I N F O R M A T I O N Q U A L I T Y
T H E I T A C A T E X A M P L E
The catalogue of Italian close encounters has been taken as an example for a preliminary
discussion about the quality of available documentation for present UFO cases. Even what
everybody recognize as the best phenomelogy on record is founded on scarce and generally
unreliable information. Some considerations have been developed about the origins and the
consequences of such a situation.
ITACAT is the acronym of Italian Catalogue of Type-1
sightings, that is a comprehensive collection of all close
encounter cases taken place in Italy. It has been started in 1977
along the trail of Peter Rogerson's INTCAT, the catalogue of
international close encounters once published on MUFOB/MAGONIA
and other national works as well. Material was collected by
checking groups and investigators' archives, old listings of
cases and the Italian UFO literature as a whole. The result was a
first 400-page manuscript prepared in 1985: it has been published
only last month due to the several problems in finding a cheap
press style.
The ITACAT monograph published by Centro Italiano Studi
Ufologici (C.I.S.U.) includes about 430 cases ranging 1912
through 1984. Beyond a long presentation of the whole work (where
explanations about definitions and methodology were presented,
as well as three complete bibliographies about catalogues and
studies on close encounters) there is a first large section
devoted to the abstracts of all collected cases and their main
Italian and foreign sources. A second section refers to comments
about the quality of each single case (that is further
information about the source, the eventual investigation, the
witness, etc ...) and evaluation of possible explanations. Of
course, most of such comments have been produced by a personal
point of view, even though grounded on data and quite objective
interpretations.
In the headline of each case you can see an attempt of
evaluation about its quality and identification. I am completely
aware this work is limited by one person's judgement, so it could
be questionable. But, as in nearly all projects of such a kind,
it wasn't possible to establish an actual panel of differently
minded researchers to express a common evaluation. Particularly,
I established some different evaluation labels which can be
freely combined together. Each label has been processed in
relation to the following definitions :
NSUFFICIENT DATA : refers to the lack of important data
necessary to a complete evaluation of
the reported story. Typical examples can
be weather conditions and in-depth
information about the witness and
sighting environment.
UNRELIABLE : the source of the case is completely
unreliable for a serious use of the case
itself. To avoid this label it must have
been investigated by balanced and expert
investigators producing a comprehensive
report. Anyway, a case not labelled as
"unreliable" offers only a better
information quality and doesn't mean that
a really unexplained phenomenon actually
has been seen by somebody.
APPARENTLY UNEXPLAINED : cases which seem to offer no well-known
explanation to their reported phenomena
and a high information quality. They are
the best UFO cases on record, as regards
ITACAT. I use "apparently" because our
experience is showing as a lot of strong
cases could be explained after some
time, thank to additional details and
knowledges.
POSSIBLE EXPLANATION : cases where available information allows
to propose a possible explanation for
the reported phenomena.
PROBABLE EXPLANATION : cases which interpretation by
conventional arguments is probable or
even nearly sure. Unfortunately, alleged
investigations don't offer those checks
able to confirm suggested
identifications.
As said before, ITACAT is a file of close encounters. But
apart from the old general definition given by the late Dr. Hynek
there is quite confusion about what one means for "close
encounter". Many researchers proposed their own definition, so I
could but propose mine !
The catalogue includes all cases which can be defined as
follows :
" Any experience where the witness states the sighting of a
phenomenon at less than 30 meters of altitude and associated to
the common idea of UFO by himself or other people "
Sincerely I don't like the altitude limit inside this
definition, but I accepted it as something like a "historical
compatibility" with past works.
You can immediately realize that ITACAT is a great
file of any kind of stories, all related to what commonly people
refer as "UFO". You can find everything from simple rumours to
detailed investigations reports, passing through an ocean of
newsclippings. It's the usual problem: as we don't know what we
are looking for, we have to consider everything. What's important
is to label each of them accordingly.
The catalogue doesn't include the so-called fringe cases,
most of which have an indirect relation with what we usually name
"UFO phenomenon", that is a concept difficult to be defined.
Bedroom visitors, lonely entities, traces without UFOs, telepatic
contacts with presumed ET beings, contactee tales and so on have
been separately filed, just beacuse they don't fit the second
point of ITACAT's close encounter definition. Moreover, well-
known hoaxes or very probable faked cases haven't been recorded
in the file.
