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Pseudo-Science of Anti-Ufology
By Stanton T. Friedman
© 2009
(Published
with permission of the author)
ABSTRACT
There have been a number of remarks by people calling themselves
scientists attacking the notion that any flying saucers are of alien
origin. The arguments aren’t scientific, but rather represent research by
proclamation rather than investigation. We can learn a lot about how to
deal with these attacks by focusing on the claims that are made and what
is irrational or illogical or just plain wrong about them. This is worth
doing because often the claims are left unchallenged and college level
students in science and journalism and the general public are taught
baloney as if it were truth. They need ammunition from those of us in the
scientific Ufological community in order to deal with the false arguments
and illogicality of the pseudo-scientific anti-Ufologists. There are a
number of demonstrably false claims which have been put forth such as
there is no evidence, one can’t get here from there, Governments can’t
keep secrets, if aliens were visiting they would want to talk to me, or
land on the White House lawn. They also falsely claim that Occam’s Razor
rules out UFO reality. Moreover, they claim that no scientists have seen a
UFO. Phil Plait of the blog Bad Astronomy falsely claims that no
astronomers or amateur astronomers have seen a UFO. This paper provides a
guide for the perplexed about UFOs and their critics.
SUMMARY
For more than 60 years the primary approach by the media and scientific
communities to the subject of UFOs and Flying Saucers has been based on
pseudo-science. Proclamations and attacks, often given the appearance of
being scientific, have been launched at every aspect of the phenomena.
Despite an enormous array of real evidence and data, we have been treated
to false claims, false reasoning, bias and ignorance. The basic rules of
pseudo-science have been followed, including especially that there are no
good reasons to present solid scientific information, that absence of
evidence in the hands of the writers and proclaimers is proof of absence
of such evidence, that everything claimed by a debunker must be true, that
everything claimed by a believer is false, that one must denigrate
“believers” and “buffs”, but accept all attacks as legitimate.
NEED TO LOOK AT EVIDENCE
Most graduate students are taught to begin a new research project with a
literature search. See what has already been published before doing ones
own work. No sense reinventing the wheel and certainly don’t make claims
that can be destroyed by those more familiar with relevant past
publications. Yet one of the most common and distressing aspects of the
pseudo-scientific anti-Ufological literature is the failure of the
pseudo-scientists to do their homework before putting their mouths or
computers in gear. I am referring to evidence about large scale studies of
sightings, landings, abductions, multiple witness radar visual cases,
saucer crashes, government cover-ups, etc. As somebody very much concerned
with advanced nuclear and space technology, I have been appalled by the
silly pseudo-scientific statements that have been made about space travel,
high acceleration travel and interstellar travel. As the original civilian
investigator of the Roswell Incident, and a long-term investigator of the
abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, I am equally appalled at the
unscientific arguments made against these two bell-weather cases. The
common features of these attacks include:
A.
A failure to look at the literature that is
available about all of these.
B.
An unwillingness to recognize that the
“specific details of how something is to be done” are very much more
important than broad general notions about the laws of physics.
C.
An enormous arrogance in thinking that if
certain things were true or certain technologies were real, these all-wise
pseudo-scientists would know about them. They don’t, so the notions must
not be true. None of this is to say that there hasn’t been a lot of
pro-UFO garbage published as well. But Ufologists tend to be critical of
their own kind. The pseudo-scientific anti-Ufologists never seem to want
to critique another debunker no matter how false the claims. They repeat
the claims rather than pointing out the fallacies.
Some of my concerns go back to the time I
spent in industry on highly classified advanced technology programs for
big industrial concerns. Everything you wanted to publish outside the
company, or at a professional meeting, had to be approved by more than one
level of management. After all, the company’s good name was involved.
Double-check everything. Equally relevant for me were the weekly science
commentaries I did (for 6 years) for the Fredericton, New Brunswick, CBC
radio station. I covered a huge range of topics and, since some people
would believe me no matter what I said, I felt I had to check things out.
I read widely and covered, medical, nuclear, Ufological, technological,
etc, topics. I found that often the summaries and conclusions at the
beginnings of the articles did not accurately reflect the actual findings.
Axes were being ground. I found government agencies had no qualms about
being pseudo-scientific, if it suited them. For example, I had done a
radio piece on the importance of adequate intake of magnesium to assure a
healthy cardiovascular system. Then I was surprised to see that the
Canadian government had issued a new Recommended Daily Allotment that I
felt was much too low. I found the person who had written the
justification and wondered why there was no mention of the importance of
Mg to a healthy heart. He said there was no connection. I rattled off some
references. He changed direction and said there were no epidemiological
studies. I asked about the outstanding work of Dr. Heikki Karppanen of
Finland. The government “expert” hadn’t heard of any of HK’s six studies.
HK had found a region of Finland where the people lived entirely off their
own land and their Mg intake was determined by the local geology, since
the amount in beef, grain, water, etc reflected local numbers. The greater
the Mg level, the lower the heart disease problems. Such studies would be
very hard to do in the USA or Canada. The official was speaking from
ignorance. Sounded very much like a conversation with a pseudo-scientific
anti-Ufologist.
