Ufology’s Insane Asylum: UFO UpDates

The pathology inherent to or study of UFOs is rampant and overt at an internet place that designates itself as The List: Errol Bruce-Knapp’s UFO UpDates.



A cursory glance at the postings on UpDates provides evidence of a psychopathology that is substantiated by a perusal of such dolts as Jerry Clark, Don Ledger, Stanton Friedman, and especially the sour and intellectually misguided Alfred Lehmberg.

Recently, sensible and coherent thinkers such as Britain’s David Clarke and the eminent Jeff Ritzmann have departed UpDates, realizing that the venue now contains a gaggle of very mentally-sick persons, who are spouting jeremiads about the Alien Abduction brouhaha that Paratopia started by its anti-Hopkins revelations of Carol Rainey, Hopkins’ ex-wife and colleague, and the Jacobs/Emma Woods imbroglio that has captured the noses of ufological morons and idiots who haven’t a clue as to what malfeasance is or perverse bias is on their part or others,

UpDates is the last refuge of the ufological residue that has been marginalized by UFO newbies and true intellectuals, who refuse to habituate the site.

The scandalous asides of The Listers is grist for psychoanalytic study, if one wants to examine minds that have gone off the deep end of sanity.

The once scholarly UFO historian Jerry Clark has descended into a state of Libyan-like autocracy, where he thinks he’s the sole-arbiter of what is germane about UFOs and what isn’t.

Don Ledger is just dumb, and grammatically lax.

Freidman is defensive and self-aggrandizing.

Lehmberg is egregiously loopy, ruining the English language with his grammatical faux pas and incoherent ramblings.

Bruce-Knapp likes the idea of having a lot of material in his UpDate archives, and encourages postings of every kind. He’s the asylum’s wayward director who should have retired a few years ago, before senility hit him square in the head.

There are others, too many to name here, who complete the inventory of psychopaths who once were atop the ufological list of responsible UFO mavens but who now make up the raft of silly persons that time has made irrelevant and rationality has subverted.

UpDates is the list alright – but the list of UFO nuts and crazies.

Alien Abductions

We're not going to get immersed in the alien abduction brouhaha that is running amok all over the UFO community...

But we are making available, a compilation (by Jeff Carney), of some papers by alien abduction mavens (including some in the current abduction imbroglio).

The PDF is mostly for newbies to the abduction phenomenon, but some regulars here might find a few interesting morsels.

Click here for the PDF.

Edward U Condon and pink UFOs

Way back when, before many readers here were even extant, we pursued the allegation that Edward U Condon, the person responsible for the flawed Air Force/Condon Report on UFOs, was a communist sympathizer, a "pinko" as The John Birch Society called him and his ilk.

We posted our inquiry online, earlier at his blog and others, but provide it again for your edification.

We believe that if Condon was, indeed, a commie sympathizer (or worse), his perversion of the Colorado Study of UFOs was compromised for reasons more substantial than stupidity.

Click here to see our paperwork for what we call The Condon Affair.

Scientology, Ufology, and Psychology

The New Yorker issue for February 14/21, 2011 has a lengthy piece by Lawrence Wright [The Apostate, Page 84 ff.] about a Scientology defector.



The article presents an overview of Scientology and especially L. Ron Hubbard (its founder).



Those interested in the Navy’s connection to UFOs will find clues to that connection in the article, but they will find much more about the founder of Scientology, and it’s not a pretty picture.

Just as Christianity is marred by the machinations of its early followers and Constantine, and psychology is saddled by the permutations of Freud to make psychoanalysis viable to his colleagues [See Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s “The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory” – Ballantine Books, NY, 1984/2003], Scientology is riddled by the flaws of its founder L. Ron Hubbard.



And ufology? Where has that artful and contrived discipline gone wrong?

Ufology has no definitive founder, but the progenitors of the faux “science” were (and are) men flawed by a lack of scientific acumen and a lack of intellectual credentials.

Whereas Freud has great insights about the human mind and behavior, he muddled those profound insights by fudging truths and facts to make his (psychoanalytic) movement palatable to psychologists and the Victorian populace of his time.



L. Ron Hubbard had no profound insights, but his movement (Dianetics and then Scientology) has been promulgated by a patina of distortions and concocted legends of his acolytes, just as happened with Christianity. [See Bart D. Ehrman’s “Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible…” – Harper One, NY 2009]



In Ufology, one can’t point to a single person who led the study of UFOs astray but one can point fingers at persons such as Phil Klass (a perverse skeptic), Stanton Friedman (a biased researcher), and a host of other “ufologists” who had or have an agenda that has little or nothing to do with truth or science but is, rather, a ploy for self-aggrandizement.



The raft of persons who’ve led the study of UFOs/flying saucers astray is too vast to list here, and most readers know to whom we refer.

The point is that movements are always corrupted by followers or instigators who have self-promotion as their premise or ignorance at their foundation.

Psychiatry, Scientology says, is a crock. And Scientology may be right. Psychiatry moved away from a therapy based on the study of the mental afflictions of people to an overly of symptomatic suppression with drugs or various kinds, a move away from the methodology of Freud and his followers.

Freud may have compromised his movement by altering the truth of child seduction but his methodology for getting at unconscious truths was remarkable and unique, even helpful to those afflicted by neuroses of a sexual kind.

But the little insight by Scientology about psychiatry and drug-therapy doesn’t offset the flawed premises of L. Ron Hubbard, as you will see by the New Yorker article.



And since Jeffrey Masson exposed the flawed, dishonest Freudian account of child seduction – the root of neuroses according to psychoanalysis, and Bart Ehrman (among others) exposes the flawed, distorted beginnings of Christianity, why has no one exposed the flawed roots of ufology?

