UFOs on the left

Two of my favorite left-leaning journalist went a bit X-Files over the new report in the New York Times about a secret Pentagon UFO unit: Helene Cooper et al, Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program 12/16/2017; 2 Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen’ 12/16/2017.

I mean, I get that it's kind of a fun story. But there's no need to get loopy over it.

Cenk Uygur took the plunge in Navy Jets Intercept UFO The Young Turks 12/19/2017:

Even Charlie Pierce took a bite! (The Pentagon's UFO Program Raises a Serious Policy Issue Esquire Politics Blog 12/19/2017)

But he also tweeted the more skeptical take of his blogging mate Robert Bateman:

A Former Military Strategist Explains Why the Government Is Cagey on UFO Matters https://t.co/cWzVJsoHAE via @RobertLBateman pic.twitter.com/sbbnpga8Qe

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) December 19, 2017

I did this mini-tweetstorm on The Young Turks' report:

Guys, sorry to say that your UFO report today was way too credulous. Robert Bigelow has been promoting UFO tales for decades: https://t.co/XmlhJ3FLto /1 @TheYoungTurks

— Bruce Miller (@brucemillerca) December 19, 2017

You fell for a stock UFOlogist schtick that pilots' have special credibility of UFO reports because they know aircraft. That don't necessarily have training to recognize astronomical or rare atmospheric phenomena. /2 @TheYoungTurks

— Bruce Miller (@brucemillerca) December 19, 2017

There are experts in the UFO lore and folklore like Robert Schaeffer who I'm sure would be glad to take a call for their opinion on this. Schaeffer looks at the new Pentagon-program story here: https://t.co/6FS827u34o /3 @TheYoungTurks

— Bruce Miller (@brucemillerca) December 19, 2017

Bateman's take (A Former Military Strategist Explains Why the Government Is Cagey on UFO Matters 12/19/2017):

The fact is that the Department of Defense looks at a huge number of things, from the future effects of global warming to the games that Chinese strategists play as kids that may affect their modes of thinking. The extreme level of classification of many such studies often comes from one of two reasons. The first and most obvious is a desire to conceal a capability from any potential competitor or enemy. The second is, essentially, political: a desire not to be embarrassed, either by political leaders or the leaders of the various branches of the Department of Defense. In some cases, it’s both. This time, however, it appears to be only the latter. ... The primary reason was likely classified to prevent political egg landing on anyone’s face. [my emphasis]

My go-to website on breaking UFO stories is Bad UFOs, the blog of Robert Sheaffer, an experienced, science-minded investigator of UFO reports and the UFOologists. While he cautions that he's waiting for "some definitive information," he writes in DeLonge Overload - And a Secret Federal UFO Investigations Program! 12/18/2017:

Over on Metabunk, Mick West makes a good case that these images show distant jets. In fact, they seem quite similar to the "Groundbreaking UFO video" that Leslie Kean (one of the authors of the New York Times UFO article) obtained from Chile's UFO investigations group early this year, quite conclusively shown to have been a distant jet aircraft whose position had been misjudged. [my emphasis]

Schaeffer sputters about the $22 million reported to have been spent on this particular Pentagon program. Bateman, having in mind the quantities of cash the Pentagon burn through continually, "Spending only $22 million over five years really is small-beans by most measures. It suggests that this whole effort, averaging $4.4 million per year, was likely conducted by no more than a dozen people."

Sheaffer suggests that the more important mystery is how that money was spent, noting that some of the federal funding seems to have gone to a study he commissioned from the UFOlogist group MUFON:

Unfortunately, Bigelow's deal with MUFON quickly turned sour. According to Richard Lang, who was the manager of the STAR Team, the deal soon got tangled up in financial controversy and audits, and was terminated in January, 2010. He says that MUFON only received about $324,000 total from Bigelow, a small fraction of the money Bigelow received from the federal government.

So far as I am aware (and I talk to a lot of MUFON people), none of them were aware that Bigelow was in essence passing federal funding onto them. In fact, I am sure that some of them will be upset that Bigelow was, in essence, making them unknowingly participate in a federally-funded investigation.

Bigelow was profiled in a front-page feature in the Wall Street Journal of 08/23/1999, "Robert Bigelow, Patron of UFO Investigators, Is Shooting for the Stars," making him sound like a living model of the problems created by drastic maldistribution of wealth:

Over the past several decades, Mr. Bigelow has quietly become one of the world's leading financiers of UFO research. When a Utah rancher found a strangely mutilated cow last year, a Bigelow-funded veterinarian rushed to the scene, and Mr. Bigelow's team eventually published a 45-page report titled, "investigation of the unexplainede death of a cow in northeast Utah, Oct. 16, 1998." He or his researchers have catalogued hundreds of claimed UFO sightings and alleged alien abductions. Now he wants to build a hotel in outer space, and says he is prepared to spend as much as $500 million over the next 15 years to make it happen.