I did a report on another highly touted
study supposedly showing that everybody should reduce his or her intake of
cholesterol. The small print in the back showed that the study was of the
effectiveness of a cholesterol-reducing drug. The very large scale, long
term, double blind placebo controlled (and very expensive) study included
only men over the age of 40 whose cholesterol levels were in the top 10%
or so. The results, highly touted in the press, could not at all be
interpreted as showing that men and women, young and old, should use their
drug. As a matter of fact the death rate was higher for stomach cancer
amongst those on the drug than on the placebo. What is that old line about
statistics and lies?
NOT ENOUGH DATA
One of the least scientific and most often claimed aspects of UFO
sightings is that the only reason sightings can’t be explained is that
there isn’t enough data. For more than 50 years this false, inaccurate,
unsubstantiated claim has been repeated over and over again.
Here are some examples:
1.
“The reliable cases are uninteresting and the
interesting cases are unreliable. Unfortunately, there are no cases that
are both reliable and interesting”. Dr. Carl Sagan, Astronomer, “Other
Worlds” Bantam,1975, p. 113
2.
“The unexplained sightings are simply those
for which there is too little information to provide a solid factual basis
for an explanation.” Ben Bova, Editor, ANALOG, December 1975.
3.
“Almost every sighting is either a mistake or
a hoax. These reports are so riddled with hoaxes and the flying saucers
enthusiasts have so many cranks, freaks and nuts among them that Hynek
[Dr. J. Allen] is constantly running the risk of innocently damaging his
reputation by being confused with them.” Dr. Isaac Asimov “The Rocketing
Dutchman” FANTASY and Science Fiction, February 1975, p.132
4.
”All non-explained sightings are from poor
observers”. Dr. Donald Menzel, Astronomer, PHYSICS TODAY, June 1976
Perhaps the above 4 examples are all
derived from this obviously (seemingly) scientific claim: 5. “On the basis
of this study we believe that no objects such as those popularly described
as flying saucers have over-flown the United States. I feel certain that
even the unknown three percent could have been explained as conventional
phenomena or illusions if more complete observational data had been
obtained”. Donald A. Quarles, Secretary of the United States Air Force,
October 25, 1955, Dept. of Defense press Release 1053-55. Very widely
published in the press.
All the comments falsely sound as if they
are based upon careful study of a large number of cases by professionals.
Perhaps the first four represent an echo of the fifth. Obviously there
could be no higher authority that the Secretary. of the USAF. The strange
thing is that the press release, though given very wide distribution,
never gave the title of the “study” on which the conclusions were
supposedly based: “Blue Book Special Report Number 14”(Ref.1) More
important, none of the data in 240 charts, tables, graphs and maps, were
actually included in the supposed summary that accompanied the release.
The release also didn’t mention who did the work: “Battelle Memorial
Institute.” So far as I have been able to determine, none of the many
newspapers that carried the release bothered to ask about any of these
items. As far as the first four comments above went, no sources or
references were cited. This is pseudo-science, especially considering that
all the comments are totally and completely false… not just slanted or
biased.
I have made a habit of starting most of my
more than 700 college and professional group lectures with the data from
BBSR 14. I also ask how many have read it; Typically 1-2%, sometimes 0. I
discuss the actual facts at length in Chapter 1 of “Flying Saucers and
Science” (Ref.2). In summary, the UNKNOWNS were 21.5% of the 3201 cases
which were evaluated.(not 3%) They were completely separate and distinct
from the 9.3% listed as Insufficient Information, despite the lie told by
Quarles. It was also found that the better the quality of the sighting
report, the more likely it was unexplainable. It was found that UNKNOWNS
were observed for longer than KNOWNS. It was found that the probability
that the UNKNOWNS were just missed knowns, based on a chi squared
statistical comparison between the two groups, was less than 1%.Fewer than
2% were hoaxes despite Asimov’s false claim. How in the world can any
professional continue, as they do, to make false claims such as those
noted above? Why isn’t BBSR 14 cited in the debunking books? I know that
Menzel had a copy from correspondence in his files at Harvard. Carl Sagan
has volumes in which the data appear. I sent copies of data tables to Ben
Bova and Isaac Asimov. Totally ignored. The rule is clearly “don’t bother
me with the facts, my mind is made up.”
I found it very interesting when I read the
University of Colorado “Scientific Study of UFOs (The Condon
Report)”(Ref.3) that, despite its length (965 pages), and the presence of
a whole chapter on government involvement in UFO investigations, that it,
too, makes no mention of BBSR 14 which covered more than 25 times as many
cases as Condon. I had written a letter to Condon talking about it, and he
acknowledged it. This is pseudo-science, as was the press release sent out
implying that nothing of interest to science came from the $539,000 study.
