constance]

In this article brain speed is considered to be faster than a bird but slower than sound. A tenth of a second though, can produce results....

"High speed is also crucial to the way we perceive the world. Three or four times a second, our eyes dart in a new direction, allowing us only about a tenth of a second to make sense of what we see in each spot. And we make remarkably good use of that time. Recently, neuroscientists Michelle Greene and Aude Oliva of MIT ran an experiment in which they briefly showed people a series of landscapes and then asked questions about the scenes. For example, was there a forest in the picture? Did it look like a hot place? People did well on these tests even when they glimpsed each of the pictures for less than one tenth of a second."

Different colors here are mapping different speeds as the brain throttles the throughput depending on the task.

"Sometimes our brains actually need to slow down, however. In the retina, the neurons near the center are much shorter than the ones at the edges, and yet somehow all of the signals manage to reach the next layer of neurons in the retina at the same time. One way the body may do this is by holding back certain nerve signals—for instance, by putting less myelin on the relevant axons. Another possible way to make nerve impulses travel more slowly involves growing longer axons, so that signals have a greater distance to travel.

In fact, reducing the speed of thought in just the right places is crucial to the fundamentals of consciousness. Our moment-to-moment awareness of our inner selves and the outer world depends on the thalamus, a region near the core of the brain, which sends out pacemaker-like signals to the brain’s outer layers. Even though some of the axons reaching out from the thalamus are short and some are long, their signals arrive throughout all parts of the brain at the same time—a good thing, since otherwise we would not be able to think straight."
The Brain: What Is the Speed of Thought? | DiscoverMagazine.com

But this character's response is a little more illuminating and specific in terms of what's the nature of a calculation in terms of conscious thought - about two thoughts per second:

How fast is the brain?

But what does repeat over and over again in the brain studies I looked at is that genetics plays a major role in speed and so does training, as we can exercise our brain to work very fast, and I would think people like pilots do work very fast. However, in that same article posted above that responds to Vallée ideas for data strategies in the bibliography is an article that examines the failures of pilot sightings and their own miscalculations and misidentifications of mundane re-entries appearing to to them as objects under intelligent control. It seems that when we see something very different, depending on the associations of that brain, a specific narrative might get selected too quickly and then form sensory impressions that are not accurate. Again this does not mean we should throw out all pilot sightings of UAP's but that the filtering methods used by researcher may need to be fine tuned more rigorously. Pilots are certainly people most likely to encounter strange visuals in their field and even some are quite experienced with seeing re-entries up above, but that doesn't stop them from misidentifying meteorites skipping across the atmosphere as air transport carriers or as alien craft.

Case Studies In Pilot Misperceptions Of "UFOs"

Oberg is your friend in the effort you make to place the usefulness of human perception in radical doubt. Re the different papers by neuroscientists that one can find concerning investigations of perception and 'the speed of thought', it's all a study in progress. One can pick and choose the hypotheses and beliefs that come through even in some of those papers, and especially in the popular science magazines that report often breathless and overinterpreted press releases announcing 'discoveries' by neuroscientific research scientists (largely with the goal of luring investors to those scientists and their labs).

And concerning the errors made by scientists, who after all are not gods and work within paradigms that limit thought, you should pick a better example than the one you site here:

This brings back shades of the BLT crop circle team whose science around the crop nodes supposedly proved something extraordinary was at work. We write the story we want with the tools we have sometimes methinks.

How much have you read of Levengood's research and that of other researchers and labs involved in studying crop circle plants and soils? And indeed of Levengood's capabilities as a biophysicist demonstrated in the fifty papers he published in international journals before he ever took an interest in crop circle anomalies? I'm not going to write a paper about it now since most of what I read in doing such research is currently locked away in the closed archives of the now permanently closed Crop Circle Connector forum (may it rest in peace). I'm just saying that there's more in Levengood et al's research than you will find undigested, distorted, and propagated by the debunking forces in England.

 

[Constance]

I think most people will be shocked to see the journey of this photo's identity as the original source is just entirely unpredictable.

Hmm, given the representation of the photo in your post, I'm surprised that anyone took this photo seriously. Looks like what we would today call amateur CGI.

 

[Constance]

I'm not suggesting that we are traveling blind for we are exceptional predators and strategists, especially when working with the familiar. But when we encounter the unfamiliar situtaion or new stimulus I would suggest that all bets are off.

I wouldn't, on the basis that every animal in the long evolution of species on our planet has likely come across something 'unfamiliar' in its exploration of its environment and learned from its encounter how to cope with it or flee from it. Coping and purposeful response is the general pattern of all species that have survived. So far, we are an example.