Yes, skeptics of UFOs abound, and some in the UFO community have assailed the fraudulent in the UFO/flying saucer era, but no one has made as thorough assessment of the UFO crockery as have Dr. Masson of Freud or Bart Ehrman of Christ’s early devotees.

L. Ron Hubbard has been skewered, and Freud too, along with Jesus’s early disciples. But nowhere has anyone taken on the personalities that have tried to make ufology a valid enterprise, using lies and distortions in the process.



Is that because ufology is seen, intrinsically, as the canard it basically is? Or is it because no one has the intellectual stamina to assail a thing as ridiculous as ufology?

We think it is both…

Being and Nothingness: UFOs and Jean-Paul Sartre

Aside from Bruce Duensing, there is little point to suggesting visitors here read Jean-Paul Sartre’s monumental Being and Nothingness, the ne plus ultra of existentialism.

But we will suggest Joseph S. Catalano’s A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness” [Harper & Row, NY, 1974].



Professor Catalano’s book provides a concise, lucid overview of Sartre’s book and philosophy. It also defines “phenomenon” – the definition of which (by Sartre and Husserl) is applicable and relevant to UFOs.



Reality is a complex thing, and not clarified by anyone, including philospophers. Jean-Paul Sartre is not an exception but his views are attuned, rather specifically, to the UFO phenomenon as it manifests itself in the modern era:

“As a phenomenologist, [Sartre] begins with a study of phenomenon – that very appearance that does not hide reality but reveals it.” [Catalano, Page 35]

Some UFO mavens – Duensing among them, if I understand his erudite writings – think that UFOs interact with human consciousness, and their [UFOs] existence dependent upon the human interaction.

Sartre says this:

“…the subsistence of a permanent element apart from something which changes can not allow change to be constituted as such except in the eyes of a witness who would be himself united with that which changes and with that which remains.” [Sartre, Being and Nonthingness, Philosophical Library, NY, 1956, Page 143]

That is to say that UFO witnesses are linked, transmentally, with the phenomenon, and become a part of it; an idea that meshes with quantum’s theory of the observer affecting that which it is observing (measuring).

For “nuts and bolts” ufologists, this is buggy and ignored. But should it be?

The superficial approach of mechanical ufologists hasn’t provided anything conclusive in the sixty-plus years of UFO scrutiny. Isn’t it time to give consideration to ideas steeped in such theorizing as that of Sartre or Bruce Duensing (at his blog, Intangible Materiality)?

Sartre, in his Conclusion to Being…,writes, “But here, as in Greek philosophy a question is raised: which shall we call real?” [Ibid, Page 622]

That is the same question that UFO aficionados have been asking for years.

We suggest that the mental gyrations required to understand Sartre can be employed to understand the UFO phenomenon.

But understanding the phenomenon doesn’t determine the essence of the phenomenon, and that still requires scrutiny of an evidentiary kind.

Ontology may be helpful as a methodology fro UFO study, but there still exists a need to touch and hold the phenomenon, which has a tangible reality, as far as the evidence thus far indicates, or does it?

That’s the question, after all, isn’t it?

Review of UFO Matrix magazine

Philiop Mantle has provided a review of his magazine UFO Matrix.

Click here for that review

The Robertson Panel -- An Overview

This is Google's cache of http://www.nicap.org/waves/1953_robertson_panel.htm. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Sep 4, 2010 15:20:56 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime.

Text-only version

These search terms are highlighted:

fred durant nicap
Form: 97 INF
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:36:09 -0600
From: Francis Ridge
Subject: The Robertson Panel, 1953; A Corrected Brief Summary
Source: CUFON, Brad Sparks
Distribution: CE, SHG, NCP

CUFON posted the text version of this report several years ago which makes internet searches possible. Brad Sparks had obtained the full declassification of the Robertson Panel Report and Durant Memo by the CIA with all sanitized redactions filled in, in 1974-5. The Panel met Jan 14-17, not 14-18, 1953. The Durant Memo (or Report) to the CIA director of the Office of Scientific Intelligence, Dr. H. Marshall Chadwell, has a typo in the memo subject heading/title saying "14-18," thus the erroneous dates. The following report has been updated.

Jan. 14-17, 1953: The Durant Report of the Robertson Panel proceedings Report of Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects Convened by Office of Scientific Intelligence, CIA. (Credit: CUFON)

The Air Force had earlier commissioned the Battelle Memorial Institute to scientifically study the various UFO reports collected by Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book, but Battelle insisted they needed more time to conduct a proper study. The CIA thought the question so pressing that it sent a group to Project Blue Book on Dec. 12, 1952. (See 1952 UFO Chronology) The CIA agreed with Battelle and tried to postpone the Robertson Panel for several months but got overruled by the AF which insisted on an immediate convening of the panel.

The Robertson Panel first met formally on January 14, 1953 under the direction of Howard Percy Robertson. He was a physicist, a CIA employee and director of the Defense Department Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG).

Other panel members were respected scientists and military personnel who had worked on other classified military projects or studies. Ruppelt's notes indicate that Robertson and Alvarez were initially pro-UFO and their pro-UFO comments can actually be found in the Durant Memo. By the end of the Panel fiasco, set up by the AF with phony IFO cases masqueraded as UFO Unknowns, they turned skeptical too.

ROBERTSON PANEL MEMBERS

H. P. Robertson, cosmologist physicist, Panel Chairman

Luis W. Alvarez, physicist (and later, a Nobel Prize winner), University of California, Berkeley

Samuel A. Goudsmit, Brookhaven National Laboratories physicist

Thornton L. Page, astrophysicist, deputy director of the Operations Research Office, Johns Hopkins University.

