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From: Jerome Clark <jkclark@frontiernet.net>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 99 09:58:15 PDT
Fwd Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 12:20:59 -0400
Subject: Re: Sheffield UFO Incident 2?


>From: Jenny Randles <nufon@currantbun.com>
>To: <updates@globalserve.net>
>Subject: Re: Sheffield UFO Incident 2?
>Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 22:47:26 +0100

>>From: Roy Hale <roy.hale@virgin.net>
>>To: "UFO UpDates - Toronto" <updates@globalserve.net>
>>Subject: Re: Sheffield UFO Incident 2?
>>Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1999 12:34:10 +0100

>>>From: Jenny Randles <nufon@currantbun.com>
>>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>,
>>>Subject: Re: Sheffield UFO Incident 2?
>>>Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1999 12:52:48 +0100


Hi, Jenny,

>I think the probability of other life in the universe is high.
>I think the probability it has visited our solar system at some
>time in the history of this neck of the space-time continuum
>maybe 50/50. I think the probability it has done so during the
>few millenia we have been here maybe 1 in 100.

On what do you base those odds, besides sheer guesswork?

>But that's not what you asked. In fact what you asked is a very

>different question. Have any UFO sightings anywhere ever been
>the result of an alien craft?

>Its possible. Of course it is. But look at the facts. The vast
>majority of cases (I mean 99% of them) absolutely do not offer
>any indication of that origin at all. They are, in fact, other
>things such as IFO and UAP. The disturbing prevalence of this
>data has to make you wary of assuming too much about the 1%
>because too often we have seen promising cases crumble even
>years down the track.

Curious.  In a lecture you gave in Sydney in 1991, at a
conference we both attended, you said you considered the ETH a
likely explanation for the most puzzling UFO reports.  I recall
your saying that your view of the UFO phenomenon was now much
like my own.  I have enormous respect for you, Jenny, but it
seems to me, as one who's been reading your work for years, that
your views are all over the map and are consistent in only one
thing: their constant changeability.  There certainly are worse
sins, of course, but I can't help wondering, given past
experience, how long you'll be holding to your current
neoskeptical course.

In your response you might inform list members exactly what a
"UAP" is supposed to be.

I would also be interested in knowing which "promising cases"
allegedly have crumbled.  The classic UFO cases, in my reading,
have stood up pretty well to years of sustained attack by
would-be debunkers, including -- mostly recently -- your friend
James Easton's failed attempt to identify Arnold's UFOs as
pelicans. Now the neoskeptics are hinting darkly that Arnold's
case has _finally_ been explained (is this explanation #243 or
#244? I'm afraid I've lost count at this point), but they can't
tell us about it.  And the relentlessly self-promoting Kal Korff
promises an "expose" (his word) of the Hill case in the near
future.  Will someone wake me when it's over?

>As we do not have anything approaching scientific evidence -
>that is alien DNA, non earthly technology conclusively in our
>possession, photos of landed craft or aliens that are close to
>probative rather than a joke, etc. The sort of things any police
>officer would need to accept, for instance, to seek to prove
>that a crime has been committed, then the only proper answer to
>give to this question is not yes or no but maybe. The evidence,
>quite simply, is not nil but is certainly inconclusive.

In your opinion.  In a statement he made to the UFO history
conference in Chicago this past May, historian of astronomy
Steven Dick said something to the effect that science has no one
definition of, or universal agreement to, what constitutes
"evidence."  He cited the UFO controversy as one area where this
issue is being played out.

In this context it may well be that scientists in the future,
and maybe the not-so-distant future, will say that visitation by
ET intelligence should have been evident as early as (say) the
Nash-Fortenberry sighting of 1952.  Or maybe the RB-47 case of
1957.  Pick your solid, unexplained report.  It is entirely
possible that science will eventually decide that the "leap of
faith" you mention was not taken by advocates of UFO reality but
by those who maintained the stubborn belief, in the face of
serious contrary evidence, that _no matter what_ all UFO
sightings would all resolve into comfortingly prosaic causes.
They haven't, but hey, who's going to let a little reality
intrude on somebody's dreams?

Jerry Clark