Sep 20, 2019 04:57 AM
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/...believers/
EXCERPT: . . . For a long time, there weren’t any new, compelling cases,” says Curt Collins, who specializes in uncovering new data from the early days of UFOlogy. “There used to be more frequent sightings that could be considered good,” with multiple eyewitnesses, Collins says, but now many photographs just look like lens flares or points of light—“some really low-grade stuff.” Sometimes the UFOs (like ghostly “orbs”) aren’t even noticed in pictures until after the fact, so there aren’t any eyewitness at all.
Despite his affinity for the classics, Collins has no illusion that any kind of definitive answers will come from them, at this point. “I think [a case] would have to be new to be compelling,” he says. “I’m not satisfied with some of the things we’ve seen recently.”
If you believe media reports from the past few years, it’s not just the good sightings that are evaporating, but any at all. By 2018, reports made to the Mutual UFO Network and the National UFO Reporting Center had dropped by 55 percent in four years (The Guardian 2018), a story that was picked up and spread globally. Locally, Rutkowski, a member of the UFOlogy Research group that maintains the Canadian UFO Survey, sees the opposite trend.
“The number of UFO sightings has been generally increasing,” Rutkowski says, and it has been in Canada for about fifteen years (though there has been a downturn in 2019). That said, he has observed some of the same trends Collins has. There don’t seem to be any more physical traces left behind. Triangles and the classic “flying saucers” have been replaced by spheres and point sources; after all, with more drones and satellites, “there are more tiny dots moving in the sky.”
And yes, “something like a quarter to a third of all UFO reports now come with photos or videos”—but today’s cameras aren’t designed to capture those kinds of images, so they end up not being very useful. Still though, as technology advances, as it surely will, won’t there come a “make it break it” moment for the reality of the UFO phenomenon? Rutkowski doesn’t think so, partly for the same, scary reason we see everywhere else now: the death of expertise.
“’What I believe is as valid as what you believe,’” Rutkowski summarizes the “meta-modernism” philosophy. “That seems to be the state of the world, and ufology is right in it.” While it might be new to the normals, that’s something that definitely hasn’t changed in UFO research. The late Friedman had a saying he applied to skeptics but could as easily be applied to all sides: “Don’t bother me with the facts; my mind’s already made up.” (MORE)
EXCERPT: . . . For a long time, there weren’t any new, compelling cases,” says Curt Collins, who specializes in uncovering new data from the early days of UFOlogy. “There used to be more frequent sightings that could be considered good,” with multiple eyewitnesses, Collins says, but now many photographs just look like lens flares or points of light—“some really low-grade stuff.” Sometimes the UFOs (like ghostly “orbs”) aren’t even noticed in pictures until after the fact, so there aren’t any eyewitness at all.
Despite his affinity for the classics, Collins has no illusion that any kind of definitive answers will come from them, at this point. “I think [a case] would have to be new to be compelling,” he says. “I’m not satisfied with some of the things we’ve seen recently.”
If you believe media reports from the past few years, it’s not just the good sightings that are evaporating, but any at all. By 2018, reports made to the Mutual UFO Network and the National UFO Reporting Center had dropped by 55 percent in four years (The Guardian 2018), a story that was picked up and spread globally. Locally, Rutkowski, a member of the UFOlogy Research group that maintains the Canadian UFO Survey, sees the opposite trend.
“The number of UFO sightings has been generally increasing,” Rutkowski says, and it has been in Canada for about fifteen years (though there has been a downturn in 2019). That said, he has observed some of the same trends Collins has. There don’t seem to be any more physical traces left behind. Triangles and the classic “flying saucers” have been replaced by spheres and point sources; after all, with more drones and satellites, “there are more tiny dots moving in the sky.”
And yes, “something like a quarter to a third of all UFO reports now come with photos or videos”—but today’s cameras aren’t designed to capture those kinds of images, so they end up not being very useful. Still though, as technology advances, as it surely will, won’t there come a “make it break it” moment for the reality of the UFO phenomenon? Rutkowski doesn’t think so, partly for the same, scary reason we see everywhere else now: the death of expertise.
“’What I believe is as valid as what you believe,’” Rutkowski summarizes the “meta-modernism” philosophy. “That seems to be the state of the world, and ufology is right in it.” While it might be new to the normals, that’s something that definitely hasn’t changed in UFO research. The late Friedman had a saying he applied to skeptics but could as easily be applied to all sides: “Don’t bother me with the facts; my mind’s already made up.” (MORE)