All vegetables are disgusting. I eat them because I have to, because they are healthy, not because I want to.

JadedSkywalker said:

TNG made Klingon’s space Vikings.

I do remember some of the complaints around this a long time ago.

I have always liked the idea, to be honest. But perhaps it is due to the fact that I watched The Next Generation first, and was therefore introduced to the Klingons through their The Next Generation portrayal. The same applies to the Borg Queen. The concept never bothered me, but I think it is due to the fact that I watched First Contact (and the other movies) before The Next Generation, and was therefore introduced to the Borg through their First Contact portrayal.

THE LOGICAL TRICKERY OF THE UFO SKEPTIC

By Brian Zeiler

Skeptics in the scientific community resist the evidence for extraterrestrial visitation because of the implications it raises and the questions it begs. But should the integrity of the determination rely on the implications of a positive classification? Or should the classification of true or false be assessed in isolation from the implications? Which is worse — a false positive, meaning ruling in favor of the UFO as a unique phenomenon when in fact it does not exist, or a false negative, meaning ruling against it and missing out on its true existence? The answer, of course, lies in the incentive structure of the analyst. An equally intelligent non-scientist has no incentive nor predisposition to favor one type of error over the other, but scientists do. For scientists, it would open a whole new confounding problem domain, and it would make them look incompetent in the public’s eyes for missing out on this fact for 50 years.

That is why the incentive structure of contemporary scientists is such that they will not accept alien visitation unless they must — meaning when they get irrefutable physical proof. Their incentive structure prohibits them from making any such inference unless it is unavoidable, and they will strain the boundaries of logic and reason to no end to dismiss all evidence other than physical proof, no matter how powerful it may be. This scientific predisposition toward disbelief, rooted not in science and logic but rather in dogma and paradigm, brings us to the logical trickery of the scientific UFO debunker.

WHAT EXACTLY IS “EXTRAORDINARY”?

First, the scientific debunker will say that because alien visitation is an extraordinary claim, it thus demands extraordinary proof. Therefore, no evidence is suggestive of alien visitation unless it is accompanied by irrefutable physical proof — even if the observations directly indicate, within normal scientific evidential standards, the presence of a solid object under intelligent control with propulsion technology beyond human understanding. No matter how directly the observations indicate an anomalous vehicle of non-human origin, skeptics maintain that a prosaic explanation must be adopted unless physical proof is obtained. But such a stance, rigid beyond the normal standards of scientific methodology, is a direct product of the incentive structure, not of logic, as indicated above. Normal standards of science would require meeting the evidential threshold for each of the above conditions necessary to establish extraterrestrial origin; yet the same degree of evidence for physical substance is rejected for anomalous vehicles when it would otherwise be accepted for observations of more conventional vehicles.

Thus, the debunkers have failed to define the boundary of extraordinariness, which renders the declaration logically specious due to its wholly arbitrary implementation that is easily contaminated by individual and collective incentives. They exploit the arbitrary classification of “extraordinary” by applying absurdly rigid evidential boundaries to cases that clearly feature anomalous, physical vehicles that humans could not have built. Instead of assessing the case for physical substance on its own merits with the radar-visual observations, they merely apply a priori probabilities of nearly zero to the detection of anomalous vehicles, with no logical defensibility in the face of insufficient information to estimate the a priori probability, and therefore give themselves license to reject all evidence of any quality unless a physical specimen is obtained.

For instance, if SETI receives an anomalous repeating signal with intelligent content, such as a mathematical constant, and rules out all known causes of terrestrial and deep-space interference, do they need a chunk of the alien radio dish or a dead alien to attribute it to alien origin? It would be just as easy to apply UFO-skeptic logic and insist that the signal is nothing more than anomalous until we obtain physical proof of aliens; after all, why ascribe a radio signal to alien origin before we have physical proof of the existence of aliens? After all, we cannot rule out malfunction, fraud, or human error with 100% certainty, so the simplest explanation is an undetected flaw, not an alien message. Right? Or is it really just the case that the a priori probability assumed by scientists of alien radio detection is higher than that assumed for atmospheric detection? Is this a priori probability differential between radio versus atmospheric detection logically defensible? Or do we lack sufficient information to make anything but a wild guess, a guess contaminated by incentive, dogma, and mere habit?

Why do so many scientists, including Tipler and Fermi, argue that interstellar travel would be feasible for advanced civilizations whose productivity growth has created such vast wealth that journeys are less expensive than they would be for us humans? Do we know what alien energy resource stocks are? Even right now, we have the technology to mount a journey at 10% of the speed of light and arrive at the nearest star in 40 years. How “extraordinary” is it to consider that, several billion years ago, one culture might have mounted a gradual expedition that took them to our solar system and many others? We sure do not know whether this is “extraordinary” or the natural outcome of technological advancement, but many scientists wish to believe, simply due to heavily entrenched ideologies with absolutely no basis in logic nor fact, that such interstellar expansions are far less likely than the human interception of alien radio signals. So just what is “extraordinary,” aside from a word referring to a claim for which extremely low a priori probabilities of truth are applied? I consider extraordinary a claim that undermines fundamental precepts of physics. Alien visitation does not do this. And no matter the difficulty as we perceive it, interstellar travel does not violate the laws of physics. Neither do aliens. Therefore, alien visitation does not violate the laws of physics, nor does it require a straining of credible probabilistic expectations. We simply do not know how likely it is. And that is hardly a strong case for considering alien visitation an “extraordinary claim.”

Nevertheless, skeptics will insist on applying to alien visitation an a priori probability of nearly zero for some strange reason. Interestingly, many scientists, such as Fermi and Tipler, were skeptical of both UFOs and of alien life in general; they contended that interstellar travel would be easy for advanced civilizations, so the lack of overt contact disproved alien existence. Yet most UFO skeptics do believe alien life exists out in the universe — just not here. So they defend the near impossibility of interstellar travel, which contradicts a considerable portion of the scientific community. This a priori probability allows them to reject evidence arbitrarily that would otherwise confirm the presence of a solid object under intelligent control with propulsion irreproducible by human technology. For instance, when a certain degree of corroboration of physical substance for an airplane is obtained for an unconventional disk-shaped vehicle, this degree of evidence is accepted for the airplane but rejected for the anomalous vehicle. The only way to do this is to apply a priori probabilities of nearly zero to the detection of such an anomalous object. The problem, of course, is that, first of all, we do not have enough information to defend a low a priori probability, and second of all, this approach guarantees the automatic rejection of normal avenues of evidence. Effectively, what the skeptics are saying is that radar evidence is too “ordinary” to suffice for an “extraordinary” claim. They succeed in eliminating from review all types of indirect and direct evidence, except for physical proof.

This type of logic can be successfully applied to any claim. For instance, let us declare that dinosaurs are an extraordinary claim. This declaration requires no logical substantiation — just the way skeptics use their nearly zero a priori probability of extraterrestrial visitation to declare the claim extraordinary with no logical defense whatsoever, given the insufficient information to determine this probability. So, we have declared dinosaurs to be an extraordinary claim. The next step is to reject all fossil evidence for dinosaurs, since fossils are only acceptable for ordinary claims such as woolly mammoths; for extraordinary dinosaur claims, fossils are worthless. What we need, as dinosaur skeptics, is physical proof of an intact dinosaur. And, to make it even more similar to the skeptic approach, we do not need to defend the rationale of the demand for physical proof of dinosaurs; the fact that it is an extraordinary claim allows us to demand the very upper boundary of conceptually feasible modes of proof — but conceptual feasibility does not translate into practical feasibility. Sure, I can demand physical proof, but will I get it? Is it worth ignoring fossil evidence while I wait for physical proof?

We could extend the analogy further by applying more skeptic logical tricks. For instance, dinosaur articles are published in journals that already believe in dinosaurs; therefore, they are biased and one-sided, and hardly representative of truly critical peer review. We could assert that all fossils are best explained as hoaxes, misidentifications of known and unknown geological processes, and hallucinations and/or misinterpretations by overzealous paleontologists imposing their belief system on an anomalous rock. This, I can contend, is the “simplest explanation,” and I do not have to worry about using overly strenuous logic because, in the absence of physical proof of dinosaurs, any explanation is simpler — no matter how contrived and convoluted! This is the essence of the scientific rejection of UFO evidence: an overwhelming need to disbelieve coupled with a shameful lack of research into the actual evidence.

THE DEMAND FOR PHYSICAL PROOF

If aliens were visiting, I find the expectation of physical proof quite illogical, since it is going to be hard to obtain. In fact, it may even be impossible. But the skeptics do not mind, since they have already decided to disbelieve until they obtain the highest conceivable level of proof. In the discussion above, it was noted that anybody can apply this logic by insisting that dinosaurs should not be accepted until we find an intact, frozen, preserved dinosaur with the flesh still on the bones. And if that is impossible — well, too bad. Is it rational to reject fossils the way skeptics reject radar-visual cases and ground-trace cases, and then demand a preserved dinosaur specimen the way skeptics demand an alien and/or vehicle specimen? I contend that physical proof is an unattainable evidential boundary that guarantees rejection of the hypothesis of extraterrestrial origin.

Despite the table-pounding insistence by skeptics on physical proof, they have simply not been able to defend this demand — one which is far beyond the scientific rigor that standard scientific methodology would require. The UFO evidence has satisfied the evidential threshold of normal scientific protocols; unfortunately, the evidence has been rejected by dogmatic, specious demands for physical proof. For all these demands for physical proof, the skeptics have not been able to meet any of the following logical criteria necessary to defend the imposition of this arbitrary evidential threshold:

• How can one declare a claim to be extraordinary without sufficient information to defend a low a priori probability?
• Are there degrees of extraordinariness?
• How does one relate a degree of extraordinariness to a fair and reasonable evidential threshold?
• What is it about extraterrestrial visitation that implies the availability of physical proof?
• How can we obtain physical proof?
• How can an evidential threshold be imposed with no logical defensibility nor any rational expectation of actually meeting such a stringent threshold?

OCCAM’S RAZOR AND THE SKEPTICS

The UFO skeptics do not understand Occam’s Razor, and they abuse it regularly. They think they understand it, but they do not. What it means is that when several hypotheses of varying complexity can explain a set of observations with equal ability, the first one to be tested should be the one that invokes the fewest number of uncorroborated assumptions. If this simplest hypothesis is proven incorrect, the next simplest is chosen, and so forth. But the skeptics forget two parts: the part regarding the test of the simpler hypotheses, and the part regarding explaining all of the observations. What a debunker will do is mutilate and butcher the observations until they can be “explained” by one of the simpler hypotheses, which is the inverse of the proper approach. The proper approach is to alter the hypothesis to accommodate the observations. One should never alter the observations to conform with a hypothesis by saying:

“If we assume the object was not physical, despite the level of evidence that would imply the solidity of a conventional aircraft with near-certainty, then we can also assume the object was not moving, was not exhibiting the color orange, was not 50 feet in diameter as described, and then declare that it was really Venus.”

But that is okay for the skeptics to do, because it is an “extraordinary claim” being made that deserves to be explained away in a Machiavellian fashion as rapidly as possible, with the urgent zeal of a religious missionary. Now, to alter observations to force conformance with the preferred hypothesis — is that science? Or is that dogma? The answer, of course, is dogma. This practice is extremely poor science, and the approach undermines the very spirit of scientific inquiry. It is simply unacceptable to alter the observations that refuse to conform with the predetermined, favored explanation.

THE ETH AND FALSIFIABILITY

While a more thorough discussion of the formulation and potential falsification of the ETH can be found on the ETH page, one particular aspect is worthy of note as another logical trick. The skeptics complain that the ETH is not falsifiable, which is a condition that violates a necessary component of hypothesis formulation. This is not true, as explained on the ETH page. However, even if it were true, the skeptics fail to realize that their beloved SETI hypothesis of alien radio signal detection can be said to be non-falsifiable! Does a lack of detection disprove the hypothesis that aliens are beaming mathematical constants at us? Certainly not, since our equipment may not be strong enough to detect them. It has been 30 years since SETI’s beginnings, with absolutely no positive results whatsoever, yet the non-falsifiability allows the preservation of the project with hopes as high as ever.

SCIENCE VS. SKEPTICISM

Skeptics are skilled propagandists who appeal to base emotions just like seasoned politicians. Skeptics like to wrap themselves in the robe of science, declaring that their approach and conclusions are “scientific,” in just the same way that a politician will cloak himself in the mantle of “family values” and “doing what’s right for America.” But is skepticism really as scientific as the skeptics want people to believe? As has been explained throughout this essay, the clear answer is no. Their logical reasoning is rife with fallacies, from their arbitrary declaration of a claim as being extraordinary to their specious demand for physical proof, to their abuse of Occam’s Razor, to their erroneous complaints about hypothesis falsification. So why do they claim that they are the real scientific side?

Skeptics are mostly scientists, but that certainly does not mean they behave scientifically, as has been explained. Their behavior stems partially from their distaste for public opinions that contradict the consensus of the scientific community. When a public consensus does contradict the scientific opinion, scientists will mount a public campaign to discredit this opinion because such an opinion undermines the role of the scientist in society as the appointed knowledge-seeker and truth-gatherer. What good are scientists if mankind will only insist on believing in warm, fuzzy superstitions anyway? So, these scientists who are guilty of the logical infractions exposed in this essay are so consumed with the presumed validity of their opinions that, like zealous religious fanatics, they must convert the masses to the side of truth in order to salvage their own self-image.

The second stimulus of pseudoscientific skepticism is that these scientists, who do not represent all scientists but rather a rogue band of propagandists, feel that science is about the mastery of nature. When nature introduces an anomaly — a violation of expectation — to science, the anomaly must be crushed. How dare nature violate science’s laws and principles! The anomaly is supposed to indicate an incomplete framework or incorrect a priori assumptions, yet to the skeptical propagandists, it indicates misbehavior by nature that cannot be allowed to undermine their role in society. The anomaly is a threat to the validity of their work, so they must wish it away, convince themselves through wild logical fallacies that the anomaly does not exist, and return the public back toward the truths of nature that are approved by the scientific community. This tendency only changes when it becomes more work to deny the anomaly than to accept it; sadly, with UFOs, this is not likely to occur, because the scientific community will never deal with UFO reports.

CONCLUSION

The scientific community has vociferously resisted the acceptance of anomalies for centuries, with the Copernican Revolution being the most notable historical example. They threaten the paradigm and disturb the equilibrium. They undermine the community’s self-perception of usefulness and value to society by threatening to destroy the assumptions behind their work. For the purposes of emotional well-being, they will be protested and debunked until they can no longer be denied; with UFOs, the breaking point will be physical proof. Yet, as this essay demonstrated, the criterion of physical proof is a product of anomaly resistance rather than a rational assessment of a priori probabilities or a rational interpretation of evidence. Instead of applying fallacious reasoning to the evidence, applying normal scientific standards to the UFO evidence would long ago have enabled the scientific community to embrace the ETH.

Original Source: https://nicap.org/papers/zeiler2.htm

Hal 9000 said:

Did all the humans in Star Wars have a common ancestor on a planet or did at least some of them develop independently?

In the Expanded Universe, it is explained that humans originated on Coruscant, and that the Rakatan Empire — which conquered almost the entire galaxy and used to enslave many species — frequently transported humans from one planet to another for slave labour. As a result, humans became widely dispersed, and by the time the Republic was founded, many planets were already inhabited by them. I personally find this explanation very compelling, because it makes a great deal of sense.

One of the things I love about Star Wars is that, no matter what your personal preferences are, you can always have a laugh when watching some silly video or parody. Whether you like the Prequels or not, you can still enjoy a YouTube Poop or a comedic take on them, and have a good laugh. The same goes for the Sequels — whether you like them or not, you can still laugh when watching a silly spoof about them. For example, I do not like the Sequels at all, but I still loved Star Wars Undercover Boss and laughed a lot when I watched that parody, even though it was based on the Sequels.

I still love The Cosby Show despite what Bill Cosby has done. Personally, I choose to separate Bill Cosby from Cliff Huxtable. For me, they are two entirely different people, as opposite as they could possibly be. I simply cannot reconcile the idea that they are one and the same, so I choose to think of them as if they existed in two parallel universes.

This mental separation is made easier for me due to the fact that I am Italian, and in the Italian-dubbed version of The Cosby Show, Cliff Huxtable is voiced by Ferruccio Amendola. His voice creates a sort of barrier between the real-life Bill Cosby and the fictional Cliff Huxtable. Another thing that helps me separate them is the fact that the name of the show in Italian is completely different. In Italian, the family’s name is not Huxtable, but Robinson. Therefore, the show is called The Robinsons, which means that the name “Cosby” is not even present in the title. It is as if Bill Cosby does not exist in the show at all, and this helps me a lot.