We might be able to fight our way out of a sudden fight with a bear or we might be at a total loss and be dead in seconds. It's not a matter of it being real or not. But in the paranormal & ufo cases where there is a real stimulus, I'm suggesting that our interpretations may be way off target and much more dependent on who the experiencer of that event is as no two brains are alike, but may have similar cultural training. See my post below on brain speed.

I think our brains, and our consciousnesses and minds, are more alike than they are different. How else would universal archetypes have developed in tribes and cultures around the planet? Granted that some individuals demonstrably have special perceptual aptitudes (shamans, psychics, mediums, remote viewers, mystics, and even practiced meditators). Granted also that, depending on ideations and ideas developed in a culture such as ours on this continent and others on other continents, individuals will absorb to varying degrees a range of representations of and appetites for 'anomalous' phenomena, which some will believe to be present in the actual world they exist in day to day and others will entertain as existing in another 'reality' interacting with our own. I do not think that most witnesses to ufo phenomena in the second half of the 20th century were subject to confabulation of what they perceived or in most cases permanently deranged as a result of their experiences. As is clear from the vast majority of sighting reports, witnesses to these phenomena at first attempt to account for them in prosaic ways, in terms of what they might expect to see in the air and sky. Thus the first speculation of most witnesses of the extraordinary wave of sightings in the US in the summer of 1947 was that they were seeing new aerial technologies/craft produced in the US or in Russia. Thus, seeing the enormous brilliant light encased in glass apparently just off the starboard wing of a Delta airliner over Lake Michicgan in November of 1989 or 1990, I was at first amazed and shortly concluded that it must have been a lighthouse light just off the western shore of the lake north of Chicago. If my three-year-old daughter had not called my attention to it, I would probably not have seen it since I was reading to her from a Beatrix Potter storybook. But I did see it and I can remember its size, its edges and contours, and its brilliance vividly today. It was large enough and/or close enough to fill the cabin window through which we viewed it. As I reflect on that sighting today I realize that this light must have been poised off the starboard wingtip, or tracking the plane, for more than second or a tenth of a second, for enough time passed for my daughter to poke me in the arm and point out the window so that I looked out and saw the light as we passed it. Definitely a UAP of some sort, and it did not radically disturb me or provoke visions of paranormal entities stored somewhere in my subconscious mind.

 

[Burnt State]

Hmm, given the representation of the photo in your post, I'm surprised that anyone took this photo seriously. Looks like what we would today call amateur CGI.

And here I thought we were making headway. Well let me put it like this.

As I said it's low res. this is also a cropped enlargement. It has it's place in the annals of Ufology for the controversy it stirred. Hynek described it as one of the most puzzling photos on record so I'm not sure it's something to wink at per se. If anything, it is highly instructive of, as you say, how science can get things wrong. And the person that you cite as having a critucal response to Vallée is in fact citing Oberg. To be selective of our science and who is doing it invites bias IMHO. Either people are being true to science or they are not. Take Levengood for example, caught validating false circles or the 'T' in that team, as Nancy Talbot, once taken apart on The Paracast. Do we need to revisit her protege, that heir to Billy Meier, and his photographic sleight of hand?

If we are going to call for science to be applied then I think the Oregon photo is quite instructive in how science can work very diligently to prove how a photo of a UFO can produce an oscillating image demonstrating some kind of strange technology which then is combined with a witness report who rather innocently, scientific expert that he as a physicist, has not only forgotten the circumstance of his photo but confabulated its circumstance and created an invented narratve of a craft rising in pulses above the forest. It goes to show how faulty human beings can be, and not out of malice nor intentionality, but just by nature.
Nancy Talbott, Robbert van den Broeke, April 29, 2012 | The Paracast Community Forums
Once we get a story in our ear, like crop circles got into the BLT team, and wormed its way into their minds, then anything is possible, and we will seek the patterns we desire, use our scientific knowledge to confirm our beliefs in alens making crop circles, and will continue to push in such a direction that we will even work against our honorable past and forge data, or be willingly blindsided and promote Disneyland fairy tales as truth.

 

[Constance]

the person that you cite as having a critucal response to Vallée

Who was that?

Take Levengood for example, caught cheating test results

Colin Andrews did a lot of thoughtless damage in repeating what a former sample-crop-gatherer for BLT claimed about the sampling of one crop circle. Who was that person, and was her claim ever investigated and proved? You couldn't be expected to place that single claim in perspective without surveying the ten years of research Levengood undertook on samples from more than two hundred crop circles in England, the US, and Canada, employing a variety of microscopic investigations of plant tissues and soil samples, publishing three scientific papers concerning his results. It's just not fair comment on your part, Burnt, because it's taken outside of a research context on your part, informing yourself about the body of scientific research concerning cc plants, soils, seeds, and growth rates led by Levengood at BLT and supported by researchers in other labs.

or the 'T' in that team, as Nancy Talbot, once taken apart on The Paracast. Do we need to revisit her protege, that heir to Billy Meier, and his photographic sleight of hand?

