Neil Tyson talks about UFOs and the argument from ignorance.

[UFO Lite]

Such enthusiasm!

His logic is sound, but what happens when evidence disappears, as it seems to, over and over again?

 

[MrChud]

Thats a great clip. Neil Tyson has such a passion for science and astronomy, it is really contagious. I think Tyson, Phil Plait, and Michio Kaku are the Sagans of our time, they speak about our cosmos with such wonder and enthusiasm and imagination, they spark the inner fire of exploration in us all.

It's funny you should post that clip. I was going to put it up for discussion earliar this week, but I figured it would be flamed, and Dr. Tyson would be called an "ignorant ebil closed minded skeptic" who worked for the NWO or some such nonsense, I am glad you posted it.

 

[Stagger]

Brilliant guy!

 

[David Biedny]

Tyson claims that the iPhone is some sort of weird technological quirk, which proves he doesn't have a clue about the history and development of that particular technology - many of us who are actual technologists could absolutely see that things were headed that way, in the same fashion that, prior to the explosion of the Internet, I taught legions of students about how microcomputer and CDROM-based interactive multimedia was essentially a simulation of future television - and the Internet, as it turns out, is the expression of that future form of broadcast media, with the iPhone a natural development resulting from the miniaturization of integrated circuits, something predicted in the Dick fucking Tracy comic strip. An astronomer like him should be careful talking about digital technology, does he think an astronomer is somehow especially qualified to have an intelligent conversation about digital media devices? That he cited this as an example is laughable, and indicative of his own significant lack of understanding of consumer electronics and wireless tech.

Further, the use of the "telephone game" argument is horseshit - it handily ignores the fact that in many cases, FIRST HAND WITNESS TESTIMONY is the compelling bit of evidence, NOT the retelling of anecdotal data. He's also ignorant of the fact that many folks - including myself - report DAYTIME sightings, NOT lights in the sky, and many of these sightings occur with multiple witnesses. He dismisses important information and data with a particular degree of snark that has precious little to do with scientific curiosity.

The guy is an entertainer, a charismatic television drone, but he's not an experiencer, so his opinion should be qualified. And Chud, take note of the fact that I have often pointed out that UFO is a term which has meaning, the Unidentified tag is the key, so to come on here and somehow claim that we would shoot this guy down without context is to show your own ignorance about the content of our show. Feel free to find some other place to express yourself, for my money, you offer very little value or understanding to the conversations we have here.

dB

 

[TClaeys]

Science and astronomy needs people like Tyson. I really like the guy and appreciate his endeavor to enlighten and inspire our youth to want to do science. He makes it sound exciting and you can't help but like to listen to the guy when he talks about the heavens above us. He is a good person and is probably the best science promoter we have in this day, or at least one of them.

However, his argument seems to be one of ignorance as well. Why should astronomers see more UFO's than the average person?? First of all, they are not only looking up, they are looking WAY up into the stars. UFO's are seen numerous places, but not usually in some kind of contrast to the stars or distant nebula. They look at a very fine point in the sky and I would guess they would completely miss viewing a UFO if it weren't in right in front of their telescope. Even so, astronomers have seen and reported them. How about Clyde Tombaugh who discovered Pluto and reported a UFO as well?? In addition I'm guessing there is somewhat of a stigma in reporting such things don't you think?? Geez, talk about being ostracized from the scientific community, try reporting a UFO and see what happens.

Also, the evidence. He's right, the evidence is shaky. But it's not like we're out there trying to convince Neil Tyson. The truth is that people have seen some freaking strange stuff, period. These people don't need to be convinced nor do they need to answer up to Tysons or sciences standards. They know. They, IMO, can't possibly all be optical illusions or brain failures. Some are, but some just plain are not. And for whatever reason, maybe the entities that are visiting are somehow inhibiting us from collecting that nail-in-the-coffin piece of physical evidence. We have ZERO evidence for string theory but that lack of physical evidence doesn't stop funders from dumping millions into it. The LHC, the most expensive elaborate machine ever constructed is looking for a particle we don't even know exists. It, for now, only exists in our minds and theories. You know, the same minds that often fail miserably.

