Reports of Unidentified Flying Object: Pseudo-Scientific Activists and Serious Scientific Approach groups
Most groups, other than the CCs and STBs, genuinely try to adopt a serious scientific approach to the solution of the UFO problem. Since most ufologists have had little or no training in the disciplines of science, one must make allowances for the members who fall by the wayside through excessive zeal. The major responsibilities of ufologists are investigations of reports of sightings , and analysis of the data for each sighting report. The work of these groups, large or small , is extremely valuable because they investigate mountains of UFO reports.
The priority in each case is to discover whether or not there is a mundane explanation for the sighting. In spite of the depressing statistics given by the Portsmouth Journal’s blue-eyed boy, around 15 to 20 percent of sightings are unexplained after thorough investigation and analysis.
Both the PSAs and the SSA groups are usually very good at sorting the wheat from the chaff. However, on occasion one of the PSAs will publicize a “mundane” explanation that is so utterly ridiculous that it makes our STBs look like Nobel candidates.
These groups have the most far-reaching interests . Not only are UFO sighting reports investigated, much attention is also given to space travel and secret weapons, humanoids, contactees and abductees, brainwashing, and ball lightning. You will enter the world of time travel, parallel universes, and the ten or twenty-six dimensions other than the three-plus space/time we can understand. (Few will mention the heterotic string theory on which the theory of these dimensions has been conceived, nor will there be much discussion of the fact that if they do exist, they are pretty small . . . one million, million , million , million, millionth of an inch!} You will hear much about certain curious apochrypha of science: poltergeists, Nessie, Big foot, tulpas, monsters, fairies, ley lines , the pendulum, dowsing, Earth lights, fungus-ingesting owls, and fait weather whirlwinds. Any one or all of these may or may not be related to the UFO phenomenon. They are all unexplained and nobody knows where they fit into the picture.
Anyone who has lived as long as I have probably will realize that there are many unexplained things in life. The only time I was privileged to meet the late Dr. Allen Hynek, he made the comment to me that a certain witness was a “repeater. ” (As with all new “ologies” one must become acquainted with a special glossary. In ufology, a “repeater” is a witness who has had more than one sighting of a UFO.) By Dr. Hynek’s demeanor I was unable to tell whether he was inferring that this witness had been lying or whether he thought a different significance should be assigned to the case.
Weeks later, while walking my dog through a Kentish meadow, I thought about Hynek’s remark at some length. It suddenly occurred to me that when a child, in a different meadow, I had known a ” repeater” of quite a different sort. A little playmate of mine, hereafter to be known as Nancy B . , had a genius for finding four-leaf clover. During one happy summer, she and I and several other little girls spent hours roaming through a Connecticut pasture looking for these good-luck charms. Nancy found one or two every single day! I had no luck at all and the rest of the girls found only one or two during the entire holiday.
While preoccupied by these thoughts, involuntarily, al most unconsciously, I bent down and plucked . . . a four-leaf clover! I was astonished; I remain astonished. I cannot understand it, nor the significance of. it, if there is any. What I do know is that that did happen to me, that Nancy B. did find four-leaf clover day after day, and that in all cases the clover were certainly not figments of the imagination: they were real . By the same token, it is probable that people see UFOs because UFOs are real and are there to be seen. Why some witnesses have more than one UFO experience is another question. It may be simply that they happen to be in the right place at the right time, or it may have a significance which evades our reason. Nobody knows.
There is no harm in forming hypotheses that incorporate these mysteries into the UFO problem. Of course the bulk of this “esoteria” (to coin a new word!) is as unexplained as is the UFO. When a hypothesis is confused with a solution, the trouble begins . Some ufologists be come so enamored with one or another of their own pet theories that they convince themselves they have found the answer. It is usually the pseudo-scientist who commits this faux pas. When whole groups become oriented toward one or another theory, hostilities are formed between rival groups and research is damaged. A recent article by Pieter Hendrickx of Belgium in Quest magazine, 6 calls for valious groups to end their differences and co-operate with one another, and one can support Hendrickx whole heartedly. Of course, dissension is nothing new in scientific pursuit. Isaac Newton was an irascible old codger and Paracelsus was not noted for a friendly disposition. Nevertheless , the UFO is such a complex problem that it will require a genuine team effort to solve it.
For the purpose of this exercise it is assumed that the many drawbacks discussed have not diminished your interest in ufology and that you wish to soldier on. As you sit leafing through the latest batch of news cuttings , you will find much to interest and amaze. Here, a book review in the January 26, 1989 issue of the Cambridge News be gins: “Jacques Vallee claims in DIMENSIONS that he has been abducted and experimented upon by humanoid aliens. ” Having read the book with care, you will probably return to its pages and read it again and again in search of this claim. You will not find it. Never mind. If the Schonnel Reading Scale is valid, that poor journalist has not reached the proficiency of age nine yet. And in the Essex Chronicle of February 10, 1989, you will see a photograph of a teacher and his pupils holding up a tissue paper and cane hot air balloon. Having sent several aloft, these happy pranksters are delighted that members of the public have mistaken the balloons for UFOs. Never mind.
The glee will soon turn to grief when Farmer Brown’s barn is set alight. And in at least half a dozen of these scribblings you will find mention of little green men, to say nothing of the queries of the witnesses’ bibulous habits . . . Best of all, here are pictures of Stealth aircraft, looking no more like Stealth than a wolfhound looks like a chihuahua. And although the Stealth bomber has not been flown outside the United States as yet, you will be told that this craft accounts for many sightings in Great Britain.
If you shrug and yawn at this rubbish, you have become a good ufologist. You will know that disinformation, including this garbage, is THE VIRUS IN THE UFO COMPUTER. Now you can help program. Carry on! Apply rule one, apply rule two, and continue to study with diligence. In ufology, no one yet has reached the Pons Asinorem, much less crossed it. You well may be the first-and the best of British luck to you!