Lloyd V. Berkner*, physicist, Carnegie Institution

ASSOCIATE PANEL MEMBERS

Frederick C. Durant, III, CIA OSI missile expert, an Associate Member of the Panel not a full member or signer; acted as Panel Secretary taking the minutes and notes.

J. Allen Hynek, astronomer at Ohio State, Associate Member of the Panel, not a full member or signer.

*(Sparks: Berkner came so late that he was in effect a non-entity and Ruppelt could not get a fix on whether he was pro or anti-UFO. Durant tried to make up for Berkner's absence by peppering his long memo with Berkner's comments so that his views were better represented.)

Formal Meetings: The Panel had four consecutive days of formal meetings.

The first day, they viewed two amateur motion pictures of UFO's: the 1950 Montana UFO Film and 1952 Utah UFO Film (the latter taken by Navy Chief Petty Officer Delbert C. Newhouse, who had extensive experience with aerial photography). Two Navy photographic analysts, Lt. Robert S. Neasham and Navy civilian Harry W. Woo, both of NavPIC (Naval Photographic Interpretation Center), then reported their conclusions: the two films depicted objects that were not any known aircraft, birds or natural phenomena. Air Force Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt then began a summary of Air Force efforts regarding UFO studies, which had to be finished the next morning.

(Note: Brad Sparks was the only researcher ever to interview Woo, who died in 1976. Woo had joined the CIA, in its highly secret Technical Services Division of the Clandestine Service working on spy cameras, several months after the Robertson Panel. Woo was still angry decades later at how the Panel scientists mistreated him and he praised Hynek for "sticking up" for him.)

The second day, Ruppelt finished his presentation. Hynek then discussed the Battelle study, and the panel discussed with Air Force personnel the problems inherent in monitoring UFO sightings. In the afternoon, AF Lt Col Frederic C. E. Oder, on assignment to CIA OSI, gave a briefing on the 1950-1 Project Twinkle, when he had been in a supervisory role in the AF Cambridge Research Lab.

(Sparks: Oder falsely asserted that nothing had ever been photographed by Project Twinkle except for "two frames" supposedly showing "nothing distinguishable" [Durant Memo p. 16]. In fact several phototheodolite tracking camera films had been taken of UFO's, on April 27, May 24, and Aug. 31, 1950, and in the first incident a triangulation was obtained of 4 UFO's about 30 feet in size flying at 150,000 feet. The existence of these White Sands UFO films was carefully concealed from the CIA. Despite Col Oder's assignment to the CIA his loyalty remained with the AF as did Ruppelt and Fournet, not one of whom breathed a word about the existence of these AF Project Twinkle tracking films proving the existence of UFO's with scientifically measurable data. On March 29, 1992, I actually got a chance to confront the eminent Dr. Oder, the black-projects spy satellite director for the AF and Lockheed for many years. Oder repeated the nonsense about Project Twinkle finding nothing. I retorted that that was flatly not true, that in April 1950 two theodolite stations had triangulated a UFO at 150,000 feet. Oder seemed a bit taken aback, paused a moment as if to settle on a response then admitted that UFO's could be some unexplained phenomenon.)

The third day, Dr. Hynek presented his pro-UFO scientific paper delivered at the Optical Society of America on Oct 11, 1952 (later published in the Journal of the OSA). Dewey J. Fournet spoke to the panel on the year he had spent coordinating UFO affairs for the Pentagon. Fournet supported the extraterrestrial hypothesis as the best explanation for some puzzling UFO reports based on his study of intelligently-guided motions in 17 cases he had selected (this was the study approved and sent up the chain of command to AF Director of Intelligence, Maj. Gen. John Samford, at around this time, in Jan. 1953).

(Sparks: The 15 months of Fournet cited mistakenly in the Durant Memo were not his 11 months as UFO Project Monitor, from Feb. 1952 to Jan. 1953, but Fournet's total time in AF Intelligence.)

For the remainder of the third day, the panel discussed their conclusions, and Robertson agreed to draft a preliminary report. Berkner finally showed up for the first time, in the afternoon of this 3rd day, when the Panel was almost over.

The fourth and final day, the panel rewrote and finalized their report.

The Robertson Panel's informal comments in the Durant memo concluded that "most" UFO sightings could be readily identified with conventional aircraft, balloons, astronomical, or natural phenomena, and that the remaining UFO reports could, in all likelihood, be similarly explained with detailed study. (p. 6 of Durant Memo).

Furthermore, the Panel suggested the Air Force should begin a "debunking" effort to reduce "public gullibility" and demystify UFO reports. The panel suggested a public relations campaign, using psychiatrists, astronomers and assorted celebrities to significantly reduce public interest in UFO's. It was also recommended that the mass media be used for the debunking, including influential media giants like Walt Disney Corporation.

Their formal recommendation stated "That the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired."

Also recommended that the government monitor civilian groups studying or researching UFO's "because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking ... the apparent irresponsibility and possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind."

It is commonly believed today that the Robertson Panel's conclusions and recommendations had a great influence on official United States policy regarding UFO's for many decades. (Sparks: The Robertson Panel had zero influence and was not even known to anyone for years, outside the few in the AF and CIA involved. No one has ever found any orders or directives debunking UFO's that cites the Robertson Panel, and the Panel itself had no power or authority to issue such orders, nor did the CIA. It was the AIR FORCE that had already established the official policy of debunking of UFO's, for psychological warfare reasons, back on July 28, 1952, long before plans for the Robertson Panel ever came into existence (in Dec 1952). After being tricked by the AF into thinking that the entire UFO problem was merely one of poor quality IFO reports, the CIA and Robertson Panel agreed with AF debunking operations and suggested ideas how to make them even more devastating.)

