Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The Magic Museum and UFO beer
This past weekend we went to visit the magic museum in Giroux, just south of Winnipeg. Although the website said the museum was open, when we got there we found that because of low attendance, they had decided to close up early for the season. I sought out the owner, and he decided to let us in for a peek, although some of the exhibits were already in storage. Even so, I was impressed with the museum.
The museum was created in memory of the owner's son, who died of cancer when he was only 15. During his short life he had become fascinated with magic and became quite adept at some tricks. he even "broke out" of the RCMP jail in Steinbach in a much-publicized event. One of his dying wishes was that a museum of magic be created to allow other kids to enjoy magic as much as he. Following his death, his parents invested a lot of time and money into purchasing a building and developing the museum. They were aided by many professional magicians who had heard of their son and donated many artifacts and memorabilia. Dean Gunnarson donated a lot of things, including a barrel in which he had been submerged for an escape. Doug Henning donated actual Houdini artifacts from his own collection. The walls are filled with photos, posters and other material from magicians all around the world. It's a wonderful place, and possibly the least-known museum in all of Manitoba.
And coincidentally (or not), the day we visited was the 22nd anniversary of the boy's death. His father spoke with us for a long time about his son, and how the museum was created. It's a great tribute, and one that should be preserved; his parents are finding it hard to keep the place open, financially and emotionally. What can we do to help?
[Insert Segue here]
Speaking of magicians, it's my first year anniversary of being married to my beautiful wife. She's a big fan of magic, and the trip to the museum was part of her anniversary gift. I also got her a DVD of Penn & Teller's TV show "Bullshit," which she enjoys. Her gifts to me included a whack of stuff from the Harpoon brewery in Boston, which manufactures UFO beer. I now have UFO beer glasses, coasters, a shirt and a few other things. What a woman!
[Insert another segue here]
And speaking of DVDs, I found and bought a copy of "Abbott and Costello Go To Mars," yet another classic UFO movie for my collection! How perfect is that?
The museum was created in memory of the owner's son, who died of cancer when he was only 15. During his short life he had become fascinated with magic and became quite adept at some tricks. he even "broke out" of the RCMP jail in Steinbach in a much-publicized event. One of his dying wishes was that a museum of magic be created to allow other kids to enjoy magic as much as he. Following his death, his parents invested a lot of time and money into purchasing a building and developing the museum. They were aided by many professional magicians who had heard of their son and donated many artifacts and memorabilia. Dean Gunnarson donated a lot of things, including a barrel in which he had been submerged for an escape. Doug Henning donated actual Houdini artifacts from his own collection. The walls are filled with photos, posters and other material from magicians all around the world. It's a wonderful place, and possibly the least-known museum in all of Manitoba.
And coincidentally (or not), the day we visited was the 22nd anniversary of the boy's death. His father spoke with us for a long time about his son, and how the museum was created. It's a great tribute, and one that should be preserved; his parents are finding it hard to keep the place open, financially and emotionally. What can we do to help?
[Insert Segue here]
Speaking of magicians, it's my first year anniversary of being married to my beautiful wife. She's a big fan of magic, and the trip to the museum was part of her anniversary gift. I also got her a DVD of Penn & Teller's TV show "Bullshit," which she enjoys. Her gifts to me included a whack of stuff from the Harpoon brewery in Boston, which manufactures UFO beer. I now have UFO beer glasses, coasters, a shirt and a few other things. What a woman!
[Insert another segue here]
And speaking of DVDs, I found and bought a copy of "Abbott and Costello Go To Mars," yet another classic UFO movie for my collection! How perfect is that?
Friday, September 26, 2008
More UFO reports
A few more UFO reports of note; one through Facebook and the other through "official channels."
The first was on September 25, 2008, at 7:30 pm, in Chandler, Quebec. A starlike object was seen moving east, looking like a plane but had no blinking lights and seemed too fast. It was seen for about a minute before it "blinked out." (Thx Jen)
The other was on September 24, 2008, at 9:25 pm, at the Sault Ste. Marie airport, in Ontario. A bright white object was seen about 30 degrees above the horizon, going NW to SE. It had "the same brightness as the full Moon." It was pretty short - just a few seconds before it faded from view.
The first was on September 25, 2008, at 7:30 pm, in Chandler, Quebec. A starlike object was seen moving east, looking like a plane but had no blinking lights and seemed too fast. It was seen for about a minute before it "blinked out." (Thx Jen)
The other was on September 24, 2008, at 9:25 pm, at the Sault Ste. Marie airport, in Ontario. A bright white object was seen about 30 degrees above the horizon, going NW to SE. It had "the same brightness as the full Moon." It was pretty short - just a few seconds before it faded from view.
Tracy and UFOs
I called Tracy Torme the other day. He's a Hollywood screenwriter, director and producer who has a strong UFO connection. I called him because I had found a copy of Sliders, Seasons 1 and 2, a SF series from the mid-1990s, and had been watching it with my kids. They think it's great! Torme wrote the pilot and several other episodes of the series, and it made me think of him.
Torme (yes, he's the son of Mel Torme, the "Velvet Fog") has penned or been involved in many SF shows, including Star Trek TNG and some of our favourite series of all time, Odyssey 5 and Carnivale. He's also done some feature films, including I Am Legend, and Fire in the Sky, the film version of the Travis Walton UFO abduction, starring James Garner.
The latter film was the catalyst for our acquaintance. When the film came out in 1993, I was given some passes to the local premiere because the marketing included UFO groups. The UFOROM gang who attended unanimously panned it. I wrote a less-than-glowing review and posted it to the net (yes, the Internet existed back then). Shortly thereafter, I received a call from a ufology colleague who told me that "some guy from Hollywood" wanted to talk with me. Eventually, Tracy tracked me down. He was concerned.
My objection to the film revolved around the deviation from the book and from Walton's testimony. Tracy and I talked about this at length. I had always thought the film portrayed the process of UFO case investigation well, and the impact that UFO experiences have on the lives of witnesses and investigators. I just didn't like the "brown goo" later in the movie.
