"Useful Research Methods for Aircrew and Air Traffic Controller UAP sightings."

Hi all,

A fifth paper of interest from the July 2014, Paris, GEIPAN workshop was by US based researcher, Dr. Richard Haines of NARCAP (click here.) His paper was titled "Useful Research Methods for Aircrew and Air Traffic Controller UAP sightings."


Introduction:

"Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) continue to be reported by pilots and air traffic controllers around the world...little more is known today about the true nature of UAP than was known in the 1950's...UAP also appear without warning near airplanes in flight which is the primary subject of this paper."


Future methodology:

"Our future research methodology must focus upon invisible and unexpected Black-swan-like events that lie outside the expectations of highly experienced UAP investigators and aviation officials than upon what appears to be the obvious."

"UAP investigators should focus on establishing a broad "net" in which to "catch" all of the objective...and subjective characteristics of UAP."

Haines calls for a "...comprehensive taxonomy of UAP to categorize and parse the various classes of these phenomena."

In the next section of the paper, Haines discusses what should be recorded when interviewing aircrew and documents the processes undertaken by NARCAP in this respect. He then proceeds to illustrate what might be learnt by an examination of the aircraft involved in terms of potential instrumented data. Reconstruction of the observation is important, to record any and all available information. He concludes that "Because we still do not know what UAP are we are wise to collect and analyze more information that we may think we need and not reject data too soon simply because it does not seem to be relevant."

"There is little doubt that unidentified aerial phenomena are complex...I believe, however, that when the data is integrated properly and the seemingly anomalous features are included - despite their apparent challenges to current scientific laws - we will really move forward in our understanding of what UAP are."


Conclusions and recommendations:

"As this paper has pointed out there are many useful procedures available for collecting, recording, and analysing pilot and ATC personnel data. Also, as has been mentioned, these myriad data call for application of scientific procedures involving hypothesis testing, control groups, creative data selection and integration and leaving our personal biases behind."


Notes:

1. A very useful tool is a list of selected research URL's used by Haines and NARCAP. These include "aero-physics;" astronomical; "geo-physics;" airports; rocket launch data, etc.

2. The full text of the paper is available, click here. The associated presentation slides are available here.

3. All in all, I found this another extremely useful and practical paper, which should be essential reading for all civilian UAP researchers.