I wonder what he would have to say about some of Ted Phillips investigations, like say the Delphos case for example. Or any number of other cases involving good-enough-for-science evidence. How many times in the history of science have we gone from "It just cannot exist to well, ... it DOES exist"?? Lots.

Again I really do like Tyson and what he does. But perhaps he should stick to what he does best.

 

[Stagger]

Hi David,

Tyson claims that the iPhone is some sort of weird technological quirk, which proves he doesn't have a clue about the history and development of that particular technology

Obvious exaggeration and probably a sign that he doesn't know much about the underlying technology indeed, but the argument holds. The fact that, in 1999 we would already have expected products to develop that way does not necessarily mean we already had the technology to actually implement and produce an iPhone at the costs and quantities required for mass market mobile telephony. It would not have looked alien, but at least 'a little bit out of place',
Additionally, if somebody came back with an actual teleportation device, would we dismiss it with a yawn because we have already seen in Star Trek?

Further, the use of the "telephone game" argument is horseshit - it handily ignores the fact that in many cases, FIRST HAND WITNESS TESTIMONY is the compelling bit of evidence, NOT the retelling of anecdotal data.

I think it's perfectly legitimate argument, it's a pitfall and it affects ufology just as much as it affects anything else. Also, first hand witness testimony is anecdotal evidence, albeit of much better quality. Radar recordings, physical traces and photographs, OTOH, are not.

Greetings

 

[SarkozyAide]

Hey DB...I have really enjoyed the last couple of months worth of Paracasts and keep meaning to ask the question: You mentioned several times that in one of the earlier paracasts you go into more detail re: your sighting in Venezuela. Where might I find this? Thanks and keep up the good work!

 

[David Biedny]

Hey DB...I have really enjoyed the last couple of months worth of Paracasts and keep meaning to ask the question: You mentioned several times that in one of the earlier paracasts you go into more detail re: your sighting in Venezuela. Where might I find this? Thanks and keep up the good work!

March 28, 2006 Barry Biedny and David Twichell | The Paracast with Gene Steinberg and David Biedny — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio

dB

 

[The Hawk]

If we rely on continually saying UFOs are completely unidentified there is a point where we are purposefully ignorant. Someone knows there have been many anomalous UFO sightings, they see a round metal UFO flying at 10,000 mph stop on a dime and land in front of them and non human intelligences walk out and introduce themselves, and they say:
"It's completely unidentified. I can't even say there was a intelligence involved."
Then they are purposefully ignorant.
We don't know that the beings came from space but we can at least deduce that they are non human and intelligent.

There are many hundreds of documented UFO sightings by astronomers BTW.

 

[Astroboy]

Tyson claims that the iPhone is some sort of weird technological quirk, which proves he doesn't have a clue about the history and development of that particular technology ...

He should stick with Astronomy. The features on the iPhone were available years in advance in countries like Japan and Korea. Even now the iPhone cannot do a lot of things phones in other countries can do. There is nothing new technically in the iPhone. Apple just did a very good job of integrating the existing technology and making it easy to use. That's their thing.

 

[MrChud]

David wrote

The guy is an entertainer, a charismatic television drone, but he's not an experiencer, so his opinion should be qualified. And Chud, take note of the fact that I have often pointed out that UFO is a term which has meaning, the Unidentified tag is the key, so to come on here and somehow claim that we would shoot this guy down without context is to show your own ignorance about the content of our show. Feel free to find some other place to express yourself, for my money, you offer very little value or understanding to the conversations we have here.

I wasn't talking about you or your show. I was talking about the very vocal doe-eyed believers that can't see past their own beliefs, or see a CT in every aspect of life that frequent this forum. They often have much disdain for skeptics or anyone who would question what they have seen, or experianced or believe.

You are wrong about Dr. Tyson, he is not just an entertainer. He has a Ph.D in astronomy and is heavily involved in public education and outreach for science, something this world desperately needs. If you brought him hard evidence for aliens or the paranormal he would be as excited as anyone on this planet, probably more so.

