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This is for Mr. Paynter in response to his "Stupid Ufology Tricks" essay. I posted this recently to Usenet. I am not interested in debate, but rather in sending you a contrary viewpoint.
You'll notice that scientists resist this evidence because of the implications it raises and because of the questions it begs. But should the integrity of the determination rely on the implications of a positive classification? Which is worse -- a false positive, meaning ruling in favor of the UFO as a unique phenomenon when in fact it does not exist, or a false negative, meaning ruling against it and missing out on its true existence? The answer, of course, lies in the incentive structure of the analyst. I have no incentive nor predisposition to favor one type of error over the other, but scientists do. For scientists, it would open a whole new can of worms, and it would make them look incompetent in the public's eyes for missing out on this fact for 50 years. That's why the incentive structure of contemporary scientists is such that they will not accept alien visitation unless they must, which would be when they get irrefutable physical proof.
This brings us to the logical trickery of the scientific debunker. This trickery manifests consistently in one of three ways. First, the scientific debunker will say that because alien visitation is an extraordinary claim, it thus demands extraordinary proof. Therefore, no evidence is suggestive of alien visitation unless it is accompanied by irrefutable proof. But such a demand is a direct product of the incentive structure, not of logic. The debunkers have failed to define the boundary of extraordinarity, which renders the demand logically specious. For instance, if SETI receives an anomalous repeating signal, but one that is not intelligent in nature like a mathematical constant, and rules out all known causes of terrestrial and deep-space interference, do they need a chunk of the alien radio dish or a dead alien to attribute it to alien origin? What is "extraordinary"? I consider extraordinarity a claim which undermines fundamental precepts of physics. Alien visitation does not do this. Interstellar travel may be difficult as far as we know, but we rode in horses and buggies 100 years ago. And interstellar travel does not violate the laws of physics. Neither do aliens. Therefore, I contend that alien visitation does not violate the laws of physics, and nor does it require a straining of credible probabilistic expectations. We simply don't know how likely it is.
Secondly, the next logical trick is the very nature of the demand for physical proof. If aliens were visiting, I find the expectation of physical proof quite illogical, since it's going to be hard to obtain. Can you obtain physical proof of a B-2 stealth bomber? If not, how can you expect proof for an even higher-performance vehicle, conditional upon its presence? I contend that physical proof is an unattainable evidential boundary which guarantees rejection of the hypothesis of extraterrestrial origin.
A similar trick is that debunkers complain that the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is not falsifiable, and therefore it is scientifically invalid. But the logical flaw in this debunker trick is that if aliens are here and if they are hard to shoot down to obtain proof, they don't care if their presence is falsifiable by humans. They would be here anyway. That's why I contend that the proper analytical approach is not the conventional methodology of hypothesis formulation, testing, and revision/falsification/acceptance, but one of a more flexible inferential approach. Debunkers prefer to discard the observations suggestive of an extraterrestrial vehicle because hypothesizing such origin is "unscientific", but that's merely a convenient loophole. I thus contend that an inferential approach is the only approach that would be amenable to a proper determination of alien presence conditional upon the presence of aliens.
This gets us to the third logical trick of debunkers. Debunkers don't understand Occam's Razor and they abuse it regularly. They think they understand it, but they don't. What it means is that when several hypotheses of varying complexity can explain a set of observations with equal ability, the first one to be tested should be the one that invokes the fewest number of uncorroborated assumptions. If this simplest hypothesis is proven incorrect, the next simplest is chosen, and so forth. But the debunkers forget about the part regarding the TEST of the simpler hypotheses. The radar-visual cases simply cannot be explained by anything BUT a solid object. And by radar-visual case, I'm talking about the proportion of cases that aren't attributable to atmospheric anomalies. Plenty of those exist, and eminent atmospheric physicist Dr. McDonald would never hesitate to explain a case as inversion or malfunction. But a portion could only be explained by a solid object.
So where do the debunkers violate Occam's Razor? What a debunker will do is mutilate and butcher the observations until it can be "explained" by one of the simpler hypotheses, when the proper approach is to alter the hypothesis to accommodate the observations. One should never alter the observations to conform with a hypothesis by saying "the analysis must have been flawed". But that's okay for debunkers to do because it's an "extraordinary claim" being made. Now, to alter observations to force conformance with the preferred hypothesis -- is that science? Or is that dogma? Interestingly, no scientist has EVER refuted McDonald with concrete scientific objections. They only use the Three Rules of Logical Trickery that I've explained here. Menzel and Klass were regularly demolished by McDonald, but they never had any counterarguments. To me, a nonscientist, the lack of rebuttal tells me that his explanation is the best one available, and the debunkers simply don't like his explanation.
My response
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