Sorry. I meant to say measuring the UFO speed does NOT call for modern methods, or photography. George Washington, who was well trained in surveying, could have done it with ease. (I suppose that training and tramping around in the wilderness surveying property must have proved invaluable to him during the war -- something I do not recall reading in any biography, come to think of it.)
Modern methods make it easier and more convenient to measure things. They make measurements more accurate, and more precise. But they do not necessarily increase confidence or make the results more believable. The notion that they do is a huge misunderstanding by people who do not know much about history. The age, origin or complexity of the measurement technique has no bearing on suitability. Lots of extra data points or digits of precision may be useful, but then again they may not. It all depends. This is important. It is germane to many aspects of cold fusion. Old fashioned experimentalists such as Fleischmann, who prefers to graph things with a paper and pencil rather than with a computer, understands this. Levi, who did an 18-hour reality check test with a commercial grade flow meter before committing to a large project, understands this. It annoys them when the younger generation confuses precision with confidence, or sophistication with good technique. People are blinded by high technology, and seduced by computers. A general rule that was drilled into me a hundred times during my education by biologists, physicists and demographers (my mother) is that all else being equal a simple, direct, first-principle method is superior. I think this has not been taught for 30 years. More's the pity. If you can do a biology experiment with a $20,000 machine, or with 2 cents worth of thread and some acid, the latter method is better. Or to take an example in which high tech modern chemistry trumps complicated social science techniques, if you can estimate the level of cocaine consumption in a community by measuring contamination in sewage, that's better than scrounging through arrest records or asking drug addicts to fill in questionnaires. - Jed
