The stagnation of UFO Research

Lets face one fact about UFOs and research into them.

We arent getting anywhere. We've stagnated. If you look at UFO research over the years there's been some at least new ways of looking at the phenomena.

But as Kevin Randle says here what the current state of Ufology is:
"I would have to say that we're stuck in neutral," said Kevin Randle, a leading expert and writer on UFOs and is known as a dogged researcher of the phenomena. There's no real new research, he said, and that's "because we have to revisit the trash of the past.
Randle points to yesteryear stories, one stretching back in time to a supposed 1897 airship crash in Aurora, Texas, long proven to be a hoax by two con men -- yet continues to surface in UFO circles.
Then there's the celebrated Thomas Mantell saga, a pilot that lost his life chasing a UFO in 1948. There are those that contend he was killed by a blue beam from a UFO, Randle said "even though we have known for years that the UFO was a balloon and he violated regulations by climbing above 14,000 feet without oxygen equipment. I mean, we know this, and yet there are those who believe that Mantell was killed by aliens."
Randle's advice is to the point: "We need to begin to apply rigorous standards of research ... stop accepting what we wish to believe even when the evidence is poor, and begin thinking ahead."
-from the article "UFO Research: Findings vs Facts" CNN.com

Item One: Trash from the past
Kevin is 100% right. How many times are we going to go over, and over the same old cases. How many times do we have to show people why a case's validity doesnt hold up. How many times do we have to argue the point. I'm as guilty of it as any other, especially in regard to the Meier case. It's been done over, and over...to what end? At what point do the minority who still wish to place belief in a long dead case, just get left behind?

These cases keep being brought up from the past, rehashed, and then what? It ultimately serves only one purpose, to educate new people with cases they may not be familiar with. Most of these long proven hoaxed cases are still yet, being trolled around the UFO community as legitimate cases, in the hope of snagging the uneducated.

We have seen this. All of us have at one time or another.

Item Two: Convincing the Refusal of Legitimacy
Ever see those people who refuse to admit the UFO subject is even worthy of study?

How many times will people try to convince the people who wont even look at data? Do people realize how futile the effort is? One only need look at "Why UFO's cant exist" here on this board. How many more threads like this are going to occupy time responding to someone so clearly just out to get a rise out of the "believers"? How long before we take control and realize it just doesnt matter. There is work to be done...yet we waste time with every tap of the reply button, to a thread like that.

Item Three: Stop accepting what we wish to believe
Admittedly hard for some to admit. That the belief stems from a desire for it to be true. No matter what the data shows, it's "true" because for certain individuals...it's become a part of the belief system.

Is belief required to research any particular case?

It's more like it should be avoided.

Because if you believe it, youre only going to research a case for it's merits. Not it's faults. Objectivity. Interest is fine, you have to have that to even look into the enigma, but objectivity is the key. Belief is not.

Until people stop "believing" and start "knowing", the signal to noise ratio is only going to get worse, and we're creating the next wave of hoaxes to be disproven in coming years by those who do truly look objectively...to again have those people educate the unknowing new people.

A vicious cycle. And one that if we dont steer this UFO research thing in another direction, we're going to stay in.

Is a database of proven hoaxed cases the answer? A single point of reference to send new interested people to? A coalition of researchers to beome accountable for the data supporting or not supporting any particular case?

Because as we well know, accountability is another seriously lacking item in Ufology. How many times are we going to allow known frauds to contaminate the water before we hold these people accountable? I'm not talking about physically locking anyone up, or lawsuits, I'm talking about holding people accountable for their presented data.

I dont need too many times of the same person pissing down my neck and telling me it's raining. How many do the rest of you need?

Right, once. Past that, youre a non entity in the UFO community. Your word is crap and your credibility shot to hell. Youre done. Next.

As of today, I'd wager we have more repeat offenders then legitimate objective researchers.

Why?

Because people *want* to believe them. They have all the answers, and some people cant wait to get them, even at the cost of objectivity and truth of reality.

