Identified flying object

An Identified Flying Object, or IFO, is any unusual or puzzling object or optical phenomenon observed in the sky which has been identified as a known or conventional phenomenon after being investigated by qualified persons. This is in contrast to an Unidentified flying object, or UFO, which has not been identified following investigation.

UFO studies and result differences.

It has been estimated from various studies (such as those cited below) that 50-90% of all reported UFO sightings are eventually identified, while 10-20% remain unidentified (the rest being "garbage cases" listed as having "insufficient information" to enable classification). Various studies (such as the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book) have also shown that only a small percentage of UFO reports are deliberate hoaxes (typically less than 1%). Instead, the vast majority are honest misidentifications of natural or man-made phenomena.

The actual percentage of IFOs vs. UFOs depends on who is doing the study and can vary widely depending on criteria and cases examined. Politics can also play an important role. For example, in early U.S. Air Force UFO studies such as Project Blue Book, the unknowns were consistently over 20%. However, in early 1953, right after the CIA's debunking Robertson Panel, the USAF issued Air Force Regulation 200-2 ordering the unknowns reduced to a minimum. As a result, percentages of unknowns dropped precipitously, usually being only a few percent in any given year. When Blue Book closed down in 1970, only 6% of cases overall were now classified as unknowns (the vast majority of the final unknowns arising from before the issuance of AFR 200-2, which ordered Air Force personnel to publicly discuss only IFOs and not "unidentifieds."

The following are some major scientific studies undertaken during the past 50 years and the proportion of IFOs vs. UFOs:
*Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 (referred to further below as BBSR) was a massive statistical study the Battelle Memorial Institute did for the USAF of 3,200 UFO cases between 1952 and 1954. Of these, 22% remained unidentified (“true UFOs”), using the stringent criteria that all four scientific analysts had to agree that the case had no prosaic explanation, whereas agreement of only two analysts was needed to list the case as explained. Another 69% were deemed identified (IFOs), and for the remainder, 9%, there was insufficient information to make a determination.
*The official French government UFO investigation (GEPAN/SEPRA), run within the French space agency CNES between 1977 and 2004, scientifically investigated about 6000 cases and found about 13% defied any rational explanation (UFOs), while about 46% were deemed readily identifiable, or IFOs. (The remainder, or 41%, lacked sufficient information.)
*When the AIAA in 1971 reviewed the results of the 1966-1969 USAF-sponsored Condon Committee study, 30% of the 117 cases remained unexplained. (This is another example of politics clearly affecting outcomes. Condon had claimed in his summary that all the cases studied were or could probably be explained.)
*Of about 5,000 cases submitted to and studied by the civilian UFO organization NICAP, 16% were judged unknowns.

In contrast, much more conservative numbers for the percentage of UFOs were arrived at individually by astronomer Allan Hendry, who was the chief investigator for the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). CUFOS was founded by astronomer Dr. Allen Hynek (who had been a consultant for the Air Force’s Project Blue Book) to provide a serious scientific investigation into UFOs. Hendry spent 15 months personally investigating 1,307 UFO reports.

In 1979, Hendry published his conclusions in "The UFO Handbook: A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating, and Reporting UFO Sightings". Hendry admitted that he would like to find evidence for extraterrestrials but noted that the vast majority of cases had prosaic explanations. He deemed 89% IFOs and only 9% unidentified. If only “hardcore” cases -- well-documented events which defied any conceivable conventional explanation -- the figure for UFOs dropped to only 1.5%.

One possible reason for Hendry's more conservative results might be that he was operating from a very different set of data. Hendry examined almost exclusively civilian reports, mostly from inexperienced witnesses. In contrast, government studies, such as the U.S. Project Blue Book or the French GEPAN/SEPRA, or the civilian NICAP study, contained large numbers of civilian and military pilot sightings and other military sightings, usually considered to be higher evidentiary cases because of the greater experience of the witnesses and the presence of corroborating data such as radar.

As an example of the difference, military personnel made up only 1% of Hendry's witnesses, but 38% of the Battelle / Air Force study. The military witnesses also contributed a much higher percentage of “excellent” or “good” cases (58% for the military vs. only 33% for the civilian cases), which were more likely to be judged unknowns in the Battelle study. Overall, 29% of military cases were judged as unknowns vs. 17% for civilian cases.

Because the results for the Battelle BBSR study and Hendry’s CUFOS study are readily available and contain many statistical breakdowns of cases, they will be contrasted in detail below.

Battelle Memorial Institute breakdown of cases

Out of 3,201 cases, 69% were judged to be identified, 22% were unidentified, and 9% had insufficient information to make a determination. A report classified as "unidentified" was defined as: "Those reports of sightings wherein the description of the object and its maneuvers could not be fitted to the pattern of any known object or phenomenon."

Only two of four scientific analysts had to agree for a case to be listed as an IFO, but all four analysts had to agree for it to be judged a UFO. About twice as many of the excellent cases were judged UFOs as the poorest cases. The difference was accounted for mostly by cases judged having “insufficient information”, which was only 4% for the best cases but 21% for the worst. Quality of cases didn’t seem to have much effect on the various category percentages for the IFOs, except in the “psychological” category, in which the poorest cases had much higher relative rates.