The Robertson Panel's study was classified for over 20 years. In 1954, however, Ruppelt made the first public mention of the panel in his TRUE article, then in his 1956 book he offered an extended summary of its proceedings. Ruppelt did not, however, note the panel members' names, nor the government agencies represented. (Sparks: Under AF instigation to support its efforts to derail Congressional hearings on UFO's sought by NICAP, the 2-page Robertson Panel report was partially declassified in 1958 in a 1-page sanitized version that concealed the CIA's role. Behind the scenes the AF circulated the classified Report and a retyped version of the Durant Memo to Congressional committees in order to get them to drop the UFO subject and not hold public hearings. )

Additional Informal Robertson Panel Meetings

Dec. 12, 1952 CIA/OSI chief Dr. Chadwell, Dr. H. P. Robertson and Fred Durant visit Project Blue Book and Battelle's Dr. Howard Cross

Dec. 30, 1952 Robertson and Thornton Page meet at CIA for UFO briefings (approx. date)

Jan. 28, 1953 Some Panel Members (probably Robertson, Page and perhaps Berkner) meet informally with CIA/OSI in a "rump session" to postmortem the UFO Panel proceedings, review the new agency NSA recently established with help of OSI deputy chief Ralph Clark (unrelated to UFO's)

July-Aug 1953 Project Blue Book acting chief Lt. Robert M. Olsson sends some selected new UFO cases to Robertson Panel members as a followup review to see if any change in conclusions was warranted (no change resulted)

Close Encounters Conference

Philip Mantle's UFO Matrix magazine is presenting a Close Encounters conference in October 2011.

Click here for the full announcement

NASA/military tests mistaken for UFOs?

Here is an ARMY/NASA position paper that outlines proposals for surveillance of outer space planets, Mars and Jupiter in particular:

AERIAL SURVEY

Has the processes proposed been put into practice and tested in the Earthian sky?

Check the details and specifically the references, and you’ll see that the proposals have, indeed, been put to tests in the last half of the 2000 decade.

Douglas R Hofstadter: Metamagical Themas...

A favorite author of ours is Douglas Hofstadter, whose Godel, Escher, Bach and Metamagical Themas (a compilation of his Scientific American columns from the 1980s).



While Mr. Hofstadter is moderate and limited about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – he thinks it is misinterpreted by almost everyone – and that the principle doesn’t state that an observer interferes with the observed but “rather hat a very fine grain size, the wave duality of the measuring tool becomes relevant.” [Page 464, MT].

Heisenberg’s principle may be extrapolated to include such things as how the measurement (the observation) of individuals or UFOs is affected by the observation of either.

For instance, if a group of people, at a party are intruded upon by a person with a camera, the group will alter their behavior, to accommodate the picture or video being taken, since it will record a moment by which the group and individuals will be remembered for posterity.



And there is anecdotal information that UFOs often seem to be affected by an observer, with a camera, radar, or just a visual encounter.

The measurement (observation) of things alter those things in various ways, some subtle, some not so subtle.



Mr. Hofstadter, in writing about electromagnetic waves, points out that “as a black body heats up, it begins to glow: first dull red, then bright red, then orange, eventually white, and then, surprisingly enough, bluish!” [Page 458 MT].



Isn’t that what UFO observers often report?



Mr. Hofstadter makes it a major point to support the cautions of physicists who tell laypersons that quantum microcosm can’t be extended to explain the macrocosmic events.

We think that is an error in judgment and theoretical hypothesizing, and have addressed the issue here at this blog and the RRRGroup blog, early on.

Applying quantum thinking to the UFO phenomenon provides an interesting patina to the UFO mystery, almost explaining some behavior and sightings.

Bruce Duensing deals with such things, rather more brilliantly than we, at his blog, Intangible Materiality, which can be accessed by clicking here:

Intangible Materiality

Also, Mr. Hofstadter is not inimical to mathematics as the lingua franca of science, which we think is detrimental to human thought, and a contrivance that is unreal, a concoction that gives scientists a mantle of authority that it doesn’t really deserve.

Math is bogus, and used by science to make hypothetical thinking obscure to laypersons and to create a priest-like order for science that co-opts religion, philosophy, and thought in general.

So, while it seems that we think that Mr. Hofstadter is off the mark on the items listed above, why do we find him so fascinating, and intelligent?

That goes to his views about how we think or should and is addressed in his Metamagical Themas chapters, World Views in Collision (which deals with the Skeptical Inquirer – he likes it) and On Number Numbness (about how people don’t comprehend the reality of numbers that affect their lives).

And in Section VII, Sanity and Survival, Hofstadter tackles irrationality itself, which is rampant in the UFO community and “ufology” particularly.

We don’t expect visitors to this blog to read or understand the bulk of Metamagical Themas, but we’d hope they might give it a try.

Moreover, since most of the UFO crowd are hobbyists, who work on the UFO mystery when it is convenient and not during their weekend down-time, we are not holding our collective breaths for any to try and enlighten themselves beyond their myopic attention to the UFO phenomenon, Bruce Duensing as the stand-out exception.

A UFO creature report (and the Templeton "spaceman")

As an habitue of Huntsville, Canada, this account of a UFO and its attendant “creature” resonates with me.



Robert Suffern (28 years old at the time), with his family, saw a UFO that disembarked a creature.

Mr. Suffern had received a call form his sister who thought she saw a barn on fire. Robert went to check it out and ended up seeing a UFO and a creature.

The UFO was described thusly:

Then I saw the ship in the centre of the road. It was the colour of the dull side of aluminum foil wrap and the surface was irregular and crinkled. I could not hear any sound other than the motor of my car. I only saw it momentarily and then it went straight up at a fast speed and disappeared. There were no lights.