Update fro 18 years later: it hasn't happened yet.

"It's going to cost a lot of money," he says. "So you'd better offer something stupendous."

If he's willing to pay the licensing fee to brand it a Trump property, maybe he can get federal funding for it now. Or maybe a joint US-Russian project?

Bigelow's wealth is based on real estate, too, like the President's:

His plans might seem laughable - and indeed, some people do chuckle at Robert Bigelow. That's all right with him. The4 truth is out there, and he has several hundred million dollars to spend pursuing it.

With little fanfare, Mr. Bigelow has built an impressive fortune, employing tactics that are almost as unusual as some of the things he intends to use it for. The heart of Mr. Bigelow's realm is 14,000 hotel and apartment rooms, mostly in Las Vegas. He is the king of the temporary stay: His properties rent by the week, and they target casino workers who pay their rent in cold cash.

Mr. Bigelow, 55 years old, values his real-estate empire at $900 million. Other estimates range from $600 million to $750 million, but no one doubts he is supremely rich.

He also sounds Trumpian in other ways: "Last year, he paid $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit by tenants who charged they were illegally locked out of their apartments after they were late on their rent. In another case, the Nevada Supreme Court said it found 'strong evidence' that Mr. Bigelow's operations 'engaged in racially discriminating practices'."

Magician and professional debunker of occult claims and pseudoscience scams James Randi mentioned Bigelow in "Randi Foundation Announces 'Pigasus' Awards" Skeptical Inquirer July/Aug 1997:

The award for the funding organization that supported the most useless study of a supernatural, paranormal, or occult claim went to Robert Bigelow, of the Bigelow Tea family. Mr. Bigelow not only gave large sums of money to Harvard University's Professor John Mack and to million-seller author Budd Hopkins on the strength of their "alien abduction" beliefs, bur also purchased (for a purported $230,000) a "haunted ranch" in Utah where UFO attacks and "interdimensional portals" had shown up, in the wake of mysterious "cattle mutilations." Mr. Bigelow lives, perhaps understandably, in a walled-in home in Las Vegas.

Shaeffer himself reported in Skeptical Inquirer May/June 1998 ("From Ark-eology to UFOIogy, from Ararat to Arizona"):

But perhaps the most significant recent nondevelopment in UFOlogy involves the supposedly "haunted ranch" in Utah dial was purchased by Las Vegas investor Robert Bigelow for his National Institute for Discovery Sciences (see http://www.nids.com). James Moseley reports in the Nov. 15 issue of his newsletter Saucer Smear (http://www.mcs.nctt-kvg/smear) that no sooner was the ranch purchased by these investigators eager to confront the paranormal, than all of the unearthly manifestations—UFO sightings, interdimensional portals, even "dog-killing balls of light"—suddenly ceased. Somehow we're not surprised.

Bigelow has since shut down the National Institute for Discovery Sciences, which apparently served mainly to promote his own favorite paranormal fads.

Pseudoscience, 1981

I've been looking back through early issues of the Skeptical Inquirer, which has been one of my favorite magazines for a long time. It began publication in 1977. For it's first three issues, it was called The Zetetic, meaning inquirer.

SI is a good popular science magazine. It uses the debunking of pseudoscience and occultism as a way of articulating the relevant scientific knowledge and critical thinking to its subjects.

A perpetual favorite topic of theirs is UFOs. Part of what makes SI enjoyable is that you can get the guilty pleasure of reading about UFOs, ghosts, lost civilizations, etc., without going to true-believer sources.

Back in their Summer 1981 issue, UFO debunker Philip Klass reviewed a book by Ronald Story, UFOs and the Limits of Science (1981). According to Klass, Story did a pretty decent earlier book debunking the claims of convicted forger and professional con man Erich von Däniken about extraterrestrials manipulating early human cultures. But Story apparently decide to cash in on the more credulous market with UFOs and the Limits of Science. Klass writes:

[Story] quotes from a study by a psychologist who concludes that "a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid." And after citing several instances of scientists who manipulated their data, Story concludes: "Fabrication and fudging almost seems to be the order of the day in modern science." This provides Story with a comfortable rationale to explain why the scientific community is not impressed with the UFO evidence that he finds so impressive.

Although scientific methodology has shown its ability to cope with challenging mysteries ranging from subatomic particles to pulsars, Story says his book is intended "to demonstrate one overriding fact—namely, that science has its limits and can only go so far in explaining the UFO phenomenon at the present time. ...

