UFO UpDates Mailing List
From: Brad Sparks <RB47Expert@aol.com>
Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 05:19:13 EDT
Fwd Date: Thu, 06 May 1999 08:42:44 -0400
Subject: Re: Two Skeptical Papers On The Trent Photos
>From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac@compuserve.com>
>Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 08:13:18 -0400
>Fwd Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 14:38:51 -0400
>Subject: Re: Two Skeptical Papers On The Trent Photos On
>>From: Keith Woodard <qwoodard@worldnet.att.net>
>>To: UFO UpDates <updates@globalserve.net>
>>Subject: Two Skeptical Papers On The Trent Photos On Line
>>Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 10:53:28 -0700
>>The 1999 revised version of Robert Sheaffer's unpublished "An
>>Investigation of the McMinnville UFO Photographs" at:
>>http://hugin.imat.com/~sheaffer/texts/trent.html
>>together with Phil Klass's 1995 "What Bruce Maccabee DOESN'T
>>Tell You About His Investigation of the Famous McMinnville/Trent
>>UFO-Photo Case" at:
>>http://hugin.imat.com/~sheaffer/texts/BSMtrentPJK.html
>>will, I trust, put this "Trent" business to bed once and for all.
>Dear Keith:
>Time to get out of bed and become informed. Sheaffer's _1969_
>paper (recently "revised" and put on the web) was thoroughly
>discussed.... some might say "dismissed" .... by my work in 1976
>and again in 1982. Sheaffer's arguments have been shown to be
>wrong.
>As for Mr. Klass...... after all these years the strongest
>argument he has against the Trent case seems to be that a lady
>of "not exceptional" (!!!) intelligence could make mistakes in
>recalling events when she was questioned 24 or more years after
>they occurred.
>Incidently, the Trent's have died recently: Evelyn in 1997 and
>Paul in 1998. They were interviewed in 1995 and presented the
>same story they told in 1950.
>When the sighting occurred these people were poor but
>industrious farmers. During the years of interviews and numerous
>publications of their pictures they were still poor but
>industrious farmers (raising several children). When they died
>they were (retired ) poor farmers.
>It was very interesting to me to see that, even though there
>were literally world famous because of their pictures, certainly
>the most famous people in the McMinnville area, the obituaries
>said exactly nothing (!) about their UFO sighting.
>It was certainly my impression, and I gather that also of
>numerous others who interviewed the Trents (or were teir
>neighbors) that the UFO sigting was not of great importance to
>them and, that the resulting publicity, etc. was a considerable
>annoyance.
Hi Bruce,
Excellent points, well said.
The skeptics' position on the Trents' post-sighting behavior is
conveniently one of damned if you do, damned if you don't. If
the Trents had recognized the historic importance of their
sighting and photos they would have sought publicity according
to skeptics -- and then would have been condemned by skeptics as
publicity-seeking, money-hungry hoaxers. If the Trents (as was
actually the case) did not consider their experience very
important to their lives and avoided publicity (they didn't
think it was an ET spaceship but a secret military vehicle),
then skeptics would condemn them as hoaxers having something to
hide.
Pray tell, you skeptics out there, what _should_ the Trents have
_done_ to avoid being branded as publicity-seeking hoaxers, on
the one hand, or as publicity-avoiding hoaxers with something to
hide, on the other hand? Seems to me they did the right thing
as best they could, which was to answer whatever questions they
were asked and make the photos available for legitimate study
whenever requested, first by their hometown newspaper, then
other journalists, the INS wire service, government
investigators, Condon Committee, and many others over the years.
I am informed that the Trents in recent years were given the
opportunity to receive automatic royalties on every photo
reprint ever made of their UFO photos through a major photo
archival service which has copies of their photos. The Trents
did not have to lift a finger for this to occur, and the
arrangement would have been completely private, no one had to
know publicly. All they had to do was just say "yes." But they
never did, despite their strained financial condition. They
didn't want a penny from the UFO photos and in the nearly 50
years since taking the pictures in 1950 they never asked for a
penny and never received a penny for them.
I would only add the following remarks to your exhaustive
scientific laboratory refutations of Sheaffer's mistaken
arguments which are available in your 1976 and 1988 CUFOS
papers.
What troubles me is Sheaffer's wholesale misrepresentation of
the weather at the time of the sighting on May 11, 1950, based
on selective distortion and gross error. The weather is
important because he uses it to attack the credibility of the
Trents and in other writings he and other skeptics attack your
findings about the sunlit cumulus cloud that evidently lit up
the Trent's garage from the east. Sheaffer has tried to argue
that it was the morning sun that lit up the garage from the east
so therefore the Trents lied about the time of the sighting when
they said it was in the evening near sunset at around 7:30 PM.
