Les bons côté de l'enquête ufologique

Pour quiconque voudrait s'empresser de juger et condamner les ufologues comme toujours incompetents, amateurs ou cultists enclins à confirmer une croyance, un regard sur les lumières de Phoenix, le vaisseau-mère du Yukon, et l'Incident d'Exeter démontre juste le contraire. Beaucoup d'effort et un niveau de compétence élevé went into the investigation of events that truly merited such attention. These examples clearly fit a checklist of reasons to regard them as promising UFOs:

1. Les 3 observations étaient des événements authentiques dotés d'une documentation montrant qu'ils étaient plus qu'un canular, une rumeur, ou une fabrication des media.
2. Les objets observés avaient un intérêt intrinsèque évident.
3. Les descriptions des objets étaient riches d'information.
4. Les témoins des objets étaient des personnes crédibles, sur lesquelles on peut compter.
5. Des témoignages corroboraient chaque cas. Cet étaiement venait des témoignages de témoins multiples dans chacun des 3 cas, et des éléments instrumentés de la photographie dans celui de Phoenix.
6. Les éléments disponibles étaient suffisamment détaillés pour que les enquêteurs puisse “faire de la science” avec et ajouter à leur compréhension, par exemple la triangulation d'objets dans les cas de Phoenix et du Yukon qui permirent une détermination de la distance et de la taille des observations rapportées.
7. Les témoignages fournissaient des récits cohérents et se confirmant largement l'un-l'autre.
8. Certaines descriptions correspondaient à des événements précédents et ces similarités reliaient les cas à autres descriptions d'ovnis descriptions. 9) Une enquête approfondie recueillit les témoignages et autres éléments directement depuis les témoins, avec une inspection du site et concernant les positions, heures et tailles angulaires exactes de l'objet.
9. L'ensemble des 3 cas reçut un examen critique de la part des ufologues comme des sceptiques dans un effort pour trouver des alternatives conventionnelles, auxquel elles survécurent pourtant (du moins pendant un temps) en tant qu'anomalies réellement intriguantes.

Un examen de ce qui marche dans l'enquête ufologique pourrait commencer par reconnaître que ces “10 commandements” pour identifier des cas ovnis de qualité respectent un critère de sélection rule-of-thumb raisonnable qui pourrait s'appliquer (au pire avec quelques modifications) à n'importe quelle anomalie. The three examples represent undeniable experiential events, describe robust, intriguing observations, and rest on abundant, detailed testimony from multiple sources. In the word of the witnesses these sightings amounted to far more than nonde-script lights in the distance. Something curious, something strange and worthy of investigation, was clearly afoot.

The three cases exemplify the investigators’ obvious passion for thoroughness. Investigators in all three cases collected extensive files of sightings and as much supplemental evidence as possible, like video-tapes. Field investigations and follow-up interviews of witnesses also filled in the informational gaps to gather as much firsthand information as humanly possible. If ufologists arrived at wrong conclusions the reason was not a lack of raw data.

Another strength was a willingness to listen to the witnesses, to take them seriously and not be too quick to second-guess or over-interpret what they said. The investigators followed the lead of their informants and accepted their descriptions as the factual foundation on which to base interpretation, so that, for example, if witnesses said they saw a dark, V-shaped form behind the lights, this object becomes the given reality to explain. At least ufologists did not completely distort testimonies and force them to conform to some preordained idea.

When the time came to bring narrative order to the collection of reports and tell a coherent story of what the witnesses observed, the results in these three examples held close to the testimonial evidence. The Phoenix story included multiple UFOs, some triangular and at least one circular, crossing the state and passing over or near the city. The Yukon story made room for people at various positions along 200 miles of highway seeing the same giant craft. The Exeter story had a flashing red UFO appear twice over a farm and scare two motorists the same night. Rather than invent a story without foundation in the testimonies, the investigators combined individual stories to encompass multiple accounts and different points of vantage, resulting in a “big picture” narration that is hypothetical yet firmly based on the full body of testimony. If ufologists erred, they could say with fairness that they simply followed the lead of the witnesses.

Ufologists typically—and understandably—have a desire to find UFOs as the cause of a spectacular case. This will-to-believe stigmatizes ufology with suspicions that its practitioners are uncritical and determined to make a UFO out of flimsy evidence or no evidence at all, but these three examples show quite a different picture. Extensive investigations probed each case, and far from any image of true believers enjoying a holiday of self-confirmation, ufologists did not automatically leap to the conclusion that a UFO caused the sightings. Jasek considered a list of conventional possibilities for the Yukon object but rejected each one for due cause. Ufologists identified the 10 p.m. Phoenix Lights as flares but built a sound case that the 9 p.m. lights were not flares. Such explanations for Exeter as advertising aircraft, a kite hoax, or KC-97 tankers met with effective refutation from investigators who truly did their homework. Of course ufologists wanted these cases to be UFOs, but they based their defense on reason and evidence rather than hope and delusion.