Mr. Robert Sheaffer - Bad UFOs: Critical Thinking About UFO Claims

Bad UFOs

Critical Thinking about

UFO Claims

Robert Sheaffer

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sheaffer

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1519260849

ISBN-13: 978-1519260840

January 14, 2016

Cover Photo: The author created this UFO photo by putting black dots on a cottage cheese container, and placing it on an aluminum plate.

Authors Introduction

Why write a skeptical book about UFOs?

There has not been a single skeptical book examining the broad UFO phenomenon published in the United States, so far as I know, since my last UFO book UFO Sightings (Prometheus Books, 1998). David Clarke's excellent skeptical book, H ow UFOs Conquered the World , was published in the U.K. In 2015.

This book is titled Bad UFOs , which is also the name of my Blog www.BadUFOs.com . This book hopes to bring the reader up-to-date concerning the most important claims from the land of UFOria since the publication of my last book (as Philip J. Klass, the Dean of UFO skeptics, used to call it). This book contains mostly new cases, as well as updates on important older cases.

While many people, especially those with scientific training, are skeptical about UFOs, very few actually read skeptical UFO books. And far fewer still bother to write a skeptical book on UFOs! Even skeptics who have done first-rate investigations of major UFO cases generally dont bother to write a book describing their work. Klass wrote six such books, one of them for young readers. The last was in 1997. He once explained to me why my first UFO book The UFO Verdict would never sell well. People who are skeptical about UFOs dont need to read your book, they already know that UFOs are nonsense. And the people who believe that UFOs are interplanetary spaceships also dont need to read your book, because they already know youre wrong. I wish I could say Klass was wrong about this, but he wasnt. Fortunately the above doesnt tell the whole story. There are those skeptics who wish to understand the arguments for and against UFOs to better be able to argue their position, simply to be a better skeptic. There are those UFO proponents who want to understand the skeptics arguments, to better defend their position. There are also those who are confused by so many conflicting statements concerning UFOs, and want to read both sides to better make up their own minds. These people are to be commended.

Here everything is linked together into a (hopefully) coherent and up-to-date narrative. All attributions and statements of fact are carefully researched, and can be substantiated. In citing printed works I have provided print references in the References section at the end of this book, since once these are printed, the ink stays in place. However I have decided to handle on-line references in an unusual way. Since most sources discussed in this book can easily be found on-line, we will rely on powerful existing search engines such as Google, Bing, etc. to provide the references for us. Because URLs change frequently, and the links on my debunker.com website seem to become outdated almost as soon as I revise them, I have decided not to try to provide exact URLs for most of the references cited in this book. Instead, I have placed some appropriate search terms in boldface type. The reader curious to learn more about the matters discussed here is encouraged to use his or her favorite search engine, with the recommended search terms where given. For example, when I discuss the claims of a UFO crash in Long Island by John Ford of the Long Island UFO Network ( LIUFON ), put the boldface words into Google and you will have the full background of that strange incident, and its bizarre outcome. An internet search on any person, book, or major UFO case mentioned here will return a great deal of information, not all of it reliable. It will also in many cases return photos or illustrations that I did not include for reasons of copyright. Consider the source in judging the credibility of any UFO claims you encounter, on-line or elsewhere.

Robert Sheaffer, San Diego, California.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No one person can realistically gather together, verify , and present as much UFO information as you will find in this book. There were many who helped me, often providing hard-to-find information when it was most needed.

I'd like to acknowledge Tim Printy, editor of the SunLite Webzine, for his prodigious efforts in putting out that magazine, which is a source of copious up-to-date and reliable information about UFO claims. Space analyst and writer James Oberg has been exposing bogus UFO claims for forty years, principally those that involve the space program. James McGaha has a lot of excellent facts, unfortunately he hardly writes anything. We can't forget Ted Molczan, Kitty Mervine, Dave Thomas, and Marty Kottmeyer. On the other side of the Pond, I owe much to Ian Ridpath, Peter Brookesmith, and David Clarke. You will see these people cited frequently in these pages, because they provide excellent quality UFO information.

I'd also like to thank those who, while I might not always agree with them, nonetheless provide important ideas and information that is always worthy of serious consideration: Marc D'Antonio, Jack Brewer, Curt Collins, Shepherd Johnson, Paul Kimball, Isaac Koi, Carol Rainey, Kevin Randle, Chris Rutkowski, Lee Speigel, and Frank Warren.. And I also thank every member of the Roswell Slides Research Group. Thanks, everybody!

Both skeptics and skeptical believers agree that the UFO field, as it now stands, is filled to the brim with rubbish. The latter group expects that, when the rubbish is cleared away, there will be a signal in the noise, while the former expects that nothing will be left. But both are natural allies in clearing away UFOlogical rubbish. It also allows us to identify those UFO researchers who are hopelessly mired in delusion, and (for example) still insist that the "Roswell Slides" (chapter 4) do not show a mummy, even after deciphering the placard proclaiming that they do! The real fault line in UFOlogy lies not between skeptics and proponents, but between UFO realists skeptics and skeptical proponents who are willing to look for weaknesses and prosaic explanations for UFO claims, and the UFO unrealists who are ready to accept practically any exciting UFO claim on very little evidence .

. UFOs Seven Decades, and Countin g

What explains the human fascination with UFOs? We must indeed use that term, because interest in the UFO phenomenon has become truly global. Nowadays UFO reports come from every continent, and from almost every major country. The British Fortean skeptic Hilary Evans (1929-2011), who studied the complex relationships between UFO beliefs and social issues, wrote, It is safe to say that no anomalous phenomenon has generated so rich an anomaly-cluster as the flying saucer (Evans and Stacy 1997, p. 257). Looking back to the early days of UFO sightings, Evans suggests, we can see that they were unquestionably an idea whose time had come. We sense an air of inevitability. Indeed. The Flying Saucers came just a few decades after Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, and just a few years after the V2, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. We were ready for them, so they must be ready for us. And the anomaly cluster Evans mentioned originating from UFO reports now includes the Men In Black, UFO crashes, UFO bases, military and intelligence agency conspiracies, NASA conspiracies, alien abductions, crop circles, alien autopsies, alien-human hybrids, cattle mutilations, and the list just continues to grow.