Breakdown by category of IFO and case quality

Analysis

Common causes of misidentification and IFOs

Both BBSR and Hendry found that the vast majority of IFOs were caused by three classes of objects or phenomena: Astronomical, aircraft, or balloons. Of all IFOs, 86% were accounted for by these three groups in the BBSR study vs. 83% in the Hendry study. However, there were significant differences in the percentages attributed to each group:
*Astronomical: BBSR = 22%; Hendry = 42%. Since BBSR predated satellites, subtracting these out of Hendry’s results leaves 40%. In Hendry’s study, bright stars and planets, like Venus, made up 29% of all cases while meteors (and to a much lesser extent, re-entering space debris) made up 9%.
*Aircraft: BBSR = 22%; Hendry = 37%. The high percentage of military people and pilots in the BBSR study may have something to do with the far lower aircraft misidentification values. Hendry had large numbers of advertising plane misidentifications (19%), perhaps reflecting a study bias toward urban centers, particularly Chicago, where CUFOS is located. Hovering aircraft such as helicopters or blimps, or aircraft that appear to be hovering, such as airplanes seen at night from the front with their headlights on as they approach for landing can often confuse the inexperienced witness, as can aircraft strobe lights.
*Balloons: BBSR = 15%; Hendry = 5%. Possibly the large numbers of big experimental balloons, such as the Skyhook balloon, launched in the period that BBSR studied, contributed to the higher BBSR percentage.

Rare causes of misidentification

*Birds: BBSR = 1%; Hendry = 0.5%
*Light phenomena: BBSR = 2%; Hendry = 1.1%. Might include mirages, moondogs, sundogs, auroras, ground lights such as street lights, and searchlights reflected off of clouds. Extremely rare light phenomena such as possible ball lightning or earthlights may very rarely trigger UFO reports.
*Clouds, dust, fog, etc.: BBSR = 0.4%; Hendry = 0.9%. Might include unusual cloud formations such as lenticular clouds, noctilucent clouds, rainbow effects, and high-altitude ice crystals.
*Other causes: BBSR = 5%; Hendry = 1.2%. Hendry mentioned some of these, such as kites, flares, reflections off windows, and windborn debris.

ome misperceptions

Light distortion from air turbulence can cause celestial bodies to move to a limited degree as can a visual perceptual effect called the autokinetic effect, caused by small, involuntary eye movements after staring at a star-like light against a black background without a frame of reference. To some observers, these may cause stars and planets to appear to start and stop, change direction, or dart around.

Hendry and many skeptics often attribute regular patterns such as “figure eights,” “meandering in a square pattern,” or “falling leaf motion” to these mechanisms and dismiss the sighting as an IFO, but this is far from certain. Movement caused by atmospheric effects or autokinesis is erratic and very limited in range. Therefore, in principle, such effects cannot cause true regular geometric motion such as a square pattern or figure eight, although perhaps those with vivid imaginations may attribute such patterns to random motion. In the case of autokinesis, the effect is very temporary and is destroyed by refixating one’s gaze. Also autokinesis can happen only in the absence of nearby objects. Thus if somebody was viewing a bright object near a visible horizon or in a field of nearby stars, it is very unlikely that autokinesis would be the cause of perceived motion.

Atmospheric distortion also tends to cause motion limited to only few seconds of a degree (causing the familiar twinkling of a star), and autokinesis is typically less than one degree. As Hendry himself noted, very large and prolonged excursions of motion would rule out either mechanism as a suitable explanation.

According to Hendry, moving clouds may also sometimes confuse observers by creating induced motion. Hendry believes this occasionally makes observers also believe objects have suddenly disappeared or make a rapid departure.

Another type of misperceived motion sometimes occurs when people are driving in a vehicle. Witnesses may believe the “UFO” was following them even though the celestial body was actually stationary. Even police and other normally reliable witnesses can occasionally be fooled by sightings of bright stars and planets.

Similarly, in about 10% of Hendry’s cases caused by celestial bodies, witnesses greatly underestimated distances to the objects, giving distance estimates ranging from 200 feet to 125 miles (60 m to 200 km).

Reentering space debris or meteors may appear as a string of lights. This can occasionally be misinterpreted as lights coming from windows, creating the illusion of a spacecraft. However, such mistakes are actually extremely rare. The effect was first noted in a widely observed 1969 re-entry of a Soviet satellite. The Air Force collected hundreds of reports from witnesses. From these, debunker and astronomer Donald Menzel found three anecdotal cases where witnesses reported the effect. ("UFO’s, A Scientific Debate", 155-161). This suggests that perhaps only 1% of all witnesses actually interpret similar events in this way. It is thus a mistake to assert that all reports of elongated objects with windows are due to misidentified meteor trains or space debris.

Venus as an IFO

Because Venus is the brightest object in the sky (except for the sun and moon) it is frequently misidentified. Contributing to this, Venus is often visible in the early evening and morning sky, and thus seen by many people. Even experienced witnesses, especially when they are in unfamiliar surroundings or atmospheric conditions are unusual, may be confused, at least temporarily.

