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From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 01:13:59 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 01:13:59 -0500
Subject: Re: MJ-12 and Area 51

________________________________________

Date: 17 Dec 96 19:42:08 EST
From: Peregrine Mendoza <101653.2205@CompuServe.COM>
To: Errol Bruce Knapp <updates@globalserve.net>
Subject: Re: MJ-12 and Area 51


The Duke of Mendoza presents his compliments and his best wishes for the holiday
season and for the New Year to all on the List.

Aha, Greg, John and alien handwriting. I quote:

> Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 12:24:09 -0500
> From: "Steven J. Powell" <sjpowell@access.digex.net>

> If the handwriting, or just writing or characters or icons or
> whatever, was _firsthand_ I'd be a lot more inclined to want to study it.

Yes indeed. Why don't they just hand us over a few parchments? After all, they
must know Budd & Betty & everyone's blown their cover by now, don't they?
However...

Lacking the priceless MSS, John Powell suggests comparing 'original' and 'fresh'
samples of alleged alien writing from each claimant (a vertical test) and then
comparing these writings claimant v. claimant (an horizontal test).

> We compare the two samples (the fresh one from the claimant and the
> original one from the claimant) and statistically on a character by
> character basis we'd expect equal or better than 80% similarity to
> advance that example further in our dataset.

> The work done above should be as 'blind' as possible.  The people
> acquiring the 'fresh' handwriting example should not have seen anybody's
> previous examples, the person holding the references samples should not
> yet see the 'fresh' samples, etc.

> Ok, _NOW_, we have a dataset that is workable.


So far so good, but you haven't any controls in this experiment. I'd suggest
that an even more workable dataset would have a third axis, using the same
abduction claimants and a control group of non-claimants (selection criteria to
be agreed). AFTER the claimants have produced their "fresh" allegedly-alien
scripts, you ask the claimants and the control group to write down their
*impressions* of a couple of lines of writing in (a) the Greek alphabet (b)
Arabic script (c) Hebrew alphabet (d) Chinese pictograms.

It will be obvious to anyone who knows these scripts whether or not the writer
is giving an impression or really knows them. You either wipe the latter from
your dataset, or choose control group members who don't know these scripts. (As
with Roman letters, handwritten Greek and Hebrew are significantly different in
places from their printed forms; for all I know that's true of Arabic and
Chinese too.) The point would be to try to get some measure of how far people's
impressions differ from a known real thing. What they write doesn't have to make
sense - we just want to know how accurately they recall details of unknown
scripts that they have seen only casually.

When they have completed their impressions, you show them a couple of lines of
the real thing, for a couple of minutes or so, then ask them to reproduce them
from memory. That gives you a measure of how accurate (compared to the
generality, too) the claimants' memories for such things may be.

The way to lay out the analyses is pretty obvious, I should think. What say?
Good wheeze?

Thanks for a fascinating debate, too. This really is a few orders of magnitude
more worthwhile than anything involving the Pope.

Peregrine, D of M
Grand Abbott, Silent Order of Squirrel Fryers
Draftsman of the Apocalypse