The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space AgeMenzel, Donald H. (Donald Howard)
Science
The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age
Menzel, Donald H. (Donald Howard)
Unidentified flying objects
To the heterogeneous data provided by these eighty-one cases, the
committee attempted to apply the precise tools of logic and mathematics
in order to establish a correlation between UFOs and electromagnetic
effects, and concluded that a cause-and-effect relationship probably
did exist.
With suitable material, statistical methods can suggest a correlation
between any two sets of facts and can estimate the probability that
the correlation is significant and not due to chance. No competent
statistician, however, would try to apply the methods to such amorphous
and uncertain data as those used by the committee. More than a third of
the incidents cited come from newspaper accounts or the private files
of saucer organizations in foreign countries. All leave many unanswered
questions. At least two involve fully identified objects: the great
fireball of September 18, 1954 (p. 92), and the three fireballs of
April 6, 1955, may well have caused some radio interference but they
were not UFOs. Even with the well-reported cases, a conscientious
historian would find it nearly impossible to determine precisely what
the witnesses saw, what they heard, what they did, and what they said.
The various printed accounts of the Levelland incidents, for example,
vary in many details. The events took place in an atmosphere of
excitement and the stories inevitably changed slightly with each
retelling. The reports of Air Force investigators, records in the files
of civilian saucer organizations, statements in newspapers, magazines,
and books--no two give exactly the same version of any given incident.
Although the points of disagreement are often trivial, they are
sometimes vital to finding the correct explanation.
Even if, for the sake of argument, a statistician were willing to
accept the evidence of the eighty-one cases at face value, he would
still not attempt to establish a correlation between UFOs and E-M
effects. The probability that a (postulated) UFO will appear at a given
time or place is unknown; the probability that an electrical appliance
will fail to work at a given time or place is equally unknown. Hence
the probability that the two phenomena will occur together at a given
time and place is a concept that has no meaning.
_Effects and Causes_
Asked to explain what caused the failures of engines, radios, watches,
etc. reported during the week of the Levelland sightings, any high
school physics student who answered, “Some new kind of electromagnetic
force” would properly receive a grade of zero. Admittedly there are
physical phenomena that the scientist does not yet understand, but
he does know that electrical and magnetic forces do not and can not
perform all the feats attributed to them by saucer enthusiasts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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