Why ufologists are NOT taken seriously

Here are some recent statements of Jerome Clark and Don Ledger at UFO UpDates.

From Clark:

"I don't pretend to be privy to what the gummint knows..."

"Of course it gives our ideas so much more credibility if we link those who threaten us to the gummint than to the real source, the mentally ill and the sociopathic in the population."

From Ledger:

"I think you have a lot to learn before you can claim to broaden anyone else's research in the UFO field, KK. You really do run off, hell west and crooked. Now you are attempting to weave Egyptian cotton out of bat-crap."

Do these two fellows think cutesy-poo words like "gummint" or "bat-crap" endears them to intellectuals, the media, or science?

Both men are smart guys. That they try to be cute only demeans their message(s), and their credibility.

They make UFO study look like an enterprise for goof-balls.

It's saddening to see how both men have devolved into blithering spokespersons for the UFO community.

RR

UFO UpDates tries to make Carrion into carrion

Former MUFON Director and current heterodox ufologist is being lacerated at UFO Updates, by the UFO old-guard (the UFO geezers) and ET die-hards.

Mr. Carrion had the temerity to show up inside UpDates with his anti-Roswell, anti-Arnold, and anti-everything else UFO stance.

(Smart guys, like Brit David Clarke, eschew UpDates, where the most rabid UFO mavens congregate to laud one-another and berate those who step outside the UFO orthodoxy.)

Jerome Clark, the aging UFO compiler who knows he’s squandered his innate brilliance on a quixotic phenomenon, isn’t necessarily nasty, but he is condescending; whereas the stupefacient Don Ledger adds his usual one and half cent vituperation to the besmogged atmosphere.

David Rudiak weighs in, of course, as he doesn’t seem able to work on new items for the Roswell Dream Team, which he is a member of, in name only it seems.

(Mr. Rudiak can’t handle new UFO material, as the old stuff has an obsessional hold on him.)

Stanton Friedman has shown up, as usual, to defend his ideas and work, which continues errantly and unabated, even though Mr. Friedman has got to be older than Methuselah but still going strong, defending the ET view with all the energy of a much younger UFO enthusiast.

Our friend Don Ecsedy has added valuable insights and information but that bounty is often overlooked by the heated and venomous List gang.

Mr. Carrion’s views intrigue, but the UFO stalwarts will have none of that. Mr. Carrion has to be eviscerated before his hypotheses take hold of the younger UFO crowd thus eliminating the self-adulating fervor of the UFO has-beens.

We suggest that Mr. Carrion run – as fast as he can – from the vampiric UpDate crowd before they eclipse his unorthodox views with their overwhelming load of bullshit.

RR

Ufologers' Mind-sets

Not surprised or stunned by the lack of intellectual or creative thought in the UFO community but greatly disappointed, I wondered why some notable and no-so-notable UFO mavens behaved and/or thought the way they have and do.

In our small circle of regulars we have the brilliant Kandinsky and the creative genius Jose Caravaca mingling with the significantly well-read and erudite Bruce Duensing.

But that’s about it when it comes to deep thought.

Outside our immediate circle we find Patrick Huyghe, Tim Printy, and Cathy Reason, who is a UFO Update habitué, unfamiliar to me, except for what I read by her at UpDates; each of these persons evoking signs of deep cogitation and eminent reasoning.

In the noted category, but not representing anything close to intellectual brilliance is Jerome (Jerry) Clark, and Stanton Friedman, among a few others you can name.

Now I ask, what make Stanton Friedman think as he does – gullible at times (the MJ-12 papers) and a believer in a vast armada of extraterrestrials visiting Earth (and crashing near Roswell)?

And what gives Jerry Clark the patina of an elderly curmudgeon who has a vast knowledge of UFO sightings but hasn’t provided an hypothesis or theory about what they are; that is, he hasn’t conjured up any scenario to explain sightings as he mounts them in a raft of books, only as a chronicler (not a historian surely, like Toynbee or Tuchman).

Why was Philip Klass so viciously anti-UFO?

What allows Bruce Maccabee or Don Ledger to think they have cachet about UFOs; neither has made a mark that counts.

Richard Hall was brilliant but marked by an image of grump. Why?

Let me provide and over-arching opinion about why or how Ufologists think the way they do or did…

Stanton Friedman appears to be a happily married man who loves his wife and family, which creates for him a mind-set that is comfortable and cushy. This makes for an optimistic view of life. Even as Mr. Friedman stokes the UFO filed with complaints of a Cosmic Watergate, the epithet itself tells us that he is locked into the halcyon days of UFOs (1970s) and political life when dramatic incidents were benign actually, only serious to those personally involved.

