UFO MEDIA MATTERS: WHEN DARKNESS FALLS - NIGHTTIME UFOs
"IF THE BRAINS OF THE UFO WORLD IS THE HONEST RESEARCHER, THEN THE SOUL OF THE UFO WORLD IS THE HONEST WITNESS" - UFOMM
In the ufology community, we like to think devaluing nighttime witnesses demonstrates how objective we really are to the mainstream science community. But it hasn’t worked yet.
I believe knee-jerk dismissal of this witness group has kept many genuine UFO witnesses from coming forward. I like to think nighttime witnesses are no more and no less honest than those reporting daylight phenomenon. But ultimately, UFO witnesses of every category have been treated like the enemy by debunker and researcher alike.
So what about our filtering out of folks across the board --deliberately or subconsciously-- just because they saw what they saw at night?
When a genuine UFO witness goes public and is treated as guilty until proven innocent, this bad behavior reverberates mightily because of the power of the web, and the permanent tracks left behind by bloggers, forums, and news coverage --not to mention advocacy websites. So when new witnesses, astonished by their experience, venture on the web for help, they’re often discouraged and delay reporting the incident. This happens at ATS, amongst other forums from what I hear. And what about the witnesses we never hear from, the ones who see the kind of treatment the others often get out there on the Internet. Are they forever intimidated?
The very nature of this experience deserves an understanding and compassionate tone from all of us interviewers, reporters and commentators. Whatever our stance is on the phenomenon, we all need to remember that it can be extremely difficult for some to come forward and make a detailed craft report or describe a light that was quite different from any other light they’ve seen before.
So let’s look at some photos of aircraft lights and photos of UFOs --both typical and unusual examples-- showing lighted UFOs from nighttime witnesses.
First, lets look at aircraft navigational lights at.
"Navigation lights: The navigation lights include a red light on the left (port) wingtip, a green light on the right (starboard) wingtip and a white light is on the tail." View PDF.
http://www.abacuspub.com/freepress/DontBeAfraidOfTheDark.pdf
Next are images from YouTube, which are a little provocative in nature.
The debunkers always have an excuse as to what else hovers
I live near an aircraft approach to Kennedy International Airport, which is one of the busiest in the country. I have witnessed aircraft lights which are rather stunning in brightness, due to the refraction of the atmosphere and therefore easily mistaken for something strange.
I have even witnessed aircraft on approach which looked like they were hovering. As well, I have also witnessed helicopters the size used by both police and media as well as massive military helicopters used when the President visits New York. But never, after studying the more provocative looking aircraft, have I been fooled.
I'm neither a genius or an optics expert, but I can usually tell what kind of aircraft I’m observing at night simply because I’m used to seeing it coming in or going out of Kennedy International. However, if what was observed by a witness differs from the more accepted explanation, they will be dismissed by your every day debunker. Then again, certain UFO researchers are probably correct about what they say that they saw.
I understand the scientific approach and agree with it. But, the problem is abuse of the scientific method as applied even by some of the more overzealous UFO researchers who believe that they need that stamp of validity from the decades-old scientific mainstream.
Serious UFO researchers inevitably come up against the brick wall of out-dated mainstream science, where at least on the matter of UFOs, with easy, predictable answers that don’t challenge the official position of government and academia, are the only acceptable answers.
So because mainstream science is already uniformly advocating that proverbial brick wall, everyone in our ufology community should be reminded that being open-minded, instead of brick-wall-minded, means not only cultivating an open mind, but going the extra distance for the witness, even though it takes time. And, it can make all the difference later on if a serious investigator is going the extra distance if they record carefully what the witness says. Unique, unimpeachable details are often caught in the secondary analysis by the original investigator, months or even years later, when other witnesses have added hard data to support what once seemed like unlikely details.
How do we strike that balance? Sometimes Venus is not what they saw, even though it was in the right part of the sky, and brilliant! That factoid is what I carry with me from the Portage, Ohio case, where even some inside the UFO community dismissed this case as nothing more than Venus. But, in 2008, as police files were made public through MUFON, it was very clear that what state and county officers reported was nothing like Venus.