You may not like my skepticism or want to hear from me and thats fine, however, I am a loyal listener to your show since 2006 I never miss an episode, and I want to see it continue to succeed. That doesnt mean I have to agree with you or believe everything you say. We live in a complex world and there is plenty of room for disagreement. Thats reality. You and people like you, who have experienced anomalous things in your life need skeptics like me. Although I may look for more mundane explanations for these things, I listen to you and look for evidence along with you, whereas most people will just point and laugh, then go on ignoring you.

 

[Kieran]

I Watched the video. My impressions straight away. The guy has no clue of the ufo phenomen.

Lights in the sky do some research. We have far more evidence than lights.People like Tyson should not comment or even reply to questions about ufos. When it obvious they have not looked at the evidence or talked to people who have had encounters.

 

[Sean Elifritz]

One of the problems I have with this sort of dismissal is that these guys always seem to just want to focus on distant lights in the sky. What about close encounters? More specifically, what about CE3s? How can all of those simply be written off as people jumping to conclusions? When you've got a case where multiple people are claiming to have encountered what appeared to be aliens at an arm's length how can you justify brushing that aside as a mistake? Look at incidents like the 62 school children in Africa, Allagash abduction, Kelly Cahill abduction, etc. These are incidents where multiple people claim to have seen alien entities close up at the same time. It seems to me like a stretch in the extreme to say that these people were mistaken. It is possible that a prosaic explanation exists but no sensible ones have been presented yet. Mass hallucination certainly doesn't work because asserting that multiple people would all start hallucinating exactly the same thing at exactly the same time is an incredible claim in its own right. The simplest dismissal is probably to just label all these people as liars but with a lot of these incidents there is no evidence whatsoever that the witnesses are being anything but honest to the best of their ability.

 

[MrChud]

You are right my friend, beyond deception I can't think of any good explanations for those events. Even if those stories all happened the way they were told, so what? What do we gain, what knowledge do we acquire from these tales? Where do we go from here? We still don't have anything concrete, nothing physical that could point us to a solution or even a hypothesis. In the end it is just another anecdote with nothing to back it up, and because of that it will not be taken seriously. What a shame.

 

[Sean Elifritz]

You are right my friend, beyond deception I can't think of any good explanations for those events. Even if those stories all happened the way they were told, so what? What do we gain, what knowledge do we acquire from these tales? Where do we go from here? We still don't have anything concrete, nothing physical that could point us to a solution or even a hypothosis. In the end it is just another anecdote with nothing to back it up, and becuase of that it will not be taken seriously. What a shame.

That attitude seems rather flippant to me. Your argument seems to be that nothing matters until it has been 100% verified by scientists. That's a strange outlook to have and seems on the edge of religious dogma in my estimation. At one time, for example, scientists believed that reports of rocks falling from the sky were absurd. But those rocks were real whether science liked it or not and were capable of wiping out all life on the planet if a particularly large one were to strike. Science has a long history of being wrong, exactly the reason school text books have to be revised frequently.

The fact remains that almighty science has been utterly impotent in the face of these close encounter reports. They can't explain them so they ignore them instead. It is fine with me when a skeptical scientist says that aliens visiting Earth has not been proven, because it hasn't been. But it is another matter entirely when they get on their soapboxes and dismiss the entire subject out of hand. The simple fact that they cannot explain these close encounter incidents in a way that makes a lick of sense should be humbling to them. These cases should be enough to leave the question open. But instead many of them pretend that they know what all the answers are. These are all misidentifications, hoaxes, military aircraft, etc. Again, how does any of that explain close encounters? It doesn't, and sadly they don't seem to care that it doesn't. Until they can start explaining some of these multiple witness entity sightings in a way that makes even marginal sense they should be looking into the matter to get to the bottom of things or at the very least cease the campaign of character assassination and ridicule on those attempting to do just that.

And I suppose that one might say what difference does it make either way? If we are being visited under science's nose so what? The reason it is important to get to the bottom of whatever it is generating these hundreds of unexplained reports is because if it is real we have no idea what its motive is. The purpose could be benevolent or indifferent, but then again it might be anything but. So long as that possibility is on the table it is irresponsible for learned men to casually ignore these unexplained reports.