I understand that not everyone is able to separate the art from the artist, and I respect that. However, for me, the voice of Ferruccio Amendola in the Italian dub provides just enough distance to allow me to continue enjoying The Cosby Show for what it meant to me growing up, without the constant reminder of the real-life issues. In my experience, Cliff Huxtable speaks with Amendola’s voice and the name of the family is Robinson. These differences help me maintain a clear distinction between the fictional loving father and the real-life serial rapist, allowing me to continue appreciating the show without feeling conflicted.

Mrebo said:

My edit has been on the back burner but occasionally game out how to address things I want to address.

Changing the podrace announcer was a dream out of my reach but with AI it would be easy.

This is not perfect (link good for 2 days) but it’s pretty good:

https://streamable.com/pgy1og

“This video isn’t available.”

I have been able to get in contact with some of my old friends from the times of Middle School, and we are planning to hang out together, eat a pizza, etc. I have also been able to get in contact with one of my old female classmates from Middle School, and I am trying to slightly approach her. It is working so far, though I have to be careful.

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Design Engineering Conference
George W. Earley
Americana Hotel, New York City
May 15-18, 1967

ABSTRACT: The paper presents an examination of the overall UFO scene during the past 20 years. Several representative unsolved sightings reported in the United States are summarized and the global nature of sighting reports is discussed. Brief mention is made of pre-20th Century sightings. The activities of hoaxers, psychotics and liars are outlined. Attitudes towards sightings and the investigatory efforts of the USAF are examined. Possible explanations of the causes of UFO sightings are summarized and the hypothesis that some UFOs may be extraterrestrial vehicles is advanced. In conclusion, some general suggestions are advanced for more effective studies of the UFO phenomenon.

In opening, I’d like to thank the sponsorsof the Design Engineering Conference for inviting me to New York and giving me the opportunity to speak to you all this evening. My topic is a highly controversial one; and controversy particularly when it grows out of opinions directly opposed to governmental agencies—seems to be a dirty word much too often these days. Now—the things that I have to say, and the things that you all have read and heard about flying saucers will doubtless raise questions in your minds. Fine. I will be happy to answer as many as I can in the time available following my talk.

But first—a word from my sponsor. I am here this evening as a representative of The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, NICAP—a privately supported, non-governmental UFO investigatory organization with headquarters in Washington, D.C. NICAP was formed in 1956 to provide a place where persons could report UFO sightings without being subject to ridicule or harrassment. Aided by its Sub-Committees and Affiliated groups, NICAP endeavors, to the best of its ability, to investigate in a scientific manner UFO reports made to it. Operating funds come from member dues—$5 annually for which the members receive six issues of The UFO Investigator, an 8-page newsletter of current UFO events. In July of 1964, NICAP published The UFO Evidence, a documented study of over 700 UFO cases from NICAP’s files. NICAP membership, over ten thousand at present, encompasses a representative cross section of our population. The Board of Governors and Panel of Special Advisers includes scientists, engineers and professional people in a variety of fields. Many of these men have earned doctorates in their specialty.

In the 20 years since the term came into existence, flying saucers have become a scientific controversy second only to the famed Canals of Mars. And, like the Canals of Mars, the term flying saucer is a misnomer created by the press. On June 24, 1947, while flying his private plane in the vicinity of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, Idaho businessman Kenneth Arnold observed 9 objects flying near Mount Ranier and Mount Adams. “They flew”, Arnold told newsmen, “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” [1] Arnold’s saucers were not disc shaped, but resembled a crescent moon. The press, however, called them flying saucers, and the name stuck. In addition to the disc or saucer shape, other aerial unknowns have been described as having a cigar, rocket, or fuselage-without-wings shape. Arrowheads or flying triangles have also been reported, with Arnold’s crescent shape and a rubber-heel shape also being reported in much less frequency. Because it was felt that the term “flying saucer” was misleading, the Air Force and the majority of other investigatory groups prefer the term Unidentified Flying Objects. A sighting is called a UFO when “the description of the object and its maneuvers could not be fitted into the pattern of any known object or phenomenon.”

Once Arnold’s sighting hit the press wires, other sighting reports began to make the papers. It wasn’t long before people were seeing saucers, hubcaps, sausages, and all manner of peculiar looking aerial objects. About this time, the USAF began to take an interest in flying saucers, but no official conclusion was released until early 1949. Of course individual Air Force officers had voiced opinions, but they had not been representing any official investigatory group. The report released April 27, 1949, stated that 270 sightings had been investigated, including 30 from foreign countries and that 40% could not be explained. Since that time, according to subsequent Air Force press releases, 11,107 sightings have been investigated through December 31, 1966, with about 10% of this total still unidentified.

This, of course, does not take into account innumerable sightings made in foreign countries, as well as sightings made in this country and not reported to the USAF.

I might digress a moment to note that reports of strange aerial phenomena are not peculiar to the post-World War II period. As NICAP staffers Lore and Deneault have shown [2], scores of unexplained sightings were reported prior to the 20th century by astronomers and other scientifically trained observers. However, coming back to the recent past—just what have people reported during the past two decades? How reliable are the sighters? I’ll recap briefly some of the more outstanding sightings.

In 1956 a Navy Super-Constellation transport was flying west across the Atlantic, carrying aircrews returning from overseas duty in Europe. Nearly 30 men were aboard—pilots, navigators, flight engineers. The night was clear, visibility unlimited. The Connie was cruising at 19,000 feet. Next stop, Gander, Newfoundland; final destination, the Naval Air Station at Patuxent, Maryland. Glancing down, the pilot saw a collection of lights where only open seas should be. The radio man reported no signals from below, and that no ships were scheduled to be bunched in the area. Curious, the pilot put the plane into a circle to examine the lights better. As they circled, the lights dimmed, and then they saw several colored rings appear and begin to spread out. It was then noticed that one ring was rushing up toward the plane. The pilot rolled out of his circle and tried to climb away, but the ring outclimbed him, reached their altitude, leveled off, and raced towards them. Then they realized that the ring of light was coming from the rim of a huge disc-shaped object. By this time, all men aboard were wide awake and watching out the windows. The disc raced toward the plane, flipped on edge, and angled past the port wing tip; then slowed, reversed course, and paced the plane off the port wing. The observers agreed that it was about 30 feet thick and 350—400 feet in diameter, with a blurred uneven glow from the rim. The glow was sufficient to show the disc’s curving surface. The pilot held to a straight course, while the disc slowly drew ahead, then tilted upward, accelerated sharply, and was lost in the night sky. The pilot called Gander Airbase at once and asked if they had seen anything on the radar. Gander replied that they had had something on the scope along side the Connie, but that the unknown had not answered radio queries. The time it took the disc to get up to the Connie indicated a speed of 1600 mph or more. The speed it climbed away was estimated at that or greater.

After landing at Gander, all personnel were thoroughly interrogated by Air Force Intelligence personnel. “They asked lots of questions, but gave us no answers,” one Navy man grumbled later. When the Connie finally reached Patuxent Naval Air Station, the air crews were again interviewed, and they furnished Naval Intelligence with written statements as to what they had seen. Several days later the pilot was contacted by a scientist in another government agency who wished to talk to him about his sighting. After getting the necessary clearances, the pilot said okay. The scientist showed up, had the pilot go over his sighting again, and then unlocked a dispatch case, pulled out some photographs, and asked the pilot if the object he had seen resembled any of the pictures. The pilot picked out one as being virtually identical. The scientist thanked him, locked up the pictures again, refused to answer questions and left. The pilot, needless to say, was—and still is—a frustrated and bewildered man. [3]

Here’s a case which occurred near an Air Force missile site. On August 25, 1966, the officer in charge of a North Dakota missile crew, based in a concrete capsule 60 feet underground, suddenly found his radio transmission interrupted by static. At the same time that he was trying to clear up his problem, other AF personnel on the surface reported seeing a UFO—described as a bright red light—apparently alternately ascending and descending. A surface AF radar installation also reported tracking the object at an altitude of 100,000 feet. The report of the base operations director stated “when the UFO climbed, the static stopped. The UFO began to swoop and dive. It then appeared to land ten to fifteen miles south of the area. Missile-site control sent a strike team (well-armed Air Force guards) to check. When the team was about ten miles from the landing site, static disrupted radio contact with them. Five to eight minutes later the glow diminished, and the UFO took off. Another UFO was visually sighted and confirmed by radar. The one that was first sighted passed beneath the second. Radar also confirmed this. The first made for altitude toward the north, and the second seemed to disappear with the glow of red.” [4] Still unsolved, the case is termed by Dr. J. Allen Hynek as “typical of the puzzling cases” he has studied in his 18 years as the Air Force’s scientific consultant on UFOs.

One of the best radar confirmed sightings—so stated by Captain Ed Ruppelt, [5] who headed the Air Force saucer investigations for several years—occurred near Rapid City, South Dakota, the evening of August 12, 1953. The events of that night started out like this. Shortly after dark, a woman spotter of the local Ground Observer Corps rang up the Air Defense Command radar station at Ellsworth AEB just east of Rapid City, and reported an extremely bright light to the northeast. The radar swung to the area the spotter had designated, and picked up a solid blip moving slowly. The heightfinding radar also picked it up and established the UFO at 16,000 feet. The warrant officer on duty at the radar station got a direct wire to the spotter, and they compared notes for about two minutes. In the middle of a sentence, the woman suddenly said that the object was starting to move towards Rapid City. The radar scope confirmed this, and the warrant officer sent two men outside for a visual check. They reported a large bluish-white light moving toward Rapid City. The three groups—the radar people, the outside men, and the woman spotter—watched the UFO make a swift sweep around Rapid City and then return to its original position. The warrant officer then called a jet fighter on patrol and put him on an intercept course. The light was still at l6,OOO feet. The pilot spotted the light visually, and had moved to within three miles of it, when the light took off north towards the Badlands. The pilot followed it 120 miles, with the light staying a couple miles ahead; and then, with fuel running low, the jet returned—with the UFO trailing him!

The jet squadron at the air field then stated that they were scrambling another F-84, with a skeptical combat veteran of World War II and Korea at the controls. Once he was airborne, radar worked him toward the UFO. The pilot quickly reported visual contact, and maneuvered to get above the light. The light headed northeast, with the F-84 behind but several thousand feet above it. The pilot, even though getting radar reports and seeing the light, was still skeptical. Once away from the Rapid City area, he turned off all his lights to see if it was a reflection on his canopy. The light was still there. Next he rolled his plane, to see if some unnoticed ground light was causing it. The light’s position didn’t change. Next he checked its motion against three bright stars—it moved with relation to them. He then figured, if it is real, my gunsight radar should pick it up. He activated his gun cameras, turned on his radar and got a solid blip. At this point he got scared—and remember, this was a man who’d fought Hitler’s best airplanes and tangled with Mig 15’s over Korea. But that large, bright, bluish-white light was more than he cared to chase any longer. He requested and received permission to abandon the chase. The UFO headed off toward Fargo, North Dakota, and a check minutes later showed that spotter posts between Rapid City and Fargo had seen and reported a fast-moving, bluish-white light. So there you are—two serial visuals, an aerial radar lock-on, two ground radar sightings, numerous ground visuals from several locations, and gun camera film which, when developed, showed a blurry object. No details—just a light source.

On April 224, 1964, near Socorro, New Mexico, shortly before 6:00 p.m. local time, Patrolman Lonnie Zamora was chasing a speeding car. [6] Seeing and hearing what he then thought was a dynamite shed exploding, Zamora abandoned the speeder and drove over a rough, dirt road towards the apparent impact spot. Briefly, during his approach, he saw a shiny object about the size of an overturned car. Beside it were two “man-like” figures in white—no details of hands, feet or face were visible. Based on a nearby bush, later measurements indicated that the figures were about 4 and a half—5 feet tall and that the bottom of the object was about the same distance above the ground. Because of intervening hills, Zamora lost sight of the object and when he again had it in view, the figures were gone. Parking about 150 feet away, he began to approach the object on foot when it suddenly began to spew flame from its underside. Believing it was about to explode, he ran the other way. When the noise ceased, he looked back and saw it fly away, narrowly missing a nearby dynamite shed. Investigators from nearby military installations, local police, NICAP representatives, and Air Force investigators from the Air Technical Intelligence Center in Ohio and Northwestern University thoroughly examined the scene. Several depressions, apparently from the object’s four legs, were found and nearby bushes and grass appeared to have been seared by intense heat. Soil samples were taken but no traces of fuel residues were found following laboratory tests. Zamora’s reliability and integrity are unquestioned and the Air Force still carries the sighting as one of an unidentified vehicle. [7]

Of course, these are only four of many similar outstanding UFO sightings from all points in the USA. But sauceritis is not a peculiarly American ailment. Radar reports, visual reports both day and night, and combined radar-visual reports have also been received from British, French, Australian; Italian, Belgian, and other foreign sources. For example, in November of 1962, the Argentine Embassy in Washington, D.C., furnished NICAP with official reports of UFO sightings made by Argentine Navy pilots. Argentine Navy Captain Luis Moreno informed NICAP that the Argentine Navy had been constantly concerned about UFOs for the preceding 10 years. [8] Representative accounts of puzzling foreign sightings can be found in The UFO Evidence as well as in the works of the French mathematician-astronomer Jacques Vallée. [9] And, of course, even the Russians got into the act—they said that saucers were all a capitalistic hoax designed to keep up the production of war material. [10]

As is often the case with sweeping Russian pronouncements, there is a grain of truth in this one—there have been saucer hoaxes. Some have been of the practical joker variety—cardboard or aluminum discs stuffed with junk radio parts and lit up by railroad flares. One man, to win a bet, bought, chloroformed, shaved, and ran over a monkey, which was then passed off—until a vet queered the game—as a man from Mars. Numerous people have claimed contact with space people—some even claim to have ridden in saucers. I know a man near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, who claims that there is a saucer base under the Berkshire mountains. None of these contactees have presented any verifiable proof and most have declined to take lie detector tests. Several hoaxers have gone after money and apparently done pretty well. A few years ago, TRUE magazine reported on Otis T. Carr, a one time elevator operator and hotel night clerk, who has reportedly acquired several hundred thousand dollars from trusting souls who think he has an engine and spaceship that will revolutionize present day propulsion techniques. [11] Frankly, I wish he really did—I’d like to go space travelling myself but based on present day planning, it doesn’t look possible for many years. So, hoaxers, psychotics, and liars-for-a-profit are with us, and have contributed quite a bit to fogging up the UFO question. That, however, is no excuse for failure to conduct a proper investigation.

Now—what has the Air Force done in the field of UFO investigations? The answer is, surprisingly little. There have been innumerable press releases telling of all the studies that have been conducted, of investigations and the like; but when you look closely at the record, you see that very little has really been done. For example, even at the height of the UFO sightings, there were never more than three or four men permanently assigned to investigate UFOs. Investigations were usually made long after a report, and the investigators often seemed more interested in seeing how they could explain away the sightings than in getting all the facts from the witnesses. Airline crews have been accused—anonymously—of being drunk on duty. Radar sightings have been passed off as resulting from temperature inversions, even when weather-bureau records did not bear out such a claim. There have been several instances when UFO sightings have apparently resulted in a rapid and substantial increase in background radioactivity, but the USAF has made no attempt to set up any radiation-detection stations in areas where there have been repeated sightings over the past 14 years. NICAP has offered to sit down with the Air Force and review the reports in NICAP’s files and to publicly correct those disproved by the Air Force. [12] The Air Force, however, refused such joint meetings and insisted that NICAP furnish its data for secret review. Results released following such secret reviews would not include any basis on which to evaluate the validity of the Air Force conclusions. These are but a few examples. The overall record is worse; and speaking as an ex-Air Force officer, I can only say that I have no confidence in the Air Force UFO investigation program to date.