To use the misquotation of Freud, when is a cigar-shaped object really a cigar-shaped object, and not Venus?
MUFON itself was guilty of the rubber-stamp, one-size-fits-all non-analysis in the early days of the Stephenville case, via Dr. Bruce Maccabee. Maccabee was quoted as coming to the conclusion after doing a short preliminary investigation that one of the witnesses had filmed nothing more than a star. But Maccabee never went to the site, himself, claiming he was too busy. True? Perhaps…but if a professional debunker like Oberg had done that….
So in the Stephenville case, we have MUFON returning a less than enthusiastic first assessment. The report even mentioned that neither of the sides would be thrilled with their official analysis.
But then everything changed with irrefutable witness evidence. Somehow this time, the witnesses were looked at with more respect after Federal Aviation Administration radar tapes fully corroborated their strikingly detailed UFO reports. And there is still other radar data available --if we could get it-- that may confirm the many other witnesses’ testimony of phenomena later that night and going into the next days and weeks that followed, accounting for approximately 300 sightings in all.
Video: When Nighttime Falls
Now let’s take a look at some classic well-investigated UFO light pictures.
If these people hadn’t taken these photos, how many would have been explained away as aircraft, and the witnesses left to wonder if anyone really listened to any of the details that they reported?
This is the dilemma witnesses face. Should we use the most rigid, conservative scientific investigation model, a model that can be truly bizarre in application of its own integral illogic and bias, based on exclusion?
We have to admit that today, same as it did five decades ago, the so-called scientific model of mainstream science departs from logic when it ignores all the ramifications of witness testimony and adds any old non-ufo explanation, often rubberstamping what amounts to the current trend, regardless of how that trendy rubber-stamp explanation challenges common sense and embarrasses the native intelligence of the witnesses.
The answer is still out there, but for me, the testimony of every serious UFO witness is like finding gold. Some of it may be fool’s gold, but if we’re careful enough, we should be able to tell the difference.
Original Source: UFO Media Matters
Photo Source: UFO Casebook
Oct Archive Sept Archive Aug Archive July Archive June Archive
In the ufology community, we like to think devaluing nighttime witnesses demonstrates how objective we really are to the mainstream science community. But it hasn’t worked yet.
I believe knee-jerk dismissal of this witness group has kept many genuine UFO witnesses from coming forward. I like to think nighttime witnesses are no more and no less honest than those reporting daylight phenomenon. But ultimately, UFO witnesses of every category have been treated like the enemy by debunker and researcher alike.
So what about our filtering out of folks across the board --deliberately or subconsciously-- just because they saw what they saw at night?
When a genuine UFO witness goes public and is treated as guilty until proven innocent, this bad behavior reverberates mightily because of the power of the web, and the permanent tracks left behind by bloggers, forums, and news coverage --not to mention advocacy websites. So when new witnesses, astonished by their experience, venture on the web for help, they’re often discouraged and delay reporting the incident. This happens at ATS, amongst other forums from what I hear. And what about the witnesses we never hear from, the ones who see the kind of treatment the others often get out there on the Internet. Are they forever intimidated?
The very nature of this experience deserves an understanding and compassionate tone from all of us interviewers, reporters and commentators. Whatever our stance is on the phenomenon, we all need to remember that it can be extremely difficult for some to come forward and make a detailed craft report or describe a light that was quite different from any other light they’ve seen before.
So let’s look at some photos of aircraft lights and photos of UFOs --both typical and unusual examples-- showing lighted UFOs from nighttime witnesses.
First, lets look at aircraft navigational lights at.
"Navigation lights: The navigation lights include a red light on the left (port) wingtip, a green light on the right (starboard) wingtip and a white light is on the tail." View PDF.
http://www.abacuspub.com/freepress/DontBeAfraidOfTheDark.pdf
Next are images from YouTube, which are a little provocative in nature.
