UFOs: Why Science Isn’t Interested

Scientific methodology is thwarted when it comes to the UFO phenomenon.

What can science study when it comes to UFOs?

There is nothing tangible for scientists to study. There is no evidence that can be tested or any behavior that can be replicated or pinned down in any way.

Photos of aircraft or even of evanescent phenomena (lightning for instance) can be examined, but UFO photos offer nothing specific for science to look at.

The photos of Adamski, Villa, and Billy Meier, to name a few, would offer elements for science or intelligence agencies to scrutinize, if they were authentic photos.







Photos, less detailed, and maybe real, of amorphous UFOs don’t offer worthy elements that can be studied either. Does no one take a telephoto picture of a UFO? Where are the professional snapshots?

As for trace elements in supposed UFO landings (Socorro) or debris elements (Roswell), those are so indefinite or imaginary that science really has nothing to examine. (Anthony Bragalia has discovered that Battelle has studied malleable metal, allegedly from the Roswell incident, but Bragalia’s findings are beclouded by Battelle’s “secrecy” in what they’re doing or have done.)

Scientists need specimens to study, or hypotheses based upon observation(s). Witness testimony, regardless of the support of such by some UFO buffs, is useless, for scientific purposes. Sure, a credible witness might provide a clue that helps a scientist see an avenue for study, but witness testimony, all by itself, is generally useless.

UFO sightings nowadays are even more transitory that flying saucer reports of the past, those that supposedly left indentations (Socorro again) or radiation traces (the Desvergers, Florida tale), so science is even less inclined to get involved with sightings.



Some UFO mavens keep indicating that the O’Hare sighting of a few years back is a prominent UFO sighting, but others (Lance Moody for one) ask for something tangible: where are the photos? After all, almost everyone has a camera-enabled cell phone, and so many persons relate that they saw something strange over the Chicago airport, one wonders (along with Mr. Moody) why none of them had the presence of mind to snap a photo of the alleged O’Hare UFO?

Scientists might have trouble with a photo, as noted, but at least they’d have something to scrutinize. (Of course, some UFO hobbyists insist upon the negatives or original photos for study but today’s photos are captured electronically, so there are no negatives to offer. That argument, from UFO tyros, even when applied to older photos, is just stupid, non-scientific.)

The point here, by me, is that science has nothing with which to grapple when it comes to UFOs. The phenomenon is primarily witness-induced today, or hoaxed, just as it was in the past. However, those past UFO or flying saucer incidents had a few ingredients (radar blips, movie-film captures, trace elements) that today’s sightings do not have.

Moreover, the topic is so tainted by the goofiness and circus-like atmosphere, even by those who once had some credibility and cachet when it came to UFOs, that science won’t touch the phenomenon at all, often acknowledging it as not a legitimate area for scientific scrutiny.

So, science is out. And ufology is a sham. That leaves us with what? A curiosity that is not going to be explained or understood as it stands right now.

To pursue the matter further takes a mind and/or personality that is in a state of denial about reality, and what is purposeful for life.

RR

UFOs are Mega-tachyons

Kevin Randle's blog is riffing on the loss of "robust UFO sightings" that we and others have mentioned recently.

Click HERE for a paper that provides a clue as to where "robust UFOs" have gone.

RR

The La Madera Sighting (and Socorro)

Jose Antonio Caravaca has been kind enough to provide us his "exegesis" of the La Madera, New Mexico sighting that took place shortly after the Lonnie Zamora/Socorro sighting (of 1964).

The La Madera sighting is important, in the context of whatever interpretation or hypothesis one might have about what Officer Zamora really saw/experienced.

Click HERE for Senor Caravaca's offering.

UFOs: The Science Fiction Effect

Copyright 2011, InterAmerica, Inc.

While perusing The Science Fiction Encyclopedia (Illustrated) edited by Peter Nicholls [Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1979] I was struck by how many SciFi images matched or were similar to what some notorious UFO sightings proclaimed.

More importantly, the images all antedate the sightings that have become folkloric in the UFO canon.

Witnesses of the airship phenomenon of the late 1890s and early 1900s might have been influenced by illustrations for various publications such as these:





Maybe George Adamski got the idea for his allegedly concocted flying saucer and photographs of same from something like this:



Betty Hill was remembering her contact from magazines and images like this:




Detail from clipping (above)

And Barney Hill’s recollection of what he saw came from this magazine, spotted on a newsstand perhaps:



Or maybe it was one (or both) of these clips:





(One might even posit that Reverend Gill’s sighting in New Guinea was predicated on a remembered picture he once saw, particularly like the first of the three above.)

And have those who’ve seen little men next to or inside craft gotten their "sighting" from a classic Superman segment airing on TV in 1951?