Criticism of the Air Force position, as well as the position held by far too many of his fellow scientists, has recently come from Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the chief civilian consultant on UFO to the Air Force. Dr. Hynek, head of Northwestern University 1st Dearborn Observatory, stated flatly: "No true scientific investigation of the UFO phenomena has ever been undertaken, despite the great volume of hard data… we should put as much effort on one of these puzzling cases as we would on a Brinks robbery or a kidnap case. [13]

In fairness to the Air Force, it should be noted that they are finally coming to realize that their attitude has tarnished their image in the public eye. A civilian scientific review committee was convened in February, 1966, by order, not of the Director of Aerospace Research, but of the Director of Public Information! This civilian scientific panel, while it did not endorse the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors, did make strong recommendations that the Air Force substantially increase its UFO investigatory teams and solicit aid from the scientific community to more adequately examine both future and past UFO reports. [14] NICAP is fully in accord with such recommendations—indeed, a full-scale scientific investigation on a global basis has long been one of our major goals. In Dr. Hynek’s words “Instead of having UFO a synonym for crackpot and ridicule, let’s make it scientifically respectable.” [15] We know that more and more scientists are willing to discuss the subject of UFOs “off the record” but we sincerely hope that more will follow the example set by Dr. Hynek and by NICAP’s own scientific advisers. And, of course, we also hope that the recently begun 15 month study program, funded by the Air Force but to be conducted independently by the University of Colorado, will be the beginning of a full scale, impartial scientific investigation of UFOs. We, quite frankly, see this study as vindication of our long held position that the Air Force investigatory program has been both inadequate and unscientific.

All right—we’ve looked at some reports of UFOs, and some attitudes towards reports. Now, the inevitable questions that arise are, just what are these UFOs and where do they come from? It has been suggested that they are:

2. Secret Russian devices based on German devices obtained after World War II,
3. Secret American devices in the missile and/or aeronautic fields,
4. Misinterpretation of various conventional objects such as stars, planets, birds, weather balloons, insects, meteors, airplanes, vapor trails, etc., etc.
5. Interplanetary spaceships from outside our solar system.

Let’s look at each of these suggestions. The Russian and American origin suggestions can be disposed of together. If the UFOs were of Russian manufacture, this meeting would be sponsored by the Soviet Society of Mechanical Engineers and I’d be a visiting Commissar lecturing on Applied Marxism. And if the UFOs were American—well, we wouldn’t be spending 13 million dollars per day on Project Apollo. After all, the speed and maneuverability displayed by these UFOs calls for propulsion systems far in advance of anything we now have. The entire vehicle represents, in terms of present earthly knowledge, a tremendous technological breakthrough. Such a breakthrough would be quickly reflected in hundreds of allied fields, as well as in fields never dreamed of before. Look at the applications of nuclear energy since 1945—even the most imaginative science fiction writer never dreamed, before Hiroshima, of all the applications that would be found in less than 20 years. The breakthrough required to create a terrestrial UFO would have even more far-reaching effects.

Misinterpretations? These already account for a large number of the many sightings of UFOs. Perhaps 80% of those investigated by the Air Force to date. There’s no denying that many people have been fooled by balloons, meteors, high-flying airplanes, the planet Venus, peculiar vapor trails, and the like—and thought they saw UFOs. Glowing clouds, resulting from chemicals released hundreds of miles in the air by NASA rockets, have caused UFO reports. So have re-entering space satellites as well as oribiting satellites seen under peculiar atmospheric conditions. These, like the other misinterpretations already mentioned, can be readily explained. They do not, however, explain the sightings I spoke of earlier nor do they explain the hundreds of still unsolved reports made to the Air Force, to NICAP, and to other UFO investigatory groups over the past 20 years.

So, we are left with the Interplanetary theory. And when I say “we”, I include not only myself and the majority of the Board of Governors of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, but also many officers of the USAF, innumerable pilots and aircrew men—private and commercial, foreign and domestic—many eminent scientists, missile experts, and just plain people. Speaking for myself, I accepted this theory only after examining the UFO question for over a dozen years. No single sighting report led to my acceptance of this hypothesis, but rather the ever growing accumulation of reports by reliable and trained observers. I have never seen a UFO, but as Dr. J. E. McDonald put it, the idea of extraterrestrial vehicles seems to be “the least unsatisfactory hypothesis for… the intriguing array of credibly reported UFO phenomena that are on record” [16]—reports such as those mentioned earlier in this talk.

Now—regardless of your feelings as to the validity of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, I would hope that we are in general agreement that “something” has been seen and that the recurrence of such reports from reliable observers over the past two decades requires a more extensive investigation than has taken place heretofore.

With that thought in mind, then, I want to conclude by outlining some ideas on what is needed in the way of a more thorough investigation. Let me say too, that these ideas are not just mine but are a synthesis of those of Hynek, [17] Vallée, [18] LeBlanc, [19] the NICAP staff and other sources.

1. Sighting stations should be established on a global basis. These could either be new stations or existing stations, military or scientific, which have been supplied with detailed instructions and instruments to provide for standard observations and records. Photographs, spectrographs, data obtainable by broad band radiation detectors, etc., should be secured if possible.
2. The data on hand, as well as future data secured by field investigations on standardized report forms, should be computerized so that new reports can be rapidly and accurately compared with older reports and trends and patterns in sightings quickly identified.
3. Policemen, civil and military pilots, and others whose jobs keep them outdoors for long periods of time, should be equipped with good cameras and trained in their use. Service or civic clubs could, perhaps, furnish such equipment to their local police.
4. Anthropologists, archeologists and other students of the past should carefully study the legends of ancient peoples to determine if contact with extraterrestrial beings may not have already occurred. Harvard astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan [20] recounts a legend concerned with the rise of the Summerian civilization (4000 B.C.) which is suggestive of such contact and is certainly deserving of further study.
5. Sincere, qualified amateur groups should be encouraged to assist by researching past cases, delving into newspaper files and similar historical documents. Such searches have already turned up much useful data on older sightings; there is little doubt that much more data remains to be dug out. Such research, however, would need to be coordinated by the official group to prevent duplication of effort. Other qualified amateurs, such as ex-military intelligence personnel, could assist in field investigations of current sighting reports. Again, coordination with the official group would be necessary.

Finally, assuming that the efforts outlined above warrant the expense, serious thought should be given to the building of a “saucer trap”, not to “capture” physically but to “trap” information by instruments. Many apparently reliable reports have commented on the seeming “curiosity” of UFOs about the works of man. It would seem possible that a large installation, built with a maximum of clearly visible activity and located in an otherwise barren area, might attract the attention of UFOs. If such an installation were equipped with all manner of detection and recording apparatus capable of covering the entire visible, audible and electromagnetic spectrum a wealth of valuable information might be obtained. All of the above, of course, presupposes a willingness on the part of the scientific community at large to examine the entire UFO question with open minds, devoid, insofar as possible, of emotion charged prejudgment that the entire subject is “utter bilge”. [21] It is the hope of all of us in NICAP that the Condon study group will be the beginning of a major change in attitude toward the study of UFO1s by the scientific community.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. The Coming of the Saucers by Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer; Amherst Press, 1952, p. 11.
2. End of a Delusion: A Historical Perspective of UFOs by Gordon I. R. Lore, Jr., and Harold H. Deneault, Jr.; Prentice-Hall, Inc. (in preparation, scheduled for May 1967 publication).
3. Flying Saucers: Top Secret by Donald E. Keyhoe; Putnam, 1960, pp. 15-20.
4. “Are Flying Saucers Real?” by Dr. J. Allen Hynek; Saturday Evening Post, December 17, 1966, p. 17.
5. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J. Ruppelt; Doubleday, 1956, pp. 303-306.
6. Associated Press, United Press International, and local press reports for April 25, 1962, et seq.
7. Personal communication from Major Maston M. Jacks, USAF Office of Information, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C., dated December 29, 1964.
8. “Argentina Confirms Navy Pilots’ Sightings to NICAP” – The UFO Investigator, Vol. II, No. 6, October-November 1962, NICAP.
9. Anatomy of a Phenomenon (Henry Regnery Co., Chicago, 1965) and Challenge to Science (Regnery, 1966), both by Jacques Vallée.
10. Radio Moscow newscast on December 7, 1953.
11. “King of the Non-Flying Saucers” by Richard Gehman; TRUE Magazine, January 1961.
12. “Air Force Secretary Offered NICAP’s UFO Evidence” – The UFO Investigator, Vol. II, No. 3, January-February 1962, NICAP.
13. “UFOs Merit Scientific Study” by Dr. J. Allen Hynek; letter in Science, October 21, 1966, p. 329.
14. Unidentified Flying Objects – House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Forces, No. 55, April 5, 1966, p. 5995.
15. “UFOs Merit Scientific Study” by Dr. J. Allen Hynek; letter in Science, October 21, 1966, p. 329.
16. “The Problem of the Unidentified Flying Objects,” a talk by Dr. James E. McDonald, Senior Physicist, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, and Professor, Department of Meteorology, University of Arizona, to the District of Columbia Chapter of the American Meteorological Society, Washington, D.C., on October 19, 1966.
17. “Are Flying Saucers Real?” by Dr. J. Allen Hynek; Saturday Evening Post, December 17, 1966, p. 21.
18. Challenge to Science by Jacques Vallée, pp. 201-202.
19. “Saucer Trap,” a personal communication from Raymond LeBlanc, December 2, 1966.
20. Intelligent Life in the Universe by I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan; Holden-Day, 1966, pp. 455-461.
21. “Space Flight ‘Utter Bilge’ Says Astronomer-Royal” – Time, January 16, 1956.

Original Source: https://nicap.org/histper.htm

NOTE: The article asserts that the objects sighted by Kenneth Arnold were crescent-shaped rather than disc-shaped. But this claim is not entirely correct. The idea that Kenneth Arnold did not actually sight disc-shaped UFOs and that the press merely misinterpreted his words is a narrative often used by UFO debunkers. They rely on this argument to claim that all subsequent sightings of disc-shaped UFOs since the 1940s were nothing more than a product of collective hysteria. However, this narrative does not align with what Arnold himself stated in 1947.

Shortly after his sighting on June 24, 1947, Arnold gave a recorded statement on June 26, in which he described the objects as looking “something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a convex triangle in the rear.” This description closely matches a drawing he later provided to the Army, which depicts an object that is nearly a full disc with only small portions missing. Additionally, early reports from 1947 indicate that Arnold used terms such as “saucer,” “disc,” and “pie pan” to describe the shape of the objects. It was not until 1952 that Arnold mentioned one object appearing different from the others, suggesting that a single crescent-shaped object may have been among the nine he saw. However, even at this stage, he maintained that the majority of the objects were disc-shaped. Decades later, in 1978, Arnold gave an interview in which he stated that all nine objects were crescents, contradicting his earlier statements. It is important to emphasize that the evolution of Arnold’s account does not imply that he was lying about his experience; rather, it simply suggests a case of memory distortion over time, a phenomenon that is well-documented in psychology.

In order to dismiss UFO witnesses, debunkers often claim that human memory is not perfect and that it deteriorates over time. And this is entirely correct. So, it is curious that they selectively accept Arnold’s later recollections while dismissing his earliest statements. The best approach would be to rely on the earliest information, recorded when Arnold’s memory was freshest. For a better overview of Arnold’s earliest statements, I highly recommend you to read this Reddit post.

THE CASE FOR THE ET ORIGIN OF FLYING SAUCERS

by Stanton T. Friedman, 2008

One of the standard claims of UFO debunkers is that there is no evidence that any unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. After all, they say, we have only anecdotes, usually from uneducated people looking for publicity. No scientists have seen UFOs; there are no radar cases; there is no physical evidence; governments can’t keep secrets; all that crash-landed at Roswell was an array of Mogul balloons; so on and so forth. As it happens, all of these claims are false. This chapter will replace these myths with the facts. I start all of my Flying Saucers ARE Real lectures with these four conclusions, which I’ve reached after more than 50 years of study and investigation:

1. The evidence that planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft is overwhelming. In other words, some UFOs are ET spacecraft. Most are not—I don’t care about them.
2. The subject of flying saucers represents a kind of Cosmic Watergate. That means that some few people in our government have known since at least 1947, when at least two crashed flying saucers and several alien bodies were recovered in New Mexico, that indeed some UFOs were alien spacecraft. This does not mean that everybody in the government knows. The way to keep secrets is to restrict their distribution to as few people as possible and stick by a strong need-to-know policy.
3. There are no good arguments against conclusions number 1 and 2, despite the very vocal claims of a small group of noisy negativists such as the late Carl Sagan, a classmate of mine for three years at the University of Chicago. The debunking claims sound great. However, once one examines the data, they collapse because of an absence of evidence to support them and the presence of evidence that contradicts them.
4. Flying saucers are the biggest story of the millennium: visits to planet Earth by alien spacecraft and the successful cover-up of the best data, bodies, and wreckage, for more than 60 years.

I will be focusing on evidence. I seldom use the term proof. Some people have insisted that if I can’t provide a piece of a saucer or an alien body, there is nothing to support my claims. I was quite surprised during my last visit with Carl Sagan in December 1992 when he claimed that the essence of the scientific method was reproducibility. In actuality, as I wrote Sagan later on, there are at least four different kinds of science:

1. Yes, there is a lot of excellent science done by people who set up an experiment in which they can control all the variables and equipment. They make measurements and then publish their results, after peer review, and describe their equipment, instruments, and activity in detail so that others can duplicate the work and, presumably, come to the same conclusions. Such science can be very satisfying and certainly can contribute to the advancement of knowledge. However, it is not the only kind of science.
2. A second kind of science involves situations in which one cannot control all the variables but can predict some. For example, I cannot prove that on occasion the moon comes directly between the sun and the Earth and casts a shadow of darkness on the Earth because I cannot control the positions of the Earth, moon, or sun. What can be done is predicting the times when such eclipses will happen and being ready to make observations when they occur. Hopefully, the weather where I have my instruments will allow me to make lots of measurements.
3. A third kind of science involves events that can neither be predicted nor controlled, but one can be ready to make measurements if something does happen. For example, an array of seismographs can be established to allow measurements to be made at several locations in the event of an earthquake. When I was at the University of Chicago, a block of nuclear emulsion was attached to a large balloon that would be released when a radiation detector indicated that a solar storm had occurred (something we could neither produce nor predict). Somebody would rush to Stagg Field and release the balloon. When the balloon was retrieved, the emulsion would be carefully examined to measure the number, direction, velocity, and mass characteristics of particles unleashed by the sun.
4. Finally, there is a fourth kind of science, still using the rules to attack difficult problems. These are the events that involve intelligence, such as airplane crashes, murders, rapes, and automobile accidents. We do not know when or where they will occur, but we do know they will. In a typical year, more than 40,000 Americans will be killed in automobile accidents. We don’t know where or when, so rarely are TV cameras whirling when these events take place. But we can, after the fact, collect and evaluate evidence. We can determine if the driver had high levels of alcohol in his or her blood, whether the brakes failed, whether the visibility was poor, where a skid started, and so on. Observations of strange phenomena in the sky come under this last category.

In all the category-4 events, we must obtain as much testimony from witnesses as possible. Some testimony is worth more than other testimony, perhaps because of the duration of observation, the nearness of the witnesses to the event, the specialized training of the observer, the availability of corroborative evidence such as videos and still photos, or the consistency of evidence when there is testimony from more than one witness. Our entire legal system is based on testimony—rarely is there conclusive proof such as DNA matching. Judges and juries must decide, with appropriate cross-examination, who is telling the truth. In some states, testimony from one witness can lead to the death penalty for the accused. We should take note of the fact that even instrument data is dependent on testimony from the observer of the instruments, and on appropriate calibration and validation under standardized circumstances. Also, our courts place limits on requirements for testimony, such as that against one spouse by the other. Furthermore, there are rules about hearsay testimony, and rules regarding legal evidence are complex and detailed.

When it comes to flying saucers, we must remember that the reason most sightings can be determined to be relatively conventional phenomena, often seen under unusual circumstances, is that most people are relatively good observers. The problem comes with the interpretation of what was observed. People watching the sky late at night may get excited about a very bright light that moved very slowly. Checking on the position of the planets at that time may reveal that that light was Venus, because we have good information as to the angle of observation, the direction of the light from the observer, the relatively slow rate of motion, the location of Venus at that time, and so on.

On three occasions, when living in Southern California, I was called by people who described an unusual object moving rapidly. I tried to make sure that I analyzed their observations, such as: What time was it? In what direction were you looking? In what direction did it seem to be moving? Was there any sound? What was its apparent size, say, as compared to the moon (just covered by an aspirin held at arm’s length)? Two of the people wanted to tell me that the object was just over the next hill. I stressed that this was an interpretation because even huge objects far away can seem to be small objects nearby. In all three cases, I felt that what was being described sounded similar to a rocket launched down the California Coast when the sun had gone down, but while the object was high enough to still be in sunlight. I had seen such a spectacular case once myself.

I checked, in all three cases, with Vandenberg Air Force Base, which launches many rockets down the U.S. West Coast. Indeed, there had been a launch at the right time in each case. One case was especially intriguing because several witnesses were looking out across the ocean from a beach area and described the thing they saw as similar to a string of popcorn. It turned out to be the launch of a special weather satellite with extra solid boosters being dropped off multiple times.

