Is Gordon Cooper saying that some UFOs are no longer unidentified?

Question

This is a short video. If you don't believe Gordon Cooper then I give up on you ever believing anything about UFOs.

http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=0ebvsgcqwb

Answer 1

I listened to Cooper talk about his incident. He appears to be concluding that they were alien spacecraft, but he also said "we couldn't positively identify them". So I think Cooper had a UFO sighting like many others where UFOs are assumed to be of alien origin because they were not identified at the time.

There is more on Cooper and his UFO sighting at the link below. James Oberg did a full investigation of Cooper's reported UFO sighting over Germany but the results of the investigation are not very supportive of Cooper's story. None of his squadron mates or his commander recalled anything of seeing UFOs that day, either.

So what really happened then and what was really seen? It's hard to tell at this point. However, given the evidence at hand and the problems that have been identified in his story, I don't think it is reasonable to put blind faith in Cooper as an omniscient observer or 100% accurate storyteller.

EDIT: Deenie, I think you're confused. That wasn't my investigation, so you don't need to believe me for anything. Instead, you can question the credibility of the investigator, and that's always a perfectly legitimate thing to do. The investigator here is James Oberg, a 22-year NASA engineer and space science journalist. Here is more about Oberg:

http://www.jamesoberg.com/profile.html

Also, don't make the mistake of shifting the burden of evidence, a very unscientific thing to do, to be sure. If Cooper insists he saw an alien spacecraft, the burden of evidence is on him to back up such a spectacular claim. If there are holes in his story that have been established and backed up by a thorough investigation (and there are), should Cooper's story be accepted blindly on faith? Or, instead, should we approach it scientifically?

Answer 2

Gordon Cooper is not the only astronaut who has made claims about UFOs. Edgar Mitchell recently (07/23/08) mentioned this topic on a UK radio interview.

The best book I know on this topic is "UFOs and the National Security State" by Richard Dolan. It provides a comprehensive look at the UFO problem from the 1940s through 1970s, and makes a very strong case that UFOs are real objects, and genuinely not understood. Whether the "pilots" are ET is unresolved, but that something extremely peculiar has been going on in the skies, and under the sea, for decades, seems clear.

Jacques Vallee makes a persuasive case that UFOs are not a modern phenomenon, but go back in history for centuries, if not millennia. He does not support the "ancient astronaut" concept, but rather that whatever these phenomena are, they are deeply embedded in the human psyche.

Answer 3

well since UFO means UNIDENTIFIED flying object... NO!!!!

Answer 4

You have to see it to believe it. I've seen two, so I know something is there. Either the government has space travel able to traverse the galaxy or there are aliens or both. Aliens would be far easier to believe, since if the government has that sort of technology hidden from the rest of the world, then  most likely only a secret group has access to it. If only a secret group has access to it, then they could easily wipe out all humans on this planet and start anew without any repercussions.

Answer 5

Rev. TR is right on the money here. Cooper himself states in that video that he could not identify what he saw, so that means he logically can't state that they are alien spaceships. He can suggest it, and it may be his opinion, but it's only opinion. And James Oberg's investigation did poke major holes in Cooper's story.

Also I noticed that there is this theme of Argument by Authority going on here, which is a fallacy of reasoning. Cooper is an astronaut and therefore perceived as an authority on UFOs, therefore his statements are taken as gospel truth. This of course is bad reasoning. The history of human knowledge is replete with examples of experts being wrong. We're human, we err.  Cooper being an astronaut does not make his claims true.

Alien spaceships may indeed be exploring our planet, but so the evidence doesn't support this as a fact or even a likelihood.

Answer 6

I think that Maj. Cooper believes he has eliminated all other possible explanations for his sightings and so decided that it must be aliens. This may be incorrect as there might be possibilities that he has not considered or is even aware exist. However, in the spirit of science he encourages investigation into what UFO's might be and the consideration of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis rather than dismissing investigation and consideration of a hypothesis bases on his previously held beliefs. He even went so far as to write a letter to the United Nations hoping that perhaps some other countries would actually want to follow the spirit of scientific inquiry and freedom of information which many scientist in the US have dismissed as too detrimental to their belief system.

It seems some people believe that yelling about "shifting the burden of proof" somehow (perhaps by magic) exempts them from the criteria of evidence for science where all claims must be supported by evidence (link below).

Also logically when a person makes a claim and one does not find additional support for it (although skeptics have been documented as making false and dishonest claims, like never meeting or talking to a person they claim to have interviewed, so this in itself bears close scrutiny) this does not mean the claim is false or provide any evidence that the claim is false. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of the actual event (VERY first logic class).

If on the other hand a person claims that another person is lying that is a claim (hypothesis) that like any other claim in science must be supported by evidence. The burden of proof does not shift it is simply they are being asked to support their claims (lying, cheating, etc.).

Thank you for posting this interesting video.

Psiexploration