Anyway, Tracy and I came to an understanding and finished our conversation on an amicable note. He and I have been corresponding ever since. I consider him a good friend and someone who has a really good appreciation for what's happening in ufology. He knows details of many cases and spoken with many major witnesses and principal players in the field.
I had heard some news that he was working on a new film version of the Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction. He confirmed that he and his people are in negotiations and are looking at a feature film based on the events depicted in John Fuller's Interrupted Journey. He already even had some major stars in mind for the leads.
In talking with him, I learned that he got his start in Canada. I should have guessed. His credits include Saturday Night Live, so is it any wonder that he began with - would you believe ... SCTV?
Neat guy. Like his work.
Torme (yes, he's the son of Mel Torme, the "Velvet Fog") has penned or been involved in many SF shows, including Star Trek TNG and some of our favourite series of all time, Odyssey 5 and Carnivale. He's also done some feature films, including I Am Legend, and Fire in the Sky, the film version of the Travis Walton UFO abduction, starring James Garner.
The latter film was the catalyst for our acquaintance. When the film came out in 1993, I was given some passes to the local premiere because the marketing included UFO groups. The UFOROM gang who attended unanimously panned it. I wrote a less-than-glowing review and posted it to the net (yes, the Internet existed back then). Shortly thereafter, I received a call from a ufology colleague who told me that "some guy from Hollywood" wanted to talk with me. Eventually, Tracy tracked me down. He was concerned.
My objection to the film revolved around the deviation from the book and from Walton's testimony. Tracy and I talked about this at length. I had always thought the film portrayed the process of UFO case investigation well, and the impact that UFO experiences have on the lives of witnesses and investigators. I just didn't like the "brown goo" later in the movie.
Anyway, Tracy and I came to an understanding and finished our conversation on an amicable note. He and I have been corresponding ever since. I consider him a good friend and someone who has a really good appreciation for what's happening in ufology. He knows details of many cases and spoken with many major witnesses and principal players in the field.
I had heard some news that he was working on a new film version of the Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction. He confirmed that he and his people are in negotiations and are looking at a feature film based on the events depicted in John Fuller's Interrupted Journey. He already even had some major stars in mind for the leads.
In talking with him, I learned that he got his start in Canada. I should have guessed. His credits include Saturday Night Live, so is it any wonder that he began with - would you believe ... SCTV?
Neat guy. Like his work.
Beausejour, continued
I received yet another call from more witnesses to the Beausejour UFO of September 20th. This time, at about 8:25 pm, witnesses just east of the town saw four orange lights proceeding one at a time across the sky from E to W, eventually six to eight of them being visible at one time. They did not appear to be aircraft, and they did not display a strobe light or typical wingtip lights as seen on other craft flying overhead. The witnesses say that when they reached a point in the north, two of the lights stopped in mid-flight abruptly and shot off to the north while the others proceeded to the W.
I checked with the Winnipeg airport, and learned that there was "nothing unusual" in the air at the time of this sighting. The airport did say that this time of the evening is one of the busiest times for flights, so there were many aircraft in the general area at the time.
While there is obviously overwhelming evidence that something was flying over Beausejour that night, we have no proof it was anything unusual beyond conventional aircraft. It's very odd that people who are used to seeing aircraft would all report seeing something extraordinary at the same time, however.
Wonder what the heck it was?
I checked with the Winnipeg airport, and learned that there was "nothing unusual" in the air at the time of this sighting. The airport did say that this time of the evening is one of the busiest times for flights, so there were many aircraft in the general area at the time.
While there is obviously overwhelming evidence that something was flying over Beausejour that night, we have no proof it was anything unusual beyond conventional aircraft. It's very odd that people who are used to seeing aircraft would all report seeing something extraordinary at the same time, however.
Wonder what the heck it was?
Monday, September 22, 2008
More witnesses to Beausejour UFO
I received another phone call from a couple who had also seen the same objects over Beausejour on Saturday night, September 20, 2008. Shortly after 8 pm, they were in their home in the town, looking out the window when they saw four bright yellow objects in a straight row high in the west. Two dimmer and smaller lights were "in front" of the four. As they watched, the two small lights vanished and the four maneuevered in the sky to form a diamond shape. they then rearranged again to form a row. Two more lights appeared, much brighter than the four, and climbed rapidly into the sky and disappeared. The four then slowly moved towards the north, seeming to climb as well, and disappeared too. The entire sighting lasted about 20 minutes. One of the witnesses said he was very familiar with aircraft, and that these lights did not appear to be on any aircraft.
So, with three confirmed witnesses and several others still to come forward, it seems as though there was something in the sky over western Manitoba on Saturday night.
So, with three confirmed witnesses and several others still to come forward, it seems as though there was something in the sky over western Manitoba on Saturday night.
UFO reports
I had a call this morning from a security guard who was going to work at 8:30 pm last night, driving just west of Beausejour, Manitoba. The guard saw 5 orange lights, none of them flashing or flickering, moving in the sky in erratic paths but generally going SE to NW. She watched them for several minutes and then even stopped two other cars on the highway to point the objects out to the other drivers. They all watched for a while and the objects eventually "took off" to the NW out of sight.
Then this afternoon, I received the following email:
==================================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:37:40 -0400
From: AVOPS
To:
Subject: Possible UFO Sighting
A concerned citizen from Postville, Newfoundland wanted to report seeing lights flying very low and fast, just above the Postville Hill. She said the lights were very low and fast in the distance. The caller’s name is XXXXXXX, and can be reached at XXXXXXX. She called to ask whether it could be extraterrestrial activity. The caller reported seeing this phenomena last night September 21, 2008. She left her phone number in case of any other questions concerning the event. XXX contacted us at about 11:00 this morning to inform us.
Aviation Operations Centre
Transport Canada
==================================================================================
I called her Monday afternoon. She said that about 2 am this morning (Monday, September 22, 2008), she had got up to let her dogs out when she heard a rumbling noise outside. It seemed as though it moved over her house. She went outside and saw what she thought at first was a plane, with a red light in front and yellow lights behind it. She grabbed her “scope” – a small telescope for spotting while hunting – and looked at the object through it. She said it looked like a “worm.” She had trouble explaining how that was so. She watched it for about 10 minutes as it flew E over Post Hill, and towards the ocean. It vanished into the distance and she went back in her house to go back to bed.