Those who’ve described flying saucers and UFOs must surely have been influenced by clips such as these or movies of the 1950s which emulated the “saucer” seen here:



And persons halted by entities shooting them with a ray gun could assuredly been interposing, by culling from their memory, such images as this:



And abductees got some of their ideas from portrayals such as this one:



Recently, UFO spotters have been indicating they’ve seen triangular craft in the skies above them, such as this:



Now either UFO witnesses are regurgitating images purloined from their memory, or UFOs and flying saucers have adopted the constructs imagined by SciFi writers and editors.

Which is it I ask?

RR

Howard Hughes: Socorro (and Roswell?)

Howard Hughes’ Tool Company and Hughes Aircraft were employed by the U.S. military to devise various space craft and satellite equipment, including lunar landing modules in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s.

Both Hughes’ constructs were CIA connected and some Hughes’ operations were CIA fronts: Maheu & Associates were a CIA front in the Hughes empire. (See Age of Secrets: The Conspiracy that Toppled Richard Nixon and the Hidden Death of Howard Hughes by Gerald Bellett, 1995.)

Hughes and Raven Industries (a CIA front) worked on LEMs and tested them in the southwestern deserts of The United States in the 1960s (footnoted at the RRRGroup blog)

Howard Hughes also worked with Soviet agencies and engineering counterparts, with CIA approval, to acquire technical information about the Russian advances in space materials, especially lunar landers.

Here are three prototypical drawings of what Hughes Aircraft/Toolco derived from those internecine contacts with the Soviets.







(Note the similarity to the Socorro craft – image 1 and 2 -- spotted by Lonnie Zamora in Socorro, 1964, and the propulsive thrusters in image 3; Zamora’s rocket blast!)

Howard Hughes was for atomic disarmament, and struggled with the AEC to thwart atomic explosions in the Nevada desert in the 1950s. He was generally rebuffed. (Ibid, Age of Secrets)

Hughes also was enamored of pychics and connected with Peter Hurkos on various occasions, ostensibly about the insinuations of George Adamski, who imparted dire warnings that supposedly came from Venusian visitors about atomic testings. (Ibid, Age of Secrets et al.)

(We have also stumbled across indications of a secret Hughes Aircraft test for the Navy in 1947 that might account for the Roswell incident and debris. More on this upcoming.)

Hughes’ operations were also employed by the United States Navy. Late 1969: the CIA wanted to use the Hughes Tool Company as a front to build a high-tech "The Hughes Glomar Explorer" vessel to salvage sunken submarines. "The Jennifer Project" was to retrieve a sunken Soviet sub 750 miles northwest of Hawaii…but Hughes pulled out of the plan. (Ibid, Age of Secrets)

That UFO buffs and investigators have overlooked the Hughes connection to U.S. military testings of prototypical space vehicles, one of which we contend is what Lonnie Zamora saw in Socorro in April 1964, goes to the heart of the lacunae in “ufological” research, especially when such research tends to reference prosaic explanations for some esoteric UFO incidents, Roswell, Socorro, Shag Harbor among them.

RRR/JS/RR

Adamski’s Flying Saucer and Heflin’s UFO

The November/December 1976 Beyond Reality (Special UFO Report) magazine had a Guest Editorial by Brad Steiger (on Page 4), in which another “identification” for George Adamski’s iconic flying saucer is provided:



To read the Editorial clearly, which says Adamski’s flying saucer photo was of a bottle cooler lid, click HERE.

The other “identifications” include a chicken brooder, a humidor, and a Christmas ornament.

How or why, then, did some UFO spotters see UFOs that look like Adamski’s flying saucer:


Drawing by Spanish witness, 1977 [Beyond Reality UFO Update, Fall 1978, Page 13]


Muhammed Ali’s drawing of what he saw in 1972 [Beyond Reality, March/April 1978, Page 34]

And the same thing happened with Rex Heflin’s alleged UFO:



Warren Martin drew a craft that he and four friends saw:


Beyond Reality UFO Update [Ibid, Page 34]

Both Adamski’s photos of flying saucers and Heflin’s photos of a UFO are said to be fakes, Heflin’s photos less so than Adamski’s arguably.

Nonetheless, if such photos are, indeed, fakes, why do some credible UFO sighters see or draw objects (or craft, if you will) “things” that smack of faked UFO photos?

RR

A 1977 Prediction: Faster than Light

Beyond Reality (Special Issue) UFO UpDate! [October 1977] had this blurb:

"It is possible that Einstein could have been wrong..." [Page 56]



Click HERE to read the "article" for yourself.

RR

The U.S. Air Force: Adamski/Heflin photos are fake!

Ray Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine [February 1969, Issue 62] has some interesting copies of correspondence tied to Palmer’s “editorial” about William D. Clendenon’s attempt to interest the Air Force and Hughes Aircraft in his flying saucer prototype, which he, Clendenon, hoped to patent also.

