Talk:USS Nimitz UFO incident

Remove the skeptic

Really saying that the plane turned and it caused the object to move off the screen is ridiculous. As if the US military wouldn't know the difference between a moving object and a panning camera. This kind of "skeptic" is just someone who tries to deny everything without thought. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.41.172 (talk) 12:05, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

The author just offered an alternative cause for the visual effect, not conclusive causality. Arguing that a potential cause is ridiculous in engaging in more uncritical commentary than the original author's statement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:406:8280:D500:48A6:680B:567:DEE8 (talk) 15:10, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Please, skeptics, stop flaging idiotics views --83.43.68.241 (talk) 07:12, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

SI is a reliable source. See Wikipedia:Reliable sources. That you find it "idiotic" is nothing but your personal POV and has no relevance here. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:40, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I was the one who removed this source as it is in direct contradiction of the mainstream accepted description of the event and therefore WP:FRINGE. Relevant discussion is here: Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident. The Navy has confirmed (after the publication of the SI story) the event and the fact that it is "unidentified" so saying that this was "a submarine" or that the movement is caused by the hornet banking is simply preposterous. I will wait for additional comments and remove it once again later. --Gtoffoletto (talk) 06:51, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

There is nothing mainstream about what "The Navy" says. Even if it were, what skeptics say is relevant because Joe Nickell has several decades more experience in such stuff than anybody in the Navy.

You are trying to push a fringe view, and you are trying to remove the sane views by calling them "fringe". As I said, SI is a reliable source.

Please read Wikipedia:Reliable sources and try to understand it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:16, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

"the U.S. Navy acknowledged that the three videos are of real unidentified phenomena" is a rather stupid wording. Is a phenomenon "unidentified" if nobody has identified it? Then you never know that it is a "real unidentified phenomenon", since you would have to ask everybody if they can identify it.

Or is it "unidentified" if the person who calls it unidentified has not identified it? (Of course this is the "logic" the whole of UFOlogy is based on: "I cannot identify it, therefore nobody can." In reality, the most you can say is that you failed to identify it. ) In that case, it is not a property of the phenomenon, but a relation between the phenomenon and the speaker. Grammar should reflect that: "the U.S. Navy acknowledged that the three videos are of phenomena they could not identify." --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:32, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Sure. The NAVY can’t identify it. Are you aware of anyone that has? Can you source it? Giving more weight to a writer in an office than to a carrier strike group with eyewitnesses, thousands of people and the most advanced sensor tech in the world investigating the event seems kinda fringe to me though. Please also bear in mind that the report on SI PREDATES official confirmation. Can we find a Reputable source which is skeptic AFTER official confirmation by the navy? Would be interesting — Gtoffoletto (talk) 10:49, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

p.s. and as for stating that "Joe Nickell has several decades more experience[...] than the Navy". He is claiming the sighting was of a SUBMARINE with a drone... yeah the Navy doesn't really have experience with those things I agree....they should call him and ask for a couple of tips ;-). Jokes aside... if you read the SI article it FACTUALLY conflicts SEVERAL times with the reports of the events that have been reported by MULTIPLE reputable sources. I can give you examples but he seems to have based the article on incorrect/imprecise third hand source materials and thus the mistakes. --Gtoffoletto (talk) 11:17, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

P.p.s I've removed one such example of a glaring mistake: stating that it was Fravor's first time in a military assignment with an F18 and he was rattled by the experience is preposterous. He was the commanding officer of the fighter squadron and had been for a few months! Joe misread the report he based his article on (which is an unconfirmed third party account to begin with). He claims "source" in the report refers to Fravor while it refers to his wingman (!!) which was actually a novice in the squadron. Embarassing... the whole article should be discarded since all off Joe's supposed "inconsistencies" stem from this fundamental misunderstanding and own personal confusion instead of that of his (unconfirmed and third party) source material. Stating that a squadron commander could be at his first military action with his model is crazy. I will wait for additional comments. If you want more such examples I can provide them. Then I will remove the source entirely. This was fun. Thanks --Gtoffoletto (talk) 12:13, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I have informed Skeptical inquirer of the factual error. Had to use the generic contact email but if anyone reading has a more direct contact I would appreciate. It's an embarrassing mistake for such a prestigious magazine. --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:13, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

You are avoiding my point: that the wording is stupid. Anybody who says "this is a real unexplained phenomenon" because they have not explained it must have a huge ego, because they conclude from their own failure that everybody else has failed too. Did they even consider consulting any skeptics? Did they even know about Nickell's article?

"Giving more weight" - You want to remove Nickell altogether. You want to cut one of the foremost experts on "unexplained phenomena" out of the article because you disagree with him. That is not what we do in Wikipedia. The highest number of witnesses and the most sophisticated sensors are worthless if not combined with expert knowledge on the frailty of human cognition. The job of soldiers is to kill foreign soldiers, not to identify things people think they saw. They are out of their depth here, as they have been since the 1940s when it comes to UFOs.

