data to back it up, or at least . . .
IMHO, you revealed the "reality" of the situation (that most will admit to be true) by the way you framed this comment Greg. What "data" do we,
John Q. Public, have in order to base our conjectures on?
We have thousands of trace cases, such as Ted Phillips' large collection, that tell us the encounter events are not "merely" dreams, but that are in some way actually occurring outside our consciousness. Yet so far, even Phillips' collection does not lead to conclusive closure as to what specifically is the cause.
Beyond trace evidence is human testimony of encounters, which typically is freaking weird. Can anyone discern much scientifically testable "data" from such testimony? On the other hand, I do think the accumulated "social" data can be sliced and diced, but that tells more about the human experiencers than anything else, other than frequency and location of events.
Then we have to ask, is there an absolute direct connection between residual trace evidence and the weird encounters, or is the association between the two far more relaxed?
Does the evidence in hand in 2017 lead to the idea of a sentient cause of UFO encounters?
If so, is there enough evidence to determine that the sentience is not derived from the human experiencer of the event, but is external to the human who reports the event?
Then too, I don't think most people conclude that
all UFO reports are solely the result mistaken identification, or of direct human deception of other humans. But on that note, I do think the Roswell event and the Wilbert Smith memo may have been counter-intel operations that piggy-backed on UFOs, and evidently the MJ documents did as well. But it is highly doubtful that
all UFO reports result from intel operations, even though such activity throws confusion and doubt on actual reports of UFOs.
There are many unsolved cases of cunning human crimes against other humans in the world. So, if there actually is an external sentience that dominates UFO / paranormal encounters with humans, then we humans may never be able to "solve" these cases in any scientifically conclusive way.
As for me, I am convinced that an external sentience does control encounter events, which I think of as
"The UFO Show." But from my view of the world as a theist,
"The UFO Show" is only one of a number of similar kinds of experiences reported by people through the ages and around the world.