Leslie Kean is a well-known UFO writer, author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (2010. See my review of it here).
In recent years Kean has been working with the CEFAA, an official organization within the Chilean Air Force to investigate UFOs (similar to the now-disbanded Project Blue Book in the U.S. Air Force). In 2012, she promoted a newly-released "UFO video" by CEFAA, asking provocatively "Is this the case UFO skeptics have been dreading?". In the end, the much-hyped "UFO" turned out just to be a fly buzzing near the camera, and all those Chilean Generals and Pilots and Government Officials who pronounced it authentic were full of baloney.
The now-retired blogger Kentaro Mori explained in 2011 that the CEFAA's supposed "world's best UFO photo" appears to be nothing more than a reflection on a car windshield.
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| This photo taken in 2010 near the El Yeso Reservoir is the "world's best UFO photo," according to the CEFAA. |
After that embarrassment, for a long time one didn't hear much about Leslie Kean, or the CEFAA. In May of 2015, Kean announced another marvellous UFO video received from the CEFAA. She wrote
The CEFAA, a government agency investigating unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) within the department of civil aeronautics (DGAC) in Chile, has released a summary of its meticulous investigation into the relatively recent “AGA case.” The acronym “AGA” refers to the prestigious Air Force War Academy (Academia de Guerra Aérea) in Santiago, Chile, which provides training for high level Air Force officers.
The sighting of unexplained lights in formation at the Academy was video taped on two cell phones. Due to technical problems, the videos are not accessible on the CEFAA website.
By "technical problems," she apparently means that none of the Chilean Generals, Pilots, or government officials could figure out how to upload a cell phone video to a website. However, since that video only showed indistinct lights in the sky, taken on a shaky camera, practically nobody else got excited about this case.
But now she is back, big time. The CEFAA recently released a new UFO video, some of it using infrared imaging, and it quickly became the #1 trending item on Facebook. In a January 5, 2017 article on the Huffington Post, Kean wrote
An exceptional nine-minute Navy video of a UFO displaying highly unusual behavior, studied by Chilean authorities for the last two years, is now being released to the public. The CEFAA - the Chilean government agency which investigates UFOs, or UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena), has been in charge of the investigation. Located within the DGAC, the equivalent of our FAA but under the jurisdiction of the Chilean Air Force, CEFAA has committees of military experts, technicians and academics from many disciplines. None of them have been able to explain the strange flying object captured by two experienced Navy officers from a helicopter.
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| The object and its "envelope," according to astrophysicist Luis Barrera. |
UFOlogist Ted Roe is a member of NARCAP, the group that investigated the CEFAA's fly video and pronounced it to be an unknown object. Roe posted to a Facebook discussion of the current video, "Our experience w CEFAA has been pretty good. .. they've got a pretty strong college of experts and, at first glance, this case is provocative" (ellipsis in original). Apparently by describing his experience with the CEFAA as "pretty good," that means "we made fools of ourselves over this video of a fly." (Roe is currently embroiled in a nasty controversy concerning how he allegedly drove Isaac Koi, an outstanding researcher, out of UFOlogy.)
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| CEFAA caption: "The object moved away from the massize plume it ejected just moments earlier. " |
In France, a group called IPACO specializes in "Analysis of photo/video documents of alleged ufos." They investigated this video, and produced a sixteen-page report, completed November 26, 2015. They performed a highly technical analysis of the video. Their conclusion: "The object observed in the video was most probably a medium-haul twin jet airliner in a landing phase, flying ahead of the helicopter at a higher velocity, with a low altitude and a low velocity, in view of landing."
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| IPACO updated the CEFAA's map to show the calculated path of the presumed aircraft (blue). The red line shows the helicopter's path. |
And now Mick West of Metabunk seems to have driven the final nail into the coffin of the great Chilean IR UFO video. After explaining how all of the aspects of the video are consistent with that of an aircraft, West writes
This looks like a plane, flying away from the camera considerably higher than the helicopter (somewhere around 15,000 to 25,000 feet), that briefly creates an aerodynamic contrail.