Then this afternoon, I received the following email:
==================================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:37:40 -0400
From: AVOPS
To:
Subject: Possible UFO Sighting
A concerned citizen from Postville, Newfoundland wanted to report seeing lights flying very low and fast, just above the Postville Hill. She said the lights were very low and fast in the distance. The caller’s name is XXXXXXX, and can be reached at XXXXXXX. She called to ask whether it could be extraterrestrial activity. The caller reported seeing this phenomena last night September 21, 2008. She left her phone number in case of any other questions concerning the event. XXX contacted us at about 11:00 this morning to inform us.
Aviation Operations Centre
Transport Canada
==================================================================================
I called her Monday afternoon. She said that about 2 am this morning (Monday, September 22, 2008), she had got up to let her dogs out when she heard a rumbling noise outside. It seemed as though it moved over her house. She went outside and saw what she thought at first was a plane, with a red light in front and yellow lights behind it. She grabbed her “scope” – a small telescope for spotting while hunting – and looked at the object through it. She said it looked like a “worm.” She had trouble explaining how that was so. She watched it for about 10 minutes as it flew E over Post Hill, and towards the ocean. It vanished into the distance and she went back in her house to go back to bed.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Why investigating UFO reports is a thankless job
Here's a UFO report from British Columbia, sent to MUFON. It's going to be entered into the 2008 Canadian UFO Survey database along with the hundreds of other cases sent to various UFO organizations and websites with online report forms.
What do you do with a case like this?
=========================================================================
Case Number: 12633
Log Number: CA-09182008-0054
Submitted Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:53:27 GMT
Event Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:15:00 GMT
Status: Submitted
City: Hope
Region: British Columbia
Country: CA
Longitude: -121.43299865722656
Latitude: 49.382999420166016
Shape: Star-like
Duration: 01:00:10
Distance: Unknown
Description:
it started off i was making a sandwich in the kitchen.then i saw this bright light beem at my window i thought it was my parents pulling up from where they went.then i heard this sonic boom like noise. so i opened the curtin slowly.i saw a star like disk floating right above the house next door.then after i looked it flew over the forest and dropped something.i called the police and they started to laugh. so i went to hide and i hear a screech like roar.i peeked through the curtin i saw about 15 reptilians walking down the road and 8 grays.they stormed the peoples house that they were hovering above earlier.they people in that house have been missing since.the ufo just sat there.when it happend i was in great fear and when i saw the grays i had a big migrain.i lost sight of the object because it faded away
==================================================================================
I think I've just got a "big migrain" too.
What do you do with a case like this?
=========================================================================
Case Number: 12633
Log Number: CA-09182008-0054
Submitted Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:53:27 GMT
Event Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:15:00 GMT
Status: Submitted
City: Hope
Region: British Columbia
Country: CA
Longitude: -121.43299865722656
Latitude: 49.382999420166016
Shape: Star-like
Duration: 01:00:10
Distance: Unknown
Description:
it started off i was making a sandwich in the kitchen.then i saw this bright light beem at my window i thought it was my parents pulling up from where they went.then i heard this sonic boom like noise. so i opened the curtin slowly.i saw a star like disk floating right above the house next door.then after i looked it flew over the forest and dropped something.i called the police and they started to laugh. so i went to hide and i hear a screech like roar.i peeked through the curtin i saw about 15 reptilians walking down the road and 8 grays.they stormed the peoples house that they were hovering above earlier.they people in that house have been missing since.the ufo just sat there.when it happend i was in great fear and when i saw the grays i had a big migrain.i lost sight of the object because it faded away
==================================================================================
I think I've just got a "big migrain" too.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
What the Canadian UFO Survey is all about
Against my better judgment, I engaged in a debate on UFO Updates defending the results of our Canadian UFO Survey. In short, I don't think it needs defending, but some people on Updates think that our finding that only a few per cent of UFO cases that get reported in Canada each year are high-quality Unknowns. The feeling from some people is that our method is flawed because such a low percentage is what debunking exercises have found (Condon, Blue Book, etc.) and therefore we must be wrong. The percentage of Unknowns must be higher, they insist, of the order of 25 to 50 per cent. Well, it's not. And here is the latest exchange:
>>>Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2008 04:15:00 EDT
>>>Subject: Re: Colorado Project Had More Than 50%
>>>What percentage of _all_ high quality cases are Unknowns? You
>>>don't tell us. Your UFO Survey doesn't tell us.
>>Sure it does. The data is right there. That's why we provide it;
>>to allow anyone to do more analysis.
>No you don't. You provide _some_ of the _data_ (not for 1989 to
>1993) but you don't tally up the High Quality case _statistics_
You're right. Geoff didn't do all possible tallies and combinations. Tsk.
>data. The statistics data (the word "data" is plural by the way)
Please. Random House Dictionary says that data is a singular noun
meaning "body of information." You've just gone beyond
objective criticism into personal attack. Great.
>are not there. You don't provide it, as apparently you expect
>people to plow through 7,600 cases to find the High Quality
>cases, and tabulate statistics on them because you are not that
>interested in High Quality cases.
Yes, well, we do expect serious researchers to do some work for
themselves, too. But we can work on this in future studies.
As a matter of fact, we'll be looking at this in the 20-year study
which we will publish next year.
>You only mention one _single_ year with a figure for high-
>quality Unknowns (2007), which I had already mentioned in my
>posting. What did you think I was talking about that was
>different from that ?? Never mind, that will obviously get
>nowhere.
True.
>What percentage of _all_ High Quality cases in the Canadian UFO
>survey from 1989 to date are Unknowns? You can't provide that
>figure because your Survey does not tabulate the data on case
>quality online, whereas you insinuate that "anyone" can just go
>and look it up. There is no table with the 1989 to 2007 data
>quality stats.
The entire 1989 to present database is not available online at this
time. I've noted elsewhere that I had to actually go back and
enter cases from the 1980s and and early 1990s again manually
because the earlier databases are not compatible. Silly dBase
and Quattro Pro.
