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UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: "Jerome Clark" <jkclark@frontiernet.net>
Date: Tue, 07 Jul 98 10:07:24 PDT
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Jul 1998 13:22:46 -0400
Subject: Re: Sturrock Report


>Date: Tue, 07 Jul 1998 13:33:05 +0100
>To: updates@globalserve.net
>From: John Rimmer <j_rimmer@library.croydon.gov.uk>
>Subject: Sturrock Report

>The P.L.A.Driftwood International Conspiracy in Exile is
>operating on a borrowed computer at the moment, so I am unable
>to quote extracts from previous postings. My apologies.

>I am puzzled and not a little irritated by the increasingly
>triumphalist attitudes of the ETH proponents to the muted and
>entirely reasonable conclusions of the Sturrock Panel. As far as
>I can see the only difference between their conclusions and the
>Condon Report is that, unlike Condon, Sturrock feels that
>science *would* be advanced by further study of the UFO
>phenomenon. So do I.

Ah, those PSHers. They just love to spin, don't they?


>Why Jerry, Bruce Maccabee and the others feel that this is any
>sort of endorsement of the ETH is baffling. They say they found
>NO EVIDENCE of any extraterrestrial involvement in the cases
>they found puzzling. You really cannot be much clearer than
>this. Perhaps the real acheivemnt of Sturrock is to come up with
>a statement that both Jerry Clark, CSICOP and Magonia can agree
>with!

Spin, spin, spin. Of course the panel was not there to decide
whether UFOs are ET or not. How John interprets what Bruce, I,
and others have written as claiming the panel's conclusions as
an "endorsement of the ETH" is baffling; but then I find much
PSH rhetoric baffling. Has John been off-line these past days?

Hey,John, listen up:

The panel was to look at a limited number of cases to see
whether further investigation of the UFO phenomenon is
warranted. Participants whom I've heard interviewed since then
have not ruled out the ETH as a possible explanation at the
other end of the scientific investigation that they say ought to
happen. The panel's concern was with what it had in front of it,
which was not enough to establish the correctness of ANY
hypothesis about UFOs, beyond the consideration that the
phenomenon has physical dimensions, conventional explanations
have so far failed for the most puzzling cases, and further
investigation is certainly warranted. Of course, knowing that
these sorts of concerns could lead to a renewed scientific look
at the ETH, New Scientist, New York Post, CSICOP, and other
guardians of orthodoxy have waxed hysterical in the past few
days. I am glad you are on our side on this one.

If you agree that further research on the physical aspects of
the UFO phenomenon is a good idea, John, and can face up to the
possibility that such research may lead to findings you won't
like very much, then your quarrel isn't with me, Bruce, Greg,
Mark, or anybody else who is more open-minded about the ETH than
you are. Your quarrel is with CSICOP and the debunkers with whom
Magonia has effected a de facto alliance in recent years. Direct
your complaints to the guys like Klass and other UFOphobes whose
books and wisdom you can't praise enough in Magonia.

In the meantime, don't try to make extravagant and unwarranted
claims about the panel's mandate. The PSH and the debunkers have
taken it in the chops in the past few days, and if you're man
enough to take it, you have my respect. I hope to see an
editorial in the next Magonia sticking it not to me for a change
(I can't be a subject of much interest to your readers, I should
think) but to the Sturrock panel's enemies, who seem ironically
to have a clearer-eyed understanding of its significance than
you do.

Jerry Clark