At moment, I have collected nearly 500 cases which are so
distributed:
50.8 % C.E. 0 (wihout any effect)
15.2 % C.E. 1 (temporaneous effects, like E.M. and physiological)
13.0 % C.E. 2 (physical traces and other permanent effects)
19.5 % C.E. 3 (entity cases)
1.5 % C.E. 4 (abductions)
Please note that the percentages of C.E. 1 and C.E. 2 aren't
exact as several cases concerning temporaneous effects or
physical traces have been reported among the other higher rated
classes. This a great limit of most catalogues currently on
record, including mine: as a consequence, we haven't a clear
picture of the real distribution of the different kinds.
As you can see at first glance, the so-called "high-
strangeness cases" count for about one third of the whole
file. The quantity isnt's so high and the quality as well.
Abductions are a rare kind of experience in the Italian UFO
scene: only five events, of which only one is relatively well
documented.
A few comments on the yearly distribution too. As you can
see by the alleged transparency, the peak has been produced by
the late '70s and particularly by 1978, rating more than 110
different close encounters. Such a record year was the production
of a series of factors and situation we don't know exactly, even
though we have some suspects:
(1) a late effect of the "Close encounter of the third kind"
movie.
(2) the unusual coverage given by mass media to the re-entry of
an artificial satellite which produced hundreds of sightings and
some "mysterious" phenomena seen by fishermen in the Adriatic sea
(phenomena recently attributed to activities related to oil
research).
(3) the special psycho-social situation of the Italian people
(1978 was a black year due to the red terrorism and the massive
press coverage to UFOs could have been an inconsciuos reaction to
reduce the high tension of the time).
(4) the top result of a special hystorical period (the '70s),
when occult and mysterious matters were fashionable and practised
by thousands people.
Practically 1978 is the peak year of a longer wave, started
in 1973 and ended in 1979. After that year, a new "dark age" got
the Italian ufology: people interested in ufology decreased more
and more and sightings became more and more less frequent, even
though with some exceptions.
The second remarkable peak inside the yearly distribution of
Italian close encounters is the 1954 one: it is the product of
the big wave taken place in Italy in that year so special for the
international UFO scene. But it is like a small island before the
exceptional '70s. Seeing the next transparency ( 3-D GRAPH OF
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS ), it is interesting to remember that 1954 has
the highest percentage of C.E. 3, 18 events of such a kind out of
39 recorded cases. This is quite strange and maybe it is just a
special feature of that wave we should carefully consider. In the
graph years have been plotted from left (1947) to right (1984),
while in the X axis the rear position takes for C.E. 0.
Getting a quick look at the time distribution we have a
further confirmation of the phenomenon's nightly attitude: this
is not so strange if we remember that UFO cases come from visual
observations and that witnesses' perception is easily distorted
during the night. Moreover, darkness leads people to a special
emotional and psychological state able to bias the witnesses'
reporting abilities. Of course this is not the ultimate
explanation for the clear majority of UFO stories in nightly
hours, but only a simple consideration.
I wouldn't like to bore you with other comments about the
well-known frequency distributions we are used to read about: all
of us know them and their actual meaning. I am still quite
skeptical about the value of such a kind of approach towards
these very simple data and, generally, about all data originating
from the tales we receive. If we want to study the very
interesting phenomenon of the tales themselves (that is a psycho-
sociological survey in order to understand why so many people are
saying to see so strange things in the sky), we can trust all the
collected data in spite of their sources. The tales would be the
object of the study and they would be enough. But I'd like to
approach my collection of cases in order to verify the eventual
presence of something objective behind the pure tale of each
witness or, better, try in understanding what they report to have
seen. This ambitious aim absolutely needs to work with sure
checked data, that is a good information quality.
This is a fundamental point of UFO research I would like to
stress. It is not serious to analyze cases based on newsclippings
and then process hypotheses or even simple conclusions about what
you think to be behind the cases themselves. Unfortunately, most
UFO stories we have just come from not checked sources: press,
rumours, direct reports, news collected by UFO fans and so-called
"investigations", enough to make Sherlock Holmes turn in his
grave. We should always remember that a lot of our UFO culture
has been founded on all these uncontrolled sources.
I think we should begin to consider a new actual parameter
in the critical evaluation of the great mass of data we have: the
quality of information. It is not possible to go on recognizing
that well-investigated reports are only a small percentage of the
whole documentation we have and then accept that same
documentation as a basis of discussion for any kind of work.
Unless we aim to a sociological survey of stories, which is not
the main interest of most ufologists.
It is difficult to define the concept of information quality
related to the special UFO case. I would like to argue only a few
simple considerations, hoping that international researchers
could establish a concrete set of features describing thoroughly
the concept itself (a partial attempt in such a direction was
accomplished by our French friends, Michel Figuet particularly,
inside the search for requirements able to define really "strong"
cases). Anyway, I don't want to deceive myself, as I know how
difficult is to propose standards to our colleagues and make them
accepted.