As for anyone using the data online, as a test a few minutes ago,
I just imported an earlier year's data in HTML into Excel with a
click of the mouse, then ran a sort on it. It works, and found about
a third of the higher-quality cases for that year were unknowns too.
Geoff is working on getting the 7000+ cases into a single file.
Apparently, he is having trouble finding time to do this because he
has a life.
>As far as I can tell 2005 was the first Survey to give the
>High-Quality Unknowns percentage, so we only have that figure
>for 2005 (7%), 2006 (less than 1%) and (2007 (less than 1%). You
>give no explanation for these figures further on in your
>posting, where you come up with 30% to 31.6%.
I just checked the 2003 data to see if this is true. It's not.
From the 2003 Survey:
"There were 111 Unknowns out of 673 total cases in 2003.
If we look only at the Unknowns with a Reliability rating of 7
or greater, we are left with 28 high-quality Unknowns in 2003
(about four per cent of the total)."
>Why didn't you explain this huge discrepancy? As I had said in
>my posting, your survey was claiming less than 1% High-Quality
>Unknowns. Now you say 30%. It's your Survey, please explain it!
There is no discrepancy. The percentage of Unknowns with high
Reliability ratings remains only a few percent of the total data.
The 30 per cent (or so) comes out when we eliminate all low-reliability
cases and only look at higher-quality cases.
Incidentally, I have just got around to reading Ann Druffel's excellent
book on James McDonald. In the first few pages, she notes that in his own
study of cases over five years in his immediate area, he found that only a
few percent of the UFOs reported were Unexplained. Maybe take up your
argument with him, too.
>I'm sorry but this just looks like gobbledygook manipulation of
>statistics.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
>You still don't explain why your Unknowns percentage is so much
>lower than the Condon Report's.
Because they didn't look at raw UFO data?
>Why aren't you doing a better
>job than the Colorado Project of the 1960's on IFO's vs. UFO's?
You tell me. Oh wait, you did:
>Well there is a reason, as I have stated here on UFO UpDates any
>number of times. You deliberately seek out and inflate your
>stats with IFO cases. Here is what you say in the 2007 Survey,
>that in the first few years of the Survey you had essentially no
>IFO's at all, so then you decided you wanted IFO's for some
>strange reason:
>"Contributors were then encouraged to submit data on all UFO
>reports they received [meaning IFO's], so that a more uniform
>assessment and evaluation process could be realized."
>So you deliberately sought out IFO reports to pad and line and
>artificially inflate your statistics.
If that's how you want to interpret that. Our view is that we realized
we weren't getting all the data from investigators. Some were not
bothering to contribute the IFOs they were dealing with. That meant
we would be artificially inflating (your phrase) our percentage of
Unknowns in the broader database if we didn't include all cases
reported as UFOs (but later explained as IFOs). The original purpose
of the study was to see what was being reported as UFOs, not to just
look at Unknowns. (That's a separate research project.)
>This is how you managed to accumulate 7,600 mostly Poor Quality
>cases.
GIGO
Most UFO case reports are not of high-quality, unfortunately.
>You don't do any
>legitimate scientific control studies of the IFO case sample
>with the UFO case sample (I shudder to think how you would
>contaminate each sample with indeterminate, insufficient data
>cases).
I'll leave this for Geoff to answer.
>Judging from your posted comments (below) on 2007, as a
>guess I would say you have less than 1,000 High Quality cases
>out of about 7,600 cases since 1989, so the remaining 6,600+
>would be Poor Quality.
Maybe.
>You should get the Poor Quality cases out of your statistics as
>Hynek urged so many years ago (1976 in The Hynek UFO Report, p.
>259), saying:
>"Insufficient Information cases should [be] excluded from
>statistical computations altogether."
Perhaps. But our Survey was originally designed to find out what
was actually being reported in terms of UFO sightings. It does that very
well. I have no problem with the fact that the analysis of the data is
something that needs debate and discussion. That's why we make
the data available for anyone to play with and why I even bother
with defending it here.
>That does _not_ mean burn them, destroy them, or shred them. The
>Poor Quality reports remain in the files, just should not be in
>the statistics.
I disagree.
>There are many indicators of the poor quality of the vast
>majority of your 7,600 reports. You have almost 40 reports where
>you don't even know the Province! How are those valid cases and
>not garbage reports with Insufficient Data? You have about 50
>reports without even the Month known! God only knows how many
>cases have the Month but are missing the Date.
>You have over 100 cases where you can't even make a Modified
>Hynek Classification of the events! How is that even possible?
It's possible because many people report their sightings to UFO
organizations and don't list or can't recall the date or time. As for
no information on the province, I know of several instances where
the source was a government or military file that listed date, time
and other data, but the actual location was blacked out or
unavailable to us. Should those cases not have been included?
My view is that cases with missing data should be included but
noted as Insufficient Data in an analysis because not including
them would lower the number of reports actually made by
witnesses in a tabulation, suggesting that fewer were reported
than actually were.
>So for 2007, we find that almost 100 of the 836 cases have no
>times or hours. Almost half these cases have no time Durations
>(about 366 of them)! Your Survey claims that "The duration of a
>sighting is one of the biggest clues to its explanation." Well
>if you don't have a Duration then you have by your own admission
>Insufficient Information for "clues to ... explanation."
Indeed.
>You have 436 single-witness cases out of 836, or over half of
>your 2007 data set, another strong indicator of Poor Quality
>cases. Hynek would eliminate virtually all single-witness cases
>unless there were good scientific reasons for retaining them.
You'd eliminate single witness cases as not being worthy of
including in a statistical study on UFOs?
Can others on the list comment on this please?
>Some 382 of the 836 reports are Point Source cases, another
>strong indicator of Poor Quality. Over 100 additional cases do
>not even have a Shape reported! How is it even possible to have
>no Shape?? What on earth could be reported without a Shape??
>What is being reported in those cases?? What kind of "UFO" or
"IFO" has no Shape?? Why do you have such reports in the first
>place?
e.g. Witness: "I saw a UFO flying along the horizon, about half a
mile away. Its light was too bright to see any shape."
