O'Hare and the Problems with Anecdotal Evidence

It made, and is still making, headlines around the world. A dozen or so employees at Chicago's O'Hare airport saw something in the sky. This is what I have managed to gather from the many various sources citing the eyewitness reports:

• It was round, or disc-shaped.
• Some people said it appeared to be spinning, others said it was motionless.
• It was dark grey in color.
• Some witnesses claimed it was metallic in appearance, others said it was hazy and unfocused looking.
• Some said it was difficult to make out against the overcast sky.
• The size has been varyingly reported as anywhere from 6 to 24 feet in diameter.
• It remained for around 20 minutes before allegedly "shooting up" and leaving a hole in the clouds.
• The object was not visible on radar, or from the control tower at the airport.

The witnesses have been described as pilots, mechanics, managers, "and others." One of the things I read or hear over and over again in discussions of this event is something along these lines:

Some of these witnesses are pilots, who are trained and accustomed to viewing aerial phenomena. Therefore, they should be considered highly credible expert witnesses, and their testimony accepted as accurate accounts. Being trained experts, they would know if what they were looking at was not paranormal.

The problem with this argument is that, being human, even the smartest most highly trained professionals in the world are just as susceptible to illusion and delusion as anybody else. A case in point would be to look at religion. There are many brilliant, highly educated persons who subscribe to a wide variety of faiths which contradict one another, and many who do not subscribe to faith at all. Regardless of your own religious position, you have to at least recognize the fact that some of these highly intelligent, educated people must be wrong about what they believe. They can't all be right!

Also, look at this website which displays a number of really neat optical illusions. Our brains and memories are evolutionarily adapted to recognize patterns and process things in ways that allow them to be tricked under the right circumstances. All of the education and training in the world cannot prevent this. It is biologically hard-coded into all humans--even pilots! It is a widely accepted fact--particularly in law enforcement--that eyewitness testimony is an unreliable source of information. The very fact that even in this case there are such widely varying accounts between actual witnesses should make this fairly clear.

If you are skeptical of the idea that eye witness testimony is so unreliable, I urge you to do a little research of your own on the matter. There have been many studies, particularly in the arena of law enforcement, where the accuracy of people's memories are tested in situations that could be analogous to witnessing a UFO. Time and time again they are shown to be unreliable and inaccurate. Some references to get you started:

Flaws in Reasoning and Arguments: Anecdotal Evidence and Testimonials
Eyewitness Identification Issues in Psychology
Archival study of eyewitness testimony regarding the sinking of the Titanic

Another factor to consider is that the reports themselves are only arriving to us second-hand through the media. This story and UFO sightings of this nature are so popular that it would not be unreasonable to suspect that the facts might have been slightly embellished to make for a more sensational story. One or two of the witnesses have come forward and done interviews, but as far as I know, no actual pilots or the so-called "expert" witnesses with the "training" to recognize these things have.

None of this is to say that the witnesses did not see something over the terminal at O'Hare airport that day. It is just to say that we don't know what they saw, we can't even be sure that they saw what they describe they saw, and we will likely never know what they actually saw. The only conclusions that can be drawn from the incident will be entirely subjective and speculative in nature. If you are a true-believer who already thinks aliens are visiting Earth, you will probably use the event as further evidence to support your already-held unfounded beliefs. Others, such as myself, will apply Occam's razor to the situation and assume that the event has a more mundane explanation (until and unless additional evidence surfaces to irrefutably suggest otherwise).