INDEPENDENT FIELD ARCHIVE01 — Methodology, Sourcing and Credibility
Scope
Unexplained aerial sightings worldwide, 1908–2026, with deliberate non-US weight. The US is covered only as a baseline (it has years of AARO/Blue Book material already; this pack exists to show Glenn's readers the rest of the planet).
Included: official government investigations and their case files, civil aviation/military radar events, photograph- and trace-evidence cases, mass-witness events, and national reporting statistics.
Excluded: abduction-regression narratives as evidence, contactee claims, crop circles, and any "document leak" with no retrievable primary document.
Sources used, ranked
| Tier | Type | Examples used here |
|---|---|---|
| A | Government primary: agency sites, released reports/PDFs | CNES/GEIPAN figures, AARO FY2025 report, UK MoD FOI PDFs, Brazilian National Archives (cited), cia.gov FOIA reading room |
| B | Reference/encyclopedic with citations | Wikipedia case articles (used as index, citations spot-checked) |
| C | Established press reporting | BBC, Reuters-adjacent, Guardian, Newsweek, HuffPost (Kean byline), Ars Technica |
| D | Advocacy/community | NUFORC, MUFON — usable for volume statistics only, never as proof of a case |
Every claim in the case files is Tier A/B/C. Where a claim rests on Tier B alone, it's marked
[B-verified-cites] implicitly by naming the primary it cites.
Credibility rating applied to each case
- A — Instrumented: two or more independent sensor systems (radar, IR, film) plus trained witnesses. Belgium 1990, Tehran 1976, Brazil 1986, Chile 2014, Kaikōura 1978.
- B — Documented: official paperwork, multiple credible witnesses, no sensor confirmation. Rendlesham 1980, Calvine 1990, Ariel School 1994, Colares 1977.
- C — Reported: single witness or press-only record. Most of Africa/Asia entries.
- D — Explaining-away plausible: a specific mundane cause fits better than the anomalous one (Campeche 2004 oil-platform flares; Coyame 1974 drug-plane crash; Westall 1966 weather balloon).
A case is never listed as "unresolved" here without naming the leading conventional explanation and why it was not accepted.
Known biases in the data (state these on the site, they are honest)
- Reporting ≠ incidence. NUFORC/MUFON volume reflects who has internet access and a reporting culture, not where objects fly. Anglophone + French + Brazilian data dominate.
- Surveillance bias. France's numbers look "cleanest" because the gendarmerie feeds GEIPAN reports; the US looks cleanest because AARO gets military sensor feeds. Africa and Central Asia look empty because almost nobody is collecting.
- Language bias in English research. The Chinese and Russian literatures are large and largely untranslated; this pack flags those gaps rather than papering over them.
- Post-hoc reporting inflation. Several waves (Belgium 1990, Ariel School 1994) show reports arriving after media coverage — a known contamination effect that weakens witness independence.
- Declassification is political. "No documents found" (Argentina) is not evidence of nothing; it can mean nothing was ever archived.
Verdict language used in this pack
- Unresolved (instrumented) — sensors + no accepted explanation.
- Unresolved (documented) — official investigation closed without identification, weaker evidence.
- Contested — government said X, independent analysts said Y, both defensible.
- Resolved — a published, testable mundane explanation exists and is generally accepted.