>You don't even have an Angular Size category of data. Angular
>Size and Duration are the two primary factors that determine the
>amount of visual data a human witness receives from a sighting
>and you don't even collect the Angular Size data!
Please understand; we don't collect angular size data
because we get the data from many different sources, most
of which don't gather angular size data themselves. Heck, I can't
even recall a recent military report where angular size was included.
And angular size isn't something found in most of Peter
Davenport's case files, for example.
Would it be nice to have? Absolutely.
>And you also shamelessly inflate your statistics with astronomer
>reports of meteor fireballs, on the flimsy excuse that you need
>them for explaining UFO reports. You never answer why you need
>to contaminate the _statistics_ with meteor reports, when you
>can simply keep the meteor reports on file. Keeping the meteor
>reports on file for investigative purposes does not force you to
>add them to your statistics.
We only did this briefly, after discussing it for awhile. We had
found that some "meteor" reports in astronomical databases
were not in fact meteors, since some lasted for many minutes
or even hours. They may have been rightly called UFOs, but were
labelled as IFOs by astronomers because they couldn't possibly
have been UFOs. We have not included MIAC reports for some time.
>>When considering only higher-quality Unknowns (using a
>>Reliability level of 7 or more), here's the breakdown for 2007:
>>Reliability Number Unknowns Percent
>> 7 68 21 30
>> 8 24 8 33.3
>> 9 3 1 33.3
>>Total 95 30 31.6
>>So in this analysis, Unknowns comprise about 30% of the high-
>>quality cases. I gather this is more like you're wanting it to be.
>You don't explain why your 2006 and 2007 Surveys claim the High
>Quality Unknowns were less than 1% of High Quality reports.
Oy.
>The Unknowns do not "stand out" if they are less than 1% of them!!
Ok.
So here?s the thing:
We spend many, many hours of our spare time mining the net and also poring
through UFO case reports to see what is being reported in Canada. We are
unfunded and do this when we can and with limited technology. We evaluate the
information that is available, enter the information into a database and
do some simple statistics on the data. We report on the percentages and
numbers of what we found, noting demographics and distributions across
time and space. The resulting published report is presented for
discussion and for further research, the data being made available in a
table each year.
What ufologists do with the information, data and study is up to them.
My vision is to create a kind of "Robertson Panel" (the "Rutkowski
Panel"?) where funds could be made available to fly in about a dozen
ufologists, non-ufologists and scientists to spend a few weeks
together each looking at all reports of UFOs from a given month or year
and assessing their quality, then evaluating them objectively and coming
to a consensus. My guess is that they would find the same distribution we
get doing the Canadian UFO Survey, but perhaps they wouldn't. It would be
an interesting exercise.
I think ufology needs more good case investigation, too. Once an
interesting case gets identified as such, it would be nice to pour
considerable time and money into in-depth investigation. Even if there
are only a few dozen such cases a year, doing exhaustive work on them
might yield valuable information. Stephenville and the O'hare cases were
a good start.
>>>Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2008 04:15:00 EDT
>>>Subject: Re: Colorado Project Had More Than 50%
>>>What percentage of _all_ high quality cases are Unknowns? You
>>>don't tell us. Your UFO Survey doesn't tell us.
>>Sure it does. The data is right there. That's why we provide it;
>>to allow anyone to do more analysis.
>No you don't. You provide _some_ of the _data_ (not for 1989 to
>1993) but you don't tally up the High Quality case _statistics_
You're right. Geoff didn't do all possible tallies and combinations. Tsk.
>data. The statistics data (the word "data" is plural by the way)
Please. Random House Dictionary says that data is a singular noun
meaning "body of information." You've just gone beyond
objective criticism into personal attack. Great.
>are not there. You don't provide it, as apparently you expect
>people to plow through 7,600 cases to find the High Quality
>cases, and tabulate statistics on them because you are not that
>interested in High Quality cases.
Yes, well, we do expect serious researchers to do some work for
themselves, too. But we can work on this in future studies.
As a matter of fact, we'll be looking at this in the 20-year study
which we will publish next year.
>You only mention one _single_ year with a figure for high-
>quality Unknowns (2007), which I had already mentioned in my
>posting. What did you think I was talking about that was
>different from that ?? Never mind, that will obviously get
>nowhere.
True.
>What percentage of _all_ High Quality cases in the Canadian UFO
>survey from 1989 to date are Unknowns? You can't provide that
>figure because your Survey does not tabulate the data on case
>quality online, whereas you insinuate that "anyone" can just go
>and look it up. There is no table with the 1989 to 2007 data
>quality stats.
The entire 1989 to present database is not available online at this
time. I've noted elsewhere that I had to actually go back and
enter cases from the 1980s and and early 1990s again manually
because the earlier databases are not compatible. Silly dBase
and Quattro Pro.
As for anyone using the data online, as a test a few minutes ago,
I just imported an earlier year's data in HTML into Excel with a
click of the mouse, then ran a sort on it. It works, and found about
a third of the higher-quality cases for that year were unknowns too.
Geoff is working on getting the 7000+ cases into a single file.
Apparently, he is having trouble finding time to do this because he
has a life.
>As far as I can tell 2005 was the first Survey to give the
>High-Quality Unknowns percentage, so we only have that figure
>for 2005 (7%), 2006 (less than 1%) and (2007 (less than 1%). You
>give no explanation for these figures further on in your
>posting, where you come up with 30% to 31.6%.
I just checked the 2003 data to see if this is true. It's not.
From the 2003 Survey:
"There were 111 Unknowns out of 673 total cases in 2003.
If we look only at the Unknowns with a Reliability rating of 7
or greater, we are left with 28 high-quality Unknowns in 2003
(about four per cent of the total)."
>Why didn't you explain this huge discrepancy? As I had said in
>my posting, your survey was claiming less than 1% High-Quality
>Unknowns. Now you say 30%. It's your Survey, please explain it!
There is no discrepancy. The percentage of Unknowns with high
Reliability ratings remains only a few percent of the total data.
The 30 per cent (or so) comes out when we eliminate all low-reliability
cases and only look at higher-quality cases.