The people were good observers. To say the least, it would be irrational to say that people are good observers when their input allows us to identify the object being observed, and yet poor observers if we can’t identify the UFO as something conventional.

CATEGORIES

Every UFO sighting can be placed in one of three groups:

• A) Those reports of UFOs that eventually, after careful investigation, turn out to be identified flying objects (IFOs). This is by far the largest category. Subcategories include astronomical phenomena, aircraft, balloons, advertising planes, experimental aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, flocks of birds, and hoaxes.
• B) Those reports of UFOs that provide insufficient data on which to base a conclusion. Sometimes, for old reports, people aren’t sure of the exact date and time, for example, or can’t recall the direction of motion, or the color, and so on. Not much one can do with these.
• C) The Unknowns. These are reports by competent observers of strange objects in the sky or on the ground, which cannot be identified by the witness, and which remain unidentified after investigation by competent investigators, and whose appearance indicates that they were manufactured (this rules out most lights), and whose flight behavior indicates that they were made somewhere other than Earth. We Earthlings can’t build things that look and act that way. If we could, we would, because of the military applications of such craft.

Remember that the question is not “Are all UFOs alien spacecraft?” The question is, “Are any?” As shall be seen, my answer is definitely yes. If you were to ask me, “Are any UFOs secret, government-sponsored research-and-development vehicles?” my answer would again be yes.

There are some logical traps awaiting the unwary here. Some people want to claim: “Isn’t it reasonable to say that, if most UFOs can eventually be identified, all can be?” Think about that for a minute. Would it be reasonable to say that because most people are not 7 feet tall, no one is? Because most isotopes aren’t fissionable, none are? Because most people don’t have AIDS, no one does? Because most chemicals will not cure any diseases, none do? Obviously, we learn early on to focus on the data relevant to the question at hand.

The basketball coach is well aware that there are far more people shorter than 7 feet than those taller than 7 feet. But he knows there are some of the latter. When I was at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Dr. Selman Waksman of the microbiology department collected soil samples from all around the world seeking chemicals with anti-disease properties. One of his major discoveries, after checking on many thousands of soil cultures, was streptomycin, the first cure for tuberculosis. He won the Nobel Prize in 1952 for that work. Other antibiotics were later found; most of the cultures were worthless.

Gold miners know that ore is worth mining if there is a half-ounce of gold per ton of ore; that’s less than 0.001% of the ore. I learned early on, when working on designing and testing radiation shielding for aircraft nuclear propulsion systems and other compact nuclear reactors, that by far the majority of gamma rays and neutrons produced in the reactor get absorbed in the surrounding shielding material. But it is the tiny percentage that penetrates the shield that had to be my focus if I wanted to protect crewmembers.

It is the category-C cases that matter: The Unknowns. The problem then becomes finding the Unknowns. Many books talk about individual cases; how can a reader evaluate them? There are tens of thousands of newspaper articles and videos about UFO cases. YouTube has loads of videos—the Internet is chock full of UFO-related material, much of which is worthless. But how can one evaluate this mass of uneven and usually uninvestigated cases?

I think that, in general, the best place to search involves the several large-scale scientific studies… almost never mentioned by the UFO debunkers.

PROJECT BLUE BOOK SPECIAL REPORT NO.14

The largest official scientific study of UFOs performed for the United States government was reported in Project Blue Book Special Report No.14. The work was done by professional engineers and scientists at the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. BMI is a highly respected research and development organization that does contract research for private and government groups. This study was the result of a contract with Project Blue Book, a USAF group at the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The contracting agency has had many names throughout the years, including Air Technical Intelligence Center and Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center, and is now known as the National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC). Blue Book, in turn, was the continuation of Projects Sign and Grudge that had preceded it. At that time (mid-1950s), Project Blue Book was the only publicly acknowledged government group concerned with UFOs. We now know that there were others.

It was BMI’s job to review all the UFO sightings in the Blue Book files for the period 1948 through 1953. Exactly 3,201 sighting reports were eventually categorized as something such as Astronomical, Balloon, Aircraft… and UNKNOWN. Every report was also evaluated for quality: Excellent, Good, Doubtful, or Poor. Presumably, a sighting by a priest, a physicist, and a pilot—of something observed for 10 minutes from 50 feet away in daylight—would have been considered a higher-quality observation than a 4-second observation by the town drunk at 4 a.m. of a light zipping by in the sky. Obviously, these are subjective judgments, but they are certainly meaningful. All sorts of data about each case (duration, speed, color, shape, and the like) were stored on punch cards so they could be sorted with the primitive computer systems then available.

The professionals who worked on the project established a number of sensible ground rules and definitions. For example, no sighting could be listed as an Unknown unless all four Final Report evaluators agreed it was an UNKNOWN. Any two could label it as anything else.

The BBSR 14 definition for Unknown (my category C) is:

“This designation in the identification code was assigned to those reports of sightings wherein the description of the object and its maneuvers could not be fitted to the pattern of any known object or phenomenon.”

Their definition of Insufficient Information (my category B) is:

“This identification category was assigned to a report when, upon final consideration, there was some essential item of information missing, or there was enough doubt about what data were available to disallow identification as a common object or some natural phenomenon. It is emphasized that this category of identification was not used as a convenient way to dispose of what might be called poor Unknowns, but as a category for reports that, perhaps, could have been one of several known objects or natural phenomena.”

Psychological Manifestations:

“This identification category was assigned to a report when, although it was well established that the observer had seen something, it was also obvious that the description of the sighting had been overdrawn. Religious fanaticism, a desire for publicity, or an overactive imagination were the most common mental aberrations causing this type of report.”

This includes the crackpot reports that so fascinate debunkers.

It is worthwhile to note that, before tabulating their findings, UFO debunkers have often made negative statements about UFO evidence, such as the following:

“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, Cornell University, Other Worlds

“Almost every sighting is either a mistake or a hoax. These reports are so riddled with hoaxes, and the flying saucer enthusiasts have so many cranks, freaks, and nuts among them that Hynek is constantly running the risk of innocently damaging his reputation by being confused with them.”

—Dr. Isaac Asimov, author, “The Rocketing Dutchman,” Fantasy and Science Fiction

“All non-explained sightings are from poor observers.”

—Dr. Donald Menzel, astronomer, Harvard University, Physics Today

“The Unexplained sightings are simply those for which there is too little information to provide a solid factual basis for an explanation.”

—Ben Bova, writer, editor, Analog

“The number of people believing in flying saucers remains at about 6% of the adult population, according to Gallup Polls.”

—Science

“A two-year-old Gallup Poll reported that more than 3 million Americans believe flying saucers are real. But that still leaves 98% of the country somewhat doubtful.”

—Los Angeles Times

“…[L]ike most scientists, he puts little credence in UFO reports.”

—Science News (speaking of Carl Sagan)

“On the basis of this study we believe that no objects such as those popularly described as flying saucers have overflown the United States. I feel certain that even the Unknown 3% could have been explained as conventional phenomena or illusions if more complete observational data had been obtained.”

—Donald A. Quarles, secretary of the U.S. Air Force

These statements have several things in common:

1. None includes any accurate references to data or sources.
2. All are demonstrably false.
3. All are proclamations rather than the result of evidence-based investigations.
4. All are many years old, but my 40 years of lecturing and hundreds of media appearances have indicated that many people still share these views, despite their inaccuracy.

Together, they certainly illustrate the four basic rules of the true UFO nonbelievers:

1. Don’t bother me with the facts; my mind is made up.
2. What the public doesn’t know, I am not going to tell them.
3. If one can’t attack the data, attack the people. It is much easier.
4. Do your research by proclamation rather than investigation. No one will know the difference.

A major reason for these false claims can be seen in the comments in the press release issued on October 23, 1955, by the U.S. Air Force, in conjunction with the supposed release of Project Blue Book Special Report No.14. Surprisingly, there is no mention of the organization that did the study: the Battelle Memorial Institute. There is no mention of the names of the authors of the report. There is no mention of the actual title of the report, though it was not classified. If it had been noted, surely some journalist would have asked what happened to reports 1 through 13. The answer, if it had been honest, would have been that they were all still classified at the time. Although a large summary was provided in the press release, amazingly, it includes no data from the more than 240 charts, tables, graphs, and maps that are in the report. How could it be called a summary?

The key quote is given from Donald B. Quarles, then the secretary of the United States Air Force: “Even the Unknown 3% could have been identified as conventional phenomena or illusions if more observational data had been available.” There would appear to be two factual statements here:

1. The percentage of the sightings listed as Unknown was only 3%.
2. These Unknowns were simply reports for which there wasn’t enough data (my category B).

In that case, “there is nothing to flying saucers” would be a reasonable conclusion. However, these statements are both flat-out lies. Table 1 on page 41 shows the tabulation of the categorization of the 3,201 cases investigated. Notice that the percentage of Unknowns was actually 21.5% of the cases studied-seven times as many as stated by the secretary of the USAF. Note especially the category listed as “Insufficient Information”: 9.3%. No sightings for which there was insufficient data, by definition, could be listed as Unknowns. Clearly, both “factual” statements by Secretary Quarles were bunk. More accurately, he lied big time.

It is tempting to think that perhaps it was only the poor-quality reports—those 4 a.m., 4-second observations by the town drunk—that were listed as Unknowns. This proclamation is clearly destroyed by the data in Table 2. It shows that the better the quality of the sighting, the more likely it was to be an Unknown, and the less likely it was to be listed as “Insufficient Information.” This is not surprising at all, though it is exactly the opposite of the unsubstantiated and false claims of the “true non-UFO believers,” as I call them. It is exactly what one would expect if the Unknowns were really different from the knowns. This tabulation is also not shown explicitly in PBBSR 14. Notice that 35.1% of the excellent cases were listed as UNKNOWN, but only 18.3% of the poor cases were. In other words, the better the quality of the report, the more likely it was to be unexplainable.

Another proclamation often made by the debunkers is that the unexplained sightings were of short duration—certainly not long enough to make a scientific determination as to what was observed. Table 3 provides information on the duration of observation. The average Unknown was observed for longer than the average known: 63.5% of the Unknowns were observed for longer than 1 minute; 36.1% were observed for longer than 5 minutes; and 12.9% for longer than 30 minutes. So much for the nonsense that unexplainable UFOs are only observed for a few seconds.

Some debunkers like to claim that only nutty people report seeing UFOs. Notice that only 1.5% of the sightings were listed as “Psychological Manifestations.” The American Physical Society, to which I (and most other professional physicists) belong, has said that 2% of the papers submitted to it for publication by physicists are crackpot papers. This suggests that there are more crackpots associated with physics than with flying saucers. Fortunately, I am not the only physicist with a foot in each camp.

Finally, comments are often made by the true nonbelievers that there is really no difference between the Unknowns and the knowns. If that were the case, why pay attention to the knowns? The Unknowns must simply be missed knowns. The professional engineers and scientists doing the work presented in PBBSR 14 were clearly concerned about this possibility, so they sought answers to the question: “Is there any difference between the characteristics of the knowns and the Unknowns?” To be technical about it, they performed a Chi-square statistical analysis based on six different characteristics of the UFOs: apparent size, shape, speed, color, duration of observation, and number of objects seen. They found that the probability that the Unknowns were just missed knowns was less than 1%! Unknowns were not missed knowns.

Obviously, this does not prove that the Unknowns are alien spaceships. However, it does show that no matter how much they manipulated the data, they could not get a match between the Unknowns and the knowns. One crucial characteristic of the Unknowns—maneuverability—was not considered in this part of the BMI effort.

My reason for stating that some Unknowns are intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft is very simple: witness reports clearly indicate that the observed objects are manufactured and behave in ways we cannot duplicate. Generally, they are small, 10-foot to 40-foot disc-shaped vehicles without wings, tails, or visible external engines. Frequently, they demonstrate high maneuverability—right-angle turns at high speed (as observed on radar), the ability to fly straight up and hover, and to go forward and then backward without making a big turn. Usually, there is no sound, no exhaust, and often a glow around the object (not the observer). A much smaller number of observations describe huge “mother” ships, perhaps ½ to 1 mile long. In recent years, several triangular objects have also been observed. If we Earthlings could build such craft, we would—because they would make wonderful military vehicles. There have been several wars in which we have not used such craft. If they were not built on Earth, they were built somewhere else. This does not tell us where they are from, why they are here, or why they do not behave the way some Earthlings would want them to.

Despite all the data available in the Blue Book report, its summary contains none. The press release was given very wide distribution, whereas the report itself was available for review in only a few places. It is no wonder that quotes from the totally misleading press release appeared in newspapers across the United States and in other parts of the world. The deception was clear and effective. No newspaper that I have seen noted any part of the actual report, and the false comments have been repeated over and over again by the news media and so-called scientists as if they were facts instead of lies.

The reader should not get the impression that I consider PBBSR 14 a perfect study. There were serious problems, besides the misleading press release, such as the failure to note relevant data and even the title itself. For example, a shameful effort was made to put together a composite picture of a UFO based on 12 cases—a frankly ludicrous approach, with drawings that would make any sensible artist ashamed. There is no section with recommendations on how to gather more and better data using the available resources of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. There is no discussion of the military and security implications of alien spacecraft violating U.S. airspace with impunity. There is not even an indication of the many highly classified military reports that must have existed. After all, a January 31, 1949, FBI memo stated that the Army and USAF considered the subject of flying saucers Top Secret. Where is all the data obtained by the Air Defense Command? These data are all born classified. Newspapers do not receive listings of military aircraft being scrambled to go after “uncorrelated targets”—a much less intriguing term than flying saucers or Unknowns.

USAF General Carroll Bolender, in a memo dated October 20, 1969, stated that “Reports of UFOs which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 and Air Force Manual 55-11, and are NOT part of the Blue Book system.” In a later paragraph, discussing the impact of closing Blue Book (which was shut down because of his memo) and denying the public a government office where sightings could be reported, he added: “As noted above, reports which could affect National Security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose.” The public has never been officially told that the important cases did not go to Project Blue Book—it was not even on the distribution list for cases reported through JANAP 146 or AF Manual 55-11. I managed to locate and speak with retired General Bolender, who clearly understood the implications of having a separate channel for the most important cases. Then, in 1979, when I showed a copy of the Bolender memo to the former Project Blue Book scientific consultant, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, he was very upset and felt that he had been badly used by the USAF: the best cases did not go to Blue Book!

Throughout its existence, Blue Book was not a high-level technical group. Typically, it consisted of a major and a sergeant, some secretaries, and a monthly visit from Dr. Hynek—a professor of astronomy and, by nature, not a boat-rocker. Blue Book did not have sophisticated instrumentation or communication systems, nor did it have a need-to-know for classified data collected by the Air Defense Command.

We know of only two fully classified Top Secret documents connected with UFOs. One was a report of a fascinating observation in the Soviet Union by U.S. Senator Richard Russell and associates in 1955, which was finally declassified in 1985. The other is AIR (Air Intelligence Report) No. 100-203-79, dated December 10, 1948. This joint USAF and U.S. Navy report aimed to evaluate the possibility of UFOs being from the Soviet Union and the implications for national security if that were the case. A history of sightings is given in these documents, but clearly, the authors did not have a need-to-know for Top Secret information about such events as the recovery of a crashed flying saucer and alien bodies outside Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947, or the destruction of U.S. aircraft while attempting to attack flying saucers. I have quietly heard of several such disastrous events and the cover-ups that followed. As an aside, it took many years for Americans to finally learn that 166 aircraft crew members had been lost in U.S. planes shot down while conducting reconnaissance missions too close to the USSR, China, or North Korea, as described in By Any Means Necessary by William E. Burrows.

From a scientific perspective, classified observations by our most sophisticated monitoring systems—radar networks, spy satellites, and the web of observing systems operated by the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office—are of utmost interest. The latter, of course, did not exist during Project Blue Book Special Report No.14. But where are the Top Secret cases?

My experience indicates that the Battelle Memorial Institute and the Foreign Technology Division of the Air Force could produce both a highly classified technical report and an unclassified companion report that made no mention of the classified one. I believe that such a report was Blue Book Report 13, produced by the same two groups. Two people have quietly told me they saw a copy of it in classified files. The Air Force has variously claimed that Report 13 does not exist or that it was contained in PBBSR 14. The old National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) actually published Reports 1 through 12, but nobody I have spoken with has a copy of 13. Based on my 14 years of professional scientific work on classified projects, I am absolutely convinced that secrets can be kept. Chapter 5 goes into much more detail about the “Cosmic Watergate,” which, unlike the political Watergate, has been very successful.

