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The Pseudoscience of Anti-Anti-Ufology

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The Pseudoscience of Anti-Anti-Ufology SI Sept/Oct 2009 pgs 7/29/09 11:24 AM Page 28 PSYCHIC VIBRATIONS ROBERT SHEAFFER The Pseudoscience of Anti-Anti-UFOlogy Many readers are surely familiar with is more their style. Deception is the practiced prestidigitation can never be author and pro-UFO lecturer Stanton T. name of the game.” trusted in anything. He criticizes Friedman, who calls himself the “Flying Friedman goes on to name names: Nickell for raising “the baseless Project Saucer physicist” because he actually did He critiques Joe Nickell’s article “Return Mogul explanation” for Roswell, which work in physics about fifty years ago (al- cannot be correct, says Friedman, though not since). Well, Stanton is upset because it does not match the claims by the skeptical writings contained in made in later years by alleged Roswell SI’s special issue on UFOs (January- witnesses (although it does match quite /February 2009) and elsewhere. He has well the account of Mac Brazel, the orig- written two papers thus far denouncing inal witness, given in 1947). us, and it is the subject of his Keynote He moves on to my critique of the Address at the MUFON Conference in Betty and Barney Hill case, where I note August. the resemblance of their “hypnosis UFO In February, Friedman wrote an arti- testimony” to Betty Hill’s post-incident cle, “Debunkers at it Again,” reviewing dreams. I wrote, “Barney had heard her our UFO special issue (www.theufo repeat [them] many times,” which he chronicles.com/2009/02/debunkers-at- claims is “nonsense.” According to it-again.html). “In actuality, the active Friedman, “Barney read Betty’s dreams writers and ‘investigators’ aren’t skeptics. once, and the notes were put in a They are Debunkers doing their best to drawer,” and that settles that. He conve- pull the wool over the eyes of a curious niently forgets the passages in John G. public. They know the answers, so don’t Fuller’s The Interrupted Journey, the first really need to investigate. Proclamation book about the incident, describing the long sessions Betty and Barney spent to Roswell” by noting that Nickell is a with several UFOlogists, “beginning at Robert Sheaffer’s “Psychic Vibrations” col- former magician, and “of course the noon and running almost until mid- umn has appeared in the SKEPTICAL stock in trade of magicians is intentional night,” in which all aspects of the inci- INQUIRER for the past thirty years, and he is deception with another sterling example dent were discussed again and again. He author of UFO Sightings: The Evidence being the Amazing Randi.” So by also forgets that Barney told Dr. Simon, (Prometheus 1998). His Web site is at Friedman-logic, anyone who has ever the psychiatrist who interviewed and www.debunker.com. 28 Volume 33, Issue 5 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER SI Sept/Oct 2009 pgs 7/24/09 2:31 PM Page 29 treated them both, that his wife had told been treated to false claims, false reason- an appropriately objective and careful him “a great many details of the dreams” ing, bias and ignorance.” Of course, if examination of the pro and anti-UFO and that Dr. Simon had concluded that Friedman or anyone else could produce arguments, one finds that the evidence is the dreams of Mrs. Hill “had assumed even one piece of “real evidence and overwhelming that Earth is being visited the quality of a fantasized experience.” data,” the UFO debate would have been by intelligently controlled vehicles of Friedman next attacks David Mor- over long ago. extraterrestrial origin and that only rison, NASA senior scientist, for the Friedman has long been obsessed pseudo-scientific arguments of a vocal “absurd” suggestion that if intelligently with the little-known and even less-read but small group of debunkers stand in controlled UFOs were here, we might Project Bluebook Special Report Num- the way of reaching that conclusion.” It’s pick up radio transmissions from them or ber 14, a statistical analysis of UFO truly remarkable what we, a small group from their home planets. “Maybe secret reports released by the Battelle Memorial of skeptics writing for SI and similar NSA listening devices pick up alien sig- Institute way back in 1955. However, he publications, have supposedly been able nals, but then the NSA doesn’t release info carefully picks and chooses the quotes to accomplish. Even though the number about what signals it receives,” said that he uses from that report, implying it of people we reach in our publications is Friedman. He also attacks Dave Thomas, is some hidden pro-UFO gem deliber- far fewer than Friedman reaches on any a scientist in New Mexico and president ately ignored by skeptics. However, one of his many appearances on TV and of New Mexicans for Science and Reason, Friedman never