Incidentally, I have just got around to reading Ann Druffel's excellent
book on James McDonald. In the first few pages, she notes that in his own
study of cases over five years in his immediate area, he found that only a
few percent of the UFOs reported were Unexplained. Maybe take up your
argument with him, too.
>I'm sorry but this just looks like gobbledygook manipulation of
>statistics.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
>You still don't explain why your Unknowns percentage is so much
>lower than the Condon Report's.
Because they didn't look at raw UFO data?
>Why aren't you doing a better
>job than the Colorado Project of the 1960's on IFO's vs. UFO's?
You tell me. Oh wait, you did:
>Well there is a reason, as I have stated here on UFO UpDates any
>number of times. You deliberately seek out and inflate your
>stats with IFO cases. Here is what you say in the 2007 Survey,
>that in the first few years of the Survey you had essentially no
>IFO's at all, so then you decided you wanted IFO's for some
>strange reason:
>"Contributors were then encouraged to submit data on all UFO
>reports they received [meaning IFO's], so that a more uniform
>assessment and evaluation process could be realized."
>So you deliberately sought out IFO reports to pad and line and
>artificially inflate your statistics.
If that's how you want to interpret that. Our view is that we realized
we weren't getting all the data from investigators. Some were not
bothering to contribute the IFOs they were dealing with. That meant
we would be artificially inflating (your phrase) our percentage of
Unknowns in the broader database if we didn't include all cases
reported as UFOs (but later explained as IFOs). The original purpose
of the study was to see what was being reported as UFOs, not to just
look at Unknowns. (That's a separate research project.)
>This is how you managed to accumulate 7,600 mostly Poor Quality
>cases.
GIGO
Most UFO case reports are not of high-quality, unfortunately.
>You don't do any
>legitimate scientific control studies of the IFO case sample
>with the UFO case sample (I shudder to think how you would
>contaminate each sample with indeterminate, insufficient data
>cases).
I'll leave this for Geoff to answer.
>Judging from your posted comments (below) on 2007, as a
>guess I would say you have less than 1,000 High Quality cases
>out of about 7,600 cases since 1989, so the remaining 6,600+
>would be Poor Quality.
Maybe.
>You should get the Poor Quality cases out of your statistics as
>Hynek urged so many years ago (1976 in The Hynek UFO Report, p.
>259), saying:
>"Insufficient Information cases should [be] excluded from
>statistical computations altogether."
Perhaps. But our Survey was originally designed to find out what
was actually being reported in terms of UFO sightings. It does that very
well. I have no problem with the fact that the analysis of the data is
something that needs debate and discussion. That's why we make
the data available for anyone to play with and why I even bother
with defending it here.
>That does _not_ mean burn them, destroy them, or shred them. The
>Poor Quality reports remain in the files, just should not be in
>the statistics.
I disagree.
>There are many indicators of the poor quality of the vast
>majority of your 7,600 reports. You have almost 40 reports where
>you don't even know the Province! How are those valid cases and
>not garbage reports with Insufficient Data? You have about 50
>reports without even the Month known! God only knows how many
>cases have the Month but are missing the Date.
>You have over 100 cases where you can't even make a Modified
>Hynek Classification of the events! How is that even possible?
It's possible because many people report their sightings to UFO
organizations and don't list or can't recall the date or time. As for
no information on the province, I know of several instances where
the source was a government or military file that listed date, time
and other data, but the actual location was blacked out or
unavailable to us. Should those cases not have been included?
My view is that cases with missing data should be included but
noted as Insufficient Data in an analysis because not including
them would lower the number of reports actually made by
witnesses in a tabulation, suggesting that fewer were reported
than actually were.
>So for 2007, we find that almost 100 of the 836 cases have no
>times or hours. Almost half these cases have no time Durations
>(about 366 of them)! Your Survey claims that "The duration of a
>sighting is one of the biggest clues to its explanation." Well
>if you don't have a Duration then you have by your own admission
>Insufficient Information for "clues to ... explanation."
Indeed.
>You have 436 single-witness cases out of 836, or over half of
>your 2007 data set, another strong indicator of Poor Quality
>cases. Hynek would eliminate virtually all single-witness cases
>unless there were good scientific reasons for retaining them.
You'd eliminate single witness cases as not being worthy of
including in a statistical study on UFOs?
Can others on the list comment on this please?
>Some 382 of the 836 reports are Point Source cases, another
>strong indicator of Poor Quality. Over 100 additional cases do
>not even have a Shape reported! How is it even possible to have
>no Shape?? What on earth could be reported without a Shape??
>What is being reported in those cases?? What kind of "UFO" or
"IFO" has no Shape?? Why do you have such reports in the first
>place?
e.g. Witness: "I saw a UFO flying along the horizon, about half a
mile away. Its light was too bright to see any shape."
>You don't even have an Angular Size category of data. Angular
>Size and Duration are the two primary factors that determine the
>amount of visual data a human witness receives from a sighting
>and you don't even collect the Angular Size data!
Please understand; we don't collect angular size data
because we get the data from many different sources, most
of which don't gather angular size data themselves. Heck, I can't
even recall a recent military report where angular size was included.
And angular size isn't something found in most of Peter
Davenport's case files, for example.
Would it be nice to have? Absolutely.
>And you also shamelessly inflate your statistics with astronomer
>reports of meteor fireballs, on the flimsy excuse that you need
>them for explaining UFO reports. You never answer why you need
>to contaminate the _statistics_ with meteor reports, when you
>can simply keep the meteor reports on file. Keeping the meteor
>reports on file for investigative purposes does not force you to
>add them to your statistics.
We only did this briefly, after discussing it for awhile. We had
found that some "meteor" reports in astronomical databases
were not in fact meteors, since some lasted for many minutes
or even hours. They may have been rightly called UFOs, but were
labelled as IFOs by astronomers because they couldn't possibly
have been UFOs. We have not included MIAC reports for some time.
>>When considering only higher-quality Unknowns (using a
>>Reliability level of 7 or more), here's the breakdown for 2007:
>>Reliability Number Unknowns Percent
>> 7 68 21 30
>> 8 24 8 33.3
>> 9 3 1 33.3
>>Total 95 30 31.6
>>So in this analysis, Unknowns comprise about 30% of the high-
>>quality cases. I gather this is more like you're wanting it to be.
