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UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark@frontiernet.net>
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 99 12:22:14 PDT
Fwd Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 20:40:03 -0400
Subject: Re: IFOs


 >From: Jenny Randles <nufon@currantbun.com>
 >To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
 >Subject: Re: IFOs
 >Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 13:24:50 +0100


Hi, Jenny,

 >There have been some curious responses to my posting in reply to
 >the question asked about whether - in my 25 years experience -
 >one alien spacecraft had conclusively been seen. I thought I
 >answered it fully and properly. Evidently not. It seems that for
 >some of you unless I can be bullied into saying - yes, sure,
 >they are here I admit it, then it isn't good enough.

I think that when you get more used to what happens on this
list, you'll stop characterizing it as "bullying" and start
accepting it for what it is: the usual rough and tumble of
debate, from which nobody -- including someone so esteemed as
your own good self -- is immune.  You're still a neophite here.
You need to thicken your skin a little.

 >Well, sorry, I cannot honestly do that . I am afraid this
 >attitude is, in my view, a large part of what is wrong with
 >ufology. The plea - do we have to wait another 25 years for an
 >answer - seems to be saying, go on, say they are here, I don't
 >want to keep waiting to hear you say what I want you to say. I
 >reckon we do have a good part of the answer. I understand what's
 >going on far more than when I started. Its just that you don't
 >seem to like what I say I have found. Problem is if you stand 25
 >years at a bus stop waiting for a train it won't show up.

In your opinion. With all due respect, yours is an informed
view, but just one of a number, many of which disagree with
yours. As you're learning.

 >As for Stanton's facts and figures. Some of them need to be
 >interpreted. Yes, Condon found a third unsolved. But so would I
 >if I selected the 60 best cases from the past year rather than
 >studied the 6000 or whatever total sightings that have happened.

This misrepresents what happened with the Condon Committee.
Hynek and McDonald _wanted_ it to look at only the best cases.
Condon decided otherwise, no doubt because of his severe
antipathy to the UFO phenomenon, and the committee ended up
taking on whatever came its way, whatever the quality.  (At the
most absurd extreme this involved Condon's going to a spot where
a contactee had predicted a landing.)  Even so, about 30% of the
committee's cases ended up unexplained. According to several
reinvestigations (for example McDonald's) some of the explaineds
should in fact have been in the unexplained category. The great
irony, as Allen Hynek wrote in a piece on the Colorado Project
for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (April 1969), was that
"the percentage of `unknowns' in the Condon report appears to be
even higher than in the Air Force investigation ... which led to
the Condon investigation in the first place."

 >I cannot change the results of what I find to make people happy.
 >As I replied (and sorry its going to sound repetitive but as
 >some of you don't seem to grasp what I am saying its necessary)
 >here is what I actually find. And so, by the way, do a lot of
 >other ufologists beyond the US. Many researchers in the US seem
 >unaware that there is a ufology beyond the East Coast or the
 >West Coast. But there is and when you add it up its actually
 >bigger and very different from whats in the US as well. Note I
 >did not say better. That is not my argument.

Oh, those US ufologists -- the root of all evil in the world.
Seriously, I detect a lot of provincialism (and, dare I say it,
a whiff of anti-Americanism - I am not referring to you, Jenny)
in non-US ufologists, too.  In truth, we all could learn from
each other. Instead, we are dowsed with gallons of rhetorical
dishwater in which "US ufology" becomes a synonym for "wrong
ufology." Sorry -- I don't buy it, and beyond that, I'm getting
bored with it.

 >In the UK in an average year we get say 300 sightings. Of thise
 >we can pretty conclusively explain around 180 (60%). I don't
 >think there are too many disputes so far. Of the rest I contend,
 >from my experience, that another 30 - 35% (it does vary - and
 >thats maybe another 100 cases) are probably explainable. You
 >cannot ever say for sure because the data to prove them is not
 >there. But they are LITS or low definition incidents where it is
 >best to err on the side of caution.

Explaining LITs is, for the most part, the functional equivalent
of shooting fish in a barrel.  I would hope that in the future
UK ufologists would invest their limited resources more wisely.

Jerry Clark