And then he saw a creature, and described it this way:

...I started for home, turned onto the Three Mile Lake Road and then I saw the thing on the side of the road. He was on the grass shoulder of the road and was about to cross from myright to my left. It suddenly pivoted and turned towards the pasture and vaulted over the fence and out of sight. It appeared to be short and had very broad shoulders which seemed to be out of proportion. The movements were similar to an ape or a midget, but it was very agile. It reached up with its hands, grabbed the fence, post and vaulted over with no effort. The head portion was covered in a globe and I could not detect any mask or face portion. The suit was a silver colour and one piece—the globe was a contrasting white or light colour.



What’s fascinating to me is how similar the drawing of the Utterson creature is to the Solway Firth “spaceman.”

Setting aside the estimated, disparate height of Suffern’s creature, note the stance in the drawing, which didn’t derive from Mr. Suffern as far as I can tell, but whomever provided the drawing or suggestions for the drawing either had access to the Templeton photo of 1965 or received a description that surely mimics the Solway Firth being.

Even without a Solway Firth connection, this sighting is interesting, and Richard Hall also found it so:

“October 7, 1975 Utterson, Ontario, Canada 8:30 P.M. One small, stocky humanoid, round helmet, from metallic ellipse on road; UFO took off as car approached, being beside road vaulted fence and fled.” [From Mr. Hall’s category of humanoid creature reports.]

Such creature sightings do not happen nowadays, and that’s something which should be addressed by “ufologists.”

Roswell's Bad "Joke"

Debating Roswell often brings out the worst in UFO mavens, but why?

We think the Roswell saga starts to unravel when news media provided this photo of the allegedly misidentified “flying saucer” debris that was originally reported as captured [sic] by the military:



The photo of General Ramey scrutinizing the alleged captured flying disk debris insults the intelligence of everyone.

The photo is saying, This is the stuff that was found near Roswell and thought to be a flying saucer.

Who, in their right mind (Brazel, Marcel, and various Roswell citizens) would have thought that the mishmash of sticks and foil was from an exotic flying craft that destructed in their locale?

The “joke” – seen as a cover-up by UFO aficionados who believe an extraterrestrial craft was discovered near Roswell – was so blatant and silly that news media and other interested persons who saw the display shrugged off the initially fascinating account as a complete observational blunder by some rural hicks, compounded by a military contingent that was totally inept.

The event faded almost immediately, only to be resurrected in the late 1970s and early 1980s by the books inspired by Stanton Friedman’s contact with Jesse Marcel, who convinced Friedman or was convinced by Friedman that the Ramey photos did not picture what he had gathered up, from the so-called debris field left by the crashed flying disk.

From that point on the Roswell incident took off.

But the intellectually insulting photos, of General Ramey with a batch of crummy materials, was the downfall of the Roswell story, in 1947, and still resonate with skeptics to this day: the photos are so bizarre and foolish that they invite the charge of a government cover-up by some or, by others, as a real account of what was found at Roswell and woven into a story of extraterrestrial aliens, expanded by fictions from those seeking notice or a late-in-life legacy that “ufologists” encouraged or helped create.

But it’s the “joke” -- the Ramey photos – that really have offput science and news media, then and now.

Who thought up the “joke” has been grist for Roswell scrutiny for years, but it’s merely a “joke” and should be treated as one, with a great guffaw by thoughtful persons who should really get on with their lives, leaving Roswell for the accumulators of hoaxes that make humans laugh.

Paratopia Magazine

Jeff Ritzmann has provided links to the new Paratopia magazine.

With the current brouhaha about Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs, stemming from Mr. Hopkins' ex-wife, in the first issue of Paratopia, you would do well to read her account to be at the ready when the topic of Alien Abduction implodes.

Click these links to get the magazine:

Virtual copy

PDF copy

Roswell: The Great Pan is dead!

In Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend [Gambit Inc., Boston, 1969], the authors, in Chapter XXI (Page 275 ff.), recount the famous tale from Plutarch about how, on board a ship with many passengers, sailing near the Echinades Islands, Epitherses (son of Aemilianus) tells that Thamus, the Egyptian pilot, heard a voice, while near the island of Paxi, calling his name.

Thamus, at first did not reply, but after a third time he responded to the voice, which said, “When you come opposite to Palodes, announce that Great Pan is dead.”

Thamus, Epittherses, and the passengers were astounded and reasoned among themselves whether to carry out the order or not.

Thamus, however, while approaching Palodes said the words, “Great Pan is dead.”

A great cry of woe, by many on the land, went up, and eventually spread to Rome, where Tiberius Caesar called for an investigation as to the truth of the profound rumor.

Plutarch, himself, did not accept the acclimation and suggested that the shouts from Paxi were misunderstood by Thamus and the story became embroidered by the masses, encouraged by the fact that Tiberius had called for an official investigation, apparently giving some credence to the tale.

The authors write this, “One is still allowed to wonder why such a fuss was made at the time about [the] exclamations…and why…that most learned of mythologists, the Emperor Tiberius himself, thought the matter worth following up.” [Page 276]

The significance of the tale is many. Firstly Pan was considered a major God, and equatable, in some quarters, with Jesus who was crucified during the reign of Tiberius.

Secondly, the tale strikes at the heart of the prevailing belief system of the time, Paganism.

Thirdly, the tale continues to be remunerated upon to this day (by scholars and mythologists, mostly).

And finally, Great Pan is dead was retold in many configurations over the years, such as it was Tammuz-Adonis, the grain god who died, the yoke-bearer, Giki-Gaki is dead on the Hurgergorn, and the Fanggen, a kind of “Little People” (or giants!?) disappeared in the Tyrol.

How does this tale relate to Roswell?