As a matter of fact, according to a special UFO subcommittee that had been
established by the world’s largest group of space scientists, the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics,(Ref.4) “The opposite
conclusions [to Condon’s negative statements] could have been drawn from
the content of the report, namely that a phenomenon with such a high ratio
of unexplained cases (30%) should arouse sufficient scientific curiosity
to continue its study.” And yet numerous pseudo-scientific anti-Ufologists
have acted as though the Condon report with its very strange statement of
approval from Condon’s colleagues at the National Academy of Sciences,(no
investigations had been checked) answered the question once and for all.
Dr. Susan Clancy a pseudo-scientific abduction debunker totally
misrepresented both the Condon Study and abductions in her book (Ref.5). I
have detailed many of these in my review at www.stantonfriedman.com.
An important aspect of the scientific
method is the requirement for focusing on the data relevant to the problem
at hand. That most isotopes are not fissionable, or fusionable, does not
mean none are; and that most metals are not heavier than uranium and don’t
have melting points higher than that of tungsten does NOT mean that none
do. That most possibly beneficial drugs do not cure any disease, doesn’t
mean than none do. That most UFO sightings wind up, after investigation,
as being Identifiable Flying Objects, does NOT mean that none are
intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft, Their behavior and
appearance indicate that they couldn’t have been built here, because we
couldn’t then build things that look like that or fly like that. If we
Earthlings could have, they would have been used in warfare.
A much more recent example of
pseudo-science than those cited above occurred during a 3 hour debate on
Coast to Coast Radio between myself and Dr. Michael Shermer, Editor and
Publisher of SKEPTIC Magazine on August 1, 2007. We and host George Noory
and others had appeared on Larry King 2 weeks earlier. Michael’s major
activity on LK besides making false claims had consisted of playing with
small alien dolls. Many asked why I hadn’t just punched him out (not my
style). Anyway, he started on C to C by claiming that the only reason some
sightings can’t be explained is that, as with other paranormal events,
there is always in such matters a residue of about 5% that can’t be
explained. Needless to say I blasted that bit of pseudo-science by quoting
the numbers from BBSR 14 and the Condon report (21.5% and 30%) and from
the other key sources noted above and below. It was interesting that
Michael still had done no homework. In the interval I had examined two of
his books and was able to quote from him as to why debunkers believe what
they believe
1.”Smart
people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs
they arrived at for non-smart reasons”p.297 “Why People Believe Weird
Things” Owl Books, 2002, p.297
2.
The Confirmation Bias: “The tendency to seek
or interpret evidence favorable to already existing beliefs, and to ignore
or reinterpret evidence unfavorable to already existing beliefs”. Why
People Believe Weird Things” p. 299.
Obviously these are right on about the
pseudo-scientists. The vote taken of listeners at the end was that
80% thought I had won the debate and 20% voted for Michael.
ANECDOTES
There are all kinds of comments to the effect that all there is on the UFO
scene is anecdotal data. This is more pseudo-science. “Anecdote” is
defined as “a short account of an interesting incident or event, often
biographical” (Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary); also “a short story
narrating a detached incident or fact of an interesting nature; a
biographical incident; a single passage of private life” (New Webster’s
Dictionary).
Only a pseudo-scientific anti-Ufologist
could ignore the myriad of detailed investigations of important sightings
that have been published. An excellent sampling of these is included in
the US Government publication “Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects”,
July 29,1968, “Hearings by the House Committee on Science and
Astronautics”.(Ref.6) The 246 page volume includes papers by 12 scientists
covering a wide range of backgrounds. The best paper (71 pages long) is by
Dr. James E. McDonald, which covers 41 cases. The famous RB 47 case
involves detailed testimony from a well trained military crew of 7 flying
a very sophisticated USAF RB-47 aircraft whose encounter with a UFO lasted
almost an hour and was visually observed and by radar on the ground as
well. This is absolutely not a detached incident and certainly not an
anecdote. Of course the pseudo-scientific anti-Ufologists ignore it.
Another important source, also ignored is, Richard Hall’s “The UFO
Evidence” (Ref.7), 1964) and the updated 1999 (Ref.8) version. Of
particular concern is the avoidance, especially by pseudo-scientific anti-Ufologist
astronomers, of the book “The UFO Experience” by Dr. J Allen Hynek (Ref.9)
. After all he was the USAF Project Blue Book scientific consultant for
more than 20 years. He was head of the Astronomy Department at
Northwestern University. He contributed to the Congressional hearings as
well. I suppose it is understandable that the astronomers so enamored with
SETI (the Silly Effort to Investigate) and astrobiology would want to stay
as far away as possible from data indicating the planet is being visited
by aliens, especially when collected by a fellow astronomer. Who would
then need SETI? I discuss this in detail in chapter 5 “The Cult of SETI”
in “Flying Saucers and Science”(Ref.2). Several astronomers, most notably
Phil Plait, who writes a Bad Astronomy column (I agree with some pieces he
has written, not about UFOs) is totally uninformed about the UFO evidence.
