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Registered Member #96
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062
Here's an interesting thought. At which point does pseudoscience become protoscience?
The mere fact that a vast number (including the Department of Defense) of organisations are investigating the topic of naturally occurring self contained luminous phenomena, surely means that they have access to more resources (including currently classified material). My honest opinion is that the topic should be classed as protoscience as a result, as Step 1 of the scientific method has indeed been covered if not in the public domain (yet).
The absence of public domain material due to national security issues is not sufficient reason to simply block all discussions, as evidenced by the recent release of France's OVNI archives.
I understand that avoiding "buzz words" to avoid attracting kooks is necessary however.
Additionally, investigating ways to create short lived luminous "clouds" as a side effect of capacitor discharges is a valid method of research, however this must be conducted as a scientific experiment (controls, null hypothesis, etc) to have any meaning.
... not Russel! Registered Member #1
Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052
Conundrum wrote ...
Additionally, investigating ways to create short lived luminous "clouds" as a side effect of capacitor discharges is a valid method of research, however this must be conducted as a scientific experiment (controls, null hypothesis, etc) to have any meaning.
The problem here is fairly evident. Where is your control? There are a lot of ways to go about creating luminous clouds of various descriptions, but what will you compare it against to determine if you've accurately reproduced the phenomenon? The best you can hope for is to create something that matches some eyewitness descriptions. Since eyewitness reports vary wildly, a luminous cloud of almost any description would do.
The scientific approach here would be to start by observing the phenomenon, and documenting it. Once you have a detailed set of criteria, then you can formulate a hypothesis on how the phenomenon might be generated, and test it with an experiment. Until you can do that, I cannot see how it would be considered science.
Registered Member #32
Joined: Sat Feb 04 2006, 08:58AM
Location: Australia
Posts: 549
It's well known that, for example, NASA funds antigravity research (or at least they used to). It's not that they think it's solid science but that they're happy to put aside some spare change towards something that might be big.
The fact that a major organisation funds research doesn't make it more or less scientific.
"Spherical plasma phenomena" are another issue. As we've been through before, there're the million ways you can make a blazing round thing in the lab and there are the anecdotal reports of floating lights. There just isn't enough evidence to tie links between the two.
Registered Member #27
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058
What you have there is a claim that someone saw something. There are no facts, no evidence, no nothing. The two posts even seem to contradict eachother. If the car was pulled over, why did all the trees move around obscuring the view?
It is not possible to derive any facts from that story. Without facts you have no science. The only thing you can hope for is that the same thing will happen again at the same place or at any place during the same conditions and be there next time to make proper observations.
Registered Member #546
Joined: Fri Feb 23 2007, 11:43PM
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Posts: 239
I'd say the first step to any real science would be observation of the phenomenon in it's native context.
Who knows, maybe NASA will give you some grant money to spend a few years sitting in a field watching for natural spherical luminous objects to document.
That would be a kinda cool job... "hey man, what do you do?? ... "Oh, I work for NASA looking for SLOs"
I don't think that's a conversation that's likely to take place, but who knows.
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Change in definition- pseudoscience vs: protoscience?
