NASA says 2 to 5 percent of UFO sightings are "possibly anomalous" in nature

[SarahEllard]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/worl...ar&cvid=ddd3a48b4c2042f0c57c4e0055392ba7&ei=8

''Around 50 to 100 UAP sightings are recorded each month, officials said – but only 2 to 5 per cent of them are thought to be "possibly anomalous" rather than caused by humans or natural phenomena.''


Seems pretty clear in their wording here that they're implying they think 2 to 5 percent of these sightings are supernatural in nature, given that they said ''rather than caused by humans or natural phenomena''.

 

[C C]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/worl...ar&cvid=ddd3a48b4c2042f0c57c4e0055392ba7&ei=8

''Around 50 to 100 UAP sightings are recorded each month, officials said – but only 2 to 5 per cent of them are thought to be "possibly anomalous" rather than caused by humans or natural phenomena.''

EXCERPT: Nasa associate administrator Nicola Fox said: “It is really disheartening to hear of the harassment our panellists have faced online, all because they’re studying this topic. Harassment only leads to further stigmatisation of the UAP field, hindering the scientific process and discouraging others from studying this subject matter.”

Mr Spergel also warned that stigma around UFO sightings leads to many events going unreported, adding that commercial pilots are very reluctant to report anomalies because of “a stigma among people reporting UAP sightings.”

He added: “One of our goals is to remove the stigma, because there is a need for high-quality data to address important questions about UAPs.”​

And yet this seems priceless irony, given who engineered the stigma in the first place (decades ago). And that included the accomplice experts that the CIA and military mobilized for the task -- the 20th-century counterparts of those above now striving to undo what their predecessors wrought.

C.I.A. admits government lied about U.F.O. sightings (1997)
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/03/us/cia-admits-government-lied-about-ufo-sightings.html

UFO stigma, alien conspiracy theories are relics of Cold War paranoia (2021)
https://thehill.com/opinion/nationa...n-conspiracy-theories-are-relics-of-cold-war/

EXCERPTS: Amid intensifying Cold War hostilities, America’s spies and defense planners worried that mass UFO sightings could again overwhelm emergency reporting channels, giving the Soviet Union “a surprise advantage in any nuclear attack.” Officials also feared that the Soviets would use “UFOs as a psychological warfare tool” to sow “mass hysteria and panic.”

Reducing the volume of UFO reports, these officials reasoned, would minimize such vulnerabilities. And so the CIA set out to quash growing public interest in UFOs.

The agency began by recruiting academics to join a “Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects.” The group, which – importantly – was not shown the most compelling UFO data, recommended a “broad educational program” to “debunk” UFO reports and “train” observers “in proper recognition of unusually illuminated objects.”

According to the panel, the “training” program would “result in a marked reduction of [UFO] reports.” At the same time, the “debunking” effort would decrease “public interest in ‘flying saucers’” and reduce Americans’ “susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda.”

As investigative journalist Leslie Kean notes, the CIA-organized meetings “would forever change both the course of media coverage and the official attitude toward the UFO subject.”

[...] the “debunking” effort had extraordinary consequences.

Objective analysis that once suggested astounding explanations for UFOs rapidly morphed into a public relations effort determined to debunk and discredit sightings, no matter how credible.

According to James McDonald, one of the world’s leading atmospheric physicists, the Air Force began applying “meteorologically, chemically and optically absurd” explanations to UFO sightings. Widespread public and congressional anger soon followed.

Perhaps worse, as astronomer and long-time consultant to the Air Force’s UFO project J. Allen Hynek bluntly stated: The CIA panel “made the subject of UFOs scientifically unrespectable.”​

Seems pretty clear in their wording here that they're implying they think 2 to 5 percent of these sightings are supernatural in nature, given that they said ''rather than caused by humans or natural phenomena''.

Such radical departures from "mundane space aliens" requires that speculative mantra which someone in the establishment occasionally mutters of "defying the laws of physics". In the Cold War days, it was their own advanced aircraft that they were often covering up. Though they're not employing the same universal "debunk everything" tactic this time around -- either because defense technology truly isn't responsible for these (select) UAP events, or they've amped the obfuscation and disinformation game to a new level of complexity.

