The report being discussed is not concerned with IFO's and mistaken
sightings.

BP wrote:

Apart from being a physics grad student, I am a flight instructor. One time
I was up flying with a student when I saw this silver thing moving toward us
at an incredible rate. First thing that I thought was...could I be wrong
about all of those UFO sightings. Maybe, the conspiracy people are right???
I took control of the aircraft and began a slow controlled bank to the
right. As it was passing by I got a really good look at it. It was a huge
Mylar horsey. Some little snot at Disney lost her damn Mylar pony balloon
and it was trying to follow me...at 5,000 feet. It quickly turned from a
UFO to IFO. Nobody believed me at the hangar when I got back.

Another story: I once talked to a Photo Interpreter at a base I was
stationed at in Germany. He was telling me about a pilot that was doing a
Recce mission at low level. The pilot swore to god that it was a Kiev class
carrier. He, being an officer, put a rush on the film thinking he was about
to save Europe from a Russian invasion. After they developed the film the
Photo Interpreter looked at the film as it was rolling off. He said that it
was a oil barge plugging along. Boy, that Major tore off with his tail
between his legs.

If you look at the pilots manuals and human factors books, you will find
that these phenomena can be attributed by physiological problems. The most
common ones are empty field myopia and hypoxia. Empty field myopia occurs
at night when there are no horizon references, the eye cannot focus so the
lens in your eye focuses very close and this makes objects move. Hypoxia
exists when you are at an altitude where the air is too thin. This can be
as low as 10,000 feet. Hypoxia can incite euphoria, hallucinations and
extreme feelings of well being. It is different in everybody.

Also, UFO does not necessarily mean extra terrestrial. It's been my
experience that many pilots are like fisherman...the all have really good
tales.

BP
"Mad Scientist" wrote in message
.cable.rogers.com...

"In 2000, Dr. Richard Haines, a retired senior aerospace scientist from
NASA-Ames Research Center and
formerly NASA’s Chief of the Space Human Factors Office, authored a
report documenting over 100 cases of
pilot encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena that raise safety
concerns, including 56 near misses. The
objects paced the aircraft at relatively near distances, disabling on
board instrumentation and sometimes caused
pilots to make sudden, evasive changes in their flight paths. Most
incidents remain unreported due to the ridicule
and official debunking policy that the pilots face. According to the
report, “Aviation Safety in America – A
Previously Neglected Factor,” published by the National Aviation
Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena
(NARCAP) founded by Haines."

"The national security argument is no longer acceptable as a
justification for the U.S. government withholding of
decades old reports of events and physical samples that may have been
recovered. Scientists are the proper
authorities to determine the true nature of the UFO phenomena. They
stand ready and waiting to conduct
comprehensive, ongoing studies, if only the resources are provided. The
public appears ready to support the
research with its tax dollars, if only they are given the opportunity."

“The phenomena is something real”

"In 1947, Lt. General Nathan Twining, Commander of Air Materiel Command
at Wright Patterson Air
Force Base, sent a now-famous secret memo concerning “Flying Discs” to
Brig. General George
Schulgen, Chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division at the
Pentagon.
“The phenomena is something real and not visionary or fictitious,” he
wrote. “The reported operating
characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability
(particularly in roll), and action which
must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly
aircraft and radar, lend belief to the
possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually,
automatically or remotely.” Twining
described the objects as metallic or light-reflecting, circular or
elliptical with a flat bottom and domed
top, and usually silent."

"J. Allen Hynek, professor of astronomy at Ohio State University and
later chairman of the Astronomy
Department at Northwestern University, was an official technical
consultant to Project Blue Book for
two decades. As a skeptic and debunker himself when beginning his work
for the Air Force, Hynek sat
in on most of the Robertson panel meetings. He said later that the panel
gave short thrift to real
science. “The implication in the Panel Report was that UFOs were a
nonsense (non-science) matter, to
be debunked at all costs,” Hynek wrote in 1977.15
After interviewing astronomers on the subject of unidentified flying
objects just prior to the Robertson
Panel meeting, Hynek noted that even discussing the subject led to an
“overwhelming fear of
publicity” for these scientists.
In a 1952 classified report for the Air Technical Intelligence Center
(ATIC) at Wright Patterson Air
Force Base, Hynek recommended that the UFO question be given “the status
of a scientific problem,”
freeing the scientists from the restraints of secrecy which confuse the
public. “The number of truly
puzzling incidents is now impressive,” he reported. “The first effort
should be to determine with great
accuracy what the phenomena to be explained really are and to establish
their reality beyond all
question.”16"

"The testimony of Dr. James E. McDonald, senior physicist of the
Institute of Atmospheric Physics and
Professor of Meteorology at the University of Arizona, was the most
extensive. A respected authority
and leader in the field of atmospheric physics, McDonald had authored
highly technical papers for
professional journals. He spent two years examining formerly classified
official file material and radar
tracking data on UFOs; interviewing several hundred witnesses; and
conducting in-depth case
investigations, details of which were provided to the Committee."

"McDonald told the Committee that no other problem within their
jurisdiction compared to this one.
“The scientific community, not only in this country but throughout the
world, has been casually
ignoring as nonsense a matter of extraordinary scientific importance.”
McDonald indicated that he
leaned towards the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an explanation, due to
“a process of elimination of
other alternative hypotheses, not by arguments based on what I could
call ‘irrefutable proof.’” 24"

"Dr. Bernard Haisch, Director of the California Institute for Physics
and Astrophysics and author of
over a hundred published papers, agrees. “I propose that true skepticism
is called for today: neither the
gullible acceptance of true belief nor the closed-minded rejection of
the scoffer masquerading as the
skeptic.” Haisch was the editor of the JSE for twelve years. “Any
scientist who has not read a few
serious books and articles presenting actual UFO evidence should out of
intellectual honesty refrain
from making scientific pronouncements,” he says. “To look at the
evidence and go away unconvinced
is one thing. To not look at the evidence and be convinced against it
nonetheless is another. That is not
science. Do your homework!”84"

--

I really like this last quote where Dr. Bernard Haisch says, "to look at
the evidence and be convinced against it - is not science". Really says
alot about how many 'scientists'only masquerade when in truth they are
nothing but pseudoscientists.