What happened is that UFO sightings basically disappeared. Turns out it's much harder to talk about seeing UFOs when you can't answer the question "So, why didn't you take a picture with your phone?"
references?
[edit]: This graph shows the frequency of reported UFO sightings inn Canada over the last 25 years. There is a steady increase in sightings over the years:
http://www.canadianuforeport.com/survey/images/ttlreports2013.gif
The graph originates from this survey: http://survey.canadianuforeport.com/
conducted by the Canadian astronomer Chris A. Rutkowski and non-astronomer Geoff Dittman
It would be a powerful tool to be able to dismiss fringe phenomena, prior to empirical investigation, on firm epistemological ground.
Thus I have elaborated on the possibility of doing so using Bayes, and this is my result:
Using Bayes to dismiss fringe phenomena
What do you think of it?