>You don't explain why your 2006 and 2007 Surveys claim the High
>Quality Unknowns were less than 1% of High Quality reports.
Oy.
>The Unknowns do not "stand out" if they are less than 1% of them!!
Ok.
So here?s the thing:
We spend many, many hours of our spare time mining the net and also poring
through UFO case reports to see what is being reported in Canada. We are
unfunded and do this when we can and with limited technology. We evaluate the
information that is available, enter the information into a database and
do some simple statistics on the data. We report on the percentages and
numbers of what we found, noting demographics and distributions across
time and space. The resulting published report is presented for
discussion and for further research, the data being made available in a
table each year.
What ufologists do with the information, data and study is up to them.
My vision is to create a kind of "Robertson Panel" (the "Rutkowski
Panel"?) where funds could be made available to fly in about a dozen
ufologists, non-ufologists and scientists to spend a few weeks
together each looking at all reports of UFOs from a given month or year
and assessing their quality, then evaluating them objectively and coming
to a consensus. My guess is that they would find the same distribution we
get doing the Canadian UFO Survey, but perhaps they wouldn't. It would be
an interesting exercise.
I think ufology needs more good case investigation, too. Once an
interesting case gets identified as such, it would be nice to pour
considerable time and money into in-depth investigation. Even if there
are only a few dozen such cases a year, doing exhaustive work on them
might yield valuable information. Stephenville and the O'hare cases were
a good start.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
The 5% solution
I posted this recently in response to UFO Updates, Errol Bruce-Knapp's excellent UFO discussion forum. My submission was because of a thread regarding the Condon Committee's stance that few UFOs were unexplained, yet a review of their data showed that more than 50% of their cases were unexplained. Discussion ensued concerning how skeptics leap on the suggestion that only about 5% of all UFO reports are unexplained, and that even these might be explained away, leaving nothing at all.
My contribution:
=================================================================================
List:
I really hate to wade into this again, but here goes nothing...
Don Ledger noted:
> You, myself and a few others have been making the point for some
> time that the "thrown bone" of 5 percent unexplained is not
> supportable. Never has been in the cases I've personally come
> investigated. I suspect that investigators and to some extent
> researchers have grabbed onto the admitted 5 percent allowed by
> some nebulous authority. Ufology saw this as a thin wedge and
> proof of true unknowns. On the other hand however that authority
> could claim that there wasn't enough detail to prove that they
> were IFOs.
I know that Brad and others have attacked me for daring to publish our results showing that only a small percentage of UFOs are high-quality unknowns, but to quote Stan Friedman, it seems to be a matter of: "I've made up my mind, don't bother me with the facts."
The reality is that when we started doing our case-by-case analysis many years ago, I was actually surprised that when we actually looked at each case in the files, the percentage of high-quality unknowns was really not very high. In fact, the percentage ranged between 2 and 10 per cent. Overall, on first pass, the percentage of unknowns from the raw data us about 15 per cent, but when we sat down and went through the cases, we could whittle that down to a smaller number of "good cases" each year.
(Take a look at our studies available online at: survey.canadianuforeport.com)
[I think the reason why the Condon Report had more than 50 per cent unknowns is because they seemed to only publish details on well-investigated cases. (One case in particular that I have studied and written about extensively, the Falcon Lake case, is Case 22 in the Report, and I note in my lectures that it's listed as "unexplained.")]
I'm working with Geoff Dittman now on a 20-year longitudinal analysis of Canadian UFO reports. It's been two decades since we began compiling case data and publishing the annual Canadian UFO Survey as of next year, and I am going back to combine all the years' data into one file for a thorough analysis. (This is a difficult job for many reasons I can talk about later.) I started with the 1989 reports and began sorting through them one by one. No matter what the source: military, police, UFO groups, NUFORC, Vike, or UFOROM, the majority of reports are simple lights in the sky, stars, planets, fireballs, meteors, aircraft and balloons. Only a small percentage each year are unknowns, and only a smaller number are "good"
cases.
How, then, do we reconcile the difference between the perceived impression that the percentage of unknowns must be higher than 5 per cent with the result of looking at the actual data?
First of all, I must say that I have great respect for Don Ledger. He has been invaluable in helping me with UFO case investigation in the Maritimes year after year. I cannot disagree with his view that the percentage of unknowns within cases he deals with is higher than 5 per cent.
All I can do is note that in the data we have available to us, and this includes RCMP files, National Defence as well as civilian reports, the percentage of unknowns is relatively low. The much-heralded MoD release of British cases supports this too; most of the official British cases aren't that interesting. (Note: In Canada, we have had access to these kinds of "official UFO reports" for many years.)
One obvious solution to the paradox is to suggest that the databases themselves are flawed. Brad Sparks has argued that we're including too many IFOs instead of UFOs, hence the percentages are skewed. But when you look at the labels for the databases (particularly civilian websites), they all describe "UFO" reports. Even the cases we get from RCMP and military sources are actually titled "UFO Sighting" at the top of the standard form, and most of these turn out to be stars or planets.
So, I doubt this is the case. The reality is that when one looks at raw UFO report data, only a relatively small percentage is categorized as "unknown."
As for the problem that debunkers use the small percentage as fuel for their argument that the unknowns are only outliers and "noise" in the data, this is not supported. As Stan Friedman notes in his lectures (and books), even the USAF Special Report tables show that the unknowns are fundamentally different from the knowns, insufficient data cases and explained cases. Remember, we note in our annual surveys that the high-quality unknowns are not filed as "possible explanation" cases or "insufficient information" cases. These are relatively well-investigated UFO cases that do not seem to have prosaic explanations such as stars, planets, aircraft, fireballs, balloons or the like.
I would suggest that ufologists not deny that the percentage of unknowns is low in the body of UFO data. I don't think there's any reason to worry that debunkers will use this fact as ammunition to attack UFO reports in general. Big deal. The facts speak for themselves. There are a dozen or two good cases every year in Canada; probably a factor of ten more than that in the USA. Many more around the world.
