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From: Jerome Clark <jkclark@FRONTIERNET.NET>
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 11:31:25 PDT
Fwd Date: Sat, 08 Aug 1998 09:46:32 -0400
Subject: P-1947: Re: Critical Thinking - The Missing Element


>Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 12:15:30 EDT
>From: Herb Taylor <HerbUFO@AOL.COM>
>Subject: Critical Thinking - The Missing Element
>To: PROJECT-1947@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

> Greetings to the List:

>Recent postings by Dennis Stacy, Jan Aldrich, and Rod Brock,
>serve to underscore the sad fact that ufology is in an awful
>state of affairs.

>Claims and allegations that once would've rightfully been thrown
>into the nearest garbage pail, are now given serious hearing (or
>actually believed) by many in this rapidly deteriorating field.

As I said in my recent posting (which evidently Taylor hasn't
seen), it is desirable to separate "ufology" from the "UFO
scene." At some point, lest we do to ourselves what our critics
habitually do, which is to lump everybody from the soberest
investigator to the wildest-eyed loon into the same cracked pot,
we need to distinguish "ufology" as a worthwhile endeavor based
on investigation and analysis from the "UFO scene," which is
everything else -- i.e., flying saucers meet popular culture,
the marketplace, credulity, religious expectation, ridicule,
dogmatic rejection, or whatever. Every silly or exploitative use
of the concept of UFOs is NOT the fault of ufologists, and only
a masochist would argue otherwise.

It is also necessary to keep things in perspective. Folk beliefs
about anomalous (or any other) phenomena are only to be
expected, and nothing in themselves to get alarmed about. What
is alarming, in my judgment, is that the level of noise is now
so deafening that it threatens to drown out the signal that
ufologists are trying to hear.

>Without mentioning any individuals or groups, it is most
>disturbing that those who should know better, are often the very
>ones helping to spread the very manure they claim to oppose.

>The need to practice critical thinking in this field would
>appear to be in disrepute.

These sorts of claims are so general that it's hard to
understand what's being talked about here. Nobody on this list
would hold "in disrepute" the need for "critical thinking." On
the other hand -- and I can't believe this is Taylor's meaning
-- "critical thinking" does not lead automatically to uniformity
of opinion over contentious issues for which no certain
resolution is in sight. Nor should it.

Jerry Clark