 

[MrChud]

I wasn't being flippant, I simply think it reflects reality. Science is often wrong? Yup, but that is the beauty of the scientific method, it is self correcting and freely admits it's mistakes. I think it's also important to seperate the scientific method from the individual scientists. As humans the scientists are just as capable of bias as anyone else on earth, but the method is there in place to counter that. Anyway I feel like we are just going in circles here, so with that said have a wonderful day.

 

[Sean Elifritz]

I wasn't being flippant, I simply think it reflects reality. Science is often wrong? Yup, but that is the beauty of the scientific method, it is self correcting and freely admits it's mistakes. I think it's also important to seperate the scientific method from the individual scientists. As humans the scientists are just as capable of bias as anyone else on earth, but the method is there in place to counter that. Anyway I feel like we are just going in circles here, so with that said have a wonderful day.

I think that what I'm driving at is that when scientists are asked, "Are aliens visiting the Earth?" the hundreds of baffling reports on the record should be enough to cause them to reply, "Such a thing has not been proven but ultimately I don't know." I can respect that sort of skeptic.

 

[Unky]

Wickerman, I applaud some of your thoughts as a cool drink of rationalism. I think you hit on the core issue. In addition to Tyson, I've recently heard Nye, McGaha and Platt take about UFO's as that "lights in the sky" issue. What's important for the public to understand is that the scientists and researchers that are involved in the serious study of the UFO phenomenon are not particularly interested in lights in the sky either. It is the strong CEII and CEIII cases, like some of those you mentioned that really drive the research.

While I like Tyson as well, people here need to remember that he is a card carrying member of CSI/CSICOP, and that should tell you all you need to know about his religious intentions. Members of this organization are partial to using ufology as a symbol of the "snuffed candle philosophy" in discussions and lectures without a desire to discuss the good cases and assigning them their properly deserved label of "unknown". While I believe that Tyson is a gifted educator and I appreciate his many points of view, I would likely not raise this subject with him at all unless I fully intended to thrash him to death with facts, data, case evidence, and all kinds of other stuff he doesn't know about a phenomenon I've spent years studying.

 

[uforadio]

Such enthusiasm!

His logic is sound, but what happens when evidence disappears, as it seems to, over and over again?

Dear UFO Lite.

Thank you so much for this post. I completely understand from where Neil Tyson is coming from and I am very sympathetic about his speech, although he makes some unchecked claims. Like some uniformed astronomers his view comes with basic terms. I can understand that – for someone to decide to check up deeply on UFOs, your decision must meet some assertive filters to actually check for the possible signal inside the enormous noise.

Anyway he makes similar claim as astronomer Phil Plait. Back in November 2008, Plait has made comment about astronomers and UFOs which started big debate inside UFO and astronomy community (the threads on UFO Updates were posted about that for months). In essence Plait has stated this:

Source: Aliens? Yes. UFOs? No. | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

“Amateur astronomers…They are dedicated observers, out every night peering at the sky. If The Truth Is Out There, then amateur astronomers would be reporting far and away the vast majority of UFOs. But they don’t. Why not? Because they understand the sky! They know when a twinkling light is Venus, or a satellite, or a military flare, or a hot air balloon, and so they don’t report it. That, to me, is the killer argument that aliens aren’t visiting us. If they were, the amateur astronomers would spot them.”

-end of quote

Here we go again. UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object and astronomers do report UFOs and few available studies on this topic are available. Phil’s classification of “alien visitation” is no more different then unconditional “UFO worshipper” from the opposite side of the spectrum.

Captain Edward Ruppelt (head of Blue Book from 1951 to 1953) wrote in his book that different astronomers had different ideas about UFOs at the time.

“We decided that the opinions and comments from astronomers would be of value, so late in 1952 we took a poll”, Ruppelt writes in his book. Ruppelt commissioned astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek to conduct a poll between astronomers during the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Victoria, B.C.

The report was “Restricted” at the time but today it is in the public domain, of course. The report is named “Special Report on Conferences with Astronomers on Unidentified Aerial Objects to Air Technical Intelligence Center Wright-Patterson Air Force Base by J. Allen Hynek, August 6, 1952”.