They have tried to claim that if aliens were visiting, astronomers would
be expected to see them, but never do. I discuss (Ref.2) their failure to
pay any attention to the surveys showing astronomers, both amateur and
professional, do see UFOs even if they, like most others, are reluctant to
report them; both Hynek and McDonald and Dr. Peter Sturrock, a Stanford
Astrophysicist, discussed sightings by astronomers. It is
pseudo-scientific for a so-called scientist to make false claims and
ignore the very data he claims doesn’t exist, even when published by noted
colleagues..
It is also amusing how often the SETI
cultists bring up the Drake Equation, which supposedly allows one to
determine the number of advanced civilizations in the galaxy. One might as
well use a dartboard with numbers on it. It is not a scientific equation.
People get all kinds of answers because the choices for certain terms are
completely arbitrary and without factual basis. For example, what is the
average life span of a civilization? We have data on one planet in one
solar system. There are a few hundred billion stars in the galaxy. The
Drake Equation assumes no colonization and no migration; this goes along
with the silly assumption that nobody is coming to Earth despite all the
evidence.
The radio astronomers not only assume
nobody is coming, but that some aliens somewhere are sending signals in
our direction to attract our attention and that we are so smart we can
determine what techniques they are using, what frequencies, what kind of
modulation, whether they are analog or digital. If the latter, there is no
way for us to interpret the signals. (Generally if they are using lasers
or gravitational waves or Who knows what, WE KNOW NOTHING)
TRAVEL
The astronomical community has, not surprisingly, a long history of making
totally false pronouncements about flight. After all, there is nothing in
their training or education that gives any professional insight about the
aeronautical and astronautical aspects of flight. The best known American
astronomer of the 19th Century, Dr. Simon Newcomb (1835-1909), had
written: “The demonstration that no possible combination of known
substances, known forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be
united in a practical machine by which man shall fly long distances
through the air, seems to this writer as complete as it is possible for
the demonstration of any physical fact to be.”
He was so prominent and highly respected
that his funeral was attended by numerous dignitaries including the
President of the United States; his expertise involved the making of
accurate determinations of the positions of the heavenly bodies and
mathematical procedures for using that data for navigation and related
problems. None of this has anything to do with flight. The first sustained
powered flight be the Wright brothers took place only 2 months later.
They, and others, had made numerous measurements determining the influence
of various factors on lift and drag.
In the course of preparing Chapter 2 (“You
Can Get Here from There” of “Flying Saucers and Science”(Ref.2) and while
working on a new book “But It’s Impossible” with my co-author Kathleen
Marden, I ran across numerous false or pseudo-scientific claims about
flight in the atmosphere and then in space by smart people who didn’t know
what they were talking about. These savants said it would be impossible to
fly across the ocean, to sink a battleship with a bomb dropped from an
airplane, to go faster than the speed of sound, etc. The attacks on the
feasibility of space flight also showed ignorance. For example, Dr.
Alexander Bickerton in a paper presented to the British Association for
the Advancement of Science in 1926 showed that because our best explosive
had only 1/10th the energy per pound required to move at orbital velocity,
that it would be impossible to give anything sufficient energy to place it
in orbit,. He obviously didn’t know that other chemical combinations give
more energy per pound in a rocket and are easier to use than explosives.
He also neglected the small detail that it is the payload that needs to go
into orbit, not the propellant. Another astronomer Dr. John Campbell of
Canada in 1941 scientifically (really pseudo-scientifically) calculated
the required initial launch weight for a rocket able to get a man to the
moon and back as a million tons. Less than 30 years later, 3 men were sent
to the moon with a chemical rocket whose initial launch weight was all of
3000 tons. To say he didn’t know what he was talking about would be a
gross understatement.
He made a host of really inappropriate
(stupid would be a better word) assumptions that he wouldn’t have made if
he had studied research papers that had been published years earlier. He
assumed a single stage rocket, limited to 1-G acceleration, providing all
the energy for the trip, launched vertically, requiring a retrorocket to
slow it down when returning, and assuming a very low exhaust velocity for
the propellant. The engineers responsible for planning our lunar
excursions used a multistage rocket, a much higher but appropriate exhaust
velocity, a much higher maximum acceleration, launched from as close to
the equator as possible to the East, and used the earth’s atmosphere to
slow it down upon return, but being sure to get the entry angle correct.
They, of course, used the gravitational field of the moon (hence a launch
window), the rotation of the earth and good sensible engineering.
Launching from near the equator takes advantage of the fact, apparently
unknown to the pseudo-scientists that the earth rotates at about 1000
miles per hour there. The moon also provides some energy, free, if the
timing is right. The atmosphere charges nothing for providing the energy
to slow the rocket down; as a matter of fact all our deep space probes
have used as much cosmic freeloading as possible to reduce the propellant
load. Mother nature can be very helpful.