The Chapter (and book, in toto) elaborates on how history and events are muddled by belief systems, what people wish to hear, and Chapter IV (History, Myth and Reality) examples instances where events are confabulated or twisted, often inadvertently, by a jumping to conclusions inspired by entrenched beliefs and/or stories heard, many times, over the years.

Hamlet’s Mill treats great myths and tales that affect or have affected humanity in significant ways, over the millennia.

Roswell is not significant, nor worthy of a Myth status, Gilles Fernandez notwithstanding, but it has developed the status of mythos, in the sociological sense.

(Mythos -- the complex of beliefs, values, attitudes, etc, characteristic of a specific group or society)

What was decried by Thamus may be seen as similar to what was decried at Roswell: The Army Air Force has captured a Flying Saucer.



The “heard refrain” at Roswell has been elaborated upon and added to, much like that which happened when “The Great Pan is dead” was taken as a profound truth by those hearing about the announcement and taking it to varying interpretations, far and wide, subjecting it to the vicissitudes of many locales and peoples.

The original story – the original announcement – has been taken apart by “researchers” and recast by those same “researchers” into many guises, all adumbrated to enhance whatever belief system held in the mind of a particular “researcher” – some preferring the extraterrestrial cast, some preferring a secret military cast, and others eschewing any cast at all, debunking the tale, altogether, as Euhemeros, the first debunker, did with myth.



Roswell is a story, with a core truth at its center. What that core truth may be has been lost to time, and the ineptitude of those who gathered the remnants of the original tale twwnty years after the “event” allegedly took place.

Can the story be cleansed of the accretions? Not easily, if at all.

The Roswell tale has been concretized into a myth (or, better, mythos) as CDA and Gilles Fernandez continue to decry.

It can’t be scrubbed clean, that’s a certainty, which Nick Redfern and this writer (among others) think is the case.

But others, David Rudiak, Stanton Friedman, Kevin Randle, et al., will continue to promote the mythology, because, for them, mythos is more important than truth.

Darwinian Ufology

We assume (almost) every visitor here is familiar with Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and his theory of Natural Selection.

Darwin’s concept of evolution can be applied to UFOs.

Strange objects, seen mostly in the air, have been reported since the beginning of mankind, appearing on cave walls, drawn by primitive man and in carvings of early civilizations, such as the Assyrian and Egyptian.



But to make concise our argument here, let us start with the period just before that of the airplane and the Wright brothers.

This would have to do with the airships of the 1890s.



Darwin spells out how species adapt and change, over time, and provides this¹:

· Individuals in a population vary significantly from one another.
· Much of this variation is inheritable .
· Individuals less suited to the environment are less likely to survive and less likely to reproduce; individuals more suited to the environment are more likely to survive and more likely to reproduce and leave their inheritable traits to future generations, which produces the process of natural selection.

This slowly effected process results in populations changing to adapt to their environments, and ultimately, these variations accumulate over time to form new species.².

The 1890s airships were, reportedly, not unlike the dirigible ships that populated the skies, rarely but concomitantly, and sailed no differently that man-made airships, even containing pilots and/or passengers no different than those who built and flew airships of a prosaic kind.



But from the period between the 1890s and the mid-1940s, dirigible-like airships all but disappeared from view, literally.

The, during World War II and soon after, smallish lights, dubbed “foo fighters” appeared to WWII fighter pilots and missile-like airfoils, similar to the Nazi V-2 rocket, made a presence in the skies over Europe.



This indicates, to us, that the 1890s ships had changed, evolving from their convoluted but primitive state to amorphous balls of light and structured craft, adapted from the V-2 archetype.

The “evolved” UFOs had branched from the 1890s to two distinct “species” – the advanced and advancing balls of light and the dead end, virtually defunct, missile-shaped craft.

In 1947 UFOs popped up in the round-shape which incurred the “flying saucer” epithet, although a few cigar-shaped craft, a dying breed, made themselves known, as in the Chiles-Whitted sighting of 1948, among a few others.



This was an adaptation from the missile shape, not the ball-of-light construct.

One ground and in the skies, UFOs maintained the “saucer” adaptation well into the 1970s and 1980s, as evidenced by NICAP’s lists of sightings.

NICAP

UFOs seemed to have used or been affected by “natural selection” – missile shapes (cigar craft) were inefficient, and the balls-of-light were inconsequential, and not suitable to the space-age environment.

But late in the 19802 and from 1990 onward, to 2011, the raft of UFO sightings indicated a shift from disk-shaped configurations to triangular configurations.



What caused this evolutionary change in UFOs?

Darwin ‘s theory posited this³:

…variation arose constantly and not just in response to changed circumstances…species formed in isolated populations only, as on islands, to an emphasis on speciation without isolation; that is, [Darwin] saw increasing specialisation within large stable populations as continuously exploiting new ecological niches.

But “New species have appeared very slowly, one after another, both on the land and in the water [or skies]….[and] We can clearly ubnderstand why a species when once lost should never reappear, even if the very same conditions of life, organic and inorganic, should recur. For though the offspring of one species might be adapted…to fill the place of another species in the economy of nature and thus supplant it; yet the two forms – the old and the new – would not be identically the same.”⁴

That is UFOs from the past woluld not assume the same identity as UFOs of the present.

Triangular UFOs have supplanted the “flying disks” of previous years. But, again, why?

Darwin would allow that the environment – the technological advance of aircraft itself – would force an adaptation, and that’s is what seems to have happened to UFOs.

But what about the remnant balls of light? They still appear, like Darwin’s crocodiles or, better, cirripedes,⁵ because they are self-productive and immune to intense adaptation.

What this means, for us, is that some UFO species will evolve – adapt and change, according to Natural Selection, while other UFO species -- the balls of light – will not change, and have not changed.