These are the cases to focus on. I don't worry about the IFOs, but I need to identify which cases are which through solid case investigation, research and analysis.
Chris Rutkowski
My contribution:
=================================================================================
List:
I really hate to wade into this again, but here goes nothing...
Don Ledger noted:
> You, myself and a few others have been making the point for some
> time that the "thrown bone" of 5 percent unexplained is not
> supportable. Never has been in the cases I've personally come
> investigated. I suspect that investigators and to some extent
> researchers have grabbed onto the admitted 5 percent allowed by
> some nebulous authority. Ufology saw this as a thin wedge and
> proof of true unknowns. On the other hand however that authority
> could claim that there wasn't enough detail to prove that they
> were IFOs.
I know that Brad and others have attacked me for daring to publish our results showing that only a small percentage of UFOs are high-quality unknowns, but to quote Stan Friedman, it seems to be a matter of: "I've made up my mind, don't bother me with the facts."
The reality is that when we started doing our case-by-case analysis many years ago, I was actually surprised that when we actually looked at each case in the files, the percentage of high-quality unknowns was really not very high. In fact, the percentage ranged between 2 and 10 per cent. Overall, on first pass, the percentage of unknowns from the raw data us about 15 per cent, but when we sat down and went through the cases, we could whittle that down to a smaller number of "good cases" each year.
(Take a look at our studies available online at: survey.canadianuforeport.com)
[I think the reason why the Condon Report had more than 50 per cent unknowns is because they seemed to only publish details on well-investigated cases. (One case in particular that I have studied and written about extensively, the Falcon Lake case, is Case 22 in the Report, and I note in my lectures that it's listed as "unexplained.")]
I'm working with Geoff Dittman now on a 20-year longitudinal analysis of Canadian UFO reports. It's been two decades since we began compiling case data and publishing the annual Canadian UFO Survey as of next year, and I am going back to combine all the years' data into one file for a thorough analysis. (This is a difficult job for many reasons I can talk about later.) I started with the 1989 reports and began sorting through them one by one. No matter what the source: military, police, UFO groups, NUFORC, Vike, or UFOROM, the majority of reports are simple lights in the sky, stars, planets, fireballs, meteors, aircraft and balloons. Only a small percentage each year are unknowns, and only a smaller number are "good"
cases.
How, then, do we reconcile the difference between the perceived impression that the percentage of unknowns must be higher than 5 per cent with the result of looking at the actual data?
First of all, I must say that I have great respect for Don Ledger. He has been invaluable in helping me with UFO case investigation in the Maritimes year after year. I cannot disagree with his view that the percentage of unknowns within cases he deals with is higher than 5 per cent.
All I can do is note that in the data we have available to us, and this includes RCMP files, National Defence as well as civilian reports, the percentage of unknowns is relatively low. The much-heralded MoD release of British cases supports this too; most of the official British cases aren't that interesting. (Note: In Canada, we have had access to these kinds of "official UFO reports" for many years.)
One obvious solution to the paradox is to suggest that the databases themselves are flawed. Brad Sparks has argued that we're including too many IFOs instead of UFOs, hence the percentages are skewed. But when you look at the labels for the databases (particularly civilian websites), they all describe "UFO" reports. Even the cases we get from RCMP and military sources are actually titled "UFO Sighting" at the top of the standard form, and most of these turn out to be stars or planets.
So, I doubt this is the case. The reality is that when one looks at raw UFO report data, only a relatively small percentage is categorized as "unknown."
As for the problem that debunkers use the small percentage as fuel for their argument that the unknowns are only outliers and "noise" in the data, this is not supported. As Stan Friedman notes in his lectures (and books), even the USAF Special Report tables show that the unknowns are fundamentally different from the knowns, insufficient data cases and explained cases. Remember, we note in our annual surveys that the high-quality unknowns are not filed as "possible explanation" cases or "insufficient information" cases. These are relatively well-investigated UFO cases that do not seem to have prosaic explanations such as stars, planets, aircraft, fireballs, balloons or the like.
I would suggest that ufologists not deny that the percentage of unknowns is low in the body of UFO data. I don't think there's any reason to worry that debunkers will use this fact as ammunition to attack UFO reports in general. Big deal. The facts speak for themselves. There are a dozen or two good cases every year in Canada; probably a factor of ten more than that in the USA. Many more around the world.
These are the cases to focus on. I don't worry about the IFOs, but I need to identify which cases are which through solid case investigation, research and analysis.
Chris Rutkowski
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Visit to the Falcon Lake UFO site
Well, we went in by horseback to the Falcon lake site on August 31. 2008. There were 7 of us including our guide, who got us there in one piece up rocky ridges, through swamps and dense forest. And my posterior hurts from the "canter" that the horses insisted on doing across the sandy open areas.
Co-researcher Geoff Dittman and I scoped out the site as the rest of our party listened to the tale told by our guide. She had it right; well-remembered from the version most popularly told. For details, see: www.ufologie.net/htm/michalak67.htm
The Unsolved Mysteries version of the story (featuring a very young me) is on Youtube at:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlbyLxctJcE&feature=related
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hizYrzd-WA&feature=related
Here are some photos from the trip:
Riding along the swamp. Site is off to the right up on the ridge.
Geoff Dittman and Heidi Jean standing on the "landing site."
Me (centre) looking around the site.
On the trail ride home.
The object that Michalak encountered in 1967, from his drawing and description.
Co-researcher Geoff Dittman and I scoped out the site as the rest of our party listened to the tale told by our guide. She had it right; well-remembered from the version most popularly told. For details, see: www.ufologie.net/htm/michalak67.htm
The Unsolved Mysteries version of the story (featuring a very young me) is on Youtube at:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlbyLxctJcE&feature=related
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hizYrzd-WA&feature=related
Here are some photos from the trip:
Riding along the swamp. Site is off to the right up on the ridge.
Geoff Dittman and Heidi Jean standing on the "landing site."
Me (centre) looking around the site.
On the trail ride home.
The object that Michalak encountered in 1967, from his drawing and description.