The UFO topic was moribund in the 1970s or, at least, not riled by major UFO events. (No, The Travis Walton or Pascagoula episodes didn’t ring the public bell as did the Arnold 1947 sighting or the concoctions of Adamski in the 50s and the Betty/Barney Hill story of the 1960s.)

The 1970s were a blissful time as far as UFOs go and Mr. Friedman was at the beginning of his fame as a “ufologist” – capitalizing on that “fame” with his Roswell splurge.

This modicum of fame, coming from a quiet decade, created the mind-set that engulfs Mr. Friedman today. His mental configurations were established by the pleasant vicissitudes of an era where he, free of a real job, was able to grow and sustain himself as a ufologist, thus formulating his movement along the UFO spectrum in the 80s, 90s, right up to now (2012).

His mind-set has been concretized by this euphoric, personal time-line.

Jerry Clark, who wrote callow pieces about UFOs early on for Fate magazine and others, thought he had cemented a worthwhile legacy. But in the 21^st Century he realized that he has no real legacy and this has made him bitter and condescending toward others. (His divorce, it seems, embittered him further.)

Clark is a non-entity among today’s younger UFO set. He is a no-show, without cachet about anything, although he’s tried his hand at a plethora of non-UFO activities and interests – to no avail, which exacerbates his bitterness and spiteful remonstrances at UFO UpDates where he is still seen by that site’s aging moderator as a UFO notable.

Richard Hall is all but unknown by today’s UFO aficionados. He was grump for not being able to capitalize on his UFO acumen, retiring near poverty and dying alone and destitute. But his legacy is cemented by his two-volume The UFO Evidence, which contains his pithy approach to UFO sightings with merit.

Philip Klass, long dead but still influencing today’s UFO skeptics, developed a mind-set aggravated by his need to be an expert about aircraft, which was usurped by things purported to be flying all over the Earth’s skies and followed by energetic believers in the idea that the things were highly advanced aircraft from outside the Earth.

Klass couldn’t abide the thought that aircraft, outside his desired expertise, was being exploited by men he saw as inferior to himself, in the intellectual area, especially about flying machines.

Klass took the rode that persons often take when their career toes are stepped upon – the rode of attack, take no hostages, and to hell with truth or civility.

Personages Randle, Maccabee, Ledger – Ledger the lesser known among any of the so-called ufologists – are settling into old-age, without garnering any public adulation for their extended UFO “research” and losing recognition among youthful UFO hobbyists.

Looking back to noteworthy UFO sightings and events, we do not see any person who stands out as worthy of our admiration for intellectual thought or creative interpretation of UFO sightings and events.

The UFO matter is not a deep well. It remains a pond (or puddle even) that hasn’t been dredged nearly deep enough to see what is at the bottom.

The mind-sets of ufologists is just that “mind-sets” – not reservoirs of elaborate thought or cogitation; ruminations without depth or creative imagination.

This is why the UFO enigma continues to "enig"….

RR 

Jose Caravaca supplements material in the posting previous to this (below)...

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.

In my posting (below this one) about UFOs being treated shabbily, I note a brief aside in an article by Clark and Farish [UFO Reports, 1975]; an encounter that was, they admit, "most interesting" with which I concur.

Noted Spanish UFO researcher, Jose Antonio Caravaca, saw my mention and has been kind enough to provide more details:

The case is from 1925, and based on an anonymous letter, received by the researcher Antonio Ribera in 1968. (No investigation was conducted.)

We only have the testimony of an anonymous informant.

The letter was sent from the town of Quero (Toledo, Castilla La Mancha). Information obtained from the book "ENCUENTROS CON HUMANOIDES" Antonio Ribera 1982.

Textual content of the letter:

"Sir, informed of your interest in collecting data about flying saucers and aliens, I am writing to you to let you know a fact, not a dream.

It occurred to me over 40 years ago.

Somewhere in La Mancha [sic], very close to a church building, suddenly I found myself with a very strange being.

Its height was approximately 1.20 meters, clothing, like a green uniform.

His arms and legs were stiff and stuck to the body.

In his hands he held a blower circle of about 20 cm in diameter, flexible, with a pinging sound.

His legs and feet rigid, united to an axis, which by turning a small wheel, he “walked” in my direction, driven by the effects of the blower which he carried in his hands.

I watched at a distance of 2 meters, for a short time.

We looked at each other, but did not come to speak. I hope you forgive my anonymity."

There is no more information. Only a letter which begins, like Don Quijote..."somewhere in La Mancha."

Ballester Olmos, included the case in his catalog of 200 landings in Spain.

But he took it back for lack of more evidence or information as to the authenticity of the case.

Meanwhile Mr. Ribera, explains in his book that as bizarre and absurd as the event seems, it does appear to be credible, when taken into account with other stories of encounters...

There is no more documentation about the letter. Ribera, himself, was the first to write about the incident.