The British Astronomer Royal, Sir Richard
van der Riet Wooley (1906-1986) made many silly claims about space flight
including when speaking to Time Magazine in 1956 “It’s utter bilge. I
don’t think anybody will ever put up enough money to do such a thing. What
good would it do us? If we spent the same amount of money on preparing
first-class astronomical equipment we would learn much more about the
universe. It is all rather rot.” This was one year before Sputnik, and 13
years before the first manned landing on the moon. Isn’t it ironic that
Astronomy has been so enriched by data obtained by such extraordinary
space based observatories as Hubble, Chandra, Fermi, Spitzer and many
more?
I suppose it is safe to say today that most
astronomers recognize that man has indeed gone to the moon and back and
has sent probes past all the planets except Pluto. Some have left the
solar system. In another excellent example of pseudoscience, we have the
statement by Hayden Planetarium director Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson that our
fastest spacecraft, the Voyager would take 70,000 years to go the distance
to the nearest star, 4.3 light years. He said this on the Peter Jennings
ABC TV Mockumentary of February 24, 2005. This is as pseudo-scientific and
misleading as Dr. Campbell’s work. Voyager has no propulsion system on it.
It has been coasting much as a balloon or kite might in the sky or a
bottle tossed into the ocean.
But can we seriously talk about going to
the stars less than 70 years into the space age? Depends, as one might
expect, on the details. The usual objection is to point to Albert
Einstein’s relativity and the conclusion that nothing can go faster than
the speed of light. However, Einstein also noted that the closer one gets
to the speed of light, the more time slows down for things moving that
fast. Sounds crazy, but this crazy notion has been verified. How much
slower time moves for the high speed systems depends on how close one gets
.At 99.9% of the speed of light it only takes 20 months pilot time to go
37 light years. At 99.99 % of the speed of light it would only take 6
months pilot time to go 37 light years . . . and so on. Now at this point
the pseudo-scientists jump in “but relativity also indicates that the
closer one gets to the speed of light, the more one’s mass increases and
the more energy it takes to keep accelerating.” True? Not necessarily. The
pseudo-scientists assume one must be accelerating by carrying along
propellant, which is sent out the back of the rocket. However, if one uses
nuclear fusion reactions such as those between Deuterium (heavy Hydrogen)
and Helium 3 (light Helium), the charged particles produced in these
reactions are born with more than 10 million times as much energy per
particle as they can get in a chemical rocket. They are not “accelerated”
by the rocket, but are born that way and electromagnetically shipped out.
Furthermore it also takes no energy to take advantage of the gravitational
acceleration by massive bodies such as the moon, the sun, Jupiter, nearby
stars, very dense black holes, maybe even twin neutron stars as suggested
by Physicist Freeman Dyson. Be in the right place at the right time.
The devil is in the details. At Aerojet
General Nucleonics in the early 1960s we did a serious study for the USAF
on deep space fusion propulsion systems using D-He-3. Reports and papers
were written and published such as Ref. 10. Naturally the pseudo-scientist
anti-Ufologists never reference these studies. In my 1999 MUFON
Paper,“Star Travel? YES!” I gave more details and also noted the problems
with pseudo-scientist-anti-Ufologist “Dr. Lawrence Krauss.”
The debunkers don’t even reference the
successful ground testing of a number of nuclear fission rockets in the
1960s by Westinghouse Astro-nuclear Laboratory, Aerojet General, and Los
Alamos Scientific Laboratory. The most powerful one was the Phoebus 2B of
LASL which was less than 7’ in diameter and operated at a power level of
4400 Megawatts.. twice the energy output of Grand Coulee Dam. Do they
really think chemical rockets are the ultimate? Are they still using slide
rules for their scientific computations (not that I am sure any do any
SC)?
It seems to me that every advanced
civilization will determine that its star produces its energy by nuclear
fusion. We tested the first successful fusion device, a bomb, of course,
in late 1952 in the Pacific. It produced the same explosive energy release
as exploding 10 million tons of TNT. It created a fireball diameter of 3
miles. By comparison the biggest non-nuclear bombs dropped during WW 2
were 10-ton blockbusters. The Soviets later actually exploded a fusion
weapon releasing the energy of 57 million tons of TNT. Remember that we
Earthlings only figured out fusion as the energy producing process in the
stars in 1938. Surely other civilizations figured out Nuclear fusion long
before we did.(A thousand or million or billion years ago??) They probably
also figured out something much more powerful a long time ago. One
suggestion might be that they noted that as one goes from the big atom to
the small nucleus, the size goes way down, but the energy goes way up per
particle. This sounds crazy, but is not. What if we figure out how to get
inside the small quarks of which neutrons, protons, etc are made? Will the
energy go way up per particle?
It is almost laughable how silly some of
the reactions are to these scientific facts. For example, UK debunker
Peter Brookesmith in a review (Ref.11) of FSS claimed that sure the mass
increases, but people would hardly be able to move their bodies, lift
their arms etc. This is nonsense. The change in mass occurs from the
viewpoint of the observer not the high speed person.
Perhaps I better add that hydrogen and
helium are the lightest and most abundant elements in the universe, which
means they can be found wherever one is going. That is not true of uranium
used in fission systems.