One final important fact about Project Blue Book Special Report No.14: when I check my lecture audiences after discussing it, I find that fewer than 2% have read it—even though one would assume an audience attending my lectures would be biased in favor of believing in flying saucers. I should also note that I once compiled a list of 13 anti-UFO books by debunkers such as Donald Menzel and Philip Klass. None of the books mentioned the report, though I can prove they were aware of it. The rule is: What the public does not know, I will not tell them. Even the University of Colorado study, despite having a long chapter on government involvement in UFO studies, does not mention it. I personally wrote to Dr. Condon about it and even received a letter acknowledging my inquiry.

THE UFO EVIDENCE

Richard Hall, who is still an active ufologist, compiled another outstanding report on UFOs for the Washington, D.C.-based NICAP in May 1964. The 184-page large-format report, The UFO Evidence, has information on 746 Unknowns-or 16% of the 4,500 cases investigated by the (mostly) professional members of NICAP. There are entire chapters on sightings by military and civilian pilots, by police officers, and by scientists and engineers. There are special sections on the major UFO wave of 1952, and on official UFO investigations. It is truly an outstanding volume; copies were given to all members of Congress. Again, fewer than 2% of my lecture attendees are aware of it. Hall put out a huge update, volume 2, The UFO Evidence: A Thirty Year Report in 2000. It has 681 fact-filled pages. There is an 87-page comprehensive section on UFO abductions, and a 10-page overview of the Roswell Incident. The book has very extensive bibliographies, and really should be in all libraries, but isn’t.

CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS

Thanks primarily to the efforts of Dr. James E. McDonald, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona, the U.S. House Committee on Science and Astronautics held a Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects in Washington, D.C., on July 29, 1968. McDonald had become interested in UFOs in the mid-1960s and was shocked when visiting Project Blue Book in Dayton, Ohio, to find a host of sighting reports of very interesting cases. He noted that the explanations often made little sense. He became upset that Dr. Hynek had not called the attention of the scientific community to the wealth of data in the files. (Their battle is discussed in detail in the excellent book by Ann Druffel: Firestorm: James E. McDonald’s Fight for UFO Science.)

Six scientists testified in person. They were:

• Dr. J. Allen Hynek, chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (and Project Blue Book consultant for almost 20 years).
• Dr. Carl Sagan, professor of astronomy at Cornell University.
• Dr. James E. McDonald, professor of physics at the University of Arizona.
• Dr. James Harder, professor of civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Dr. Robert L. Hall, head of the department of sociology at the University of Illinois, Chicago (and Richard Hall’s brother).
• Dr. Robert M. L. Baker, senior scientist for System Sciences Corp. in El Segundo, California.

In addition, the printed 247-page proceedings (available on the Internet at [URL=https://www.project1947.com/shg/symposium/index.html]www.project1947.com/shg/symposium/index.html[/URL]) included written submissions from six more scientists:

• Dr. Donald Menzel, astronomer at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, psychologist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
• Dr. Garry C. Henderson, senior research scientist for Space Sciences at General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas.
• Dr. Roger N. Shepard, department of psychology at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
• Dr. Frank Salisbury, head of the plant science department at Utah State University in Logan.
• And myself, then a nuclear physicist at Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory in Large, Pennsylvania. I have taken pride in the fact that I was the only one of the twelve without a PhD.

In my opinion, the best paper by far was that from Jim McDonald. He presented information on 41 separate cases, including multiple-witness radar-visual cases, sightings over big cities, sightings by scientists and astronomers, and clear indications of intelligent control of some UFOs. His paper alone is 71 pages long and should be read by anyone who thinks there are no good UFO cases. John Fuller, who earlier had written The Interrupted Journey, the story of the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, and Incident at Exeter, also wrote Aliens in the Skies, which includes most of the papers, but without the references.

Quite frankly, I have found throughout the years that very few people have read this very valuable volume, The Symposium on UFOs. The reward for Indiana Congressman J. Edward Roush, who presided over the session, was that in the next election he was gerrymandered out of his district. Another member of the Committee on Science and Astronautics was Donald Rumsfeld of Illinois, who later became Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush. Hynek, also from Illinois, once told me of approaching Rumsfeld much later, saying he thought he had a need-to-know for what was happening. Rumsfeld told him in no uncertain terms that he did not.

There is a substantial difference between the factual content of most of the papers by people who had really dug into the facts and those of Menzel and Sagan, whose papers revealed a lack of concern with facts and data, instead full of proclamations and little investigation. If Jim McDonald had lived many more years, instead of dying in 1971, I believe the situation today would be very different. He spoke to many sections of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and many other professional organizations and used hard-nosed science to destroy the often foolish explanations of Menzel (who often proclaimed “temperature inversions” without doing the required computations that Jim did) and Philip Klass (who often proclaimed “plasma explanations”—again without doing the scientific calculations that Jim did, which destroyed those proclaimed explanations).

THE CONDON REPORT

There is no doubt that the largest and most publicized study of UFOs is the 965-page 1968 Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. Its editor was Daniel S. Gillmor, and the study was conducted under the direction of Dr. Edward U. Condon, a professor of physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, with funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Many universities had been approached by AFOSR in response to recommendations from the O’Brien Panel (established after the controversy over Hynek’s swamp-gas explanation for sightings in Michigan in 1966). Condon was known as a tough figure and had, much earlier, taken on the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Problems with the Condon study have been described in many places well after its publication. At the time, in early 1969, it was lauded by the press primarily because of the introduction by Walter Sullivan, science editor of The New York Times, and the complimentary comments by a special panel of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)—who did not investigate any cases to evaluate Condon’s work. Of course, he had not investigated any cases either and had made a number of negative comments along the way. Not enough attention was paid to the fact that Condon was himself a member of the NAS, a self-electing body. What might be described as a minority report was later published by Dr. David Saunders (UFOs? YES! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong), who had been fired by Condon. John G. Fuller had written a Look Magazine article titled Flying Saucer Fiasco on May 14, 1968, pointing out, among other important aspects of the unscientific study, a letter from Robert J. Low, an assistant dean at the University of Colorado, describing how the project would be made to look scientific but, of course, would not be. In the August 9, 1966, memo, he said:

Our study would be conducted almost entirely by nonbelievers, who, although they couldn’t possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of thick evidence that there is no reality to the observations. The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that to the public, it would appear a totally objective study, but to the scientific community would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective, but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer…

There is much more, and the article is available on the Internet (at [URL=https://www.project1947.com/shg/articles/fiasco.html]www.project1947.com/shg/articles/fiasco.html[/URL]). The public wound up paying more than half a million dollars for this so-called study. As a young scientist, I was angry about the whole business and the praise given to the study by the press and the National Academy. I have often wondered how many other controversial areas have seen the public so betrayed by what passes for an objective scientific community and an objective press.

As was the case with Project Blue Book Special Report No.14, the press coverage was generally based on the press release and the first chapter—Condon’s summary and conclusions—and not on the facts in the report. Frankly, I got the impression that Condon had not even read the rest of the volume. It comes as a great surprise to many that, according to a UFO subcommittee of the world’s largest group of space scientists—the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics—one could come to the opposite conclusions as Dr. Condon based on the data in the report. Any phenomenon with 30% unidentified classifications is certainly worth further investigation, as the AIAA noted. I am a member of the AIAA, but they would not allow me on the committee (I must be biased because I had reached a conclusion! One would think that after 11 years of effort, I would be expected to have a bias, and that ignorance is the worst bias). Indeed, 30% of the 117 cases studied in detail could not be identified. There are some good sections in the report, and I have talked to some old-timers who say they were drawn into the subject of UFOs by some very interesting unexplainable cases.

One can only wonder how many fields have rejected the exceptional simply because only 30% of the cases examined could not be explained away—think of cures for cancer, great musicians, and elite athletes. My son-in-law works at the Diavik Diamond Mine in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It is a rich diamond mine, producing 3.5 carats of diamonds (less than a handful) per ton of ore—another case of having a small percentage but high value.

Both Hynek and McDonald (along with several others) have written factual negative reviews of the Condon report. Condon later made public statements that the files of the study had not been preserved, yet I found them at the American Philosophical Society library in Philadelphia. Why lie? Fear of a critical review?

THE UFO EXPERIENCE

Dr. J. Allen Hynek had been a consultant to Project Blue Book for about 20 years, starting at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio (close to Blue Book in Dayton), and then continuing later when he became chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He had a PhD from my alma mater, the University of Chicago (1935), as did Carl Sagan (1960). Jim McDonald was a research physicist at the University of Chicago in 1953 and 1954 when Sagan and I were there. As far as I know, Sagan did not know him then, and neither did I. In order to meet with Hynek, I had to pass muster with an associate of his, also at the University of Chicago, who attended my lecture at the University of Illinois, Chicago campus, in 1968. I passed and was taken up to Evanston. Hynek was 58 years old at the time, the same age as my father. I was 33. His first question was, “Why haven’t you received a PhD?” I noted that I had worked my way through college as a union waiter at a Chicago hotel my last three years and was anxious to get out into the real world of industry to work on exciting and challenging programs. We saw each other at conferences and when I was going through Chicago, or in Southern California when I lived there. We existed in very different worlds and had very different personalities. I did arrange a press conference and media appearances for him in L.A. when he published The UFO Experience. It was like pulling teeth to get background info for the press release. He suggested I look in Who’s Who, which contained a very small bio. When I finally got something from Northwestern, UFOs were barely mentioned in it.

Hynek’s book has information about roughly 70 good sightings that could not be explained. It contains the definitions for Close Encounters of the first, second, and third kinds. He was a consultant on the very successful movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind and had a cameo role himself. He also made some fairly strong comments about the inadequacy of the Condon Report and some recommendations as to what should be done. He established the Center for UFO Studies, which still exists, to try to accomplish some of those goals. He had a good sense of humor and even collected some of the cartoons that were published about his swamp-gas explanation. The book is well written and serves as a good introduction to the subject, but I do wish he had done more looking at interstellar travel and atmospheric propulsion technology, among other topics.

THE COMETA REPORT

I decided to include this report, even though it is not book length, because it is much more recent than any of the other volumes, was done in France, and comes at the subject from a less academic viewpoint, which gets closer to many of my views. The actual title in English is UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For? It is 90 pages long and originally appeared in a special issue of the magazine VSD in France in July 1999. It is an independent report on UFOs written by the French association COMETA, presenting the results of a study by the Institute of Higher Studies for National Defense. The foreword is by Professor André Lebeau, the former chairman of the French National Center for Space Studies. This is the French equivalent of NASA, but it is hard to imagine NASA leadership having the courage to speak out about UFOs.

The report covers a number of excellent cases from France as well as from the United States and gives a good overview of various non-ET explanations—but is quite willing to seriously consider the extraterrestrial hypothesis. It discusses Roswell and also, in a sensible fashion, the reasons why the United States would keep things secret and not share with its allies what scientists have learned from the examination of Roswell wreckage. The authors of the report definitely seem to understand why it could not be shared with America’s enemies.

The Fund for UFO Research paid to have the report translated. Unfortunately, the French group leaders, for reasons still unknown, were very upset when I offered copies of the translation for purchase. They also rejected the notion of letting the Fund distribute it or collect royalties. This situation arose only because, when the report became a topic of conversation on the Jeff Rense radio program, I mentioned that I had a copy of it. Rense said, “Of course you are going to make it available, right, Stan?” I hesitated and then said yes. As someone who has been complaining about the Cosmic Watergate for decades, I could hardly say no and become part of the cover-up myself. Later, people on my website were threatened, so it is not listed there. Perhaps the French are sensitive because the report is critical of the United States for not revealing more information to its supposed allies.

I have distributed copies of Project Blue Book Special Report No.14 for the same reason. It is a government document, so it cannot be copyrighted. I could hardly say, “It is a very important report, but you can’t see the data… just trust me.” Fortunately, one of the best investigative journalists covering UFOs in the United States, Leslie Kean, managed to prepare a comprehensive article about the COMETA report, which appeared in The Boston Globe and a number of other newspapers. She has continued her efforts, taking on NASA over their attempt to hide information about the Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, UFO crash and retrieval of December 9, 1965. She also helped set up the very important National Press Club press conference on November 12, 2007, in Washington, D.C. She and James Fox, a documentary film producer, arranged for pilots and military personnel from many countries to reveal their own experiences at the conference, and they are preparing a documentary.

A statement worth repeating about the U.S. UFO cover-up appears near the end of the 1999 COMETA Report: “Only increasing pressure from public opinion, possibly supported by the results of independent researchers, by more or less calculated disclosures, or by a sudden rise in UFO manifestations, might perhaps induce U.S. leaders and persons of authority to change their stance.”

OTHER SOURCES

A truly enormous amount of material has been written about flying saucers. Some people do not even want me to use the term, but I use it to make an important distinction: Flying saucers are, by definition, unidentified flying objects, but very few unidentified flying objects are flying saucers. I am interested in the latter, not the former. As an example, all great-grandfathers are men; only a small percentage of men are great-grandfathers.

I cannot possibly take note of all the relevant literature here. However, the studies I have listed make an excellent starter kit. I would add the dozen or so PhD theses that have been done on UFOs and the many excellent books on UFO abductions (though there are some that are very unscientific, such as Dr. Susan Clancy’s Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens). I have a detailed review on my website, at https://web.archive.org/web/20191221095618/http://www.stantonfriedman.com/index.php?ptp=home.

I do recommend books by Budd Hopkins and Dr. David Jacobs. An excellent overview with 11 essays is the book UFOs & Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge, edited by Dr. David Jacobs. I would also point to the outstanding work done by Ted Phillips concerning physical trace cases. Phillips was a protégé of Allen Hynek and has, for more than 40 years, collected information about more than 4,000 such cases from more than 70 countries. These are cases in which a flying saucer is observed on or near the ground, and where, after the saucer has left, one finds physical traces in the dirt or vegetation. In about 1/6 of these cases, humanoids are observed. Phillips still has not written a book about his work, but he has been writing a monthly column for the MUFON Journal for some time. The next time debunkers claim that there is no physical evidence, refer them to Phillips’s work.

Two other topics I am not covering here are crop circles and animal mutilations. These are in my gray basket—they are interesting, but it is not easy to find a direct connection to the flying saucer phenomenon.

Original Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12HUrFpvmgysve8t2gVD7UUy8TUaXd0sj/view?usp=drivesdk

PERSONAL NOTE: I completely distance myself from the positive characterization of Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs that Friedman presented in this piece. I deeply respect Friedman’s contributions to UFO research and acknowledge his extensive work in the field, but I do not agree with his conclusions regarding the abduction phenomenon. He was firmly in the pro-abductionist camp, while I, on the other hand, am more inclined to believe that the solution to the abduction phenomenon is likely to be found here on Earth rather than among the stars. So, while I appreciate Friedman for his outstanding research, his perspective on abductions is one aspect of his work with which I fundamentally disagree.

Marry Christmas!

JadedSkywalker said:

Anakin isn’t killed because George was confused over two Anakin’s.

Which was never the case to begin with, anyway. In fact, while George did say that people were going to be confused by the fact that there were two Anakins as main protagonists, he never instructed the authors to kill off Anakin Solo. He only stated that Anakin should not have been the main protagonist of the New Jedi Order series, and suggested that Jacen should have taken that role instead. The authors made the decision to kill off Anakin on their own; no one directed them to do so. They could have easily kept Anakin as a secondary character without killing him.

EDIT: Wrong thread

THE ROSWELL CRASH: VOICES FROM 1947

by Spartacus 01

The Roswell incident of 1947 remains one of the most intriguing and debated events in modern history. What started as a seemingly straightforward military announcement about the recovery of a “flying disc” quickly turned into a decades-long controversy after officials changed the story, claiming it was just a weather balloon. However, what truly keeps Roswell alive in the public imagination are the numerous witness testimonies that emerged over the years. Many of those who claimed to have seen the debris — or even the bodies — describe something far more unusual than a conventional military device. Their accounts, often consistent despite the passage of time and the social pressure to dismiss such stories, raise questions that the official explanations have not entirely resolved. While some may attribute these accounts to misinterpretations or flawed memories, the persistence and detail of these testimonies make it hard to completely dismiss the possibility that something truly extraordinary occurred.

THE CORE STORY

"On July 4, 1947, Mack Brazel, a rancher living southeast of Corona, New Mexico, was out checking his pastures when he stumbled upon something unusual. The ground was covered with metallic debris, unlike anything he had seen before. Curious, he picked up a few pieces and decided to show them to his neighbors, Floyd and Loretta Proctor. Loretta described the metal as incredibly strong, very light, and resistant to fire—remarking that it seemed like plastic but much tougher. The Proctors advised Brazel to inform the sheriff about his find. After discussing it with a few people in Corona, Brazel was convinced that notifying the authorities was the right move.

