From: Terry Blanton <commengr@bellsouth.net>
Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 10:04:57 -0700
Fwd Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 19:48:17 -0400
Subject: Scientists at Odds with Jeffrey
From:
The Journal of Scientific Exploration web site:
http://www.jse.com/PR_Roswell_98.html
[reformatted for UpDates]
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SOCIETY FOR SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION
PRESS RELEASE
Embargoed until April 6, 1998
CONTACT: Marsha Sims, Executive Editor, Journal of Scientific
Exploration
phone: 650-593-8581, fax: 650-595-4466
The Roswell UFO Crash: Myth or Reality
Stanford, CA, April 6, 1998 --- The "Roswell Declaration" was
formulated in 1994 as a public petition to the government. After
summarizing the claim that an extraterrestrial craft crashed near
Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, it concludes by requesting that the
President issue an Executive Order declassifying any government
information that might exist concerning UFOs, regardless of
whether positive or negative on the topic. It also requests a
termination of any security oaths that might still be prohibiting
individuals from openly discussing information they, or the
government, might have.
One of the prime movers behind this initiative was Kent Jeffrey,
an airline pilot by profession. He worked with other key members
of the three primary UFO groups (Hynek Center for UFO Studies,
the Mutual UFO Network and the Fund for UFO Research) to bring
this about.
It was thus a surprise and a newsworthy event when Jeffrey
published an article in the MUFON Journal last year concluding
that his investigations no longer supported the claim of a
crashed saucer at Roswell.
With Jeffrey's approval and with the permission of MUFON, the
Journal of Scientific Exploration obtained permission to reprint
the article and to invite two experts in UFO studies to critique
it. The Jeffrey article and articles by Prof. Michael Swords,
Western Michigan University, and Dr. Robert Wood, a retired
research director for McDonnell Douglas, appear in the current
issue of the Journal (Vol. 12, No. 1, March).
Key arguments made by Jeffrey are:
1.Jesse Marcel, Jr., who handled the wreckage as an 11-year
old, gave testimony under hypnosis that shows that it might have
been just balloon parts.
2.Sketches of writing on the wreckage made during that
testimony compare favorably with writing from a conventional
source - flowered tape from a Mogul balloon.
3.The Air Force has released some classified information
pertaining to Roswell.
4.Three retired colonels, apparently in a position to have
known about a project to examine wreckage, did not know about it.
5.Extraterrestrial spacecraft would be far too advanced and
reliable to crash.
Wood argues that Jeffrey fails to consider alternative
interpretations of the same facts. An example would be the
interviews with three colonels retired from the Air Force who all
say that the Air Force did not have a covert program. The author
simply accepts this as fact without seriously considering the
possibilities that one of them lied or that none of them knew
about it. Wood argues that:
1.The testimony, captured on 6 hours of video tape, is
significantly inconsistent with an ordinary interpretation.
Marcel Jr. himself reportedly rejects Jeffrey's interpretation.
2.The sketches proffered show little similarity in detail and
may be based upon contaminated sources, since the hieroglyphic
writing had much prior media exposure.
3.The Air Force information, obtained via the Freedom of
Information Act, is from a source at the secret level of
classification which would be irrelevant to the existence of a
so-called "black" project. Almost no SCI (Special Compartmented
Information) has ever been released for the public.
4.It is just as likely that the personnel interviewed by
Jeffrey were kept totally unaware of the existence of a covert
project.
5.Speculation on the reliability of extraterrestrial
spacecraft could just as easily include consideration of
reliability associated with lighting, mid-air crashes, proximity
fused shells, or electromagnetic interference caused by radar.
Swords critiques the Jeffrey viewpoint on Roswell's alleged
crashed disk from the position of a student of the early document
exchanges between Wright-Patterson Air Force Base's Intelligence
Division and the headquarters of the U.S. Air Force in the
Pentagon. This historical research is germane, because Jeffrey
admits that it was the reading of three of these documents that
changed his entire opinion on the case from strongly "pro-crash"
to completely and uncompromisingly "anti." Swords' analysis goes
deeply into the background which gives meaning to these
documents, and concludes that Jeffrey's interpretations (due to
lack of analysis and historical context) are in error in every
case.
Swords also comments upon the second main element of Jeffrey's
piece, a videotaped hypnotic experiment with one of the prominent
case witnesses.
Swords was one of only five ufologists privileged to view these
tapes, and reports that all but Jeffrey interpret the information
on the tapes non-prejudicially to the authenticity of the case.
Swords sets the debate in its contrasts before the interested
public for the readership to decide.
A detailed response by Jeffrey will appear in a subsequent
issue.
###
The Journal of Scientific Exploration is the quarterly
peer-reviewed research journal of the Society for Scientific
Exploration, an interdisciplinary organization of scholars formed
to support unbiased investigation of claimed anomalous
phenomena.
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