For example, Astronaut Gordon Cooper, himself a strong advocate of the Extraterrestrial hypothesis, related that he had once been momentarily fooled by the planet Venus when he was a fighter pilot, thinking it a distant enemy plane, and pursued it for several minutes. Other famous cases involving Venus are the Jimmy Carter UFO Incident of 1969 [http://www.debunker.com/texts/carter_ufo.html] (though the skeptical explanation of Venus is hotly contested, including by Carter himself) and the flying cross chased by two policemen in Devon, England, in 1967 [http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/flyingcross.htm] .

Although there is no doubt that Venus frequently triggers UFO reports, it is often overplayed as a UFO culprit by many skeptics. For example, astronomer Phil Plait claimed that Venus was responsible for a “majority” of all UFO reports (Plait, 205). But the studies cited here do not support this. BBSR attributed only 22% of sightings to astronomical causes of "all" types, stars, planets, meteors, etc. Venus constituted some unspecified fraction of these. “Certain” astronomical identifications were only 13% of cases (the other 9% of astronomical IDs being “doubtful”), which would further reduce the number of actual “Venus cases.” Hendry attributed a larger 29% of sightings collectively to “bright stars or planets.” Again the fraction believed caused specifically by Venus isn’t broken down, but likely didn’t exceed 20%.

In other cases, some skeptics will claim Venus (or perhaps Jupiter or a bright star) to be responsible for a sighting when they aren’t even visible or are in the wrong part of the sky. An infamous example occurred in August 1965 when the U.S. Air Force tried to explain away widespread sightings in the midwest as bright stars in or near the constellation Orion. However, Orion, a winter constellation, was still well below the horizon at the time, a fact quickly pointed out by some astronomers, and the Air Force was forced to make a hasty retraction. [http://www.project1947.com/bg/ufogov.htm] [http://books.google.com/books?id=uVL7BCSdv5gC&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=oklahoma+orion+1965+air+force+ufo&source=web&ots=UwkkhEH1cx&sig=zT4sePIroRZuELbbp23Wk34X73Q#PPA26,M1]

Further, sometimes impossible properties are ascribed to Venus in order to debunk prominent UFO cases. In one famous case, known as the Portage County UFO Chase from 1966, two policemen in their car chased a brilliant UFO for an extended period of time; in the end, seven police officers were involved in the pursuit, and about half a dozen civilians claimed to have seen the same or a similar object. The deputies said the UFO was as clearly defined and metallic, roughly the size of a house when they first saw it up close, bathed them and the surrounding countryside in bright light, and flew directly over them at one point. Another set of policemen saw the initial two officers' car and the UFO approaching rapidly from the west while Venus was in the east. Despite this, the USAF claimed, after a cursory investigation (only one of the police officers and none of the civilians was interviewed) the police chased a satellite and then Venus. [http://ufocasebook.com/portage.html] (This incident was the inspiration for the police UFO chase in Steven Spielberg’s "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"). However, in another famous police chase, the "flying cross" UFO of Devon, England, in October 1967, the culprit was definitely identified as Venus. [cite web| url = http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/flyingcross.htm| title = Devon flying cross UFO of 1967| accessdate = 2007-10-02| author = Ian Ridpath| format = HTML]

Conclusions

In many cases, whether an unknown flying object is ultimately called an IFO or UFO is a judgment call of the researchers involved, and thus the proportion of IFOs to UFOs will inevitably fluctuate and their significance will remain controversial. As Hendry himself noted, “Reasonable UFO proponents admit that ‘genuine’ UFO sightings are in the minority, around 10-20%; the skeptics say, ‘If 90% of the reports are IFOs, why not 100%? Actually, there is no way to determine the absolute percentage of IFO and UFO—they keep changing from sample to sample and year to year and are dependent on the biases of the judges.”

Many Ufologists argue that IFOs represent the inevitable “noise” encountered in analysis of any phenomenon. Those cases that still defy conventional explanation, even if their percentages are relatively small, constitute the hardcore “signal” of the UFO enigma.

References

* Allan Hendry, "The UFO Handbook: A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating, and Reporting UFO Sightings", 1979, Doubleday & Co., ISBN 0-385-14348-6
* Philip Plait, "Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax", 2002 John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-40976-6. (Chapter 20: Misidentified Flying Objects: UFOs and Illusions of the Mind and Eye)
* Carl Sagan & Thornton Page, editors, "UFO's: A Scientific Debate", 1972, Cornell University Press, 1996, Barnes & Noble Books, ISBN 0801407400

External links

* [http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/astroufo1.htm Astronomical Causes of UFOs] (Ian Ridpath)
* [http://stratocat.com.ar/ovnis/indexe.html IFO cases caused by stratospheric balloons]
* [http://www.deltapro.co.uk/IFOguide.HTML Common IFO Phenomenon ] (Robert Moore)
* [http://www.nufonews.co.uk/UFO_Study_P1_V151.pdf Text of UFO STUDY Part 1 (UFO Investigation), gives detailed description of various IFO types] (Jenny Randles)