The researched pattern included 45 astronomers (of course for better results bigger pattern would be advisable but later studies have accomplished that – in the continuation of my text). From 45 astronomers, 36 % is not interested in UFO sightings but 41 % is – and some astronomers have even offered their professional services for future UFO study if there will be need. 23 % of astronomers thought that “the UFOs were a much more serious problem then most people recognized”.

“During the past few years I have heard it said that if the UFO’s were really “solid objects” our astronomers would have seen them. Our study shed some lights on this point – astronomers have seen UFOs”, Ruppelt wrote in his book.

The most famous astronomers that were questioned by Hynek were Clyde Tombaugh (discoverer of Pluto) and Lincoln LaPaz (both had their UFO sightings). Also Hynek’s poll finds that 11 % of astronomers have seen UFO which is a far bigger value compared with the general public – controlled group. Namely, for the need of the study, the poll has been conducted with the control group too (outside of astronomy circles) where only 1 % of general public has seen UFOs (compared with 11 % of astronomers) – so again this is quite opposite from Tyson’s statement.

“This seemed to indicate that as a group astronomers see many more UFO’s then the average citizen”, concludes Ruppelt.

Other study was done in January 1977 by astronomer Peter Sturrock from the Stanford University. The study was conducted with professional astronomers, members of the American Astronomical Society. The questionnaire has been sent to 2611 astronomers. 52 % of astronomers responded to task. From those, 80 % has supported new scientific study about UFOs and also offered their help. 20 % expressed their opinion that UFOs are not valuable for scientific attention. 5 % of astronomers stated that they have seen UFOs – from those only 30 % tried to report the sighting to some formal organization. Also Sturrock concluded, less the astronomer knows about UFOs – he will have more negative approach towards the problems.

In 1980, astronomer Gert Herb has conducted similar study with the amateur astronomers. The questionnaire has been sent to 8526 astronomers and 1805 astronomers responded to task. From those 67 % stated that “UFOs definitely or probably exist”. 24 % of amateur astronomers responded that they have seen a UFO which is a far bigger value then we have with the professional astronomers. But to pass such a big result with more critical analysis, Herb has selected 261 “senior observers” for a 2nd series of filter questions. From those he has acquired 74 cases of UFO sightings where astronomers have stated that they saw the objects “which resisted the most exhaustive efforts at identification”.

Of course it can be argued that those who have seen UFOs are more likely to fill the questionnaire so those who didn’t responded to study (there was 8526 astronomers in total) maybe are not interested in UFOs but they should be included in the total pattern. If we take that in consideration we again get that 5,2 % of astronomers have seen UFOs. So with those critically crunched numbers Herb concludes in CUFOS Bulletin (1980) that “even if only 5 % of all amateur astronomers made valid sightings of truly unusual objects, this would still be of great significance – by comparison, if we make the same calculation for professional astronomers in the Sturrock survey, the sighting rate drops to 2,4 % which is still impressive. In contrast, the sighting rate among the general public is somewhere between 5 and 10 % depending on which survey result we use.”

So - with critically crunched numbers the percentage of amateur astronomers drops from 24 to 5 % but again it is around the percentage of general public (relative to study) – only with the professional astronomers in the Sturrock study with the more critical approach, numbers are below the general public). To make a conclusion – yes, astronomers do see UFOs - what ever they are - values are not so far away from general public if we take more conservative approach with the results.

 

[Schuyler]

Dismissing a subject you know nothing about is easy. That means you needn't take any knowledge into consideration and can fly on uninformed opinion alone. I'm not one to dismiss the value of education. It IS valuable. But the fact that this guy has a PhD in astronomy does not make him an authority. Hynek had a PhD in astronomy, too. James McDonald had a PhD in atmospheric physics. Not that they can debate each other, but I can't see how they are not equally qualified to speak on the subject, and at least the last two actually studied the subject. I wouldn't be surprised if Tyson had never read anything on the subject. And for that matter, Michael Salla has a PhD, too--a legitimate one (in 'government')--yet he's never met a UFO he didn't like. He believes in reptilians, chemtrails, and pretty much anything you throw in front of him.

I don't think highly-educated astronomers know anything about UFOs any more than I believe actors know anything about politics. It's just that they have a platform, so they use it to further their own agendas, no matter how ill-informed they are.