Such oddball connections are probably the only the way such a program would ever get funded.
Edit: well, obviously he didn't have the money. Misspoke. I meant the means (a company with the required infrastructure).
If he raised some VC funding, he can go hunt Minotaur for all I care. But this is my money he's using to do this. No thanks
People in first-world countries are usually OK with spending public money on science. So, if you consider it legit science (and he does), it makes perfect sense for him to lobby spending public money on it.
No really, show us the public tender and the evidence that the money was well spent by tender won on merit alone. Or we are going to assume it is totally corrupt. Onus of proof used to be the other way around but Washington, yeah, it really does stink like that. This is why outsider populists like Sanders and Trump are popular. Everyone has had enough of this garbage.
This is unexplained phenomena which could be the result of diminished mental acuity or other unexplained physical events. I’m not sure how these theories should be made anymore legitimate without more evidence?
Science is a process, a method by which we can answer certain types of questions. To often people hear things like settled science, or the science is crystal clear, not up for debate.. These are political posturing and have little to do with actual science. It's absurd, and some people realize this.
As with any science, data comes in late, or sometimes not at all. There are quite a few FDA prescription drugs that were approved and later recalled, some with devastating effects on their consumers.
The truth is, science is done by people, people who are infallible. People who make mistakes, who see things from a certain point of view, or who don't have all the data yet. Additionally, prediction models can be tweaked to say exactly what you want to, with devastating effect on our community.
You can't say anything though. Even in grad school labs, to make certain statements or even hint about things can lead to problems with your advisor, or research, or worse yet, peers.. Academia is a great place, at least it has been for me, as long as you keep your head down and focus on research.. i dont think it's the best place now if you truly want to question everything. I wouldn't even venture where you could go for that now.
I think this has led to a generalized mistrust, and it falls on all of us. The reality is that data is always changing, models change, etc.. People who put policies into legislation need to balance not only the aspect of the science, but the overall big picture; cultural, societal, expectations, desires etc. as well. That's politics. I think it was Russ Roberts who said you can engineer a bridge, but you can't engineer society in the same way. And i think that's right, too Often we miss that.
What you are describing is the science, the institution and this is perhaps also how wider public perceives it.
You spend your own money rather than ask taxpayers to fund your fantasy. There is more than enough open source intel on atmospheric phenomena out there. And plenty of "UFO researchers" willing to work.
Hiring him to do this is like hiring Robert Ballard to find the Titanic.
No, because the Titanic could be proven to have existed before Robert Ballard tried to find it.
It's also disingenuous to skip over more plausible explanations, including hoaxes, the memetic effect of UFO culture, classified military aircraft and disinformation campaigns, and misidentification of other mundane aerial phenomena, to assume that anything unidentified in the sky is likely an alien spacecraft.
But beyond that, I think we can agree that the conversation elsewhere in this thread demonstrates there is a whole lot of negative context which serves to drive people away from taking it seriously.
I don't, but only so long as they don't ascribe magical or supernatural qualities to physical phenomena.
It's one thing to believe alien spacecraft as an extremely unlikely possibility, and another to consider it not only likely, but indisputably so. The lack of skepticism combined with unfalsifiable claims are what disqualify him, in my view.
There does seem to be a fringe of interesting events in the field worth studying. I'm not convinced that there aren't plausible explanations for them - after all, how many "black triangle" sightings are likely to have been classified stealth aircraft? But I also think the negativity serves a valuable purpose as long as it keeps people from entertaining flights of fancy.
I'll believe the Robert Bigelows and Bob Lazars and Whitley Streibers of the world when they can back their claims up with undeniable and irrefutable evidence. Given the nature of their claims, I don't believe that's an unreasonable bar to set. Even Einstein was doubted until someone proved him right.
I'm not saying it was an alien craft, but there are a limited number of plausible explanations for an event like this and none of what you listed is a plausible explanation.
>"The disc was visible for approximately five minutes and was seen by close to a dozen United Airlines employees, ranging from pilots to supervisors, who heard chatter on the radio and raced out to view it."