On Sunday, July 6, Brazel made the three- or four-hour drive to Roswell and brought a box of the strange metal pieces to Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox. At that point, no one — not Brazel, nor Wilcox — knew exactly what it was, yet they just knew it was unusual and not something they could identify. Therefore, Wilcox figured the best thing to do was call the military. So, he reached out to Major Jesse A. Marcel, the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group. Marcel later recalled, “I was having lunch when the sheriff from Roswell called me and said he needed to talk. He said a rancher had come to town with something weird. I said, ‘I’m all ears.’ Then he told me about the crash and said the rancher didn’t know what he had found, but it might be worth looking into.” Consequently, Colonel William Blanchard, who was the commanding officer of the 509th, told Marcel he should go investigate, and he also mentioned that Marcel had access to some Counter Intelligence Corps agents, so he suggested he take one along. Eventually, Captain Sheridan Cavitt, the senior CIC officer in Roswell, ended up going with him.

Marcel said, “Cavitt drove a jeep carryall, and I drove my staff car. We followed the rancher’s pickup truck across open land — he didn’t use any roads to get there. We arrived at his place around dusk, so it was too late to do anything that evening, and we spent the night there.” The next day, Monday, July 7, Marcel saw the debris field for the first time. To him, it was obvious that “something had exploded above ground and fallen.” So, he, Cavitt, and Brazel walked the site and figured out the path the debris had taken. “You could tell where it started and where it ended — it was thicker at the beginning and then gradually thinned out going southwest.” Subsequently, they inspected the whole area. Marcel said, “It was scattered over a wide area — probably three-quarters of a mile long and a few hundred feet wide.” He also said, “We found some metal, small pieces. We picked it up.” According to him, it was clearly something manufactured. “I wanted to see if the stuff would burn, but all I had was a cigarette lighter. I tried to light it… but it didn’t burn.”

Marcel also described some I-beam-like pieces that he said were “solid members that you couldn’t bend or break, but they didn’t look like metal.” He remembered them as being maybe three-eighths of an inch by one-quarter of an inch thick, and they came in a variety of sizes — though none were very long. The biggest one, he said, “was about three or four feet long” and completely weightless. “You couldn’t even tell you had it in your hands,” he recalled. Additionally, he told Leonard Stringfield, a UFO researcher from Ohio, that he had found many small metal fragments, along with what looked like “parchment.” The fragments, he said, were up to six inches long but as thin as tinfoil. What made them stand out was their incredible strength. In later interviews, Marcel gave more details about the materials he had seen. When someone asked him whether there had been any markings on the debris, he said, “Yes, there were. Something undecipherable. I’ve never seen anything like that myself. I don’t know if anyone ever managed to figure out what they meant.” Moreover, he added that some of the I-beam-like pieces had small markings along their length. “Two-color markings… like Chinese writing. Nothing you could make any sense out of.”

Captain Cavitt, on the other hand, initially denied that he had even gone to the site. In his first interviews with UFO researchers Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt, Cavitt said he didn’t know why Marcel had claimed he went with him. However, later, when he was interviewed by an Air Force colonel, Cavitt not only confirmed that he had been at the site, but also said that as soon as he saw the debris, he knew it was from a weather balloon. Nevertheless, he never explained why he had not told Marcel this at the time, or why they had spent an entire day collecting pieces of what he supposedly recognized right away.

It was obvious that the debris wasn’t from any kind of aircraft, missile, or weather balloon. Marcel said, “I’d never seen anything like that. I didn’t know what we were picking up. I still don’t know. Even today, I have no idea what it was… it couldn’t have been from an aircraft, or from any kind of weather balloon or experimental balloon. For one thing, if it had been a balloon, it wouldn’t have been porous. But this stuff was porous.” Marcel explained that he had seen rockets launched from White Sands, and this material definitely didn’t come from any rocket, missile, or aircraft. They gathered as much as they could carry, yet much of the wreckage remained scattered across the field. Although he and Cavitt had moved some of the wreckage to the center of the field, much more remained “scattered all over.” Marcel sent Cavitt back to the base while he stayed behind to gather more. He filled up his staff car with as much as it could hold. Still, he said, “We only picked up a very small portion of it.” Before heading back to the base, Marcel made a stop at his house. He said that he had been so impressed by what they had found that he wanted his family to see the debris, even if it meant waking them up.

Jesse Marcel Jr. remembered being woken up by his father that night, feeling confused and disoriented. His father was standing over him, urging him to get up. He got out of bed and followed him outside, where they carried a box filled with metallic debris. Once inside the house, they spread the pieces across the kitchen floor, trying to fit them together like a giant puzzle. The debris covered most of the floor, from the back door to the entrance of the living room, stretching from the stove on the left to the sink and refrigerator. Jesse Jr. described the materials: lead foil, I-beams, and a small, black plastic-like substance that was thicker than the foil and much stronger. He said it reminded him of “Bakelite.” As they were examining the pieces, Marcel’s wife, Viaud, picked up one of the beams and pointed out that it had strange markings on it. Jesse Jr. remembered seeing “purple, strange symbols” — different geometric shapes, including leaves and circles. The symbols were shiny purple, small, and less than the width of a fingernail, scattered across the beam. Marcel Sr. told him it was from a flying saucer, and when Jesse Jr. asked what a flying saucer was, his father explained it was a ship, sounding excited. After they finished inspecting the debris, Jesse Jr. helped his father put the pieces back into the box and carry it out to the car, where Marcel was heading to the air base.

Early the next morning, Marcel met with Colonel Blanchard and showed him some of the debris they had collected, explaining that it was unlike anything he had ever seen. Later that day, Blanchard sent Marcel to Carswell Air Force Base to speak with General Ramey, the commanding officer of the Eighth Air Force. Marcel’s orders were to fly the materials to Wright-Patterson Air Field in Ohio, but when he arrived at Carswell, General Ramey was absent. Robert Porter, a crew member on the flight to Fort Worth, said there were only four small packages. After the preflight check on the B-29, a staff car from Building 1034 delivered the material, which was handed up to Porter through the hatch. The largest piece was triangular, about two-and-a-half to three feet across and three to four inches thick, while the other three packages were about the size of shoeboxes and felt empty.

Once the packages were loaded, they were moved to the back of the forward compartment, where Porter could no longer see them. When the plane arrived at Fort Worth Army Air Field, the crew was told to stay with the aircraft until a guard was posted, after which they were allowed to eat. The material was then transferred to a B-25 and flown to Wright Field. When the crew returned, they were told the debris had been nothing more than a weather balloon and instructed not to discuss the flight with anyone. Years later, Walter Haut, the public relations officer at Roswell, spoke with Marcel, who shared that he had taken some of the debris into General Ramey’s office to show him. The material was laid out on Ramey’s desk for when he returned, and Ramey wanted to see the exact location where it had been found. The two went to the map room, but when they came back, the wreckage on Ramey’s desk had been replaced with a weather balloon.

While Marcel was at the Fort Worth base, Major Charles A. Cashon, the public information officer, took two photos of him crouching near the remains of the weather balloon. Marcel briefly left the general’s office, and during his absence, reporter J. Bond Johnson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram interviewed General Ramey. Johnson later reported that Ramey explained the debris wasn’t from a flying disc, as initially reported, but from a weather balloon that had crashed. That evening, Ramey held a press conference in his office. Marcel, present at the conference, had been instructed not to speak to reporters, despite their numerous microphones and questions. Marcel recalled, “They wanted to interview me, but I couldn’t say anything… until I talked to the general. I had to go under his orders.”

Also at the press conference was Warrant Officer Irving Newton, a weather officer at Fort Worth, who had been called into Ramey’s office to identify the debris. Newton was briefed by a colonel who told him the officers from Roswell believed they had found a flying saucer, but the general thought it was a weather balloon. When Newton arrived, he saw a rawin-type weather balloon in a damaged state, spread out on the floor. Newton recalled that Ramey asked for his opinion, and he explained that the general seemed to mock Marcel for bringing the weather balloon all the way from Roswell. After Newton identified the debris as a balloon, Ramey canceled the special flight to Wright Field. However, an FBI document from 6:17 p.m. on July 8 noted that “Disc and balloon being transferred to Wright Field by special plane.” The FBI report also mentioned that Major Curtin had stated that the object resembled a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector, although their conversation with Wright Field hadn’t confirmed this. A final photograph was taken of Newton crouched by the debris, where Marcel had been photographed earlier. The image appeared in only a few newspapers. After the press conference, Marcel said the general told him to return to Roswell as he was needed there, so Marcel left Ramey’s office, stayed overnight in Fort Worth, and returned to Roswell the following day.

Even though Ramey had ordered the special flight canceled, it seems there were still flights to Wright Field, which was the main research and testing center for the Army Air Forces. If something truly unusual had been found, Wright Field was where scientists could examine the material. Brigadier General Arthur Exon, who was a lieutenant colonel at the time, confirmed that the debris did make it to Wright Field. Exon recalled that they heard the material had arrived, and extensive testing was done, including chemical analysis and stress tests. He said, “I don’t know how it arrived, but the boys who tested it said it was very unusual.” Exon also supported the descriptions given by Marcel and others, describing some of the material as flimsy but tough, almost like foil but much stronger. He added, “It had them pretty puzzled.” When asked about the weather balloon explanation, Exon said, “Blanchard could have cared less about a weather balloon.” The idea that the balloon story was a cover-up was confirmed by Brigadier General Thomas DuBose, who was the chief of staff of the Eighth Air Force in July 1947. DuBose stated, “[It] was a cover story. The whole balloon part of it. That was the part of the story we were told to give to the public and news and that was it.” The military attempted to convince the media that the object found near Roswell was just a weather balloon, but the officers who were in the know, including those in Fort Worth, at Strategic Air Command in Washington, and at the highest levels of the Army Air Forces, all agreed that the debris wasn’t from any conventional weather balloon.

CORROBORATION BY OTHER WITNESSES

A significant testimony comes from Frank Joyce, one of the first journalists to get involved with the Roswell events. In July 1947, Joyce worked as a radio announcer for KGFL in Roswell and was directly involved in broadcasting the first news about the mysterious object. He received a phone call from Major Jesse Marcel, who confirmed the discovery of an unidentified object. Joyce initially treated the news as a major story, discussing it openly with Marcel and sharing the information on air, which led to growing media interest. However, Joyce later recalled being contacted by military authorities, who ordered him to retract the original story. He received an intimidating call from a high-ranking officer, who insisted he change his version of events to align with the new official narrative of a weather balloon. Joyce claimed he was pressured heavily to comply, with threats of serious personal and professional consequences if he didn’t back off from his initial reporting. This experience left Joyce so shaken that he remained silent about the incident for many years.

A particularly important part of Joyce’s testimony involves his interaction with Mack Brazel. Joyce recounted that Brazel first gave an interview to the local radio, conducted by his colleague Walt Whitmore, the station’s owner. In that interview, Brazel provided a version of the events that differed from the story he later shared with the Roswell Daily Record on July 9, where he claimed to have found remnants that resembled pieces of wood and tinfoil. According to Joyce, the radio interview was never aired. Shortly after the recording, Joyce received a call from military authorities who ordered him not to broadcast it and to destroy all evidence of it. Joyce also mentioned meeting Brazel again on July 9, when he found the rancher visibly shaken and scared. Brazel confided that he had been detained and threatened by the military, adding that he would never speak publicly about the incident again. Joyce saw this as a clear sign that Brazel had been under intense pressure to change his version of events.

Joyce’s account was later corroborated by his colleague, Walt Whitmore, who confirmed hearing about the incident from Joyce, who had spoken directly with Sheriff Wilcox and Mac Brazel. Intrigued by the story and eager for an exclusive interview, Whitmore went to Brazel’s ranch on July 7, meeting him after his visit with military officials at the crash site. Whitmore invited Brazel to come with him to Roswell for a radio interview. However, being aware of the growing media interest, Whitmore decided to take an unusual approach. According to his son, Walt Whitmore Jr., and his collaborator Judd Roberts, Whitmore brought Brazel to his own home in a quiet part of town, offering him a safe place away from the pressure. Whitmore’s goal was to give Brazel a secure environment where he could freely share his side of the story without interference. But this arrangement didn’t last long, as the military quickly traced Brazel to Whitmore’s house. Whitmore testified that soldiers came, took Brazel, and essentially arrested him, subjecting him to long interrogations, medical checks, and heavy pressure to change his original account. Whitmore also claimed that on the evening of July 9, he received a special phone call from Washington, ordering him not to air the interview, or else he would lose his station’s license. After that call, military personnel raided the offices of local newspapers and radio stations, confiscating anything related to the incident. The culmination of this was Brazel’s return to KGFL, where, under armed escort, he appeared at the radio station, but with an entirely different story than the one he had originally shared.

The testimony of Bill Brazel — Mack’s son — adds further weight to the accounts given by Frank Joyce and Walt Whitmore. In fact, Bill’s recollection supports the idea that his father was taken into custody and pressured into changing his original story. According to him, Mack had initially shared a very different version of what he had found in the desert, but after being held by the military for several days, he came back deeply shaken and unwilling to talk about the event ever again. Bill said his father had been interrogated multiple times and warned not to say anything. This lines up with what Joyce remembered from seeing Mack on July 9 — scared and clearly under pressure — and with Whitmore’s account that the military had tracked Mack down after he gave a radio interview and essentially took him away.

But Bill’s involvement with the case did not end there. In fact, he also claimed that he had managed to recover a few small pieces of debris that had somehow escaped the military’s cleanup operation. His description of these fragments closely matches what Jesse Marcel and his son reported. Bill talked about small, grayish pieces that felt as light as balsa wood but were unusually strong. One piece was around six inches long and slightly flexible, while others looked like thin sheets of a strange metallic material. One detail he recalled in particular was how some of these metallic sheets would return to their original shape after being folded — a property that seemed completely beyond anything known in 1947. Eventually, though, Bill’s possession of these fragments attracted attention. After casually mentioning them to some people in Corona, word got back to the military. Officers showed up and made it clear that he had to hand everything over. Bill understood the situation and complied without argument.

Another key figure in the Roswell story was Sheriff George Wilcox, who was quickly pushed aside once the military got involved. After the debris field was cordoned off, Wilcox and his team were kept out of the investigation. His two deputies were even denied access to the main site, though they managed to explore the surrounding area. By the time the case was reopened decades later, Wilcox had already passed away. But his children and grandchildren shared what they remembered about his experience. One of his daughters, Phyllis McGuire, recalled that military officers showed up at the sheriff’s office in a hurry and gave no explanation for what was going on. Curious about what had happened, Phyllis kept asking her father questions, but her mother, Inez Wilcox, told her to stop. According to Inez, the military had explicitly instructed Wilcox not to talk about the matter. Another family member, Jay Tulk — the husband of Wilcox’s daughter Elizabeth — remembered seeing numerous military vehicles parked outside the sheriff’s office shortly after the soldiers arrived in town. The whole experience seemed to leave a deep impact on Wilcox. He lost interest in his job and eventually decided not to run for re-election. This change in behavior was confirmed by one of his former deputies, Tommy Thompson, who described Wilcox as noticeably depressed after the summer of 1947.

THE SAUCER AND THE BODIES

Other witnesses also recalled unusual military activity during that time. Joe Briley, who took over operations at the Roswell base starting in mid-July 1947, told researcher Kevin Randle that Colonel Blanchard had personally gone to the crash site. Briley also said that the famous press release — the one announcing the recovery of a “flying disc” — had been abruptly shut down by “people from Washington” who arrived at the base shortly afterward. This sudden federal intervention was also mentioned by pilot Robert Shirkey, who said he saw around ten military police officers loading debris onto a plane while he watched from the operations office. According to him, all of those MPs were transferred to other bases within the following month. That account was echoed by Thomas Gonzales, who in 1947 was a sergeant in Roswell’s “T-Squadron” bomber group. He, too, was transferred just days after taking part in the security cordon placed around what he said was the wreckage of a UFO — a craft he described as resembling a flying wing. Gonzales also claimed to have seen the bodies of “small men” who looked human-like, recovered from the crash site near Brazel’s ranch.

