A couple of other things that I blew in my coverage in the last blog. One of them is quite interesting [to me at least]. 
There was mention of the continuance of New Zealand landing cases in the 1970 DATA-NET case reports. In a coincidence, I stumbled across a set of images of the Ngatea trace, which we mentioned here a few posts back. It was in a rather rare Australian UFO newsletter. So I thought I'd let you see that for what it's worth [above].
There was also a lengthy presentation of VJ Ballester-Olmos and Jacques Vallee's study of Spanish landing cases. Really surprised me to see such a thing in DATA-NET. The Ballester-Olmos group study was comprised of 100 cases in the Iberian peninsula up until 1970. Five of those cases were at the end of the study from 1970. My favorite among the 1970s was from Cazalla de la Sierra (Sevilla, Spain). In that case four witnesses saw an object which looked two-dimensional, [two meters high and one meter wide], like an illuminated "door" inserted into our space. Dogs were disturbed by the thing and one man almost decided to open fire on it. After watching it for a few minutes, the "door" just vanished.
Well, that was neat, but the best thing to come from the study was confirmation of Poher and Vallee's "Law of the Times". [Please look up the earlier blog post on this way back somewhere][try February 10, 2010, I think]. Graphing the cases according to when the encounters occurred, out came a peak at the 10-11pm area with a secondary peak at about 3am or some such era in the early am. Vallee went on to make a few assumptions about what this portended, and calculated a huge "close encounter" phenomenon happening [mainly unseen and unreported] peaking early in the am. My analysis differs from Vallee's and I see the curves as being two separate peaks [ET agendas?] as you can see on the older post.
Regardless of whether Jacques or I or Rumplestilskin is correct, publishing Ballester's study inspired the DATA-NET crew to analyze the DATA-NET reports in bulk using all the cases which had a definite time of day. Their curve for 138 cases is shown below. Again the surprising double-peaked curve arose, hitting the "just before midnight" peak on the nose, and being closer to dawn on the secondary peak. Because DATA-NET did not include ONLY close encounters like the Poher/Vallee/Ballester studies did, this could cause some drift. But still I see the trend here again as remarkable. The "Law of the Times" might be one of the biggest proofs of the reality of the UFO phenomenon that we have. And the fact that the main graphs are for close encounters, we see that the issue of mistaking ordinary things for anomalistic ones is basically a non-issue.
Three cheers for DATA-NET and The Law of the Times. Having seen a UFO myself I didn't really need it, but it's nice to see anyway. {And that Portal by the side of the road wasn't bad either}. 
I've posted about the hourly and monthly peaks in sighting reports elsewhere and found the response mixed. The eleventh hour was largely dismissed on the premise that more people were out at that time. This is a reasonable interpretation, but I wish I'd been aware of your previous posting and Poher's efforts to show how it wasn't so simple.
ReplyDeleteAt the time, I found Chris Rutkowski's Canadian data also showed a peak and he runs a very clean database. He noted that the average number of witnesses was 2 which reinforces an objective reality of sightings. Further afield, Sturrock and Teodarani have noted the same pattern in their own studies with Sturrock very cautiously (intriguingly too) suggesting a possible source of origin for further study; a direction in space no less. Crikey!
There's also a monthly peak around August and September that shows in all the work of the guys mentioned. I haven't seen southern hemisphere analyses to see if these months are peaks there too although it sounds like something Keith Basterfield would have done already. If there is a peak in those months, it would strengthen the signal by weakening the argument that Aug/Sept are 'hot' months and more people are liable to be outside.
I used NUFORC's figures from pre-internet 65-69 and post-internet 2000-09 and the monthly peaks were present in both sets.
Cultural elements are impossible to avoid and can't help but effect the data and analyses. I think we all know that. Over and beyond these effects, there's still a tantalising signal! Like many, and yourself, I've seen something, in company, and am more focused on the *what* rather than the *if.*
Whoops. I withdraw the certainty about the Aug/Sep peaks - more of a summer/autumnal peak.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the southern hemisphere, Larry Hatch has a histogram that doesn't really show the trends I was hoping for. Quite possibly this is due to differences in data collection and dispersal. For instance, N America and Western Europe had UFO groups collecting and sharing data from very early on. Australia's population is less spread out than the USA (for example) and S. American nations have had more important things to focus on than UFO databases. Possibly the same applies to African countries too.
Without continuity of collection and some way of sharing the information, I guess there's little chance of making sense of the data. On the other hand, maybe there just isn't a monthly peak?
http://www.larryhatch.net/YDAYSHM.html
http://www.larryhatch.net/YDAYNHM.html
Very good stuff. The reason why I have been impressed by the Poher/Vallee/Ballester work [Ted Philips' data too] is that they restricted their analyses to close encounters. This wipes out much of the noise in the data pile due to poor observing of mundane things. When it's right there in your face you know "it ain't no weather balloon".
ReplyDeleteThose cleaner data sets, plus Poher's bright use of the sociological data to wipe away the "more people out" argument, leave me with a non-sociological and non-error-of-perceptions statistical pattern which is yet to be explained away [by anyone actually looking at the method used to "see" it.]
Given the growth of modern lifestyles [going towards a disruption of the "natural" country patterns of "who's up when and where"], this sort of analysis may be difficult to do any longer --- you need lots of close encounters plus a very well studied sociology of the population's habits. And one might assume that your CEs will have to congregate in the rural areas [note that most of these cases did] in order to remove confounding social behaviors [ex. when the bars close].
The phenomenon isn't providing the close encounters in big numbers anymore, and people don't report them to good collection points [maybe the French Space Program's new office will help in that], and the amount of rural life itself continues to shrink, so getting a large enough clean data set these days might be impossible.
Some of the European areas could save us here [Italy; Spain; Sweden] as they have good organization in place. We do not.
've posted about the hourly and monthly peaks in sighting reports elsewhere and found the response mixed. The eleventh hour was largely dismissed on the premise that more people were out at that time. This is a reasonable interpretation, but I wish I'd been aware of your previous posting and Poher's efforts to show how it wasn't so simple.
ReplyDeleteAt the time, I found Chris Rutkowski's Canadian data also showed a peak and he runs a very clean database. He noted that the average number of witnesses was 2 which reinforces an objective reality of sightings. Further afield, Sturrock and Teodarani have noted the same pattern in their own studies with Sturrock very cautiously (intriguingly too) suggesting a possible source of origin for further study; a direction in space no less.
Edward Scissorhands analysis
Thanks for the comments. I believe that Poher has eliminated the simple human sociology argument with his use of the French social data about rural and small town activity in 1950s France. Any explanation for the peaks has to be cleverer than that.
ReplyDeleteI respect Rutkowski's work. Using his info is smart. I am not yet aware of Peter's idea that the time graphs indicate a possible direction in space.
I have come across another study [by, I believe an Argentinian] from the 1970s which also shows the Law of the Times. When I get a moment I'll try to get something up here on it.