So, the answer might be harsh, absolute and I'm sure controversial. But how many more years are we going to dance? How many more years will we be as we are, blasting in every direction with no particular aim in mind?

I dunno, maybe the whole UFO matter is too subjective to work any other way. But there's no question about stagnation. So whats the solution. I'd really be interested in ideas.

~Jeff

i think some of the problem, at least with this website or others like it, is people can stumble upon a page that is older and hasnt been updated. there are multiple threads on the same subject all the time. i was thinking the other day that maybe we could compile a list of cases that have been proven to be a hoax and make it a sticky. possibly everyone can agree on some criteria as to what would constitute a hoax. for example, the australian ufo website. it was an admitted "work of art" by the owners and declared a hoax. yet someone may find fottage of that on youtube and think its new. maybe it wont exactly stop everyone but it will help educate ats users.

another thing is where are the people analyzing these photos? i used to see shows in the 80's and 90's where they would send off a video or picture to professional photo people. a little more evidence could go a long way.

Gone are those days about ufo's comming from mars or venus or grey aliens.This era is all about shapeshifting royal famalies being reptilians and matrix.And if any ufo researcher goes into this he is ridiculed by even the most hardcore ufo lovers.Ufo research is not stagnating but evolving.Now the masses are becoming the researcher,a silent revolution is happening but you are blind to see.

Originally posted by jritzmann
Randle's advice is to the point: "We need to begin to apply rigorous standards of research ... stop accepting what we wish to believe even when the evidence is poor, and begin thinking ahead."

Can I get an "AMEN" ? I've been waiting for us to find aliens or them to find us my entire life. And I think it could happen some day. But I'm not convinced that it will be the UFOlogists who will uncover it first. Too many are busy retrieving "lost memories" of abductions (hypnotic regression being dubious in the *extreme*), complaining about conspiracies that could never hold up in our government, turning every myth and religious story into an "aliens did it", reinventing our alien-less history so it appears "aliens did it all for us", and generally believing in and propagating a whole big pile of unsubstantiated codswallop.

Heck, supposedly "serious" UFOlogists even support channelling, meditation, or dream work as a way to contact or experience aliens!! We're in deep RELIGIOUS TERRITORY here, folks. This has all the hallmarks of a cult, including the increasing tacking-on of extra beliefs (ESP, remote viewing, etc) and the us versus them mentality.

I think part of the problem is that ATS is a public forum. As such there is nothing stopping "average Joe" from watching Billy Meier Videos on Youtube and then coming to ATS and starting a thread for example.

There are other problems such as many people simply being very gullible. Others approach the subject simply for the entertainment value that the subject provides them. Still others are young or have never been exposed to the subject and must on their own navigate through the labyrinth of the hype and lunatic fringe without losing focus just to get a handle on the UFO Phenomena.

There are other factors that cause problems as well for example , many people have an attitude that why should they waste time talking about "Blurry lights" ( UFOs ) when they can talk about Aliens and Abductions.

Then you have to take into account that serious UFOlogy takes all the heat for these problems even when UFOlogy has no control over them.

As for the research itself , I'm not so sure that it has actually stagnated. Consider that Dr. Erling Strand and others working at Hessdalen have shown that phenomena of unknown origin exists and Data and instrumentation can be gathered. Last Year the Brazilian Air Force openly admitted to tracking UFOs in Brazilian Air Space and invited Brazilian UFOlogists to look at classified Data and Documents. In France CNES recently, this year, renewed the UFO investigation of GEPAN/SEPRA as GEIPAN.

Originally posted by lost_shaman
....there is nothing stopping "average Joe" from watching Billy Meier Videos on Youtube and then coming to ATS and starting a thread for example.

..other problems such as many people simply being very gullible. Others approach the subject simply for the entertainment value that the subject provides them. Still others are young or have never been exposed to the subject and must on their own navigate through the labyrinth of the hype and lunatic fringe without losing focus just to get a handle on the UFO Phenomena.