Your "official confirmation", as you call it, is stupid, as I explained above. And even if it were not, it would not automatically invalidate everything else that happened before. "The CO said it is so therefore it is so" is military thinking, not scientific thinking.

PS By "such things", I obviously meant "things people see which they cannot explain". --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:26, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

We can change the wording no problem as I told you before. I totally agree with you that it only represents the Navy's POV. My point as I have proven verifiably above is that Nickell's article is fundamentally flawed. I wrote a pretty description of his embarrassing mistake with notes (part of what I sent to SI). Did you read it? Want to change wording for a statement? Go ahead. Have some comments about the mistake Nickell made? I'm all ears (I could have made an error myself). Thanks! --Gtoffoletto (talk) 15:57, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I am not interested in that. It does not matter: again, this is original research by you, and therefore would not be admissible to the article if it were not a deletion. --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:43, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Questionable Sources Removed

Recent edits have removed several sources indicating they were not reliable:

• One of them was the paper linked here: https://www.explorescu.org/post/nimitz_strike_group_2004 it is not published by a peer reviewed journal but the authors appear to have good credentials and the work has been cited in at least one peer reviewed paper https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/21/10/939 The report is gigantic and contains A LOT of information. Does the citation in a peer reviewed paper make it reputable? In any case this second paper can serve as a more appropriate source for this section.
• removal of: "One of the witnesses, retired United States Navy officer, Commander David Fravor, lamented the amount "of misinformation that [was] starting to come out through third and fourth parties".(with source LMH) is also questionable. This is the commander of the Strike Fighter Squadron not just some random witness. However I think as we restructure the page to remove the fringe skeptic view we can reintroduce it more appropriately.
• I am reverting the edit to the skeptic view section (calling it mainstream when it goes against the official U.S. Navy version of the facts seems rather ridiculous). We are actually discussing about this section here: Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#USS Nimitz UFO incident

--Gtoffoletto (talk) 04:41, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

MDPI is not a reliable publisher when it comes to WP:REDFLAG. Your actions here are borderline WP:ADVOCACY. I suggest you take a step back and try to get a better view of the WP:MAINSTREAM treatment of these claims (which is, interestingly, not the same as the media treatment). jps (talk) 16:18, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

NPOV and Wikipedia's voice

It is fine for us to report what people have said about this incident. It is fine to share those reports as the attributed opinions of those people. It is absolutely unacceptable to claim the existence of any object or apparition in Wikipedia's voice. That is the essence of WP:NPOV. Likewise, we should not, in Wikipedia's voice, claim that there was no object. So I have gone through and patiently tried to fix the wording which was heavily skewed towards the POV that this incident was the record of an actual object traveling in the way described by the pilots and technicians who described the situation. Here is a record of the clean-up. I strongly recommend any interested editors here familiarize themselves with WP:FRINGE. It is not okay to use Wikipedia to promote the fringe view that UFOs represent a phenomena that requires any sort of extravagant explanation beyond the ones that are normally provided. jps (talk) 16:58, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Nobody is doing so. You are not reading the discussions and the edits. UFO means Unidentified Flying Object NOT aliens. You want to change it to UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) to include other causes? Fine. But reverting blindly like this and removing reputable sources is unacceptable. I just reverted as discussed you edits. Contrary to your MO I have read each of your contribution and maintained several. i hope you appreciate my efforts. Let's move forward to improve the page. --Gtoffoletto (talk) 17:02, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

P.s. I apologise but using the visual editor I missed the edit description box or I would have also specified the partial revert better there.--Gtoffoletto (talk) 17:03, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Nobody is doing so. As the diff above shows, the wording was definitely doing so. I have now cleaned it up. I also added the paragraph from SI with a few cosmetic changes. We can certainly move forward from here! But I will not abide by claims that "UAP", or whatever you want to call them, are physical objects unless and until we get some fantastic sources that can allow us to WP:ASSERT as much. Wording matters. jps (talk) 17:12, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Original research removed

Fighters were approximately 100 miles from the coast of San Diego when the incident occurred.

  100 miles from San Diego County coast

  100 miles from San Diego coast

This image was removed from the article. It is original research based on the interpretation of a reader as to the claims that the incident occurred ~100 mi. from San Diego. This approximation means that the shading is overly precise in a way that is unjustified by the significant figures (e.g.) in the report. It could easily just be an order of magnitude estimate anyway. In any case, all this is not allowed per Wikipedia policy. So it's gone.

jps (talk) 18:02, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

AI

Seems that some people on various forums have suggested that this may have been an AI driven craft. This may make sense as something without a human pilot could certainly make very sharp turns and potentially accelerate but does not explain the more unusual features.

It might have been some experimental aircraft belonging to a foreign government but if so then surely they would have mentioned something. One does not simply "Buzz" a state of the art destroyer and jets for fear of the super secret technology falling into enemy hands. A slim possibility is that some people knew what it was but were sworn to secrecy as it was "One of ours!".