September 9, 2018 — David Halperin

[Gene Steinberg]

In a sense this episode took us back to the core of the UFO phenomenon the cause. Without a final solution or evidence, this episode proved ended up involving a healthy discussion about different possibilities.

Gene and Randall also talked about this episode and other subjects on this weekend's episode of After The Paracast, an exclusive feature of The Paracast+.

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[kanakaris]

Great guest.But i don't agree on the Belgian wave.How does he explain the radar tape ?

 

[Randall]

Great guest.But i don't agree on the Belgian wave.How does he explain the radar tape ?

Good point. Halperin waffled a bit when it came to radar, at one point using the same tactic skeptics make which is to claim that there are good radar detections without visual observations, and good visual observations without radar detection, but none that have both. Then I brought up the 1952 DC case, and @Farlig Gulstein brought up the Nimitz tic-tac case. That seemed to make David think again, which IMO is the sign of a fair minded skeptic. According to Tim Printy's analysis of the radar/visual claims for the belgian wave ( BELGIUM 1990: A CASE FOR RADAR-VISUAL UFOS ) there were no simultaneous radar/visual instances. But like the 1952 DC case, the entire story isn't as easily dismissed as Printy would prefer.

 

[Sand]

Those who've had a chance to read Edward Ruppelt’s book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects will likely remember this 1953 radar-visual case which Ruppelt personally investigated the day after it happened. The case involved visual witnesses at multiple locations observing the UFO at the same time it was being tracked on two radar systems. It also involved two pursuits by F-84 jet fighters. During one pursuit the pilot turned on his radar-ranging gun sight which also detected the UFO.

A copy of the case has been posted on the NICAP site. In Ruppelt’s book, it appears in Chapter 17.
The Ellsworth AFB Case. Aug 12, 1953

(Note. The person who made the copy for the NICAP site made an error in the date Ruppelt first learned of the events. In his book Ruppelt said it was at about 2:00am August 13, not August 11 which would have been before it happened. Otherwise it’s a verbatim copy of what Ruppelt says in his book)

 

[Randall]

Those who've had a chance to read Edward Ruppelt’s book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects will likely remember this 1953 radar-visual case which Ruppelt personally investigated the day after it happened. The case involved visual witnesses at multiple locations observing the UFO at the same time it was being tracked on two radar systems. It also involved two pursuits by F-84 jet fighters. During one pursuit the pilot turned on his radar-ranging gun sight which also detected the UFO.

A copy of the case has been posted on the NICAP site. In Ruppelt’s book, it appears in Chapter 17.
The Ellsworth AFB Case. Aug 12, 1953

(Note. The person who made the copy for the NICAP site made an error in the date Ruppelt first learned of the events. In his book Ruppelt said it was at about 2:00am August 13, not August 11 which would have been before it happened. Otherwise it’s a verbatim copy of what Ruppelt says in his book)

Funny thing, I was just thinking about the Halperin interview on the way home and there was your post. Good point too. The other thing that bothered me a bit was David's response to the point that most often the stuff we see is because there's something actually there. His position was essentially that because the number of things we normally see is so large compared to the number of unexplained things, that the implied explanation is that the unexplained things are more likely to be hallucinations.

That seems fine on the surface, but I have to question the logic. The stimulus response doesn't pick and choose what photons to process based on what we think is normal or otherwise. It's a scientifically understood biological process. In the case of vision, it converts photons to bioelectrical signals. It doesn't discriminate between an alien craft giving off light, or the evening fireworks. Therefore what logical reason is there to assume that the photons given off by a UFO are more likely to be a hallucination than photons given off by anything else?

I would submit that all other things being equal, the ratio of hallucinated UFOs to actual craft should be about the same as the ration of hallucinated objects to mundane objects. But how often do people hallucinate something like a tree where there is no tree? I don't have stats on specific hallucinations of trees, but you get the idea. It seems to me that if hallucinations were a primary factor in producing UFO phenomena, that there would be far fewer sightings overall, which suggests that at least some UFOs aren't hallucinatory. Something is indeed giving off photons that are picked up by the witness' retinas.

 

[FletcherMunson]

Finally finishing this episode, and as I listen, I keep saying, "Read Albert Budden's work." His books are super cheap on Amazon, and a couple of them -- UFOs Psychic Close Encounters and Electric UFOs -- present research and a hypothesis that could serve as a type of bridge between the two schools of thought presented in this episode.