This is the common bond that links such diverse phenomena as UFOs,
poltergeists, Sasquatches, N-rays, and "psychic phenomena." When their existence cannot be demonstrated using accepted scientific methodology, then clearly scientific methodology is fatally flawed and must be abandoned. [my emphasis]

This kind of pseudoscientific thinking is also what we see today in creationism, climate change denial, pseudohistory and even economics. It's ultimately a reckless way of thinking.

Klass closes his review by quoting Story from his earlier book debunking Von Däniken:

If our planet is to survive, if social injustices are ever to be rectified, and if we are ever to have an ethical society, we must practice all forms of honesty. This includes distinguishing carefully between science and pseudoscience. Wild speculations in the guise of science and a collection of half-truths will only retard our progress.

And this was before we had the kind of global climate change issue we have today!

Tags: philip klass, skeptical inquirer, ufos

Pod people and the mainstream press: "unanswered questions remain"

Robert Shaeffer in the Jan-Feb 2009 issue of Skeptical Inquirer provides a historical summary of the last 61 years of UFO lore, UFOlogy 2009: A Six-Decade Perspective. He describes the changing styles in UFO publicity, from "flying saucers", films and photographs to testimony of alien abductions. He points out that, in contrast to earlier decades:

It has now been over twenty years since a UFO book has become a bestseller and generated nationwide interest and controversy; the last two were Whitley Strieber's Communion (1987) and Transformation (1988). Today, first and foremost, the entertainment media play a major role in keeping UFOs alive, as well as radio and TV talk shows. News programs play only a very minor role. In the 1990s, cable-TV stations began producing entertainment programs based on popular UFO claims and themes, such as Roswell, the Alien Autopsy, and UFO abductions. In 2002, the Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) channel presented Steven Spielberg's Taken, a twenty-hour miniseries based on alleged UFO abductions. Soon there were many other entertainment programs featuring UFO themes, which even though presented as fiction many take to be "based on fact." Entertainment shows were soon bolstered by pro-UFO documentaries in which the skeptical view is given little or no voice and then by UFO "reality shows," such as The History Channel's UFO Hunters [2008] ... In that show, several "UFO experts" (all of whom are favorable to the pro-UFO position) investigate UFO claims and invariably find tantalizing evidence yet never any real proof.

Talk shows on radio and TV also reach millions of people with their sensational claims and uncritical analyses. Since the 1980s, the syndicated late-night, call-in radio show Coast To Coast AM has reached millions - now on over 500 stations as well as on XM satellite radio. Originally hosted by Art Bell, and now by George Noory, the show offers a dazzling array of wild tales about not only UFOs but cryptozoology, parapsychology, and conspiracies of every sort. Callers often relate their own allegedly paranormal experiences, and it seems that no claim is too bizarre to be given a respectful hearing. [my emphasis]

While he notes that it's not primarily news programs that are pimping UFO stories, the increased blurring of "news" and "entertainment" by the corporations that dominate both the news and entertainment businesses in America means that programs that viewers take as journalism push the stories. Shaeffer refers to a couple of notable examples:

Even some of the biggest names in the broadcast industry have uncritically promoted UFO claims in an attempt to boost ratings. During the summer of 2008, Larry King Live on CNN ran a series of poorly balanced programs about UFOs that displayed shockingly low standards of critical thinking for a major journalist. In February 2005, ABC-TV ran in prime time a two-hour show, "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing." The late journalist, a former news anchorman for ABC News, said, "I began this project with a healthy dose of skepticism and as open a mind as possible. After almost 150 interviews with scientists, investigators, and with many of those who claim to have witnessed unidentified flying objects, there are important questions that have not been completely answered - and a great deal not fully explained." In spite of all the reporting and investigative resources that must have been available to Jennings, the program contained nothing significant that had not already been reported before, and was just a re-hash on primetime network TV of existing UFO claims and interviews with mostly pro-UFOlogists. [my emphasis]

And this is the same standard of journalism our major news orgs now apply to news of public affairs, as well.

I was struck by that phrase, "questions that have not been completely answered". That's a favorite of our sad excuse for a press corps when they're trying to pump up a pseudo-scandal. We've heard similar phrases a lot over the last couple of weeks as the pundits speculated wildly and fact-freely about Obama's (non-)involvement in the corrupt dealings of Rod Blagojevich.

Yes, our press reports on matters of major public concern with UFO-nut-level journalism. That's no small part of the story of the last eight years. And the bad news is ... they continue to get worse!

Tags: establishment press, mainstream media, mainstream press, ufos