Those thrusts by Clendenon led to missives from the Air Force to members of The United States Congress, in which Adamski’s (in)famous flying saucer photograph is mentioned along with the photographs of Rex Heflin.

Click HERE to see the Adamski reference.

And click HERE to see the Adamski and Heflin references. (Another click HERE provides the signatory of this letter.)

Also, as I implicate Hughes Aircraft in the Zamora/Socorro sighting of 1964, I’m including two missives from Palmer’s publication [Ibid] that indicate Hughes Aircraft was not immune from the flying saucer phenomenon, in practical, constructive ways:

HUGHES-1

HUGHES-2

(Note that, in the Heflin letter to Congressman Meeds, the Air Force writes that it never had possession of Adamski’s photograph nor Rex Heflin’s, which may be disputative to some Heflin supporters.)

RR

Leon Davidson, the CIA, and UFOs

Leon Davidson was an avid “ufologist” – noted for his publication of the Flying Saucers: An Analysis of Project Blue Book, Special Report 14 pictured here:



Dr, Davidson and I communicated during the 1970s, and he provided his analysis of the Zamora/Socorro insignia; his analysis, unfortunately, irrelevant because it seems the Air Force had Lonnie Zamora fudge his observation (ostensibly to confuse hoaxers) and the symbol considered by Dr. Davidson, and others (including me and my gang) is nothing like the actual symbol that Zamora saw.

That aside, Dr. Davidson felt that the CIA was heavily involved with UFO sightings and peripheral elements.

He did an exegesis of the CIA’s involvement.

I’ve scanned his work for your perusal.

This is the cover:



To access readable content, click…

HERE-1

HERE-2

HERE-3

(Click on the image to enlarge it.)

I’ve appended Dr. Davidson’s work because of the mention in Goodavage’s Wanaque piece, below this posting, that a friend of his (Gordon Evans), who knew Allen Dulles, said that ex-CIA head Dulles confided in him that he (Dulles) had set up a CIA unit to deal with UFO matters, exactly what Dr. Davidson suggested in his evaluation and research.

Some find such a revelation intriguing, as do I…

RR

The 1966 Wanaque UFO Sightings [Revisited, once more]

I stumbled upon an article (Seeing is Prickles...) by Joseph Goodavage in the magazine above (from 1967).

He wrote about his first-hand, on-site experience(s) at the New Jersey Wanaque Reservoir during a spate of UFO sightings there in 1966; sightings which have fallen through the ufological cracks, but evaluated by Anthony Bragalia, for us, recently, yet left unresolved, pretty much.

This is the police officer who escorted Mr. Goodavage to various areas where sightings were occurring, and there were, apparently, many sightings over several days in early 1966 and later in the year (October):



While Anthony Bragalia is enthused by the (faked?) Wanaque photo showing a beam of light from the UFO to the ground, a fellow photographer of Goodavage provided this photo of one of the objects, no beam of light, obviously, and Goodavage writes:



“…there was no beam of light [his italics] descending from the pulsating red disc (or discs) I observed at Wanaque Reservoir.” [Page 12]

But the 2 inch thick ice was melted at the spots where “discs” hovered over the reservoir:



Mr. Goodavage also provides information on a Volkswagen and other cars that were stalled or incapacitated by the UFOs:



NICAP’s Don Berliner was there when the cars were affected, and noted that no occupants were found in the Volkswagen.

Something mentioned by Goodavage also caught my eye and interest, which I’ve mentioned to Nick Redfern (for his studies of U.S. agencies involved in UFO phenomenon)....

Goodavage was intrigued by the possibility that the Wanaque UFOs may have been using teleportation (because of their behavior) and contacted a UFO afficianado [sic], Gordon Evans of the American Management Association, who told Goodavage that he (Evans) knew Allen Dulles, ex-head of the CIA, and that Dulles told him he had set up a CIA investigating unit for UFOs. [Page 10]

There are clues to a CIA unit doing just that in Ellen Schrecker’s book, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America [Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1998]

Like a few earlier flying saucer events and sightings, the Wanaque sightings of 1966 have been ignored by UFO hobbyists, to the detriment of “ufology.”

We’ll try to bring more to the table about this raft of sightings, which also involve Nick Redfern’s Men in Black, and hoaxing: the Wanaque photo that Mr. Bragalia likes so much:



RR

How the Trent/McMinnville Photos were created?

This photo from The NEW Report on Flying Saucers magazine [True/Fawcett, NY, 1967] appears on Page 27 in a Lloyd Mallan article entitled “There’s More (and less) to Saucers than Meets the Eye.”



The saucer depicted consists of two paper plates glued together by Gary Buboltz, hung on a clothesline with a thin thread and photographed from fifteen (15) feet. The photo may be found in the Project Blue Book files.