Again, this is not fair or reasonable comment concerning Levengood and the significance of his research. Levengood has never been connected to Nancy Talbott's interest in the paranormal in general or her specific involvement with her perhaps psychic protogee in Holland. Talbott was not a lab researcher at BLT and never claimed to be. You should look instead to the contributions made at BLT by the late John Burke and to his subsequent research concerning megaliths and smaller ancient structures generating heightened EM effects on seeds and plants today and evidentially used for that purpose by the people who built them. See his book Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty: Understanding the Lost Technology of the Ancient Megalith-Builders, research inspired by what Burke had learned from Levengood in his years of working alongside him at BLT. Link to that book:

It goes to show how faulty human beings can be, and not out of malice nor intentionality, but just by nature.

Humans are certainly subject to a number of flaws, most predominantly these days in swallowing whole the objectist-reductivist presuppositions that still plague much of science and have trickled down to a majority of the uninformed and uncritical public.

Once we get a story in our ear, like crop circles got into the BLT team, and wormed its way into their minds, then anything is possible, and we will seek the patterns we desire, use our scientific knowledge to confirm our beliefs in alens making crop circles, and will continue to push in such a direction that we will even work against our honorable past and forge data, or be willingly blindsided and promote Disneyland fairy tales as truth.

Do you think you can speak for the totality of our species then? The above is a convenient 'just-so' story that might apply to various people in and out of science, in and out of research into anomalies, and in any walk of life. It could even apply to you. It doesn't apply to Levengood or Burke. And it doesn't apply to all the serious researchers of the ufo phenomenon with the exception of St. Jacques.

 

[Burnt State]

Well I'm not awarding myself a false Ph.D. nor did I participate in inventing the internet so I balance my criticisms according to my own truths I suppose, or what appears to have actually happened in the real world, and choose my scientific representatives accordingly. Crop circle "science" has never appealed to me in the face of known hoaxing and there is a line to be drawn to Talbott in terms of what value the crop circle has come to represent through Robbert and his photography.

You cited the UFOCAT article whose essay doubted Vallée's filtering methodology would yield anything and it had a very open minded bibliography, but both Crop Circle analysis by Levengood and the Oregon Diamond Ridge photo demonstrate the need for very tight filtering of results. How many false circles did Levengood find, how many nodal anomalies were found outside of circles? Like the pilot convinced that what they saw was an extra-terrestrial craft. So no, I'm not damning all of science. On the contrary you can see how science can often be used to sell a legitimized interpretation of a false positive, like the chemical analysis work done by Roger Leir and his implants or the dazzling math used in the supposed proof of the Turkey video. And really, those are truly the weak parts of the study of anomalous events.

The words 'serious,' 'committed,' 'dedicated' etc. should not be mistaken for truth. I have a similar problem with the word 'all' when it comes to these discussions as well. Yes, very curious things take place that warrant good science, but as far as certainties go, it's hard to be too Ted Serios about those that would promote false realities whether they are engaged in belief or hoax. It's in refining the approach by asking more questions that seems to open up and reveal a myriad of truths, no matter the endeavor. As Virginia Woolf said during the heyday of Modernism, "Nothing is ever one thing."

 

[Constance]

Well I'm not awarding myself a false Ph.D. nor did I participate in inventing the internet so I balance my criticisms according to my own truths I suppose, or what appears to have actually happened in the real world, and choose my scientific representatives accordingly. Crop circle "science" has never appealed to me in the face of known hoaxing and there is a line to be drawn to Talbott in terms of what value the crop circle has come to represent through Robbert and his photography.

You should read the crop circle history from its earliest known manifestations and reports, as well as the crop circle research that was carried out from the earliest days of the modern cc phenomena in and around southern England. It is a fact that organized hoaxing and disinformation eventually drove international scientists out of England's crop fields before that research was completed. You can draw a line between crop circle research and Nancy Talbott's support of RvdB's possible psychic abilities if you like, but the line will reside in your imagination.

You cited the UFOCAT article whose essay doubted Vallée's filtering methodology would yield anything and it had a very open minded bibliography,

Yes, I remember: the Ballester-Olmos essay. He was not that critical of Vallee's proposal, but I found his perspective on it to be persuasive.

but both Crop Circle analysis by Levengood and the Oregon Diamond Ridge photo demonstrate the need for very tight filtering of results. How many false circles did Levengood find, how many nodal anomalies were found outside of circles?