Very well put, lost_shaman


Problem number one, we do not all think alike. You might say use reason and rationale, but not everyone is driven by those factors. Even when both sides of the fence point to one particular direction, along comes someone else to counter and say that those claiming it to be a hoax, had/have an agenda for disinformation. You will see this over and over again. The more well-known researchers disagree from time to time.

So the question arises, just what makes a case verifiable to you?

so, where does one find real, hard, physical evidence?

cattle mutilations and crop circles, if i'm not mistaken. other than that only fringe archeology comes to my mind, but that's too obvious and people cannot 'digest' precision cut granite and super heavy monoliths, so to speak.

jritzmann- well put. One can leave for months and see the "same ol same ol" recirculated subjects bearing nothing new. This requires the stalwarts willing to post a number of threads that have already covered the topic.

Of course there is New material. There is always a creative/colorful UFO personality that pops out to make unsubstantiated claims that turn into 70 page threads. And there is generaly "here's my pictures of a pixel 4000 yards out and the YouTube videos.

At this stage of the game, in what should be the real golden age of Legit UFO/Alien phenomenon reporting, the tap "is" or "has" run dry. It might take the next Cold War, New arms race to get the unidentified viewings back up to speed.
Until then there needs to be a new way to approach the subject matter to keep it interesting without losing all objectivety in the process.

Originally posted by jritzmann
Lets face one fact about UFOs and research into them.

We arent getting anywhere. We've stagnated.

Hi Jeff,

I don't think it's accurate to say that "we've stagnated".

Ufology has always been pretty stagnant, and I don't think things have really got much worse.

I posted my own views at length a few years ago on what needs to be done, but the gist of my comments was that the amount of reinvention of the wheel within ufology _must_ be reduced. So much time and effort is simply wasted that the lack of progress is hardly surprising. The same questions keep being asked and the same responses keep being given.

I've also posted my views on one of the most obvious steps to reduce the amount of reinvention of the wheel (basically, by creating various basic reference documents with references to further reading).

I've made one such reference document available on the Internet (my 1,800 page draft UFO chronology) and hope to finish another document shortly. Unfortunately, the bigger documents of this sort take a _lot_ of time and effort to produce. The one I'm currently trying to finish has taken over three years to write and involved reading over 900 relevant books.

Most people within ufology have neither the time, inclination or resources to produce such reference documents.

Heck, I can think of a few dozen relatively _short_ reference documents (which could be produced by one or two people within a day or two) that would make a significant contribution to the debates on ATS and elsewhere which no one seems to have produced, or be interested in producing.

In my mind, the question is not "what's the solution" but rather "why bother putting in the hard work required?".

Kind Regards,

Isaac Koi

Originally posted by IsaacKoi

I've made one such reference document available on the Internet (my 1,800 page draft UFO chronology) and hope to finish another document shortly. Unfortunately, the bigger documents of this sort take a _lot_ of time and effort to produce. The one I'm currently trying to finish has taken over three years to write and involved reading over 900 relevant books.

i understand if you are getting at that you are planning to sell this but if not then why dont you post a link?

and to lost_shaman's quote. where are the links?

As for the research itself , I'm not so sure that it has actually stagnated. Consider that Dr. Erling Strand and others working at Hessdalen have shown that phenomena of unknown origin exists and Data and instrumentation can be gathered. Last Year the Brazilian Air Force openly admitted to tracking UFOs in Brazilian Air Space and invited Brazilian UFOlogists to look at classified Data and Documents. In France CNES recently, this year, renewed the UFO investigation of GEPAN/SEPRA as GEIPAN.

why not help the cause?

Originally posted by nullster
It might take the next Cold War...

See, this is where the problem begins. There never was a Cold War. Our history books and political leaders tell us all about the so-called Cold War, but the real truth that's starting to emerge is that the Americans and Russians were buddy-buddy at the highest levels all along - joining forces to come up with a solution to the alien problem. A game of mass deception was played on the public.

