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From: Dennis Stacy <dstacy@texas.net>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 20:18:57 -0500 (CDT)
Fwd Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 07:01:26 -0400
Subject: Re: Failure Of The 'Science' Of Obergian Debunking


>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark@frontiernet.net>
>Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: Re: Failure Of The 'Science' Of Obergian Debunking
>Date: Wed, 14 Oct 98 05:14:32 PDT

>For example, in Scientific American the Australian plasma
>physicist John Lowke, a world-class authority on ball lightning,
>states his reasons for belief in the reality of this curious
>natural phenomenon:
>
>"Though ... I have never seen the phenomenon personally, I feel
>that there is no question that ball lightning exists.  I have
>talked to six eyewitnesses of the phenomena and think there is
>no reasonable doubt as to the authenticity of their
>observations.  Furthermore, the reports are all remarkably
>similar and have common features with the hundreds of
>observations that appear in the literature."
>
>Needless to say, not a word was raised in objection to Fowke's
>conclusions, based on six -- I repeat: _six_ -- so- called
>anecdotal reports of ball lightning.  Imagine,  however, what  a
>scorching Lowke would have received if he had been talking about
>UFOs.
>

Jerry,

Your characterization here isn't completely correct. For one
thing, Fowke's conclusions obviously aren't based solely on six
anecdotal accounts; included is a familiarity with the existing
literature (which he mentions). And no doubt his conclusions are
at least partly based on his own working knowledge and
experience as a plasma physicist. In which case he would most
likely be aware that a Japanese physicist, Ohtsuki (someone
correct my spelling if it's wrong), and perhaps others (dating
back to Tesla), has claimed to have generated ball lightning in
the laboratory.

For a plasma physicist, in other words, anecdotal accounts (plus
a few indeterminate photographs in the literature) don't
necessarily violate his every notion of what is possible where
plasma phenomena are concerned. (There is even a virtual
'textbook' on the subject, Ball Lightning and Bead Lightning, by
James Dale Barry, published almost 20 years ago.) If a sizeable
proportion of all ball lightning cases involved episodes of
missing time and fetuses, mysterious scars, little greys, giant
space ships and anecdotal accounts of hybrid babies, however,
then I suspect Fowke might have drawn a significantly different
conclusion about ball lightning, however weird its other
reported properties.

Of course this raises the interesting issue: if ball lightning
is agreed upon by both ufologists and plasma physicists, what
percentage of UFO reports, especially nocturnal lights (the
largest category), can be attributed to ball lightning seen at a
distance? Has any prominent nuts and bolts enthusiast drawn any
conclusions about that prospect lately? Has any ufologist argued
for a deeper, in-depth study of ball lightning within the field,
possibly thereby risking his ET stature? Is there an entry on
ball lightning in your encyclopedia? No, there isn't, although
several references are made to same throughout the work. Still,
wasn't it worth an entry, as a possible instigator of numerous
UFO reports, if nothing else? To think: you could have quoted
Fowke, too.

Moreover, six anecdotal accounts of ball lightning don't
necessarily vary that much, one from the other, whereas six
sequential UFO accounts can literally be all over the map,
abductions included.

Anecdotal testimony per se can't be separated from its content
as cleanly as you would like to think. Mark Cashman (to whom you
were responding) has already posted to this list, eloquently I
might add, as to the scientific uselessness of much anecdotal
testimony concerning the size, speed, and distance of reported
UFOs. To say that much of it has to be taken with the proverbial
grain of salt is to overstate the obvious, which is one of the
points Hendry himself emphasized.

If I say I saw a snake 35 feet long while floating down the Amazon, some
biologist specializing in Anacondas is at least going to give me the time of
day, even while seriously questioning my expertise at estimating the length
of a distant snake. If I say my snake was 100 feet long, however, the
chances are equally good that he won't, prima facie.

Could said scientist be wrong, whereas I'm absolutely right on
the money? Of course. At the same time, would I expect him to
abandon his present research position and apply for a grant to
visit the Amazon in search of anecdotal 100-foot long snakes?
Not if he had a mortgage and a family to raise.

>Of course, if debunkers _really_ believed anecdotal testimony to
>be worthless, they wouldn't pay so much attention to it.  Thus
>any report, however superficially impressive, could be dismissed
>out of hand if it came solely from eyewitness testimony.
>Instead,

>debunkers go to extraordinary lengths to disprove these cases,
>on the implicit assumption that the testimony _is_ meaningful.
>Typically, debunkers employ any argument immediately at hand,
>even if their actions prove they don't believe it themselves for
>a second.

>Cordially,

>Jerry Clark

Who are these many monstrous debunkers, anyway? Menzel is long
dead, Sagan is recently deceasad, Klass is alive but aging,
Oberg rarely addresses the subject anymore, and Sheaffer only on
occasion. To whom are you referring in the collective sense,
then, as if there were an army of demon debunkers massed out
there on ufology's angelic, overwhelmingly evidential front, the
latter backed by a mountain of convincing physical (as opposed
to largely anecdotal) evidence?

I would like to see the UFO subject more highly regarded and
studied, too. But as a poker player, I also know the difference
between a pair of threes and a flush. Give me a straight flush
and I'll bet it.

Dennis