UFOs and science

I find it funny how sometimes scientific stigma can get in the way of genuine science. 99% of the time, when scientists investigate a UFO claim, it's a pretty clear fake. They can check the position of clouds on that day, whether balloons etc, and work it out. Often by looking at whatever evidence there is, such as photographs, forgery can be deduced as a likely explanation. But recently in Chile, two photographs of a flying saucer taken outside a remote mine had the government baffled. The nature of the light on the disk seems to suggest an internal energy source, but there were no drones operating in the area at the time or anything else the government could deduce.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-kean/government-agency-in-chil_b_5558713.html

The problem was that the witnesses who took the photos were all apparently so afraid of being "found out" as "nutty UFO conspiracy theorists" that they all refused to talk. They never mentioned it to anybody until their supervisor happened to casually see the images they took. Thus, other than a few very vague details, the case can never really be closed adequately.

If it is a fake, it's incredibly convincing. Much more likely, it's some phenomenon we don't know about. Or perhaps a secret drone Chile's government couldn't detect or know about. Probably not aliens, but who knows? The point is that something was there and it should be explained.

Scientists spend too much time telling us what facts are scientifically validated and not enough explaining science as a method. It's pretty sad really.

admin: That's a really good article. Thanks for posting it, I needed that for this year's team policy resolution.

admin: Interesting.

I don't think someone can explain something they don't understand themselves. It is easy to accumulate the facts because they can be observed or measured. However to explain facts requires a meticulousness that understands how and why things happen. There is not enough evidence to arrive at a definitive answer.

I wouldn't assume it is aliens because that plays more to the human imagination than reality. It is similar to how human beings portray "gods" as humanoids or similar to humanoids when most life on earth is not a humanoid or bipedal for that matter. I am of the opinion it is probably a Chilean weapon or aircraft.

Tophatdoc: The one government it can't be from is Chile. Unless you're accusing both their air force and independent aviation review board to be complicit in some kind of cover-up. It's a really remote location so apparently the air force was happy to admit there were no drills, tests, flights etc in the area at the time. No guarantees some other government might have been operating there illegally, of course.

I wouldn't assume it's aliens either, but I feel like that popular perception that people might judge you because of what mainstream science is popularly portrayed as being prepared to accept is worrisome to me. The evidence in this case could have been so easily acquired, but for the unwillingness of any witnesses to provide a statement. It's pretty anti-scientific.

admin: I am not accusing them of anything. I was thinking it may have been a weapon or aircraft manufactured by a private company. Very few militaries in the world manufacture their own weapons or aircraft. Normally, weapons are contracted through a private company. This is just based on my readings of UFOs aside from this one.

I think many people only perceive the results of science rather than the methods and efforts that go into arriving at conclusive results. As my favorite neuroscientist says "there are far too many things observed in this life that are unexplainable and will remain unexplainable due to the lack of evidence." There is no evidence from what I read in the article that any of the observants could state with authority what it was or was not. This is why I think they didn't say anything initially because they found something they could not explain. In many respects, this may even be considered worse than when human beings create problems without solutions.

Tophatdoc: But just because they could not explain it should never mean withholding evidence. The entire point of science is to explain that which previously could not be explained.

Private company or not, if it's in Chilean airspace it needs to follow Chilean law. Law states the government needs to know about it, and in this case the government didn't. I'm not discounting the idea that Lockheed-Martin has a secret development facility in the middle of the Andes, and perhaps only failed to notify the government of this particular test, but I don't consider it any more likely an explanation than the government meteorological service secretly releasing a botched weather balloon and forgetting to notify anybody (or something of that nature).

Are we just ignoring the fact that doc has a favourite Neuroscientist?!

I feel so inadequate...

nzlockie: I don't like clinical neuroscientists which is what most people tend to think of. But...............

I love neuroscience! What is there not to love about? Forgetting, remembering, learning, associating, and disassociating. There is not a single cognitive disorder I don't know, I have memorized them. There is a reason why I started the futurist group here on Edeb8. I need to get back to work on that...................sometime.