According to many American UFO researchers who delved into a wide range of sources, all those who had been involved in guarding the Roswell crash site received financial compensation — more than a dozen military police officers were each allegedly paid $10,000 for their service, an extraordinary amount of money for 1947. This information appears to be supported by the account of Sergeant Melvin E. Brown, who spoke to his family shortly before his death. Brown had been a sergeant with the 509th Bomb Group at the time of the incident. Later, he was transferred to England, where he married a British woman and eventually settled in the outskirts of London after leaving the military. On his deathbed in 1982, Brown revealed the existence of a secret bank account — a trust fund tied to a place called Roswell — containing a large sum of money he claimed to have received for participating in a top-secret mission. He urged his family to try to locate the money. However, the search led nowhere: there was no record of a special family account or one registered under his name. Despite his illness — Brown was dying of cancer — his family insisted that his mind remained perfectly clear until the end.

Over the years, he had occasionally shared fragments of a strange story with his wife and daughters, but in his final moments, he felt compelled to reveal everything. “As he was telling us, it seemed like he was already beginning to regret it,” said his daughter, Beverly Bean. According to her, Brown described how all available men at the Roswell base were suddenly ordered onto military vehicles and sent into the desert, tasked with guarding the crash site of a flying saucer. They were instructed to “look without seeing” and warned not to touch anything. Despite this, Brown and a fellow soldier lifted one of the covers draped over a military truck — and what they saw shocked them. Inside were several bodies: small beings, less than a meter tall, with oversized heads, slanted eyes, and yellowish skin. Beverly Bean publicly shared her father’s story in 1986 during a long-form documentary on the Roswell incident by filmmaker Mark Wolf. Melvin Brown’s widow, however, declined to speak out, reportedly out of fear that doing so could jeopardize her pension.

Just like in the case of Sergeant Brown, it was Captain Oliver “Pappy” Henderson’s family who eventually disclosed his connection to the Roswell affair. Henderson was a pilot stationed at the Roswell base and had a notable military career. He had flown bombing missions over Europe during World War II and later took part in atomic tests in the Pacific. But his life took a dramatic turn when he was ordered to transport pieces of the wreckage and alien bodies recovered after the incident. For decades, Henderson remained absolutely silent, but everything changed in the early 1980s, when a local newspaper article caught his attention and led him to confide in his wife, Sappho. He told her that he had been the pilot tasked with flying the wreckage of the flying saucer and the extraterrestrial bodies to Wright Field.

According to what he said, the beings were small in size, with heads much larger than their bodies, and they wore suits made from a material he had never seen before. He also mentioned that the bodies had been preserved in dry ice during the transport. In 1981, Henderson shared a similar account with his daughter, Mary Kathryn Groode, and confirmed to her that he had personally seen both the wreckage and the alien beings. Mary later recalled that her father used to talk about flying saucers during the nights they spent stargazing together. Another key moment came in 1982, when Henderson openly told a few of his old military colleagues that he had taken part in transporting the wreckage. He described the bodies as “small and different.” While his former companions were initially doubtful, they soon realized he wasn’t making it up, and that he was being completely serious. Additional support for Henderson’s account came from Dr. John Kromschroeder, a dentist and close friend. Back in 1977, Henderson had shown him a piece of metal that he claimed came from the crash site. Kromschroeder described it as shiny gray, similar to aluminum but much lighter, rigid, with sharp edges, and completely unbendable — a description that matched those given by Jesse Marcel Sr., Bill Brazel, and other witnesses. After Henderson passed away, his wife Sappho firmly refused to let investigators examine his personal papers and belongings, which were stored in two large storage units packed full of cardboard boxes.

But even though Henderson’s account helps clarify how the wreckage was transported, the testimony of Vernon and Jean Maltais complicates things for those who believe the military were the first to discover the bodies. In 1978, the couple told UFO researcher Stanton Friedman that their friend, a civil engineer named Grady “Barney” Barnett, had shared an extraordinary experience with them. According to what Barnett told them, he had personally come across the crash site of a flying saucer and had seen the bodies of alien beings. Despite how unusual the story sounded, the Maltais had no reason to question its veracity. At the time of the alleged events, Barnett was living in Socorro, a small town located in the Rio Grande Valley, between Albuquerque and El Paso, not far from the Mexican border. He worked for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service and was known for his upstanding character. A World War I veteran and a former commander of the American Legion, Barnett had a solid reputation as a model citizen. Investigations carried out by UFO researcher William Moore supported this view of him, and so did the testimony of Holm Bursum, a former mayor of Socorro. Bursum stated he was convinced Barnett could never have made up such a story.

Barnett told Vern Maltais that one morning in 1947, while conducting land surveys near Magdalena, a small town west of Socorro, he noticed something glinting in the distance. At first, he assumed it was the wreckage of an aircraft that had crashed overnight. Curious, he made his way toward the site, which was about a mile and a half away. What he found, however, wasn’t any conventional aircraft. It was a metallic, disc-shaped object, roughly 25 to 30 feet in diameter, with a surface that reminded him of stainless steel. The structure appeared mostly intact, showing no obvious signs of an explosion or fire. Shortly after his arrival, Barnett was joined by a group of individuals who introduced themselves as archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania. They too had noticed the object and had initially assumed it was the scene of a plane crash. But what they found next was even more shocking: scattered around the craft were several bodies. Barnett didn’t say exactly how many, but he described them as humanoid in shape yet clearly not human. Their heads were bald, round, and oddly shaped, with small eyes set in unusual positions. They were very short in stature, but their heads were disproportionately large. All of them were wearing the same kind of one-piece gray suit — no buttons, belts, or zippers — and based on what he could tell, they all appeared to be male. As Barnett and the archaeologists stood there, stunned by what they were seeing, a military truck arrived. An officer and a driver got out and quickly took control of the situation. Soon after, more soldiers showed up, cordoned off the area, and ordered the civilians to leave immediately. They were also strictly warned not to speak to anyone about what they had witnessed. If these accounts are genuine, they suggest that civilians were the first to lay eyes on the remains of the extraterrestrial occupants.

One of the most debated aspects of Barney Barnett’s story is the precise location of the crash site. According to what Vern Maltais recalled, Barnett had mentioned Magdalena as the area where the incident took place. However, Barnett’s wife, Jean, remembered things differently. She was certain that he had never referred to Magdalena, and instead believed the event had occurred farther south, closer to Socorro, in the Plains of San Agustin — a wide, arid basin west of town. James “Fleck” Danley, Barnett’s former supervisor, confirmed this version, claiming that Barnett routinely worked in that region. Despite these inconsistencies, William Moore and Stanton Friedman didn’t abandon the story. In fact, Friedman suggested that two UFOs had collided with one another: one exploded in midair, scattering debris across Brazel’s ranch, while the other managed to stay airborne just long enough to crash in the Plains of San Agustin. Moore, on the other hand, never fully accepted the idea of two separate crashes. Instead, he proposed that a single craft had been struck by lightning, shedding parts of its structure over Brazel’s ranch, and then continued flying for a short distance before ultimately crashing in the Plains of San Agustin.

However, not everyone was convinced by the earlier theories. In 1985, William Moore himself reconsidered his position. While he continued to support the idea that a single craft was involved, he stopped believing that the craft had crashed in the Plains of San Agustin. Instead, he proposed that it had crashed much closer to Brazel’s ranch, and suggested that Barnett’s discovery might have taken place much closer to the debris field than previously thought. This view was later adopted by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt. According to their analysis, the Plains of San Agustin couldn’t have been the site where Barnett found the crashed saucer. To support this argument, Randle and Schmitt pointed to the testimony of Dr. Herbert Dick, an archaeologist who had been working in the Plains of San Agustin during July and August of 1947. He stated that he had no memory of any unusual activity taking place in the area during that period and added that, if he had remembered it, he would not have tried to hide it, as he had no sympathy for the U.S. government. They also referenced Francis Martin, a well-known local bar owner, who said he didn’t recall anything unusual happening in the region during that period. Given this information, Randle and Schmitt proposed that Barnett’s discovery may have occurred on July 8, much closer to the debris field. To support this idea, they cited multiple testimonies from military personnel who reported a series of aerial search flights over Brazel’s ranch, which eventually led to the discovery of the main wreckage site a few miles away from the debris field.

Another important and fascinating testimony related to the appearance of the bodies is that of Glenn Dennis. In 1947, Dennis was just 22 years old, working as a mortician at Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell. The funeral home had an agreement with the nearby military base to provide services in the event of deaths, including plane crashes. On the night of July 8th, Dennis received a strange call from the base. A military mortuary officer on the line asked how many small-sized caskets the funeral home had in stock. Dennis replied they only had one, but more could be ordered from a supply depot in Amarillo, Texas the next day. Curious, Dennis asked if there had been a plane crash, but the caller brusquely cut him off — he was only interested in supplies. Roughly an hour later, Dennis got a second call. This time, the officer asked a series of hypothetical questions about how to treat bodies that had been exposed to the elements in the desert for several days — what chemicals to use, how the organs might decompose, and how to preserve blood. The bizarre nature of the questions only deepened Dennis’s suspicion.

Later that same evening, Dennis accompanied a wounded soldier to the base hospital in a Ballard Funeral Home ambulance. Once inside, he noticed two uncovered military ambulances parked nearby, closely guarded by the Military Police. Inside those vehicles were what looked like metallic debris, shiny like aluminum and etched with unusual symbols that reminded him of hieroglyphics. While heading toward a vending machine, Dennis ran into an officer and casually asked whether there had been an aircraft accident, even offering his help. But the officer reacted with unexpected aggression. Moments later, Dennis was escorted off the base by two MPs despite his protests. As he was being led out, he passed a nurse he knew from town. She was just exiting a room with a cloth over her face, visibly shaken. Recognizing him, she whispered that he was in serious danger, warning him he could be shot for asking questions. Dennis then noticed two other staff members exiting the same room, also wearing cloths over their mouths.

Before leaving the base, Dennis was taken to a small room where he met two men he didn’t recognize — a red-haired captain and a stern-looking Army sergeant. What followed was a chilling encounter: Dennis was explicitly threatened. If he ever spoke about what he had seen or heard that night, they told him, he would be in grave danger.

The following day, Dennis met the nurse for lunch at the officers’ club. She was visibly shaken, pale, and clearly frightened. Over the course of their conversation, she confided something astonishing: she had assisted in the autopsy of three humanoid beings recovered from the desert. Two of the bodies, she said, were in poor condition — damaged both by the crash and what appeared to be scavenging animals. The third was in better shape, and what she saw convinced her that the beings were not human. She described them as small in stature, significantly shorter than the average adult, with unusual arm proportions — the upper arm was oddly short compared to the forearm. Their hands had four fingers, with no thumbs; the two central fingers were longer than the others. The beings’ heads were disproportionately large, their eyes wide and recessed, with almost no visible ears or noses. The bodies emitted a foul, overwhelming odor, so strong that the air conditioning in the facility had to be shut off to contain the stench. Eventually, the autopsies were moved to a separate hangar on base.

The nurse told Dennis that the medical staff had struggled during the procedure — several became physically ill. She also revealed that the two men Dennis had seen the previous evening — the red-haired officer and the stern sergeant — were actually pathologists flown in from Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. That lunch would be the last time Dennis ever saw her.

In the days that followed, when he tried to reach her again, he was told repeatedly that she was unavailable. Eventually, he was informed she had been transferred. Then, about ten days later, Dennis received a brief letter from her, sent from a military post office box. Through contacts at the base, Dennis learned the letter had originated from England. He quickly wrote back, but two weeks later, the letter was returned unopened, stamped simply: “Deceased.” Subsequent inquiries on Denniss’ part yielded a tragic story: the nurse had been transferred overseas and allegedly died in a military plane crash during an operation. She had been only 23 years old, deeply religious, raised in a strict Catholic family, and had enlisted in the Air Force to support her education. She had been stationed at Roswell for less than three months.

Despite the dramatic nature of his account, Glenn Dennis’s credibility has often been called into question, particularly due to the mysterious nurse he claimed had confided in him following the events at the Roswell base hospital. For years, Dennis refused to disclose her identity, stating that he had sworn a solemn oath never to reveal her name. It was only later, under mounting pressure from researchers hoping to corroborate his story, that Dennis reluctantly offered a name: Naomi Maria Selff. However, extensive investigations into military and medical archives yielded no evidence that any such person had ever served at Roswell Army Air Field, nor was there any record of her death in England as Dennis had claimed. Eventually, Dennis admitted the name was fabricated, explaining that it had been a necessary deception to protect the woman’s true identity. Still, this admission casted serious doubt over his entire testimony, leading many to dismiss his story altogether.

Yet the mystery of the nurse’s identity did not end there. Among several possible candidates, the most compelling match to Dennis’s description may have been 1st Lt. Adeline “Eileen” Fanton. A young, petite Army nurse stationed at Roswell in 1947, Fanton fit the physical profile Dennis had provided. Moreover, military records confirmed that she had indeed served at the base during that time and was later discharged a few years afterward, reportedly due to a psychological breakdown. Her name surfaced after another base medical technician, David Wagnon, identified her photograph as the woman he remembered from that period. In addition, two other witnesses — Sgt. LeRoy Lang and Bob Wolf — independently recalled seeing Dennis with a base nurse who matched Fanton’s description. These connections, combined with Fanton’s presence at the base during the critical period, suggest that she may have been the real Nurse X.

That said, other plausible candidates have emerged over the years. One was Miriam “Andrea” Bush, a short, dark-haired civilian who worked as secretary to the hospital administrator. According to family members, Bush returned home one evening visibly shaken, describing small humanoid bodies she had seen at the hospital and warning her family never to speak of it again. Like Dennis’s mysterious nurse, she withdrew from public life and later died under disturbing circumstances in what was officially ruled a suicide. Another candidate was Mary Lowe, a former Army nurse who, according to a coworker, once confessed to having witnessed the alien bodies at the base hospital. When interviewed in 1999, Lowe denied having been stationed at Roswell, claiming instead to have been overseas. However, her military records showed that she had been discharged in 1946 for marrying an enlisted man, contradicting her own story and casting further doubt on her denials. When UFO researchers later mentioned the name “Mary” to Dennis, he immediately identified her as Mary Lowe and said, “Yeah, she knows everything,” only to retract the statement the following day. His sudden reversal added to the intrigue, but also to the confusion.

Given these overlapping threads, it is possible that Dennis may have known all three women — Fanton, Bush, and Lowe — and deliberately fused their identities into one composite figure. His intention may not have been to deceive, but rather to obscure specific identifying details in order to protect all three. Even if “Naomi Selff” never existed, and even if the true identity of Nurse X remains officially unconfirmed, multiple women working at the base during that period matched Dennis’s description in striking ways. Furthermore, testimony from other witnesses, as well as official military documents support his account of sudden personnel transfers and vanishing medical staff at the Roswell base hospital. In that light, Dennis’s evasiveness may be understood not as a flaw in his testimony, but as the result of a sustained effort to shield individuals he believed to be in danger.

CONCLUSION

After decades of investigation, the Roswell incident continues to resist a straightforward explanation. Each new piece of testimony or uncovered document seems to add yet another layer of complexity to the story. Whether the strange metallic debris found by Mack Brazel truly belonged to an alien spacecraft or was part of a secret military project is still a matter of debate — but the details presented by those directly involved certainly make the extraterrestrial hypothesis hard to dismiss. Some of the most compelling accounts come from individuals like Jesse Marcel, Bill Brazel, Glenn Dennis, and others who witnessed the aftermath firsthand, describing materials and circumstances that seem far from ordinary. Despite the military’s persistent attempts to steer the narrative towards the weather balloon explanation, ongoing statements from former military personnel, civilian witnesses, and researchers consistently point to something much more unusual. The way information has been controlled and the numerous contradictions in official accounts only deepen the suspicion that the full truth remains guarded.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• The Roswell incident by William Moore and Charles Berlitz
• UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt
• Crash at Corona by Stanton Friedman
• The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt
• Roswell UFO Crash Update by Kevin Randle
• Roswell in the 21st Century by Kevin Randle
• Understanding Roswell by Kevin Randle
• Roswell Mortician Glenn Dennis’s Story, ‘Nurse X’, and Much Other Testimony about Small, Non- Human Bodies by David Rudiak

JadedSkywalker said:

There are too many Darth’s in Star Wars. Vader should be the only one.

Every Sith being named Darth something is ridiculous.

Why?

I like the addition of the “NOOOO!” at the end of ROTJ.

Personally, I don’t mind that they discarded Lucas’ ideas for the Sequel Trilogy, because I wasn’t a fan of his concepts anyway. What really bothers me, though, is that they threw out his ideas only to come up with something even worse. If they had rejected his vision but delivered a solid, well-crafted trilogy, I wouldn’t have had any complaints. Unfortunately, they chose to abandon his plans just to create something that manages to be even more disappointing than what he originally envisioned.

There was no question about the EU. Shame on you.

I do not blame Filoni for the discrepancies between The Clone Wars and the Clone Wars Multimedia Project. However, I do believe that spending too much time around George Lucas may have negatively influenced him.

