The_Sage <theeSage@azrmci.net> wrote in
news:bu92mv4e6av0lk5e2dfp033qbgef4i19uo@4ax.com: 

<blah, blah, blah, snipped>

I just hope our first ambassador to ET isn't a UFO researcher.

The Sage

Ok, now do this one:
(http://www.ufoskeptic.org/)

An information site on the UFO phenomenon by and for professional
scientists. 

Skeptic - One who practices the method of suspended
judgment, engages in rational and dispassionate reasoning as exemplified
by the scientific method, shows willingness to consider alternative
explanations without prejudice based on prior beliefs, and who seeks out
evidence and carefully scrutinizes its validity. 

"Advances are made by answering questions.
Discoveries are made by questioning answers."
Bernard Haisch


Dear Colleagues, 

I have been an active professional astronomer since earning my doctorate
in 1975. I have published a respectable number of scientific papers in
most of the right journals (including our favorites, Science and
Nature), have been Principal Investigator on several NASA studies, have
served as referee and proposal reviewer for NASA and NSF, belong to half
a dozen professional societies, have chaired international conferences,
i.e. I've engaged by and large successfully in all the usual activities
of a busy professional scientist. For those of you who want the full
details, click here for my CV. 

During my career I have had the responsibility and privilege as an
editor of accepting or rejecting somewhere in the neighborhood of a
thousand articles in a prestigious astrophysics journal. This does not
conclusively prove, but certainly indicates, that I recognize good
science when I see it. I have also had the responsibility of accepting
or rejecting papers on the UFO phenomenon in a quite different refereed
journal, the Journal of Scientific Exploration (JSE). For 12 years I
served as editor of JSE (as an unpaid public service) because I believe
that examining evidence that may challenge prevailing scientific dogma
is good for science and a necessary part of searching for the truth. The
road of discovery may have 99 deadends in the thicket for every new path
winding its way up the peak, but that is just how it is. Curiosity and
tenacity are equal prerequisites for a scientist... as is an open mind. 

I have learned quite a bit about the UFO phenomenon over the years
(certainly more than I had bargained for) and have met many of the
leading figures, some credible, some deluded. When Prof. Peter Sturrock,
a prominent Stanford University plasma physicist, conducted a survey of
the membership of the American Astronomical Society in the 1970s, he
made an interesting finding: astronomers who spent time reading up on
the UFO phenomenon developed more interest in it. If there were nothing
to it, you would expect the opposite: lack of credible evidence would
cause interest to wane. And the fact of the matter is, there does exist
a vast amount of high quality, albeit enigmatic, data. UFO sightings are
not limited to farmers in backward rural areas. There are astronomers
and pilots and NASA engineers -- and others who have been around the
block a few times when it comes to observing natural phenomena -- who
have witnessed events for which there is no plausible conventional
explanation. 

There is another aspect to the UFO phenomenon that involves politics and
secrecy rather than observational evidence. I do not currently have a
ticket to any SCI program, but over the years I have gotten to know
individuals who for one reason or another would be aware of the
existence of relevant black programs. From such sources, certain
possibilities have made it through my credibility filter and now reside
-- like Schroedinger's cat -- in kind of an unresolved mental
superposition of quantum states having both the eigenvalues "true" and
"false" and no operator around to collapse the wave function. My
credibility filter is a function of several parameters such as my own
knowledge of physical laws, state of technology and history of its
origin, some personal experience with government agencies and security
classification systems, but mostly the filter is tuned to the questions:
Which people have I learned over the years to be trustworthy, sensible
and knowledgeable? How would they be in a position to know the things
they do? Why and to what extent would they tell me anything, even based
on long-time friendship? Do they have anything to gain by telling
stories or making claims? What consistency and convergence is there
among various people's claimed information? 

I see myself a bit like the kid standing next to the kid looking through
the hole in the big tall fence at the baseball game. This means that the
closest I am getting to inside information will be a recounting of what
is going on in there. I myself am definitely not an insider, but
contacts I have acquired and/or befriended over a long period of time
seem to be on the periphery of some kind of inside which appears to
contain at least remarkable information, and apparently more than that.
Let me be (somewhat) more specific. I now have three completely
independent examples of individuals whom I trust reporting to me that
individuals they trust have admitted to handling alien artifacts in
"our" possession in the course of secret official duties. (The special
access level in the one case for which I know it is R, a not widely
known SCI level whose existence was finally verified for me by someone
who himself had a very high access level, though short of that one, as
being "reserved for someone at the very top." I do not know, however,
whether it is specifically reserved or designated for this topic.) And
in yet a fourth case, I am one tantalizing step removed from a former
head of a federal government agency who was involved with a special
access program reporting decades-long extraterrestrial reverse
engineering efforts. Now the Air Force Project Blue Book of the 1950s
and 1960s did have both a public and a classified side. I suspect that
after the public half of Blue Book closed up shop following the Condon
Report, its classified half may have continued, existing today as a
black special access program (see below). 

Could such things possibly be true? While I am intrigued by what I have
learned over the years, I can't be absolutely certain. It is interesting
that from the clandestine intelligence world perspective the scientific
community, for all of its technical and theoretical sophistication, is
viewed as remarkably naive in certain respects. We scientists tend to
think that we know better than anyone else what is possible and what is
impossible, and that we of all people could surely not be kept in the
dark for very long. Over the course of time I have learned how it would
indeed be possible to maintain decades-long secrecy on this topic and
why this might be justified, concepts I myself once dismissed. (See
Black Special Access Programs, also Some Thoughts on Keeping It Secret.
And for some insight on the origin of this situation see the book UFOs
and the National Security State: An Unclassified History. Vol. 1:
1947-1973 by Richard Dolan; also The Missing Times by Terry Hansen which
documents the history of ties between the national media and the
intelligence community.) 

The above is, of course, short of any kind of proof, but all in all I
have now gotten to the point in my exposure to the subject at which I
think it somewhat more likely than not that something not merely
delusional, but real and important may be going on with regard to the
UFO phenomenon. If so, I would like to discover what it is, or what the
ensemble of phenomena are if it is a multiplicity of things. My
estimation of the probable reality of the subject puts me somewhere
between the majority rejectionist view of the mainstream scientific
community and the majority accepting view of the general public
(depending on how the issue is presented in opinion polls). 

I propose that true skepticism is called for today: neither the gullible
acceptance of true belief nor the closed-minded rejection of the scoffer
masquerading as the skeptic. One should be skeptical of both the
believers and the scoffers. The negative claims of pseudo-skeptics who
offer facile explanations must themselves be subject to criticism. If a
competent witness reports having seen something tens of degrees of arc
in size (as happens) and the scoffer -- who of course was not there --
offers Venus or a high altitude weather balloon as an explanation, the
requirement of extraordinary proof for an extraordinary claim falls on
the proffered negative claim as well. That kind of approach is also
pseudo-science. Moreover just being a scientist confers neither
necessary expertise nor sufficient knowledge. (I wish it did, sigh.) Any
scientist who has not read a few serious books and articles presenting
actual UFO evidence should out of intellectual honesty refrain from
making scientific pronouncements. To look at the evidence and go away
unconvinced is one thing. To not look at the evidence and be convinced
against it nonetheless is another. That is not science. Do your
homework! 

This website is a work in progress. It is certainly no statement of any
"truth" but in that regard it is worth keeping in mind something Winston
Churchill once said on that topic: "Men occasionally stumble over the
truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had
happened." 

Bernard Haisch
Palo Alto, California

admin@ufoskeptic.org