Ufologists (yes, we hate the term), should take a look at the different species, as the evolutionary species (the Triangular UFO) provide one clue to the UFO origin while another species (the balls of light) provide a different clue to the origin of UFOs.

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is a guide post for study, or should be.
---------------
1 From Wikipedia
2 Ibid
3 The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, Chapter XI (ff.)
4 Ibid
5 Ibid (Chapter 4)

Scholarship. Truth, and UFOs

The January 3rd 2011 New Yorker has an article by Daniel Mendelsohn about the Vatican Library [Page 24 ff.].

There are a few quotes in the piece by current Library Prefect, Monsignor Cesare Pasini which applies to our approach here for 2011, regarding postings and content.

Monsignor Pasini, talking about culture and scholarly community says this:

“There is the possibility of entering mystery of culture…The mystery of scholarship, the mystery of the spirit of humanism. The patient study that allows someone to know something that hasn’t been know before – or perhaps something that someone has studied before. But one can go another step further, testing, verifying, correcting…the world of scholarship, entering the mystery of scholarship – the mystery of truth.” [Page 30]

This is where “ufology” (we hate the term!) goes wrong. There is no culture, no scholarship, and no mystery. Ufology and the UFO phenomenon have been held hostage by a few fanatic self-aggrandizers and intellectually deficient persons, many of whom can be found lighting up the pages of UFO Updates with smug, meaningless asides and self-promoting rants.

We shall make sure that posts here, from now on, will make every effort to be scholarly and truthful – even when we provide our usual lambastings of UFO geezers and those who kneel at their feet, sycophantically.

Those of you, with open minds and the desire to attack the UFO mystery – its old and new manifestations -- with hard scholarship and a sincere pursuit of truth will bear with us we hope.

Nick Redfern's The NASA Conspiracies

Nick Redfern’s latest effort at deriving truth from within the corridors of government and other bureaucratic constructs involved the National Aeronautics and Space Administration: NASA.

His book, The NASA Conspiracies: The Truth Behind the Moon Landings, Censored Photos, and the Face on Mars, [New Page Books, Pompton Plains, NJ], is replete with information readers will think they are familiar with but will find out they are not.

Mr. Redfern’s forte isn’t just ferreting news from FOIA documents. He actually has accumulated first-hand information, via face-to-face interviews with persons privy to the inner workings of NASA, the military, and other relevant agencies – insiders.

He has done this again for his NASA book, with a fellow named John, from Bloomington, Minnesota about Area 51 (page 57 ff.), Nick Pope, former U.K. Minister of Defense staffer about contactees, et cetera (Page 97 ff.), Matthew Williams, an investigator with the U.K.’s Customs & Excise Agency about crashed UFOs in the Britain (Page 125 ff.), and a NASA employee with NASA’s Public Affairs office about the Gary McKinnon affair (Page 199 ff.).

Mr. Redfern also presents incredible stories about alleged alien abductions (Sharon, Page 146 ff.) and persons who have experienced mothman-like creatures in and around NASA facilities (Hilda Walker and Frank Shaw, Chapter 13, The Monsters of NASA, Page 153 ff.).

Mr. Redfern also offers a kind of paean to Sci-Fi writer and UFO maven Mac Tonnies, who died recently but left a legacy of hypothetical thought that is unique and provocative, about the so-called Face on Mars (Chapter 9, Page 101 ff.) and cryptoterrestrials, a concomitant, hidden Earthian civilization that interacts with human beings who share this planet with “them.”

Mr. Redfern also provides illuminating minutiae about Roswell, the Moon landing, and the Frank Scully Aztec story.

His ruminations about the Space Shuttle and NASA’s astronauts, some of whom who are believers in extraterrestrial visitation, offer grist to those who believe that the UFO phenomenon is ET oriented.

But most of all, Mr. Redfern confirms for the rational observer that NASA and other U.S. agencies (such as the CIA and FBI) harbor secrets that would be explosive if revealed.

The NASA Conspiracies is a must-read for those who would like a heads-up on the agency that is at the fore-front of our Space exploration and efforts, including the next trips to the Moon and Mars (and beyond).

What does NASA know now, and how would that “secret” information, if made public, impact humanity, and human civilization? Mr. Redfern gives readers some insightful clues.

Mr. Redfern’s book may be had via Amazon.com or from Career Press, Inc., 220 West Parkway, Unit 12, Pompton Plains, NJ 07444 (careerpress.com or newpagebooks.com).

The Roswell Balloons

What was the Roswell debris? Mogul balloons?

No. They were controlled-altitude meteorological balloons.

And who was involved in experiments with those balloons in Roswell, 1947?

David Rudiak’s nemesis, C.B. Moore of Mogul notoriety.

Click here to read an abstract [PDF] of the balloon tests

UFO Truth? Not so fast....

The December 13th, 2010 Issue of The New Yorker has an article that all UFO mavens would do well to absorb.

It’s “The Truth Wears Off” by Jonah Lehrer [Page 52 ff.].

Lehrer recounts how science (and researchers) get snookered by “The Decline Effect” –the measurable drop off of one-time observations and data that, when first obtained, seemed invincible as proof of various phenomenon, but end up on second (or third) observations to be considerably less that originally measured.

Rhine’s studies, at Duke, of ESP are mentioned, as are pharmacological, ecological, psychological, biological studies.



The gist of the article is that studies are intrinsically flawed but why is still open to question.