Initially, Filoni wanted to tell a completely different story, centered on an entirely original cast of characters who would embark on adventures at the edges of the galaxy, far removed from major figures like Anakin and Obi-Wan. He did not want to heavily involve the main characters because, at the start, he cared about continuity and sought to avoid contradicting the Republic comics and other materials from the Multimedia Project. However, it seems George Lucas was not fond of this idea and insisted that the series focus on the main characters from the films, which inevitably led to contradictions with the previously published material. So, I do not blame Filoni for these inconsistencies, because in the beginning, he wanted to create an entirely new story and genuinely tried to respect the existing Canon.

That said, I am also convinced that over time, being in close proximity to George Lucas altered his perception of the franchise. While he initially seemed interested in preserving continuity and avoiding major contradictions, spending so much time with someone who famously stated that “continuity is for wimps” must have changed the way he views Star Wars. It turned him into someone who, much like his mentor, has little regard for maintaining consistency within the universe, which explains his disregard for any previously established continuity (weather it is Legends or Canon) in subsequent years.

Omni said:

A film should work within itself regardless of what Episode it is or something. ROTS is quite competent at establishing their relationship and what is it that falls apart - ditto for Anakin!s relationship to Padmé. Not a surprise it was reviewed more positively than all other Lucas SW films upon release - with the exception of the original.

Absolutely, I completely agree. The chase scene in Attack of the Clones, as well as the entire opening act of Revenge of the Sith, are completely dedicated to showing positive interactions between Anakin and Obi-Wan. I too think they could have included more moments like these, but some people act as if the two were constantly at odds throughout the Prequel Trilogy and never had any positive interaction — which just isn’t true. In the first half of Revenge of the Sith, they share plenty of good moments. Even when Obi-Wan tells Anakin that the Council has asked him to spy on Palpatine, he doesn’t blame him for anything and even apologizes to him later.

I have updated my personal Canon once again. After a long time, I abandoned my Legends purism and decided to create a personal continuity that combines the best elements from both the Legends and Disney continuities.

• Dawn of the Jedi (comics)
• Tales of the Jedi (comics)
• Knights of the Old Republic (comics)
• Knights of the Old Republic I
• The Old Republic: Revan
• Knights of the Old Republic II
• The Old Republic: Deceived
• The Old Republic (cinematics)
• The Old Republic (original game)
• The Darth Bane Trilogy
• Darth Plagueis (novel)
• Cloak of Deception
• Episode I: The Phantom Menace
• Bounty Hunter (video game)
• Obi-Wan & Anakin (comic)
• Episode II: March of the Clones (my fan edit)
• The Clone Wars (2002 video game)
• Clone Wars (Canon Edit): The Master and the Apprentice
• Clone Wars (Canon Edit): Knight of the Republic
• The Clone Wars (Season 2 Episode 16)
• The Clone Wars (Season 1 Episode 16)
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars (movie)
• The Clone Wars (up to Season 6 Episode 4)
• Dark Disciple (novel)
• Labyrinth of Evil
• Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
• Darth Vader (2017 Marvel comics)
• Catalyst (novel)
• Kenobi (novel)
• Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith (comics)
• Rebel Rising (novel)
• Star Wars: Andor
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• Episode IV: A New Hope
• Darth Vader (2015 Marvel comics)
• Scoundrells (novel)
• Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
• Shadows of the Empire
• Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

Over time, I re-evaluated The Clone Wars and ultimately chose to replace the Clone Wars Multimedia Project with the 2008 series. However, I have made a few exceptions to avoid incorporating elements of the show I never truly liked in the first place: I exclude the Mortis arc, most of Season 6 (except for the first four episodes), and all of Season 7. I am willing to accept Maul’s return, but I prefer to believe that after being captured by Palpatine, he was subjected to experiments and ultimately killed by Palpatine himself before Revenge of the Sith. Consequently, I do not include the Son of Dathomir comic, as it depicts Maul escaping from captivity. While I still have great respect and appreciation for the Clone Wars Multimedia Project, I now feel it is better to incorporate The Clone Wars, though I have kept some stories from the Multimedia Project and placed them either before the series or after the fourth episode of Season 6. I have also decided to discount all stories set after Return of the Jedi. As I said in another thread, I was never really invested in the post-ROTJ world, so I decided to just end my personal continuity with Return of the Jedi itself.

Channel72 said:

ESB, you have Luke fighting the man who killed his father (or so he believes), and in ROTJ you have a son fighting his own father.

However, it should also be pointed out that Luke did not interact with Vader at all in The Empire Strikes Back, nor did Vader have any particularly special relationship with Luke up to that point. The only thing Vader knew about Luke was that he was his son, but the two had no meaningful connection, and prior to that duel, Luke had never even spoken to him. Therefore, all the tension in that duel exists solely because you, the viewer, imagine what the two of them might be feeling in that moment. Which is essentially the same as imagining Anakin and Obi-Wan having more positive interactions off-screen compared to the ones that were actually shown in Attack of the Clones.

Channel72 said:

CGI lava effects

The lava was not created using CGI. Footage was taken from Mount Etna — a real volcano located in Sicily, Italy — and then composited into the background. The only CGI related to the lava involved the instances where it rains down just a few inches away from them. Otherwise, the scenes used real footage of Mount Etna. Furthermore, there are not many alternative ways to simulate such a scenario other than CGI and real imagery pasted in the background, as there are not exactly many practical effects capable of convincingly simulating lava, and it is not like you can start throwing real lava at the actors.

ken-obi said:

Stardust1138 said:

ken-obi said:

Firstly, if people enjoy the Prequel films then all power to them. It is pleasing that some people enjoyed these films. A younger generation of fans have now come through online: and the young kids who enjoyed them at the time are now grown up and want to talk about them and why they enjoyed them. Good for them.
 

But for those of us that didn’t enjoy them:

George seemed to forget the golden rule of making movies with the Prequels:

Show. Don’t tell.
 

Show: George should have done was delivered on what he promised - the story of a great man and his fall into darkness. Although The Phantom Menace is probably the best of the three films, but it served little purpose in the greater narrative. He could have centered the first two films on an intelligent, thoughtful but conflicted Jedi who was lured to the Dark Side. The third film would have then chronicled the crusade of a tortured, Vader who traveled the galaxy hunting down the remaining Jedi.

But instead George gave us something very different - the adventures of an annoying hot-shot child who got lucky in a repeat of a space battle seen twice before in previous Star Wars movies, who then started a toxic controlling relationship with the mother of Luke and Leia, and somehow inexplicably morphed into Vader. George also gave the audience countless contradictions to what had already been explained and established in the previous Original films.

When you consider what could have been, and probably should have been, it is difficult not to feel letdown. Disappointed. Frustrated. In need of a good Fan Edit or 50! 😃
 

Don’t Tell: Since the backlash on the Prequel films George, Lucasfilm and many Prequel fans has spent considerable time and effort to explain why the Prequel films were what they were, and that people who didn’t like them just didn’t understand them, or that in not liking the films they were being mean to him. Mental gymnastics is required to take George at his word, And that is a problem in itself - George had the opportunity to show us the films he later espoused about, but he didn’t. The quality, the heart, the thrill, the story, the talent, all in abundance in the Originals, just wasn’t there for the Prequels. The later explanations and attempts at reasoning why the Prequels weren’t widely liked mean little to the people who paid their ticket money on these much hyped and publicized films at the time, sat down to watch them, and left disappointed. Or people who just plain didn’t like them or thought they were “merely okay”. Or just don’t want to watch them again.
 

Licensed books, animated and live actions series trying to explain the contradictions and plot holes between the two trilogies really only serve to remind people how poor, lazy and incoherent the Prequel films were. Selective interviews from George with friendly journalists and pre-approved questions, more retcons, extensive PR campaigns, videos, blogs, articles - all trying to justify, explain, or give some reason why the Prequels were better than we think or remember, or that we just didn’t understand them - all fail in their purpose: to get more people to watch, like and appreciate these films.

Why would George and others who champion the Prequels think people who didn’t enjoy these films want to read articles and watch videos and so on, or have it explained to them they were somehow wrong not to like these films? Or that they didn’t understand them? It seems a waste of time and effort to me, and yes, we understood them perfectly fine, thank you. George would probably have more respect from fans if he was more honest, about his own shortcomings in approaching the Prequels and the films themselves. Answer the tough and hard questions, not avoid them. Sometimes films don’t work out - not every film is going to be a smash and that is okay. It is also okay to say you “got it wrong” or could have done it differently. Many of us would rather find other Star Wars content to enjoy, whether new games, books, comics series and films.

Enjoy what you like. Leave what you don’t enjoy behind.

There’s a great documentary about this from History Channel. It’s just the Prequels tend to get more unfairly treated because the media tended to propel the backlash to continue as they attacked Ahmed Best, Jake Lloyd, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, and Rick McCallum. They attacked George too. Why would they want to listen to people who are going to accuse them of being racists, poor actors, yes men, or out of touch mainly deprived from not giving fans what they want? You get nothing from attacking people personally. Instead that’s exactly what happened and still does with a different group. George did listen to critics but he also recognised most were circlejerking around the ideas of things that just weren’t true about him or his colleagues. Most critics tend to view the films from the view of what they wish had happened in the films versus the actual stories and understanding them for what they are. An artist is equally not obligated to tell you their intentions. Andrei Tarkovsky or even Stanley Kubrick never explained themselves. George doesn’t need to either.

“Many don’t understand the Prequels and even Original Trilogy for that matter.”

“racists, poor actors, yes men, or out of touch mainly deprived from not giving fans what they want? You get nothing from attacking people personally”, and “most critics were circlejerking”

WTF? I just don’t like the films. Like I said before many people just don’t like them too, and has nothing to do with what you listed above.

“Most critics tend to view the films from the view of what they wish had happened in the films versus the actual stories and understanding them for what they are.”

No, they don’t. Critics may offer possibilities and alternative scenarios sometime after - but they can also understand the actual films for what they are.

“Andrei Tarkovsky or even Stanley Kubrick never explained themselves. George doesn’t need to either.”

I completely agree, and said before George “doesn’t need to”, yet George continues to attempt to explain them, retcon them, and bridge them so many years afterwards? Again, show - don’t tell.

"What matters I think though is you try understanding the author’s intentions and how successfully they achieved what they set out to do." and “at least give things a chance from the filmmaker’s prospective instead of brushing them off off and thinking only about what you thought could’ve been better”

No. What matters is people making their own mind up if they enjoyed watching a series of films or not. Again, show - don’t tell.

If people decided they did not enjoy them, they do not need to be labelled or associated with, as you did above, as being inferior minded people, accusers of others being racist, people who personally attack others, or are people who don’t understand the Prequels, or other films. Yes, a minority of those toxic fans exist, but they do not speak for the vast majority of those who simply did not enjoy the Prequel Films. A running theme with your posts is that if people critique the Prequel films (or George) then they somehow do not understand them. So there is no point in continuing this discussion with you.

I am happy you and others do enjoy these films, but the many that didn’t enjoy the Prequels certainly don’t need lectures on how we just “don’t understand them”.

 

SparkySywer said:

Really, I just can’t understand why Revenge of the Sith is considered by anyone to be some operatic masterpiece. The only good qualities it has comes from depicting the interesting events ANH describes, but even then it butchers them. It’s really just an uncompelling story, shot and directed as blandly as possible, with a healthy helping of bloat and a completely tangential VFX reel every 15 or so minutes to make sure you don’t fall asleep.

Fanedits of Revenge of the Sith that cut out the cheese and the bloat completely fail for me because once you cut that out, the movie has very little left.

I agree for the most part of that, especially when depicting the events that are described in the original film (that don’t contradict it). It does feel at times that the filmmakers wanted it to be over and done with, and as long as “the boxes were ticked” it was somehow “good enough”. It seemed very flat and uninspiring, and not at all what you expect for the climax of the final Prequel film.
 

JadedSkywalker said:

Star Wars was from the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. It was about him and he was the main character. Darth Vader wasn’t his father, and there was no long planned out saga of Darth Vader. Vader was Tarkin’s henchmen. With the first film obviously, then Lucas started rewriting from Empire on.

Lucas made it all up as he went. Its very clear he only started writing the prequels in 1994. He never bothered to watch the original movies again to keep continuity.

It certainly appeared that way given the many contradictions, and the mental gymnastics required to even to attempt to make some them more coherent, in the Prequels.

I think you have partially misinterpreted my views on this subject. Yes, some of Anakin’s reactions in the Prequel Trilogy do come off as exaggerated — even over-the-top, especially in Attack of the Clones. There are moments where he should use more restraint, and I do think that some of his reactions should be toned down. I will not deny that; in fact, in the Prequel edits I am planning to create, I intend to remove certain moments that are simply too over-the-top. However, I still believe it is fitting for Anakin to be more emotionally expressive in the Prequels than he is in the Original Trilogy. Anakin’s heightened expressiveness does not feel out of character to me. After all, he is still young, still learning to navigate his immense power and the emotions that come with being the Chosen One. So, while I plan to moderate some of his more exaggerated reactions in these fan edits, I also intend to keep his character a bit more openly expressive than Vader in the Original Trilogy. This intensity — even if occasionally dramatic — reflects his inner conflicts.

As you pointed out, in the Original Trilogy we can certainly see Darth Vader as a character who appears far more controlled and repressive. I will not deny that. (Just to be clear, when I asked you to give me some examples, I was not trying to be sarcastic. I genuinely wanted you to give me some examples, because I did notremember them.) Yet, there are still moments in which the Original Trilogy’s Vader recalls that same passionate Anakin from the Prequels. For instance, in A New Hope, when Vader captures Leia and accuses her of being a spy and a traitor. His line, “You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor. Take her away!” has a fierceness that feels very much like Prequel-era Anakin, revealing the passionate core that has always been a part of him. Both trilogies show these two sides of Anakin’s character — his struggle to suppress his emotions and his inability to do so at times. In the Prequels, while he may seem overly expressive, there are also instances where he tries to hold back. Take, for example, when he tells Padmé, “Jedi do not have nightmares.” In this moment, he is suppressing his vulnerability, trying to project the calm and control that a Jedi should embody. And I have not watched the films in quite some time, but I am certain there are other moments in the Original Trilogy where Vader’s reactions are similarly spontaneous, as well as other moments in the Prequel Trilogy where Anakin tries to deny his own emotions.

In my opinion, both of these aspects — sometimes repressing his emotions, sometimes failing to contain them — are part of Anakin’s character arc. It would be unrealistic to expect him to behave consistently in one way across every situation, especially given the intense, conflicting pressures he faces. So yes, while I do plan to reduce some of Anakin’s more exaggerated reactions in my fan edits, I believe his expressive nature as a young man adds depth to his character. It shows us the raw conflict within him — a conflict that defines both Anakin and Vader in different ways across the trilogies.

PS: I apologize if my previous response was brief and did not address all your points as thoroughly as this one. Last time, I responded a bit too quickly and without much thought. I tend to fixate on certain things, and having unread messages or unresolved responses really bothers me. So sometimes, just to ease that feeling, I end up sending answers that are not fully thought-out, simply to get it off my chest.

Z6PO said:

Spartacus01 said:

Back to the Future’s version of Johnny B Goode is better than the original version. And I’m saying this as someone who loves Chuck Berry.

But the phone call that follows, even if it’s a time paradox, is an unfortunate racist joke. That short scene could have been left on the cutting room floor and the movie would not have been changed at all (besides being slightly less racist).

Why is it a racist joke?

G&G-Fan said:

Anakin in fact should be expressive, but also have a tendency to repress his emotions in distress, forming a cold persona. This doesn’t mean he can never fly off the handle either. He goes cold because he cares too much.
As I’ve noted, this is shown in the OT. Vader regresses into his cold persona immediately after he admits something vulnerable or Luke says something that gets to him. In Anakin’s death scene, now having abandoned the dark side, we see he is very caring and sentimental.

In the Prequel Trilogy, Anakin was in his early 20s, while in the Original Trilogy he was in his early 40s. It is natural that his behavior and mannerisms would have changed over time. Twenty years separate the events of these two trilogies, and it is uncommon for individuals to retain the same attitudes and ways of behaving in their 20s as in their 40s. This is especially true in Anakin’s case, given that he fell to the Dark Side and became a Sith Lord. It is entirely realistic for a person to evolve over such a span of time. Thus, Anakin’s transformation reflects both the natural passage of years and the profound personal experiences he underwent in his journey from Jedi Knight to Darth Vader. Furthermore, I do not remember any particular instance where Vader represses his emotions in front of Luke. Could you provide some examples?