Now, much more is coming to light. A intricate conspiracy that reaches down to the deepest reaches of human understanding. Ufology has always been about "what we see" but the "unseen" and the stuff being kept from us, is the real problem. It reaches down into the core of our everyday life. Why the world is overrun by multinational corporations and our dependence on fossil fuels. Why so many children go missing each year. Why high profile killings / assassinations are nothing more than saturated news headlines or an unfortunate incident for the history books to gloss over. Everything is linked to the ET problem. You might think it's ridiculous but it's all tied together. This is why it's so hard for the traditionalists to get their head around it. They can't comprehend just how massive the cover-up is. They can't comprehend that the public figures they uphold as trustworthy are capable of such deception, manipulation, evilness, blatant lying.

So all they have to cling to, is to look up at the night sky looking for little flying saucers and dismiss the important things going on that really tell the tale. This guy, James Casbolt, is onto it, is ex-MI6, is sincere and has no reason to lie:
Interview - August 2006 - Part 1
Interview - August 2006 - Part 2

I get the feeling traditional ufologists are afraid to face up to the real facts going on in their world because the night sky with the mysterious flying discs in the air is a safe and attractive pursuit, posing no immediate threat to their perception on how the world operates. Whistleblowers closer to the truth such as James Casbolt, Steven Greer, Phil Schnieder, Dan Burisch to name a few, have the real inside information. Phil paid the price for this with his life.

Isaac-
I think youre right, when you say why bother to put in the effort to do so. So much of the UFO populace is already poisoned beyond all comprehension, with what they wish to be true and not. The bottom line is, will anyone listen anyway. I dont know, I guess all one can do is do their thing and hope to bring some sanity to it all.

But the reall issue here is accountability...again I come to this point. This would solve many issues, as it pertains to information and who presents it.

RiotComing-
I hate to say this ya man, but this is part of the problem. You attribute everything from missing children to the cold war and murders to ETs. Where is the proof of this? There is absolutely none. Humanity is more then capable of heinous endevors without "ETs", or black govt agents. I see alot of people so saturated by the subject they attribute everything they cant figure out to ETs...when we as human beings dont even know if we're dealing with ETs when it comes to the UFO question.

Dan Burisch? Dan Burisch, actually Dan Crain, was substancially researched and found to be untruthful, both about his educational background and his employment. *Burisch says he earned his doctorate in 1990 at Stony Brook University in New York. The school says he was never a student there. Burisch says his records were erased, but at the time he supposedly earned his degree in New York, records show, he had a full time job in Las Vegas as a parole officer.

Now he says he flew back and forth to the school on weekends (albeit the University says thats ridiculous.). He met his wife as a parole officer. She was there on drug charges. She's spent 12 years in the PBX department of the Mirage.*
*Verifiable data presented by George Knapp of the Eyewitness News I-Team


Far fetched stories of J-Rod, Stargates...there's no real evidence or data of any of this whatsoever. Burisch at this point should be persona non grata. Bye.

But ya know what, his story will be around for the next 20 years, because people want to believe it. They'd rather believe it then think rationally and subject Crain's claims to any kind of checking.

Quality of the messenger. It's something very few want to look at when they want to believe something...it's open season for suckers.

I could go on about Greer forever, but all one has to do is go to his website. You'll get the idea.

The Quality of the messenger is what was taught to me years ago by a guy named Russ Estes. Russ passed away awhile ago, but he and I had many conversations about the UFO "pros", and claimants. We agreed this subject attracts some very shady people, most if not all with something for you to buy, complete with unverifyable exciting claims.

Anyway, this thread isnt about "Burisch" nor Greer, it about how we can clean up the mess thats been left to it's own devices for too long, so that future generations can possibly see some sort of progress.

Who do you guys feel would be on the list for those we should NOT believe, and why?

Originally posted by homeskillet
i understand if you are getting at that you are planning to sell this but if not then why dont you post a link?

I don't plan on selling my Chronology. I didn't post a link because I did that a few months ago. See:
www.virtuallystrange.net...

Anyway, my basic point was not about my own document but about the desirability of basic reference documents _generally_. I'd like to see other people produce some basic reference documents, not merely look at one I've produced.