The plane that seems to fit best is LA330, a two engined A320, which was reported to be climbing through 20,000 feet at that exact visual position at 14:01:39. It was actually 65 miles away, not 35-50. This explain[s] why it was not seen on radar (the actual plane was on radar, just not where they thought it was)
As the French skeptic Gille Fernandez noted, we have a situation here where a major UFO case was solved by 'amateurs' in two or three days, after having been unsuccessfully investigated by "experts" for two or three years. The same thing happened with the "Roswell slides" in 2015.
Leslie Kean doesn't agree with this at all. On January 7 she wrote on her Facebook page
Leslie Kean doesn't agree with this at all. On January 7 she wrote on her Facebook page
There are many holes in this flight LA330 hypothesis. First and foremost is that the Chilean authorities would have easily determined this to be the explanation if indeed it were.
Amused to read there *was* air traffic in the region and in the right location ... when other sources said there wasn't!
ReplyDeleteI am of the opinion that CEFAA cannot be trusted in anything they do with UFOs and UAPs. They are too biased for their own good because they HAVE to justify why they exist. If they debunk these sightings, they will demonstrate they are no threat and, as a result, jeopardize their very existence as a government body. Why pay for something that demonstrates that UAPs are NOT a threat? As a result, the "scientists" will be out of a job and the General will be in a dead end position with no hope of future promotion(as if he had any in the first place). This is why they ignore data/information that indicates the object might be explained. Meanwhile, Kean is giving them free publicity world-wide. She does not even question what they tell her. Her response is telling. She trusts CEFAA more than the actual data that is available.
ReplyDeleteI did notice this paragraph:: "It was confirmed that no space debris entered the atmosphere on that date in that location, and in any case, such an object would have fallen rapidly and not flown horizontally. Two independent experts on explosives told CEFAA staff that in such a scenario, the rounded vehicle would explode in the air due to the high internal pressure, and that the gas would catch fire in a flash. And any such re-entries would have been communicated to the Chilean government so that aircraft can be warned, as is the protocol." This paragraph is nonsense. The most that could be confirmed is that no object was predicted to reenter along a path thousands of miles long that crossed the region that the target was thought to be in -- nobody can predict a location where a low Earth orbit reentry will actually occur nor does the US DoD normally disclose what its highly classified space-based IR cameras observe. Reentering satellites do NOT "fall rapidly", during their fireball phase they are very close to horizontal, descending at a shallow angle. Also, "experts on explosives" in Chile know nothing about the thermal environment of hypersonic reentry nor about what spacecraft would or wouldn't do under such conditions. And there is no protocol to warn governments about satellite reentries to allow air traffic to be warned off -- that entire sentence is imaginary, since nobody can predict WHICH governments a demising satellite will burn up over..
ReplyDeleteJim has been sparring with Leslie Kean ever since her UFO book was first published!
Deletehttp://www.nbcnews.com/id/38852385/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/ufo-book-based-questionable-foundation/#.WHLxLFyc57k
Skeptic Ray Hyman Sees Billy Meier UFO Photos
ReplyDeletehttp://theyflyblog.com/?p=4266
World-class skeptic goes wide-eyed with wonder!
There are a few scientifically minded skeptics out there, one is Ray and the other just facilitated my two university presentations at NAU.
It was only a matter of time. But just watch how silent the rest of them will be. Perhaps that's a sing of...some wisdom on their part.
I probably should not have approved this posting, as it has nothing whatever to do with the subject at hand (the CEFAA and its UFO follies). Michael Horn is a tricky guy, and he has a habit of listing skeptics as believing in Meier's fakey photos, simply because they don't take the time to reply to his balderdash.
DeleteI've known Ray Hyman for almost 40 years now, last saw him at the final Amazing Meeting in 2015. No way is he gullible enough to fall for Billy Meier's shit.
I remember working at the Stanley Works lab back in the early '80's when I assisted on making a copy of one of Meier's books for one of the big shots in the company. The whole thing was hush-hush and we were not allowed to mention it as THEY would be watching for anything suspicious. My thought then, as it is now, is that a big shot executive making a six figure income annual income shouldn't be so cheap and should have just bought his own copy of what was obviously a BS book.
DeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteOn a very side note, I shared Jim'comment in UFO-pragmatism FB group thread devoted on the case, yesterday or before (dont remember the exact time of my comment because I read Jim dunno where).
It gives lights imho how they are "experts", or of space re-entries and regarding this case (I believe to be solved).
Well, that's ufology, after all...
Gilles.
Noory endorses 'airplanes'. When you've lost Coast-to-Coast radio, you've lost UFOria.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/chilean-ufo-mystery-unravels
Q: Why should we trust your theory over the experts?
ReplyDeleteA: I could argue I'm an expert too (at identifying planes and contrails), or that the CEFAA is really a UFOology group, or that even experts make mistakes. However let's drop that "Argument for authority", and look at facts you can verify yourself.
We have some very solid verifiable evidence in
1, The helicopter video with timestamps and GPS coordinates.
2. The IB6830 and LA330 ADS-B tracks with timestamps and GPS coordinates.
1 matches 2 in every way
IB6830 is in the right place at the right place
IB6830 is going in the right direction
IB6830 banks when the "UFO" banks,
IB6830 would create a visual thermal signature the same size as in the video.
IB6830 engine configuration matches the flares seen in the banking
The size of IB6830's thermal signature shrinks proportional to its distance, matching the video.
This is not my theory. These are verifiable facts that I (and others) simply discovered. Unless there was a UFO flying between the plane and the helicopter, mimicking the motion, the banking, the size and and the thermal signature of the plane, then it's a plane.
Kean is saying on her Facebook page that the case is NOT solved and that she will have more information...."soon". Apparently, she has to contact CEFAA in order to get her marching orders on how to address this problem. She did the same thing with the bug videos. One would think that an "investigative journalist" (which she proclaims to be), would take the time to read the arguments and see if there is a case. Instead, she is blindly rejecting the solution because she believes that CEFAA would not have missed it after two years. Like so many UFO proponents, she isn't smart enough to say, "well, I guess I was wrong and there might be a solution". That would be acceptable.
ReplyDeleteMy view of "experts" on a topic was given a severe jolt some 25 years ago when a famous conundrum was going the rounds, promoted by a super-high IQ woman called Marilyn vos Savant. It was known as "The Monty Hall Problem". It got its name from a TV show of the 60s.
ReplyDeleteIt concerned the probability of choosing one prize-containing box out of 3 (the other two contained junk).
Anyway, the point is that this conundrum was shown to many experts, including a number of skilled mathematics & science academics, professors and the like. They still got the wrong answer. Some later admitted it but others did not.
It was a rare and rather obscure branch of probability theory that defeated them (or most of them). These "experts" were indeed fooled. Yet they were still experts in their own fields. But NOT in this particular kind of puzzle.
You have to be very wary of so-called 'experts' on a rare subject matter. They may not be as expert as you think.
For those interested, the Monty Hall Problem and its history can be fould on google.
Kean now concedes it was an airliner. See her new HuffPo piece. Good for her. We've all had to do that in this field.
ReplyDeleteKean doesn't quite concede that it was an airliner. She wrote, "Actually, I believe that the resolution of this video is of secondary importance. What’s more significant is the fact that, in Chile, a government agency investigates reports of UAP."
DeleteSo she is leaving this video in the same Limbo as the earlier Fly UFO video of the CEFAA - 'It's impossible to ever say for sure what it was, and I'm not even going to try to figure it out any more.'
Because she realizes that her critics are correct, but ashe does not want to admit it.
I wonder how Kean will react the next time that the CEFAA contacts her saying "We got this great new UFO video!" If she's wise, she'll tell them to "Get lost!"
But I suspect she will follow the example of Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-chilean-navy-ufo-video-is-it-a-plane_us_587e7277e4b06a0baf6490ef
It is amusing that she thinks CEFAA is investigating UAPs. Personally, I believe that CEFAA will eventually get axed because it is a waste of money. If they can't identify bugs or airplanes, what makes them such experts in analyzing UAPs?
ReplyDeleteThe most important thing that Keane has ever done is help me illustrate why everyone should know about the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
ReplyDeleteNext time you go to the Huffington Post to find out what's true in the world, remember... they greenlit Keane's stories and continue to do so.