Another sticky wicket to some people is to
assume that one would accelerate half way out to a target star and then
decelerate the other half, all the while carrying all the propellant
needed for the round trip. Obviously when one drives from Fredericton to
Miami, one refuels along the way rather than carrying all the fuel for the
trip from the beginning. One doesn’t keep the gas pedal to the floor;
incidentally at 1G acceleration, it only takes a year to get close to the
speed of light. Some have suggested in campus classes that I have
conducted that it would take a decade, century, or millennium. A Nobel
Prize winning Physicist, Dr. Edward Purcell, assumed accelerating at 1 G
for 5 light years and then decelerating for 5 years and repeating the
pattern in reverse to get home (from a star 10 light years away) and of
course carrying all the fuel for the whole trip from the start. Not much
payload fraction for such an absurd trip profile. This is the equivalent
of assuming that a 747 keeps at full throttle when it gets to altitude
instead of going into cruise mode. And of course it refuels when it lands.
Many military planes refuel on the fly for most long missions. How many
alien fuel storage stations are out there? Maybe like the coaling stations
set up by England to facilitate ocean crossings a century ago!
SAUCERS COULDN’T CRASH
Another silly assumption is that it would be ridiculous to suggest that
very sophisticated spacecraft from another solar system could possibly
crash. Let us, of course, ignore the tragic loss of TWO space shuttles. I
try, not always so gently, to point out that crashes occurring near
Roswell and Aztec
(in New Mexico), Varginia in Brazil, seem to involve relatively small
craft as opposed to the huge “mother ships” observed for example in the
JAL Case on November 17, 1986, over Alaska or the Yukon Case of December
11, 1996. and so ably investigated by engineer Martin Jacek.. A useful
analogy here is that different systems are designed for different
environments. The US Navy operates massive nuclear fission powered
aircraft carriers, which can run for 18 years without refueling. Each
carries about 75 very much smaller non-nuclear powered jets, which can fly
for a few hours at most. Different environments, and one has different
systems. The space between stars is very different than that in the
vicinity of a planet with an atmosphere and a high gravitational field.
and heating and drag.
Some have demanded how could such an
advanced tech system possibly crash. I point out that unexpected events
and circumstances have often caused aircraft and rocket accidents. How
about a sudden lightning and hailstone storm? How about bird strikes,
pilot error, unexpected radio or radar signals, that interfered with
navigation or propulsion systems?
ACCELERATION LIMITS
Over and over again pseudo-scientific anti-Ufologists claim that the
reported acceleration of flying saucers is far more than man can stand.
“It is impossible” they shriek. One silly book (Ref.12) even claimed that
when one gets to 9 G-s one dies!. Sure, if one slams into a brick wall or
much of anything else while being accelerated at 9Gs. But properly trained
and constrained (seat belts etc) and with the force acting in the proper
direction with reference to the body, one can stand quite high
accelerations. For example, pilots can perform a tracking task while being
accelerated at 14Gs for 2 minutes. That is about 300 miles per hour per
second,. Astronauts are launched on their back because they can stand much
more acceleration back to front than foot to head. The escape rocket on
the Apollo Lunar excursion module would provide 13Gs in the event of a
quick escape because of a fire down below. Colonel John Paul Stapp
(1910-1999) once withstood 41Gs when a rocket sled very rapidly slowed
down from 620mph in less than a second, and lived to tell the tale.
Properly constrained one can stand 30Gs for 1 second.. That is 600 miles
per hour per second. Obviously it may be that aliens create artificial
gravity and are not accelerated in their reference system.
NATIONAL SECURITY and UFOs
The pseudo-scientists claim that secrets can’t be kept, that there would
no reason to keep secret the recovery of a crashed saucer or alien
visitations and that they would, using their own protocol, immediately
make the world aware of the most important discovery of all time reception
by a SETI specialist of a an alien signal.. What would be the big deal,
except to improve their funding, of a reception of a possibly intelligent
signal from a star hundreds of light years away?.. I suppose if it said
“arriving in 2011 your time frame,. Please prepare dinner for 175 and
arrange for a guided tour. No need to RSVP” that might be useful. Do they
really expect the signal would help us solve our problems? Would we pay
any attention if they said your birth rate is too high, you are destroying
your planet, you need to learn to live at peace with each other, your
religions are based on myths that we created…. We give you 10 years to
straighten up,” that might be useful, but the presence and observation of
high performance craft in our atmosphere not only tells us we are not
alone, but might lead to better military systems for flight, for attack,
for defense, for reconnaissance. The best systems for monitoring flight
performance would be airborne or space borne and would produce data that
is born classified. Wouldn’t any country with access to such technology
want to keep it for themselves and not want to make their enemies aware?
