Ufology [UFOs] have never caused a paradigm shift (and never will)

Copyright 2018, InterAmerica, Inc.

Time magazine, the drone issue, June 11, 2018, in The View Politics segment [Page 24], Errol Morris, dealing with Trump and the truth (or lack thereof) mentions Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Morris writes, “Kuhn argued that science progresses in fits and starts. In normal science, a group of ‘practitioners’ has settled on a way of defining and solving problems – a paradigm, a conceptual scheme. They have a way of looking at the world and are by and large happy with it. But then there are anomalies – things that don’t fit neatly into the scheme. One or two anomalies can perhaps be ignored, but as they accumulate, they threaten the stability of the paradigm. Unexplained anomalies lead to a crisis, a crisis leads to a revolution, and a revolution leads to a shift to a new paradigm.”

Now, we know that anomalies, many anomalies, are rampant in the world, and have been for some time, UFOs being one of those anomalies (whether a reality or a myth doesn’t matter).

Kuhn, Morris notes, “argued that as science changes, so does the world.”

But our anomalies, we who call ourselves ufologists or paranormalists, haven’t seen the world change, even though some of us think that UFOs, ghosts, Big Foot, Nessie, and other fringe quirks that sap our interest, are the sine qua non of existence.

Morris continues, "Kuhn espoused a kind of crazy-idealist philosophy: We make the world up as we go along."

UFO enthusiasts (and paranormalists) do make their world up as they (we) go along, but that made up world has no cachet, no credibility in the real world…never has, never will.

No matter how hard we try to embrace a reality from the anomalies that enchant us, and no matter how hard we try and proselytize on their behalf (our perceived anomalies), nothing has happened or will happen to change the world or the world’s reality.

Our anomalies are foolish, and after over 71 years of UFOs, slightly in the mainstream, and other anomalies (spirits, wild “men” et al.) longer in the world’s lore, we have seen no paradigm shift of any kind, not a bit.

So, all the work of UFO believers and all the work of UFO skeptics are for naught, a waste of Earthly time and effort(s).

No wonder the bulk of the UFO community and the arena of paranormalists are so fraught with hysteria and repressed depression.

RR

Mistaking the Moon for a UFO?

Copyright 2018, InterAmerica, Inc.

Mon ami Gilles Fernandez, a skeptic of the highest order, placed this on his Facebook UFO page [UFO Pragmatism]:

You can see that the Belgium skeptics, SAROS, responsible for the abstract, have extrapolated what should be isolated accounts, by psychologically/neurologically maladjusted persons, to make a case for the idea that the Moon is often mistaken for UFOs, the paper adducing Moon/UFO madness for 22% of UFO sightings for the 1976 wave (using the Geipan/CNES database).

That is, the SAROS team offers that of all the unidentified UFO sightings reviewed, 22% could be accounted for by misperceptions of the Moon.

This is abstract (errant) science, of the shoddiest kind.

If persons are misperceiving the Moon (or Venus, and other planet) for a UFO, they may be put into a category of mentally ill-equipped human beings, at least during the period of time when they are supposedly viewing the Moon as a spacecraft or unidentified flying object.

Cognition, Gilles’ forte is, in this instance, used malevolently, to make a case that UFOs are probably mistaken observations of something as prominent as the Moon.

If anyone, in their right mind, thinks that mistaking the Moon for a UFO or anything else other than the Moon is a healthy, normal mode of cognition, they, themselves, need a dose of what constitutes reality and the normal vicissitudes of mental health.

Persons seeing the Moon as a UFO and those allowing such a wayward observation as a normal, or even a valid statistical anomaly, is stretching mental reliability (and reality) much beyond what is considered normalcy in human perception or sane sensory observation.

To foist such nonsense as the SAROS paper upon the UFO community goes to the heart of what skeptics will resort to in order to debunk UFO sightings (reports).

It’s shameful and fraudulent.

RR