Some relevant quotes from the piece, which UFO debaters should heed, include:

“Most of the time, scientists know what results they want and that can influence the results they get.” [Page 52]

“Asking people to put their perceptions into words led to dramatic decreases in performance.” [Page 53]

(Re: Rhine’s studies/experiments) “What he wanted to know was whether the images [from Zener card experiments] that got a second showing were more likely to have been identified the first time around. Could subsequent exposure have somehow influenced the initial results? Could the effect be the cause?” [Page 54]



“The extrasensory powers of…subjects didn’t decline – they were simply an illusion that vanished over time.” [Page 54]

“…the ‘decline effect’ deserves more attention: its ubiquity seems to violate the laws of statistics.” [Page 54]

“…[an] author might publish several critical papers, which distort his analysis.” [Page 54]

“…some – perhaps many – cherished generalities are at best exaggerated in their…significance and at worst a collective illusion nurtured by strong a-priori beliefs [are] often repeated.” [Page 55]

“…the problem seems to be one of subtle omissions and unconscious misperceptions, as researchers struggle to make sense of their results.” [Page 55]

“…act[s] of measurement [are] going to be vulnerable to all sorts of perception biases.” [Page 56]

“The problem of selective reporting is rooted in a fundamental cognitive flaw, which is that we like proving ourselves right an hate being wrong.” [Page 56]

“…after a claim has been systematically disproven…you still see some stubborn researchers citing the first few studies that show a strong effect. They really want to believe that it’s true.” [Page 56]

“Every researcher should have to spell out, in advance, how many subjects they’re going to use, and what exactly they’re testing, and what constitutes a sufficient level of proof. We have the tools to be much more transparent about our experiments.” [Page 56]

“Although…reforms would mitigate the dangers of publication bias and selective reporting, they still wouldn’t erase the decline effect. This is largely because scientific research will always be shadowed by a force that can’t be curbed, only contained: sheer randomness.” [Page 56]

“…a lot of extraordinary scientific data are nothing but noise.” [Page 57]

“…dramatic findings are also the most likely to get published in prestigious journals…” [Page 57]

“…the decline effect is actually a decline of illusion.” [Page 57]

“While Karl Popper imagined falsification occurring with a single, definitive experiment – Galileo refuted Aristotelian mechanics in an afternoon – the process turns out to be much messier than that. Many scientific theories continue to be considered true even after failing numerous experimental tests.” [Page 57]



“Even the law of gravity hasn’t been perfect at predicting real-world phenomena. In one test, physicists measuring gravity…in the Nevada desert found a two-and-a-half-per-cent
discrepancy between the theoretical predictions and the actual data. Despite these findings…The law of gravity remains the same.” [Page 57]

“Such anomalies demonstrate the slipperiness of empiricism.” [Page 57]

“Although many scientific ideas generate conflicting results and suffer from falling effect sizes, they continue to get cited in textbooks…Why? Because these ideas seem true. Because they make sense. Because we can’t bear to let them go. And this is why the decline effect is so troubling. Not because it reveals the human fallibility of science, in which data are tweaked and beliefs shape perceptions…And not because it reveals that many of our most exciting theories are fleeting fads and soon will be rejected.” [Page 57]

The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that is often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. An just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true.” [Page 57]

“When he experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.” [End of article]

Scientists and (some) “ufologists” like to think they have a lock on truth. But as Mr. Lehrer’s New Yorker article shows, truth is as elusive as ever, and nothing is certain.

UFO Peer Review? You gotta be kidding….

The UFO phenomenon continues as a mystery, unabated.

Although some so-called researchers have spent their life-times studying the phenomenon, these “researchers” have come nowhere close to resolving any aspect of the UFO phenomenon.

Not an iota of understanding or tangible hypothesis has evolved over the sixty years plus of UFO study by a small group of UFO die-hards, who like to pretend research credibility by labeling their hobby “ufology.”

The resident hang-out for this moldering group of UFO devotees is UFO UpDates, called “The List” by habitués of the shop-worn web-site.

A visit to The List will show you that the left-over and left-out members of “ufology” try to one-up other members with attempts at faux-expertise; that is, members strive mightily to show that they have some expertise about something: aircraft, chemistry, photography, et cetera – all things that have little or nothing to do with the intrinsic UFO riddle.

Elder statesmen of the concocted “science of ufology” hope to create a legacy of some kind for the futile and fruitless endeavors over the years.

Jerome Clark, for instance, hangs his hat on the rubric “UFO Historian” – a sad commentary for one’s career or life.

Stanton Friedman, a well-known UFO spokesperson has been relegated to defending his obtuse views about UFOs and various elements of the foolish study called ufology.

Bruce Maccabee, a Naval insider, uses The List to showcase his knowledge – limited knowledge we note – of UFO photography that has shown up over the years.

Don Ledger is a pilot, who likes to correct Listers when they wax eloquently but incorrectly about airfoils and things that fly in the sky.

When a topic arrives at UFO UpDates, it’s never ignored, but always flailed by someone who uses the topic to back-bite others or to showcase a pretense at scholarship about something.

No topic is ever debated on its merits, or efficacy. The List is all about ego and self-promotion.

What’s even sadder is that the small contingent of UFO mavens who still use UpDates for a presence in the UFO community have no idea how ridiculous their ramblings are to outsiders who look at UFOs in the context of wider realities or surrealities.

Over the years, The List has accumulated more UFO rot than any other UFO site in existence.

The surfeit of blather is astounding, for its faux seriousness and ludicrous patina, as academics and true scientists see the thing.

We continue to refer to the group that maintains a presence at UFO UpDates, The List, as UFO Geezers: a group of has-beens or never-weres who represent nothing worthwhile within the legitimate study of UFOs.

This group of pathetic UFO hobbyists are in the final stages of life, thankfully, whose passings will leave open the door of UFO study for real peer review by persons who are less inclined to defend their smarmy, egotistical wasted lives and pursue a mystery that evokes true awe in the human mind.