The Brits developed radar around 1938. They fooled the Germans into
thinking they had no radar for the entire war . . . very important for
winning the battle of Britain. They didn’t share it. They broke the German
enigma codes; should they have announced that? It took 25 years for that
little detail to be released after the war was over. The first nuclear
chain reaction (leading to fission reactors and atomic bombs) was in
December 1942. Should the US have published a paper about it? We had
broken the Japanese codes. Should that have been published?
In Chapter 4 “The Cosmic Watergate” of FSS
I note several multibillion dollar, multi year development programs
conducted in secret for long periods of time. The SETI people are
delighted as they should be with Paul Allen’s 35 million dollar
contribution to the Hat Creek Observatory. A single B-2 bomber cost more
than 2 billion dollars. I keep reminding people who think of research as
being conducted at universities by a small group of professors and a bunch
of graduate students who are very anxious to publish lest they perish,
that way back in 1958, I was working as a nuclear physicist at the General
Electric Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Department near Cincinnati. We
employed 3500 people full time of whom 1100 were engineers and scientists.
We spent $100,000,000 that year. That was a great deal of money in 1958.
The test data were all classified. And that wasn’t a “Black” program.
MOTIVATIONS FOR VISITATIONS
I am truly shocked by claims that there would be no good reason for alien
visitors to come here or to be frightened of us Earthlings. I have an
entire chapter in FSS about what is special about Earth and why aliens
would of course be interested in coming here, besides the simple fact that
we provide many opportunities for thesis research on a primitive society
(us) whose major activity is clearly tribal warfare. Have we forgotten
that we destroyed 1700 cities and killed 50 million Earthlings during WW 2
and that many millions more have been killed since? I would bet that we
would be able to go to the stars before 2l00 using new developments in
nuclear propulsion. Everybody in the neighborhood would rightfully be
concerned. We also have a plethora of natural resources that may have been
used by them for millennia. An awful lot of people traveled difficult
journeys during the 19th century in search of gold to California, Alaska,
Australia.. We spend 10s of billions of dollars on defensive and offensive
weapons and on elaborate reconnaissance activities on the ground, in the
air, and in space…. To make sure nobody will surprise us with an attack.
Remember Pearl Harbor? The United States alone has tested 331 nuclear
weapons. Peaceful Planet??
Are Earthlings peaceful? Every new frontier
is a new place to do battle. Of course others in the neighborhood would be
worried about us with our advanced nuclear destruction technology. We are
not talking slingshots vs. laser weapons. It is easy to forget that the
rate of the new development of advanced military technology has been
exponential, mostly because of the enormous a expenditures that have been
made, despite all the starvation. Look at the changes in just the past 62
years since Roswell. Earthlings can go much faster, and higher now than
ever before at least in the past several thousand years. Think of lasers,
microwaves, DNA, incredible devices for storing information, manipulating,
and transmitting it. Think of Terabyte hard drives, cell phones, the
internet, etc . . ..
PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS
It is very interesting, and distressing to look at debunkerdom. Basically
it is based on several underlying assumptions:
1.
There cannot be any alien visitors to Earth.
2.
Governments cannot keep secrets.
3.
There is no scientific data about flying
saucers. Only anecdotal tales from uneducated observers. Please ignore the
PhD Theses.
4.
People are notoriously poor observers . . .
except, of course, when we depend on their testimony to make
identification. He must have been observing Venus because the
characteristic behavior and location, as described by the witness, point
to Venus.
5.
There is no need for collection of
large-scale studies because, after all, there are none.
6.
There is certainly no physical evidence, so
we can neglect the so-called physical trace cases,(Ted Phillips has
collected several thousand cases from almost 90 countries) the radar
visual cases, photographs that can withstand careful investigation.
7.
The best way to investigate UFO sightings is
to repeat the explanations of other debunkers. Proclaim, don’t
investigate. Spreading the word, wrong though the explanations might be,
is an effective way to suppress reportage and investigation by open minded
people.
8.
Always cast doubt upon the honesty and
capability of witnesses and serious investigators alike. Whenever possible
use such terms as believers, buffs, profit seekers, paranormal., new age.
RE ROSWELL
If at all possible, don’t mention that the military group involved; the
509th, was the most elite military group in the world having dropped
atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and two more at Operation
Crossroads in the Pacific in 1946. Avoid the testimony of retired General
Thomas Jefferson DuBose as to the instructions he received as Chief of
Staff to General Roger Ramey head of the 8th Air Force from Ramey’s boss,
General Clements McMullen“—cover it up, send some wreckage here, don’t
talk about it again”.
Ignore the fact that Major Jesse Marcel,
was the intelligence Officer of the 509th,the only atomic bombing outfit
in the world and the first military man to collect wreckage from the
debris field. Ignore the testimony of Colonel Jesse Marcel Jr. Medical
doctor, flight surgeon,, helicopter pilot with 225 combat flying hours in
Iraq and somebody who handled wreckage in 1947. Ignore the testimony of
William Brazel (son of the rancher Mack Brazel) who also handled wreckage.
Ignore the testimony of 27 first hand witnesses on the DVD “Recollections
of Roswell” (Ref.13). Don’t mention that Colonel Blanchard, base
commander, went on to be a 4 star General and Vice Chief of Staff of the
USAF.