All the best,

Isaac


[edit on 3-9-2006 by IsaacKoi]

That's exactly the point I've been making. It's started to get kinda boring!!

Click here for a peek!!

Jritzmann, you're bringing up the point of accountability, but I think all those people I mentioned bring valuable evidence to the table. 'Quality of the messenger' is a subjective and potentially erroneous process of elimination. Dan Burisch for example is of course not going to believed because certain things don't add up. He was abducted in a park as a kid and his soul switched with a brighter child while in the UFO - I mean, that's not going to add up to most people, let alone going over his college records or working at a casino in Vegas. He's lived a unique and special life that many will never come to grips with, no matter how palatable you dress it up to be. But the information and insight he has is crucial - by all means feel free to shoot the messenger but the message is more important in my opinion.

Go to Dr Greer, ok maybe you don't think he is credible but I think he is.. as do many people. I'm also going to throw David Icke into the mix here too - he is a switched-on man who is awake to what's going on in the world. Alex Jones. Everyone. All of them have something to offer. Put their personalities aside and consider their message - and it is unified and clear. I don't think 'quality of the messenger' is the best way to look at this, because the most dangerous individuals are going to be trashed and discredited at any cost regardless. At the end of the day, you have to come to your own gut conclusions and put the puzzle together.

I think most of us know that there are visitors in the skies. What we need to focus on is the why. This makes all the amateur skywatchers redundant in my opinion. We have to rely on the word of whistleblowers coming forward and this is where ufology has headed, and that is a positive direction for disclosure. Look what's happening on the 9-11 front. We're at the point that if the US govt mount another 'home-soil invasion' there are enough people awake to it to say "we know you did it" - and I think similar ground is gaining in the ufo field. Go with the flow, man!

I am sad to say that the internet has done little to help finding truth in this subject, infact, it has done the opposite.

There are so many hoaxes, rehashes of debunked UFO stories and all that which are probably deliberately being put up to throw us off and make us subject to ridicule.

The internet has been helping the dis/misinformation campaign to lead us away from the truth, the only truth can be find in circles of SERIOUS researcher like ATS.

We can only hope for a new case that might be ground breaking.

Any UFO researcher ever considdered moving to Mexico? that seems to be THE hotspot for UFO's, perhaps some research can be done there?

Originally posted by RiotComing
'Quality of the messenger' is a subjective and potentially erroneous process of elimination.

Subjective? There's work records, therefore witnesses to the work, co-workers, paystubs, W2's, etc. I dont find any of that subjective. Thats called evidence. While we may never get evidence of UFOs or alien presence, we do have evidence on people claiming to be something they are not.

I dont believe we have to take anyone's word on anything (my own included), especially after looking into the background and seeing discrepancies to their story.

Nope, it's either legitimate or it isnt. To me it's as simple as that. Mixing truth with fact? How much to add of one before the other has to be thrown out. I dont buy that one either. Thats an easy way for people who wish to believe, to be able to live with a hoax found after their belief system in the case was already established.

"We arent getting anywhere. We've stagnated." == jritzmann

Almost sounds like any of the honchos for Blue Book, or comments from the Condon folks. If so, this is
progress. At least, we have finally arrived where they were, and have two clear choices. Abandon the effort, as did Blue Book.
Or clean house, lessons learned. Start over with built in corrections for inherent problems. Interested ?

Interested ? = nightwing


Interested , sure why not ?

What do you have in mind?

What is happening now may have always been the subjects inevitable conclusion. Everything about the subject matter is so open ended and limitless that it encourages gross speculation and extraordinary claims while conveniently discounting proof, evidence, and/or liability for any claims.

Put five UFOologits together and tell them to reach a cohesive defined conclusion about UFO science and species. They won't or can't as none of them can present their evidence to argue for or against their beliefs or conclusions.

My view on the subject matter has evolved considerably since my teens. For me personaly its working on the Science of UFO's. Complete illustrated [Fiction] but with the application of science and subjects like string theory. The only difference between me and a charletan is that I would admit mine is a work of fiction.

[edit on 3-9-2006 by nullster]