N.B. The "blower" is a hand tool used to fan the embers of a fireplace or charcoal. I do not know its name in English.

In the book by Ribera, the date is given as 1924, and in the book of Iker Jimenez, ENCUENTROS; EL ENIGMA OVNI [2000], it also appears as 1924.

Jose Antonio Caravaca/RR

UFOs treated shabbily...

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.

The Fall 1975 issue of UFO Report [Volume 2, Number 5] contained an article by George Eberhart [Flying Saucers over the Arctic, Page 34 ff.] from which this excerpt comes:

Click HERE for an enlarged, readable image

It’s an interesting item, but has no provenance or anthropological credibility and has been sitting, unnoticed in the magazine for thirty-six years.

Why?

(Nick Redfern has promised us a piece about hairy dwarves and UFOs, so maybe we’ll get more about these little people, in the arctic wastelands, from him)

UFO compiler Jerry Clark – we don’t consider Mr. Clark a UFO historian, although he and others try to apply that epithet to him; he has never employed historical methodology to his sighting lists, only presenting a litany of sightings with no historical exegesis – and the late Lucius Farish had an article [Unsolved Mysteries from UFO archives – Part VII, UFOs of the Roaring ‘20s, Page 48 ff.] which had this brief paragraph:

“By far the most interesting report of 1925 occurred in La Mancha, Castilla, Spain. Unfortunately we have few details, only this short account from ‘Survey of Iberic Landings’ in DataNet Report, March 1971.

A man suddenly met a strange being, 1.20 m. [approximately four feet tall], wearing a greenish uniform. The entity had rigid arms and legs, held a disc in his hands, and was propelled by another disc on which he was standing. The witness observed it from a distance of 2 m. [six-and-a-half feet]. No word was exchanged.” [Page 60]

(Perhaps Jose Caravaca, an authentic UFO researcher, might be able to find out more about this intriguing, little encounter. I’ll ask him.)

These examples tell us why UFOs have been dismissed by science, academia, and media: they are teasers, without journalistic substance or referential detail.

Clark is old now, and left with a legacy that some of see as wanting. His compilations have never taken us into hypothetical or theoristic territory. He just gives us icing on the cakes, but no cakes.

UFO Reports, like other UFO magazines merely titillated. They didn’t satisfy, least of all those who need substance and credible sources for the so-called information imparted.

Kevin Randle tells, in his latest book, how he slipped articles into such magazines, on the fly, for a few bucks, without having to do any real digging for facts or details that might edify.

The UFO topic has been ill-served by the “writers” of such dreck.

And that’s why UFOs are the scourge of almost anyone with a sense of scholarship and/or journalistic acumen.

RR

Anti-Semitic Socorro?

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.

One of our readers discovered a United Press article [4/20/64] about the Socorro sighting which you can read by clicking on the link here:

UPI
From UFO Digest

In that article, the false Socorro symbol is proffered:

This is the symbol that Hynek, the Air Force, and Ray Stanford tried to foist off on the public and media as the insignia that Lonnie Zamora saw.

Their contrived insignia didn’t fly as ufologists and researchers subsequently discovered the original drawing that Officer Zamora provided:

But there is an interesting aspect of the concocted, fake insignia:

The contrived symbol resembles an image used by anti-Semitics, as in the cover for the despicable Protocols of Zion:

Why did they select and promote use of the Zion symbol they wanted the public to see as the insignia of an unidentified craft?

Or is this just a mere coincidence?

RR

UFO UpDates and Magoniax

We sneak into UFO UpDates now and then to see how the lower half lives.

Surprisingly, the site for “list members” – the mantle readers and users of the site like to be known by – has become a link source for newspapers, magazine, and internet sites, losing it’s previous cachet as a source for UFO news and ideas by ufology’s “best and brightest.”

Errol Bruce-Knapp has lost his site’s dominance for unique UFO ideas and news, mostly because most UFO mavens seek more dynamic sites and blogs about UFOs.

UpDates is really old school, using a format that was good for the 1970s but not anywhere near what the trends are for 2012.

UpDates is so over…

Our friend Chris Aubeck allowed us back into his Yahoo sited Magoniax (once Jerry Clark departed), where “members” provide UFO and UFO-like observations from archived sources mostly.

Chris’s forum is a repository more than anything, used by such oldsters as Ray Dickenson and Martin Shough (both are also UpDate “contributors”), who like to gather UFO materials, just to have them.

They don’t do anything, as far as we can tell, with the stuff they collect. They are hoarders.

We’ve touched on this before: the collection of sightings, just to collect then.

What Chris is planning is not known by us, but we hope it’s something more than a litany of old observations that have a UFO patina.

Getting rid of the hoarders and encouraging theoretical UFO hobbyists would go a long way toward cleansing Magoniax and saving UFO UpDates.