(31) Fri 25 Jul 97 21:31 By: Sheppard Gordon To: All Re: Roswell UFO Skeptics St: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ @EID:cc05 22f9abe0 @MSGID: 1:278/15 0017f03f ROSWELL SKEPTICS ASK SERIOUSLY: WHY THE PARTY? 06/29/97 The Columbus Dispatch Even as Roswell, N.M., braces for an estimated 100,000 goggle-eyed tourists this week, skeptics of the city's celebrated UFO "incident" in 1947 are seeding the clouds with scientific doubt. They hope that a sobering downpour on the parade of true believers will keep public sensibilities from wandering too far astray from reason. "It's a lot of hype for a nonmystery," charged Barry Karr, executive director of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. "Of course, it is all very sexy to the paranormal UFO community for a number of reasons -- government conspiracy, visitors from other planets. It's an interesting story, but one that is not factual." Karr's Buffalo, N.Y.-based group, better known as CSICOP (pronounced "psycop"), is a national network of members of the scientific community. They debunk everything from poltergeist claims to spoon-bending acts. The group is so certain that the 50th anniversary of the Roswell Incident will rekindle brush fires of public gullibility that it hosted a two-day conference earlier this month in Tucson, Ariz. The hope is that a preventive dose of scientific reason might keep a lid on things. Among those invited was Robert Sheaffer, an engineer and writer from San Jose, Calif. Sheaffer, who wrote The UFO Verdict: Examining the Evidence (Prometheus Books, $19.95), suggests that what happened at Roswell was inconsequential and easily explained. He says the nation forgot about it until ufologists resuscitated the whole thing, embellishing it with government conspiracy and coverup, military gag orders, disappearing nurses, alien autopsies and the ever-present Hangar 18. "I think it is the search for excitement," Sheaffer said of Roswellmania. "It would be the most interesting story in the world if it were true. But a lot of people have trouble separating fantasy from fact, wish from thought. "Roswell was a blip of excitement for a day or two in 1947, then for more than 30 years this incident was dead," he noted. "Take any UFO book written in the 1950s or '60s and it only mentions Roswell as a footnote, in passing, if it mentions it at all. It has only been in the past 15 years that ufologists have accepted the crash at Roswell as an article of faith." Like Sheaffer, most detractors and skeptics contend that the case made by true believers (such as Charles Berlitz and William Moore in the 1980 book The Roswell Incident) is long on hearsay, conjecture and inconsistent testimony - a doily of indistinct recollections with flourishes of intrigue and conspiracy. Albuquerque, N.M., physicist Dave Thomas is vice presidentof New Mexicans for Science and Reason. He has argued for years that nothing was in the handful of wreckage that landed on a ranch outside Roswell other than trash strewn from an off-course, experimental contraption for snooping on the Soviets. "They were trying to get microphones high into the upper atmosphere - 50, 000 feet - to listen to rumbles coming from Russia, to monitor atomic explosions," he explained of the military's Project MOGUL. "We wanted to be able to tell when they started popping off the big ones. "It didn't work and it was quickly replaced by more efficient means of detection, but one of the first flights they lost track of." When it crashed, the debris was found by ranch foreman William "Mac" Brazel. Brazel did not find aliens among the crash debris and never claimed he did. As for the "coded extraterrestrial hieroglyphics" allegedly found, Baker notes that the apparatus's designers - scientists at New York University - had used lightweight tape from a Manhattan toy manufacturer. The adhesive served their purposes, and the scientists didn't seem to mind that the roll was printed with fanciful symbols and characters. An ill-considered military press release, issued and disavowed in haste (Roswell officers likely didn't know about the experimental surveillance craft), said debris from a "flying disk" had been discovered. The disavowal only abetted ufologists' later contentions of coverup and conspiracy. One observer pointed out that we ought never ascribe to conspiracy that which can more plausibly be explained by incompetence. Yet no matter what Baker, Sheaffer and Karr say or do, it's doubtful the three will disabuse many true believers of their notions. Karr acknowledged that most of the 50 or so attendees at the Tucson meeting already were skeptics. The speakers were preaching to the choir. The question that begs an answer in all of this is whether any true menace or peril is involved in Roswell generating a tourist-dollar windfall by hyping the anniversary of its dubious notoriety. Robert Baker, psychology professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky and an expert on alleged UFO abuductions, allowed, "No, I don't see any harm in what is happening at Roswell." The danger, he implied, comes when people turn to the skies in search of messages, instructions, directions to help sort and plot the course of their brief stay on Earth. The suspension of rational inquiry narrows the chasm one must leap from the logical to the ludicrous. Alien messengers and extraterrestrial portents and signs no longer are beyond the realm of the plausible. "They wind up in the hands of charismatic cult leaders," Baker said, "and from Heaven's Gate you can see what happens with that." -> Alice4Mac 2.4.4 E QWK Hiya:05Nov94 Origin: ----------> Jack Sargeant, you look fabulist! --- PCBoard (R) v15.3/M 10 * Origin: MoonDog BBS þ RIME NetHub Brooklyn,NY (1:278/15) SEEN-BY: 112/4 218/701 890 1001 278/15 230 353/250 396/1 3615/50 51 @PATH: 278/230 3615/50 218/1001