First of all we must consider information quality as the
result of an evaluation of how many and what data have been
produced by the source and the nature of the source itself. It
isn't so important the presence of a lot of detailed descriptive
features about the appearance of the phenomenon sighted by the
witness. It's also very important to know exactly this guy, the
environment where the sighting took place, weather conditions and
geographical coordinates. These are only examples of data every
investigator needs to judge correctly a tale in order to evaluate
its reliability and objectivity. I repeat once again: we could
take it at face value in case of a survey about what men are
saying to see in the skies, but we would like to know if they are
actually seeing something real and what, if possible.
Certainly, there are remarkable problems in being able to
get those information: investigator should ask the witness for
embarassing questions on his personal life, as well as to collect
data requiring a hard search. Ufologists are generally dilettanti
people who do what they are able to do, so we cannot humanely
expect too much from their generous effort. This situation could
explain the scarcity of basic data even in most investigation
reports. This certainly explains the huge quantity of ITACAT
cases labelled as "Insufficient Information" and "Unreliable".
We should always take in mind that such a loss of
information produces two serious consequences at least :
* a misknowledge or no knowledge at all about details able to
stress eventual causes having produced the reported phenomena.
* only the usual details concerning the witness' tale are
collected, so you haven't elements to judge the whole case by a
point of view other than a "simple" story.
The control over the source is another fundamental element
for the information quality. Who is the producer of the case ? A
journalist ? The witness itself ? An unidentified rumour
collected by somebody ? A super-enthusiast young UFO fan ? Or a
skilled investigator ? Who knows ! I don't know even this detail
for many Italian cases, as their available news are scarce and
confused. The situation should be the same everywhere, but worse
in countries where there aren't researchers able to recognize
such a situation. Of course, the weights of a well-investigated
case and a newsclipping-generated event are different. Beyond the
quantity of data supplied by them, the alleged reliability does
the difference. This doesn't mean that a ufologist is much more
reliable than a journalist, but that the latter is proned to
report the episode quickly and unseriously.
Sometimes I am asking myself how it has been possible to
produce so much literature and theories on the ground of so many
unchecked sources or rumours. I don't consider a hypothesis built
on newsclippings to be serious. It seems a consequence of the
power of the myth and the wonderful dream of ET visitors ! Unfor
tunately, this situation remains and myth is always feeding these
far and uncontrolled information.
Beyond these very simple considerations, I would like to
show some data produced by a quick analysis on the ITACAT sample.
Let's start with the kind of available sources. Four of them have
been considered for the analysis:
* PRESS (newspapers and magazines)
* INVESTIGATION (any kind of report produced by a ufologist or
another person)
* DIRECT REPORT (practically a tale directly supplied by the
witness)
* OTHERS (letters from other people, rumours, unreferenced
books)
Several cases have different kinds of sources, for example
both press and investigation: I have always taken the best one
into consideration (generally the investigation, even though such
a choice could be sometimes questionable).
Seeing the alleged graph (KIND OF SOURCES) we may realize a
lot of cases are just coming from ufologists: this doesn't
actually mean that quality of this kind of source is better than
the others. Most cases labelled in the investigation class have
been reported in a terrible way, with few data and very short
papers. A further selection between "good" and "bad" enquiries
would be necessary, but it would produce some judgment problems
and consequent reactions.
Anyway, it is clear how most available cases take origin from
completely unchecked sources, without any real possibility to
evaluate the alleged sighting tale correctly.
In the next graph (NUMBER OF SOURCES) the number of primary
sources for each single case has been processed. We should expect
the more different sources an event has, higher its information
quality is. In fact, we could compare different approaches and
maybe different data so to get a better look at the case.
Unfortunately, more than 80% of the whole ITACAT file originates
from one single source. Well-documented cases are a little
fraction of the whole but they offer a quite good quality, as two
out of the three or more sources are different investigations at
least. Our attention should be caught just by such small group of
cases.
I think the TIME OF SOURCE RELEASE (see alleged graph) is
another interesting parameter to evaluate the quality of our UFO
documentation. The later is the date when the case was
communicated to someone for the very first time the more probable
is the loss or inconscious change of the witness' memories. It is
clear that an interview about the description of whatever visual
event taken a long time lapse since its occurence can't supply
reliable information. The time of source release may so suggest
us a first rough indication about the reliability of our
collected cases. More than half ITACAT entries have been released
after one month or more their actual occurence: this means that
more than half ITACAT entries can't be taken into serious
consideration, as they ground on not "fresh" tales.
