Diversity in UFO Statistics: The Truth is in the Shapes

by Cheryl Costa               September 14, 2018                  (syracusenewtimes.com)

• Publishing numbers of UFO sightings scares the hell out of the skeptics. They reassure themselves with the notion that UFO reports are largely misidentifications and the product of kooks and crackpots. They are certain that UFOs can’t be real.

• In writing the UFO Sightings Desk Reference, authors Cheryl Costa and Linda Miller Costa had an epiphany that “The Truth is in the Shapes!” “The diversity of exotic UFO shapes suggests a wide variety of species and builders,” reported Miller Costa.

• Focusing only on exotic-shaped UFOs, the authors first removed those UFOs identified as ‘man-made’ or confused with man-made craft such as the reported triangle, boomerang, chevron, bullet/missile and cigar-shaped craft. “What we wanted was only exotic shapes, UFO shapes that have high probability for not being man-made.”

• Then they made a chart of the NUFORC and MUFON sighting reports from 2001 through 2017. The total number of sightings was 139,876. Exotic-shaped craft amounted to 33% of the total, or 45,894 eyewitness accounts. “In my estimation, those kinds of numbers are still something significant to talk and write about,” said Costa. In other words, even without the craft that skeptics like to point to, saying that UFOs are all man-made and not of extraterrestrial origin, a significant percentage of sightings remain a mystery and very likely come from someplace other than Earth.

It’s funny how publishing UFO sightings numbers scares the hell out of some people. Many have written to me, “They (UFOs) can’t all be real!” They reassure themselves with the notion that UFO reports are largely misidentifications, and the product of kooks and crackpots.

A number of other people who have purchased my book UFO Sightings Desk Reference seem to go out of their way to twist my words and suggest that I think only 7 percent of UFO sightings are real. Then there are the debunkers who fail to accept good research and data. These are the folks who have their own opinion, and, by gosh, they’re right!

An important step in the scientific process is gathering data for analysis. My co-author Linda Miller Costa had an opinion she arrived at after editing and assembling the first draft of the publication. In 2018 she said, “The Truth is in the Shapes!” More recently she stated, “The diversity of exotic UFO shapes suggests a wide variety of species and builders.”

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