“People are sloppy thinkers that are true believers. They do their cause a disservice because they don't include error bars. … The sign of a good scientist is what error bar he or she can assign to it and the breakdown in that error in terms of systematic and statistical errors.”
Into the Impossible With Brian Keating · Ideas & Essays · November 2026
Context
Brian Keating reacts to acceleration estimates for a 1986 UFO sighting that came with error bars. He criticises enthusiasts who give a single number with no uncertainty.
Transcript
…are we observing, you know, so many steradians on the sky? And it's a huge amount. And for a UFO enthusiast, you know, to kind of besmirch a scientist and say that, like, oh, you're just paid off by NASA. I mean, I work for NASA once. You work for NASA, but I think it's more... I'm not going to be
paid off by NASA. I know, exactly. Anybody to pay me off would be great. It was like, you know, are you getting paid by
…Like, I don't care if you get the central value. You know, you measure G and you get it 9.8 meters per second squared, but you don't tell me that your error bar is 100 meters per second squared, plus or minus, you know, on the plus side and minus 10 meters per second. That's my problem with the Drake equation. It's always presented as an equation for a number as if that's what we do. No, no. The sign of a good scientist is what error bar he or she can assign to it and the breakdown in that error in terms of systematic and statistical errors. My first question is: what are those errors? Are they statistical? Are they systematic? And my second question is, this thing was flying for an hour at 747 speeds, call it 500 miles an hour, pretty much. Let's round up, round numbers. And so this thing was tracked over what? I mean, Alaska is not that big. So, you know, how are they tracking this thing for that long, getting this data? And what…
Right. Well, when you calculate errors like this, you can't actually estimate systematic error because you would need to know what the true value is to estimate that, right? You'd have to have some handle on what the true value is. So you can never really estimate a systematic error. You're…
do me a favor. I know you're enjoying this on YouTube, but make sure you follow me on Spotify too and leave a review. That helps out more than I can tell you.
And that's what the uncertainties in pretty much any scientific calculation actually give you. You can't easily estimate uncertainty in any kind of bias unless you know what that bias is. And the uncertainties are important because it tells you how well you know the answer, right? Right? When I get…
More from Into the Impossible With Brian Keating