Parallely, we may look at the next graph ( CASES AND
SOURCES ), where the dates of cases' occurences have been compared
with dates of release of their sources. It's evident how most
sources have been located after 1972. That's not casual. As
said before, the '70s caused a great interest for ufology among
the people (the youth, especially) and the natural consequence
was the production of a huge amount of UFO cases. Then we must
remark that Italian ufology was practically born in the early
seventies, when there was a great diffusion of local groups all
over the country. Then, around 1978, the national Italian group
founded in 1966 actually got a national size, coordinating all
activities and promoting serious investigations. In the fifties
and sixties, the Italian UFO scene was featured by few enthusi
asts and some small groups: strangely the first real investiga
tion was carried out in 1966 and enquiry activity became common
only after 1972. This could help us in explaining the remarkable
difference between cases' occurence and source release. Moreover,
we have a clear demonstration of the proportional link between
people and mass media's interest in the matter and the number of
disclosed UFO cases.
A last graph must be devoted to the survey of evaluations
given to ITACAT events. I repeat they are personal evaluations
developed on the ground of two main groups of parameters:
* the quantity and, above all, quality of available
documentations at moment of the analysis (later information
could change or enhance the evaluation itself).
* suggested interpretations about the reported phenomena, if
available data allowed it.
The consequent results aren't advisable for true believers
being weak in the heart. Maybe I really was too bad in my
judgements, but I actually tried to think like a researcher
before the available evidence. The picture coming out from such a
survey is really depressing: four fifths of the whole file has
few and unreliable information. This means that most cases have
grounded on newsclippings, rumours, low quality investigations,
direct reports and so on. Data are so scarce and unchecked that
no serious attempt of interpretation about the alleged unusual
phenomena can be accomplished. What about the remaining part ?
Another 3.2% has insufficient details, but hypothetical
explanations were suggested all the same. Nearly 5% offer enough
details, but it is completely unreliable, while 8% of cases could
be hoaxes. Well, we remain just a little bit less than 1% of
Apparently Unexplained cases. Maybe an evaluation accomplished by
a guy less drastic than myself could lead to some more cases, but
I think the final global result were just the same.
Really good trustworthy reports are very few, due to a
series of problems related both to ufologists and the myth
itself. The UFO lore allows and make easier the development of
unchecked sources, because what they report belongs to that same
universe of stereotyped motifs and expectations producing the
mythology. As a consequence, UFO myth increases more and more its
own power thanks to rumours and low-quality information. So the
circle closes on itself. We could question if the myth develop
ment is a negative thing, but this will need an in-depth discus
sion. Maybe, we would prefer to study high-quality reports,
offering excellent documentation and description of apparently
unexplained phenomena. This would be a search towards the sup
posed physical component of UFO phenomenon. There are two prob
lems:
(1) the selection and the small quantity of resulting incidents
(2) what to do
As the ITACAT sample showed, the sample of "perfect" cases
able to justify the search for an original stimulus (whatever its
origin could be) behind the witness tales is reduced. Much more
all of us have been using to believe. What is the cause ? Mis
knowledge or a secret wish to avoid stopping our interest in
ufology ?
Please consider what I am saying as some free provocative
considerations coming out from a critical survey of a sample of
UFO phenomelogy.
What's important is a thoroughly reflection about the
quality of information we deal with. We must try to define a
meaning for the term "quality" and establish a set of standards.
Of course this won't solve the problem at all. We must ask
ourselves if ufologists, that is some enthusiasts, will be never
able to reach those standards. Certainly, we could improve the
investigator's trainging and knowledges, but a lot of other
limits will remain. But I prefer don't be worried: sometimes it
is better to avoid some questions to enjoy with ufology.
At last, two final considerations. Firstly, a bad
information quality doesn't necessarily mean that all cases are
hoaxes or have a sure explanation. Ufologists' dilettantism and
the omnipresent myth let cases to be reported in an uncompleted
or even wrong way, but more witnesses actually refer interesting
genuine sightings of what they think to be anomalous aerial
phenomena. Secondly, most UFO cases are only supported by rumours
and hardly reliable sources. There is a lot of noise produced by
somebody, that is people who speak about something: this doesn't
necessarily involve the presence of a truly strange objective
phenomenon. On the contrary, it surely means that we have a
social phenomenon. A phenomenon about which we only have tales.
The search for a serious quality information can surely help
us in finding a truly scientific dimension for our studies.
Without a checked concrete base we cannot do anything, only enjoy
ourselves.