reveals this quote from radio programs such as Larry King Live, saying, “Dave has certainly demonstrated the Summary of BBSR14: “It is consid- Coast to Coast AM, etc., he claims that the his lack of knowledge of both the Roswell ered to be highly improbable that reports only reason that extraterrestrial visitation and Aztec UFO crash retrieval cases.” of unidentified aerial objects examined has not been accepted by mainstream sci- Thomas has conducted in-depth inter- views with Charles Moore, the chief sci- entist of Project Mogul, whose balloon caused the Roswell crash scare in 1947. The “Aztec crash” case that Friedman Stanton Friedman critiques Joe Nickell’s article seems so keen on is taken from a 1950 book by Hollywood writer Frank Scully, “Return to Roswell” by noting that Nickell is a former Behind the Flying Saucers, which was magician....So by Friedman-logic, anyone who has exposed as a hoax more than fifty years ago by newspaperman J.P. Cahn. Fried- ever practiced prestidigitation can never man concludes with, “the SKEPTICAL be trusted in anything. INQUIRER provides many examples of the intellectual bankruptcy of the pseudo- science of anti-Ufology.” Friedman was still hot under the col- lar in May, when he followed this up in this study represent observations of ence and the media is because we noisy with a second article titled the “Pseudo- technological developments outside of negativists keep chattering against them. Science of Anti-Ufology” (www.theufo the range of present-day scientific The reality is, of course, that if his sup- chronicles.com/2009/05/pseudo-sci- knowledge” (page viii), which means posed “UFO evidence” were nearly as ence-of-anti-ufology.html). He says that that the report says exactly the opposite good as he claims it is, then nothing skeptics’ arguments “aren’t scientific, but of what Friedman wants us to think it would be able to stand in its way. rather represent research by proclama- does. “Why isn’t BBSR 14 cited in the Since Friedman loudly claims to repre- tion rather than investigation.” Given debunking books?” he pointedly asks. sent “scientific UFOlogy,” then like all that SI’s special issue on UFOs con- Probably because it is over fifty years old scientists he must revise or even discard tained detailed investigative reports on and contains little that is interesting or his hypotheses when new data comes in the 1984 Minsk, USSR UFO sightings, relevant today, although Alan Hendry and invalidates them. One such instance the Big Sur UFO of 1964, an update on (not a “debunker” but a very skeptical has clearly occurred of late: the complete Roswell developments, and the Steven- UFOlogist) did spend several pages of invalidation of the Fish Map, supposedly ville, Texas sightings of 2008, if this is his UFO Handbook (Doubleday, 1979) an extraterrestrial navigation map that mere “proclamation,” then I can’t imag- critiquing its approach. Hendry con- Betty Hill saw during her celebrated ine what “investigation” would look cluded, “If the Battelle group had had a “UFO abduction” in 1961. For at least like. “Proclamations and attacks, often real appreciation for how loose the data thirty-five years, Friedman has been given the appearance of being scientific, were, they never would have bothered claiming that researcher Marjorie Fish’s have been launched at every aspect of with a statistical comparison to begin supposed identification of the dots Betty the phenomena. Despite an enormous with” (p. 266). Hill drew as being potentially habitable array of real evidence and data, we have Freidman concludes, “If one makes nearby stars proves the extraterrestrial SKEPTICAL INQUIRER September / October 2009 29 SI Sept/Oct 2009 pgs 7/22/09 2:30 PM Page 30 nature of the Betty and Barney Hill new data reveals two of her stars as sus- UFO research. The Macedonian Inter- “UFO abduction.” He has made the Fish pected variables and two more as close national News Agency reported on May Map one of the central points of his lec- binaries. So there go four of her fifteen 26 that a Russian scientist has theorized tures and writings. The similarity between stars. And two more are much farther that a UFO deliberately collided with the Hill drawing and the Fish Map was away than earlier believed, removing the Tunguska Meteorite to save Earth actually never very good, but folks who them completely from the volume of (see http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/ were so inclined could point to a number space in question. Six stars of that sup- view/6868/56/). So says Yuri Labvin, of points of correspondence between the posedly exact-matching pattern are defi- head of the Tunguska Space Phenome- two. (For a detailed discussion, see my nitely gone, excluded by the very criteria paper “There Were No Extraterrestrials” that once included them using the forty- non public state fund.
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