The debunkers always have an excuse as to what else hovers
I live near an aircraft approach to Kennedy International Airport, which is one of the busiest in the country. I have witnessed aircraft lights which are rather stunning in brightness, due to the refraction of the atmosphere and therefore easily mistaken for something strange.
I have even witnessed aircraft on approach which looked like they were hovering. As well, I have also witnessed helicopters the size used by both police and media as well as massive military helicopters used when the President visits New York. But never, after studying the more provocative looking aircraft, have I been fooled.
I'm neither a genius or an optics expert, but I can usually tell what kind of aircraft I’m observing at night simply because I’m used to seeing it coming in or going out of Kennedy International. However, if what was observed by a witness differs from the more accepted explanation, they will be dismissed by your every day debunker. Then again, certain UFO researchers are probably correct about what they say that they saw.
I understand the scientific approach and agree with it. But, the problem is abuse of the scientific method as applied even by some of the more overzealous UFO researchers who believe that they need that stamp of validity from the decades-old scientific mainstream.
Serious UFO researchers inevitably come up against the brick wall of out-dated mainstream science, where at least on the matter of UFOs, with easy, predictable answers that don’t challenge the official position of government and academia, are the only acceptable answers.
So because mainstream science is already uniformly advocating that proverbial brick wall, everyone in our ufology community should be reminded that being open-minded, instead of brick-wall-minded, means not only cultivating an open mind, but going the extra distance for the witness, even though it takes time. And, it can make all the difference later on if a serious investigator is going the extra distance if they record carefully what the witness says. Unique, unimpeachable details are often caught in the secondary analysis by the original investigator, months or even years later, when other witnesses have added hard data to support what once seemed like unlikely details.
How do we strike that balance? Sometimes Venus is not what they saw, even though it was in the right part of the sky, and brilliant! That factoid is what I carry with me from the Portage, Ohio case, where even some inside the UFO community dismissed this case as nothing more than Venus. But, in 2008, as police files were made public through MUFON, it was very clear that what state and county officers reported was nothing like Venus.
To use the misquotation of Freud, when is a cigar-shaped object really a cigar-shaped object, and not Venus?
MUFON itself was guilty of the rubber-stamp, one-size-fits-all non-analysis in the early days of the Stephenville case, via Dr. Bruce Maccabee. Maccabee was quoted as coming to the conclusion after doing a short preliminary investigation that one of the witnesses had filmed nothing more than a star. But Maccabee never went to the site, himself, claiming he was too busy. True? Perhaps…but if a professional debunker like Oberg had done that….
So in the Stephenville case, we have MUFON returning a less than enthusiastic first assessment. The report even mentioned that neither of the sides would be thrilled with their official analysis.
But then everything changed with irrefutable witness evidence. Somehow this time, the witnesses were looked at with more respect after Federal Aviation Administration radar tapes fully corroborated their strikingly detailed UFO reports. And there is still other radar data available --if we could get it-- that may confirm the many other witnesses’ testimony of phenomena later that night and going into the next days and weeks that followed, accounting for approximately 300 sightings in all.
Video: When Nighttime Falls
Now let’s take a look at some classic well-investigated UFO light pictures.
If these people hadn’t taken these photos, how many would have been explained away as aircraft, and the witnesses left to wonder if anyone really listened to any of the details that they reported?
This is the dilemma witnesses face. Should we use the most rigid, conservative scientific investigation model, a model that can be truly bizarre in application of its own integral illogic and bias, based on exclusion?
We have to admit that today, same as it did five decades ago, the so-called scientific model of mainstream science departs from logic when it ignores all the ramifications of witness testimony and adds any old non-ufo explanation, often rubberstamping what amounts to the current trend, regardless of how that trendy rubber-stamp explanation challenges common sense and embarrasses the native intelligence of the witnesses.
The answer is still out there, but for me, the testimony of every serious UFO witness is like finding gold. Some of it may be fool’s gold, but if we’re careful enough, we should be able to tell the difference.
Original Source: UFO Media Matters
Photo Source: UFO Casebook
Oct Archive Sept Archive Aug Archive July Archive June Archive
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