Sheaffer and Klass both brazenly assert, contrary to the weather
reports in their own files, that there were "PERFECTLY CLEAR
SKIES" in the evening of the sighting, so the Trents were lying
about the time of day. Klass claims the photos show an
"overcast or hazy sky." (Klass 1974 pp. 148-9; 1976 pp.
175-6.) Whereas Sheaffer claims the Trents themselves insisted
that it was overcast.
But Sheaffer and Klass didn't bother to find out the meaning of
standard weather observation symbols in the official US Weather
Bureau reports, which you took the time to find out about. In
one place there is a three-phase reporting symbol for cloud
cover in which "O" means 0-10% and does NOT mean ZERO cloud
cover or "PERFECTLY CLEAR SKIES" as Sheaffer and Klass both
falsely claim, but up to 10% cloud cover. ("I" means 10-60% and
"II" means 60-100%.)
Sheaffer in effect calls the Trents (and you) liars based on
this incredibly dumb mistake of his own in misreading weather
reporting symbols. He claims that while the skies were
purportedly completely clear that "the witnesses contend[ed]" it
was overcast at 5,000 feet. In fact it was a REPORTER for the
Portland Oregonian for June 10, 1950, who made the undocumented
and unattributed claim that, quote, "The day was dull with an
overcast at about 5000 feet."
Sheaffer insinuates there were no clouds with his additional
claim that "At no time is there any [cloud] ceiling recorded
between 9:00 AM May 10 and 10:00 AM May 12" from the McMinnville
Airport weather station. Notice how he carefully calculates to
mislead by omitting the weather observations BEFORE 9 AM on May
10 and AFTER 10 AM on May 12 -- the omitted times had reported
60-100% cloud cover.
One would think from reading both Sheaffer and Klass it was
"PERFECTLY CLEAR SKIES" the entire 3-day period surrounding the
Trents' sighting. But in fact, there was cloud cover from 2,500
to 30,000 feet throughout most of the days of May 10, 11 and 12,
according to the official weather report. And the Portland
Oregon Journal for May 10 published the following weather
forecasts for May 10 and 11: "Portland Area--...MOSTLY CLOUDY
Thursday [May 11].... Oregon--West: MOSTLY CLOUDY [May 10]....
OCCASIONAL SPRINKLES. Thursday [May 11] PARTLY CLOUDY."
Sheaffer and Klass deliberately ignore the Salem Airport weather
report which is almost as close as McMinnville's (17 miles SE
instead of 12 miles NE of Trent farm), and which has more
complete documentation. And they have copies of the Salem
report.
Salem explicitly records cumulus clouds (altocumulus) at 7:28 PM
on May 11, the EXACT TIME of the Trent sighting plus or minus
several minutes, thus accounting for the cumulus cloud(s) to the
EAST of the Trents reflecting sunlight from the setting sun onto
the Trent's Garage. Your measurements had already proven that
the light source on the garage was roughly 4 to 15 times the
angular size of the sun (horizontally and vertically) and
obviously could not have been the sun, but a much larger cumulus
cloud.
As for Sheaffer's assertion that clouds at sunset would be
reddish colored and that supposedly this was not in evidence in
the Trent case, reddish coloration depends on the height of the
clouds and atmospheric conditions. But in my upcoming Trent
Case Update I've been planning to point out that the Trents'
long puzzling report of "bronze" coloration of the UFO is in
fact due to the expected reddish coloration at sunset.
As for Klass' 1995 article on Sheaffer's site, Klass relies
heavily on a brief photo caption to the pictures in Life
magazine saying no neighbors saw the object, when such brief
captions are notoriously unreliable and the claim of no other
witnesses is not repeated in the body of the article or in any
other article I have available. None of the stories say that
the Trents were ever asked about additional witnesses, but one
mentions Mrs. Trent unsuccessfully tried to phone her
mother-in-law down the street during the actual sighting
(Portland Oregonian, June 10, 1950).
Mrs. Trent told you on Oct 25, 1976, that her mother-in-law
(Alice Bowers Trent) may have seen the UFO but that she (Mrs.
Trent) didn't tell reporters because the mother-in-law was ill
with CANCER at the time and she didn't want her to be bothered
by reporters -- Klass omits to mention this understandable
reason which he knows about since he has it in your interview
notes, your July 4, 1982, letter to him, and in your 1988 CUFOS
paper. Paul Trent told McDonald in 1969 and both Trents told
you in the early 70's that Paul's father, John Highland Trent,
did see the UFO, too. But they told you they did not tell
reporters because they wanted to spare them the stress of
dealing with reporters when his mother was battling cancer.
Regards,
Brad Sparks
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