EXCERPT: Rather than acknowledgeing the existence of the top-secret flights or saying nothing about them publicly, the Air Force decided to put out false cover stories, the C.I.A. study says. For instance, unusual observations that were actually spy flights were attributed to atmospheric phenomena like ice crystals and temperature inversions.

''Over half of all U.F.O. reports from the late 1950's through the 1960's were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights'' over the United States, the C.I.A. study says. ''This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project.'

​

 

[exchemist]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/worl...ar&cvid=ddd3a48b4c2042f0c57c4e0055392ba7&ei=8

''Around 50 to 100 UAP sightings are recorded each month, officials said – but only 2 to 5 per cent of them are thought to be "possibly anomalous" rather than caused by humans or natural phenomena.''


Seems pretty clear in their wording here that they're implying they think 2 to 5 percent of these sightings are supernatural in nature, given that they said ''rather than caused by humans or natural phenomena''.

Balls. The wording you are quoting is by the reporting journalist, not the speaker.

 

[Yazata]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/worl...ar&cvid=ddd3a48b4c2042f0c57c4e0055392ba7&ei=8

''Around 50 to 100 UAP sightings are recorded each month, officials said – but only 2 to 5 per cent of them are thought to be "possibly anomalous" rather than caused by humans or natural phenomena.''

I watched the livestream of the meeting but I don't have access to a precise transcript of what was said. As I recall, it was Sean Kirkpatrick of AARO that said something close to that. Again as I recall, he was saying that only 2% - 5% of their reports appear anomalous on their face and display what might be called clearly anomalous characteristics. I took that to mean aerodynamic maneuvers outside the performance envelope of conventional aircraft and so on.

Seems pretty clear in their wording here that they're implying they think 2 to 5 percent of these sightings are supernatural in nature, given that they said ''rather than caused by humans or natural phenomena''.

I really doubt that Sean Kirkpatrick meant to say that. I think that what he meant to say is that going by the data that AARO has available to it, a small percentage of reports (2-5%) don't appear on their face to be consistent with familiar and mundane explanations. That shouldn't be taken to mean "supernatural in nature", just "unknown at this point". It's entirely possible that many/most these ostensibly anomalous reports might turn out to be the result of sensor artifacts or other errors. That's why the meeting participants placed such emphasis on what they called "calibrated data" from instruments and circumstances that are well understood.

And it's why they repeatedly emphasized the importance of taking what they called an "agnostic approach" to puzzling phenomena such as these. I think that it's pretty clear that at this point, they aren't sure what it is that's happening.

 

[DaveC426913]

Gonna be a good decade for UAP research. Be good to have some respectability come to the subject - both reporting and researching.

 

[billvon]

Seems pretty clear in their wording here that they're implying they think 2 to 5 percent of these sightings are supernatural in nature, given that they said ''rather than caused by humans or natural phenomena''.

No, they said what they said, not what you imagine they said.

Specifically they said that 2 to 5 per cent of them are thought to be 'possibly anomalous' meaning they 'cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena.'

For example, re-entering space junk. An unknown experimental aircraft from China. An unknown natural phenomena. All those would account for that 2-5%.

Let's take an example. Let's say you set up a computer vision system near a highway; it scans every car as it goes by and reads the license plate. The computer tells you the make of the car, the color, the license plate - and then it looks up the license plate to see who the car is registered to. And let's say further that 5% of the time the computer cannot identify the car. What is the most rational explanation?

-The computer failed to identify the car and/or the registration has a problem (lapsed, fake name etc.)
-Aliens are driving around on the freeways.

Now, to be clear, both of those explanations are possible. But one is far more likely than the other.

 

[DaveC426913]

A very good analogy.

 

[James R]

Moderator note: I have changed the title of this thread and moved it to the UFOs subforum.

The original title was misleading. It claimed that "NASA believes 2 to 5% of UFO sightings are paranormal in nature".

NASA is an organisation full of people with different views on things, so NASA doesn't really believe anything much. But that's a side issue.

The bigger issue is that nobody on the NASA panel said anything about believing any UFOs to be "paranormal".