You'd have to read his published papers and unpublished reports to find out, which you can do if you're interested enough. You need to understand that Levengood did not set up his decade-long analysis of cc plants and soils in order to distinguish between hoaxed circles and others. The distinctions, the differences, showed up in the samples in the form of microscopically visible cellular changes in plant tissues, differences in seed size, and differences in subsequent growth rates from cc seeds, found together in some crop circles and not in others. Analysis of anomalies in the soil beneath crop circles supported the thesis of the anomalousness of some crop circles, but that analysis was largely undertaken by another scientist, in the western US or in Canada, whose last name as I recall was Deerborn or something similar. When hoaxing became a broader problem for scientific researchers, threatening the prospects for the entire scientific effort and the costs of funding it, Levengood suggested that changes in the sizes of plant nodes and their distribution in and just beyond cc might provide a clue for researchers on the ground at various cc locations on the planet in deciding whether the cc should be exhaustively sampled and labeled as to locations of each sample and sent to BLT for the tests performed there. The node changes represented a visible clue to whether a cc might be anomalous; they did not represent the substance or depth of L's research, which hypothesized and demonstrated microscopically significant biophysical effects in the cc's of interest. Re Levengood's 'false' Ph.D., he began signing his name in colleaguial communications and published articles as Dr. W. C. Levengood only after the American Academy of Sciences referred to him that way. He had communicated to them following their invitation to him to read a paper that he did not have a Ph.D. but rather two Masters of Science degrees, one in Plant Physiology and one in Biophysics. They considered that to be a Ph.D. equivalent so he read the paper and was designated 'Dr. W.C. Levengood in the conference program. Other scientists in turn addressed him and referred to him increasingly as 'Dr. Levengood,' and he adopted the use of the title that others had taken to be appropriate. This was nothing like the cases of invented expertise and advanced university degrees we see discussed here concerning Imbrogno and other individuals trafficking in the 'paranormal'.

Like the pilot convinced that what they saw was an extra-terrestrial craft.

Many pilots, radar operators, air traffic controllers, and even some physicists have speculated that their sightings could not be accounted for as terrestrial craft. Some or many of them might have been correct in that impression. One day we might find out if that surmise was accurate.

So no, I'm not damning all of science. On the contrary you can see how science can often be used to sell a legitimized interpretation of a false positive, like the chemical analysis work done by Roger Leir and his implants or the dazzling math used in the supposed proof of the Turkey video. And really, those are truly the weak parts of the study of anomalous events.

The words 'serious,' 'committed,' 'dedicated' etc. should not be mistaken for truth. I have a similar problem with the word 'all' when it comes to these discussions as well. Yes, very curious things take place that warrant good science, but as far as certainties go, it's hard to be too Ted Serios about those that would promote false realities whether they are engaged in belief or hoax. It's in refining the approach by asking more questions that seems to open up and reveal a myriad of truths, no matter the endeavor. As Virginia Woolf said during the heyday of Modernism, "Nothing is ever one thing."

I haven't read enough about Leir's implant research and reports, or about the Turkey ufos, to comment. Concerning thought 'filters' and consequent "promotion of 'false realities'," I wonder if you have considered the possibility that ideas about the paranormal might not also serve as misleading filters. Of course our species and its scientists and other researchers should 'ask more questions'; of course we should expand research in all possible directions. I've never argued against that proposition.

 

[Burnt State]

I wonder if you have considered the possibility that ideas about the paranormal might not also serve as misleading filters.

Actually, I have often suggested that the UFO narrative itself may be a significant distraction, a tricksterish charade of sorts being put on for our own benefit to distract us from discovering other architectures of reality. In the past I've described our UFO hunt, replete with everyone kept busy arguing amongst themselves, as, "Dancing on the stage of god." We may be pursuing a red herring that we are now participants in its making, co-creationists of an enormous mythos for the sake of keeping us confused.

In this way I see some interesting connections to the iconic phrase, "We are someone else's property." But I only think about humanity as a damned species on Tuesdays,l I have gone through
all the early material back when I first got online and we have probably argued before together in other recycled web eras about these points, an endless reincarnation of pro and con crop circle proponents. I accept that there's some unique notions being presented but who has replicated such findings? Where are the double blind studies? Could it not just simply be a case of using science to prove what is desired? But enough, we won't get beyond that. Civility is all that matters. How do you see the paranormal as a misleading scenario?