Here is the uncropped photo:


Ibid: Back Cover

It shows, as Mr. Mallan points out, how easy it is or was to fake flying saucer photos.

J. Allen Hynek authenticated this photo from 1967:



The saucer shown was a balsa-wood model, created and filmed by the Jaroslaw brothers of Michigan who hung it, by a thread, from a tree at the edge of Lake St. Clair:


Ibid: Page 31

The idea that the Trents may have strung a truck mirror from overhead wires rankles even me. The iconic photos have their supporters and defenders, such as Bruce Maccabee, and also their critics, such as Robert Sheaffer and deceased skeptic Phil Klass.

What allows me to accept the possibility [sic] of a Trent hoax is the time factors involved in the episode: the sighting by Mrs. Trent, the calling of her husband, his trip inside the house to get their camera, and the time to take two shots before the object departed. Moreover, the object doesn’t move far enough in the sky if Bruce Maccabee’s estimate of the time between photo one and photo two taken by Mr. Trent is correct: 31 seconds.

(See a previous post here for copies of the Trent photos.)

Photos can offer proof or disproof of UFOs, as the Mallan article delineates, among other critiques of UFO photography; the advent of computer programs that can create or manipulate images exacerbates the problem of hoaxed UFO photos.

The Buboltz photo, above, emulates the Trent photos. Does it remove the “authentic” rubric given to the Trent pictures? You decide.

RR

Some UFO Stuff (being discussed in the UFO arena)

This February 1977 issue of Official UFO has a rebuttal letter from Bruce Maccabee about the analysis of the Trent photos by Robert Sheaffer [Contact, Page 36 ff.] in an earlier edition of the magazine (October 1976).

Mr. Maccabee gives it his all to refute Mr. Sheaffer’s evaluation with which we generally agree.

However, what caught my eye was the mention that 31 seconds expired between Photo One and Photo Two that Mr. Trent took of the flying saucer (in 1950, over his farm).

Here are the Trent Photos:


Photo 1


Photo2

Timewatch 31 seconds.

How slow was Trent’s flying saucer traveling to only traverse the sky the short distance that his photos indicate?

You can read Mr. Sheaffer’s erudite critique by clicking HERE
----------
The magazine also has an evaluation by Robert Barrow of the Tom Towers 1956 UFO movie, Unidentified Flying Objects, which is being discussed elsewhere in the UFO community [Page 26 ff.].
----------
There is also an interview with J. Allen Hynek by The Paracast’s Gene Steinberg [Page 14 ff.]
----------
And finally there is an interview of Phil Klass by NASA sycophant James Oberg; an interview that deals with the alleged Travis Walton abduction, which Mr. Klass, unsurprisingly, thought was a hoax [Page 18 ff.]

Phil Klass has been indulged by Kevin Randle at his blog for several days now, with a protracted debate by Lance Moody, David Rudiak, and others…all of which has nothing to do with UFOs per se, but provide alternate views of Mr. Klass, which the Official UFO article supplements and maybe clarifies: Klass wasn’t a stupid man surely, although he was, by all accounts, a skeptical S.O.B.

(I would scan the magazine but the return on investment (payback) wouldn’t offset the effort, so you might try to obtain a copy, if interested, from a collector willing to sell it.)

RR

Egregious actions and blunders?

UFO Report magazine [August 1976] had an interview with J. Allen Hynek by Timothy Green Beckley [Page 18 ff]. This clip is from Page 20:



Hynek’s “marsh gas” or “swamp gas” explanation was for the Ann Arbor/Dexter/Hillsdale sightings in March of 1966, not April 1967.

This kind of inattention to detail is what has undermined Hynek by any serious UFO investigator or maven.

Adrian Vance provided an article for that same UFO Report magazine [August 1976, Page 36 ff]: Vanishing UFOs: A Dimensional Dilemma.

In Vance’s piece he related that Edward U Condon destroyed all the Colorado Projects UFO materials right before his death.



And in a following paragraph, Mr. Vance tells how Hynek mislaid some UFO photos and negatives that he (Hynek) took of a UFO himself.



Click HERE to see that portion of Mr. Vance’s article.

Can anyone substantiate the Condon and/or Hynek actions?

If either actually happened, it represents behavior that is egregiously unscientific and sickening, as Mr. Vance indicates.

Condon was a security risk, who should not have had access to any materials from the Air Force or any other government agency. We went after Condon’s security status right before he was handed the Colorado Project and you can read about our efforts here in a very early posting – the second one in the archive:

Condon's Security Woes

Hynek was just scatter-brained.

Is this any way to do science?

Is this why the UFO phenomenon is a joke?

Are UFO hobbyists investing their productive lives in a topic that is so befouled by past and present stupidities that they (the hobbyists) can be maligned for wasting their lives?

I ask you…

RR