Focus on the Roswell Daily Record of July
9,1947; ignore the many front page stories across the country from Chicago
West on July 8, published before rancher Brazel had been reprogrammed..
Claim that witnesses came running to me and
Bill Moore, Don Schmitt, Tom Carey, and Kevin Randle seeking attention,
when in fact we all spent a huge amount of time and money seeking them
out.
Claim, as the head of the Committee for
Skeptical Inquiry has on several occasions, that nothing happened, but an
inexperienced public relations man put out an unauthorized press story to
garner attention. In summary “Don’t bother us debunkers with the facts,
our minds are made up”. This is pseudoscience.
Re THE BETTY AND BARNEY HILL CASE
Constantly claim that Betty and Barney only saw a bright light in the sky,
everything that came out under hypnosis is suspect. Claim Barney only
repeated the stuff of Betty’s dreams since she was always telling him
about them. Don’t mention the strange spots on their car, or the warts on
his groin, or the analysis of Betty’s dress, . The missing time is only
because they got lost on the country roads, Barney must have watched a
special TV program. Betty was a UFO buff before her so called abduction.
Sources are never given for these outlandish claims. The facts indicate
that Betty and Barney saw the flying object FROM within a few hundred
feet. Barney using binoculars saw beings behind a double row of windows.
The object was seen in front of the moon (strange behavior for Jupiter)
all without hypnosis. As a direct comparative analysis by Kathleen Marden
in “Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience” (Ref.14), shows,
Barney’s testimony did not match Betty’s dreams, and on and on. Numerous
debunkers have picked up on the false claims despite their being made up.
Pseudoscience is once again in the forefront.
PERSONAL
Then of course there are the personal attacks. I have been told that I was
only in Ufology for the money. “Why do you say that?” “I see you on a host
of TV programs”.
“I don’t get paid for them”.
“Really? Not even Larry King?”
“ No.. I spend 2 days of my life to go to Los Angeles; they put me up at a
hotel and cover transportation. They don’t provide meals or money for them
and there is no fee.”
“Oh.. But you get publicity for your books.”
“Yes, and why not? They make a lot of money by selling commercials.”
At one point Wikipedia had an article claiming I had only worked on paper
studies in industry. I did a lot of expensive experiments while working in
industry on a number of large budget programs. I guess they don’t count.
CONCLUSION
If one makes an appropriately objective and careful examination of the pro
and anti-UFO arguments, one finds that the evidence is overwhelming that
Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled vehicles of
extraterrestrial origin and that only pseudo-scientific arguments of a
vocal but small group of debunkers stand in the way of reaching that
conclusion.. along with a fear of ridicule for being logical. Take
courage. I have had only 11 hecklers at more than 700 lectures and 2 of
them were drunk.
REFERENCES
1.Project Blue Book Special Report
Number 14 1955, Battelle Memorial Institute for the USAF. 246 Charts,
Tables, maps and graphs. $25. including shipping from Stan Friedman, UFORI,
POB 958, Houlton, ME 04730-0958.. or paypal at website
2.Friedman, Stanton T. Flying Saucers and Science, New Page Division of
Career Press, Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, 320pages, 2008. $19. from UFORI,
or Paypal including priority mail, Autographed
3. Condon, Edward U. Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects
Bantam Press, New York, 1969, 965 pages
4. AIAA UFO Subcommittee UFO: A Scientific Appraisal of the Problem
Astronautics and Aeronautics 8:11, l970, p.49
5. Clancy, Susan Kidnapped: Why People Come to Believe They have been
Kidnapped by Aliens, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2000
6. House Committee on Science and Astronautics Symposium on UFOS, July 29,
1968
7.Hall, Richard The UFO Evidence 1964, NICAP, Washington, D.C.
8. Hall, Richard The UFO Evidence Vol. 2. A Thirty Year Report, Scarecrow
Press, Lanham, MD 2003
9.Hynek, J. Allen The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, Henry Regnery,
Chicago,1972
10. Luce, John S. Controlled Fusion Propulsion, Proceedings of the third
Symposium on Advanced Propulsion Concepts. Vol. 1 Gordon and Breach
Science Publishers, 1963pp 343-380
11. Brookesmith, Peter “Review of Flying Saucers and Science”, Fortean
Times FT 243, December 2008,p.61
12. Faughn, Jerry S. and Karl F. Kuhn Physics for People Who Think They
Don’t Like Physics, Saunders, Philadelphia, l976
13. Recollections of Roswell, DVD, 105 Minutes, $20. including shipping
from UFORI or via Paypal
14. Friedman, Stanton T. and Kathleen Marden Captured!The Betty and Barney
Hill UFO Experience Career Press, Franklin Lakes NJ 2007, 319p. $18.99
including Priority Mail , from UFORI, or via PayPal From Website.
Autographed by both authors
Stanton T. Friedman:
fsphys@rogers.com
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