It also apparently was not visible on radar or visually from the control tower. Who cares if it was 'aliens' or not, it's a damned interesting phenomena that should be studied for it's own sake.
Not taking a side, just pointing that out.
And Someone allegedly photographed it, but no one bothered to examine or release the photos?
The vast majority of people are looking at Venus or the moon or streetlights or drunken hallucinations. But we don't care about those people. We care about the 0.0003% (or whatever) of people that check all the boxes on a long list of reliability factors. And yet, that still isn't good enough for some people, because of the hugely negative pseudoscience context that this carries with it. "It's folklore!" In fact, I'll assert that a strange enough advanced aircraft could fly nuclear weapons over this country, and until our pilots shot it out of the sky and spread the wreckage across three states, it would hardly get any attention because of the context this subject carries.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek#Change_of_opini...
Neverthless, the military does sometimes test classified aircraft in view of civilians. And they have been known to use or even encourage UFO sightings as misinformation to cover up their activity.
Fiction has to make sense, but reality doesn't always have to make sense.
And so a sensible person seeks (perhaps justifiably) prosaic explanations for everything and automatically excludes any hypothesis without a prosaic explanation (with the incredibly audacious conceit of assuming we already understand enough about the universe to make such assumptions), while the fantastical person, not as bound by the need for evidence, can wildly speculate (which would of course include nonhuman intelligences somehow visiting us over distances that are insurmountable to us currently, but might also include basically, well, anything, since without the hard-evidence requirement, you're free to get creative)
I think both of these points exist as extremes on a continuum and that they're both wrong in some capacity. I think pragmatism and reasoning and rationality are a good basis, however... just, limiting, as well.
We might advance a bit on the evidence front here if there was a scientific way to evaluate mass eyewitness testimony (individual eyewitness testimony has come under fire recently https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-..., but perhaps, if you multiply the number of witnesses, the errors will tend to cancel each other out and you might end up with something more like Evidence with a capital E. (This would be useful in far more areas than mere UFO observation, of course.)
What I am refusing to do is believe that hypothetical reality to be more likely than it is, based on the evidence (or lack thereof) presented and what it does or doesn't actually prove. I'm slotting it in the rank it deserves, which is slightly ahead of demons in likelihood but still less likely than everything else.
But yeah, the likelihood that it's aliens is not entirely zero.
Also, this came out moments ago. Timely? https://twitter.com/cnn/status/943105094345723904
There is a lack of transparency and obviously Bigelow has way more connections than a typical person, but it seems plausible to me that they really are sincere.
And 22 million to fund this program does sound somewhat reasonable, although granted we'll probably never see an audit of how the money was spent.
There are numerous creditable sightings of unidentified things in the air. Are they aliens? Almost surely not. But no matter what mundane phenomenon is responsible for unidentified things in the air, it is of interest to the military.
What is the size of your organization? How are you submitting bids, and where are you getting your solicitations? Does someone in your company network with the government liaisons beyond just the one you've submitted a bid to? Has your company hired someone to work this network for solicitations that aren't on FBO? Do your PIs have experience outside academia in contracting? I've been a part of several (successful) bids and -- operating under the assumption your claim was made in good faith and not just a lie -- I wonder at your approach. This is work that pretty much every organization in the US government needs.
For example, if you approach the US government through a solicitation with really any half-reasonable suggestion for processing enormous amounts of data, and you'll get a contract.
Your subsequent comment proves my point: it isn't that easy.
As it happens, we are well qualified, and we've won a number as well. My point is that your original statement is completely wrong (and ironically it appears you agree).
If they had nothing to hide, that part of the equation would be perfectly transparent.
I work in the public sector in Scandinavia and while I realize our laws are a little different, I would be in jail if I did something similar. Getting contracts to friends/family is a huge issue in most countries, which is why you document the reasoning even harder to make sure its absolutely bulletproof legally when they happen to have the best bid.
Also, may I add, what was the aerospace research company paid for exactly? Wasn't the project just filing reports and talking to people?
"The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space."
So... Harry Reid's friend is absolutely convinced there are aliens, gets Reid to convince congress to fund the program, and all the money goes back to his own company? Not fishy at all.