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is Nick Pope bulls---? let's discuss

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posted on Jun, 5 2018 @ 01:29 AM
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Yep


And from it, other people brought some interesting facts to the table. Which is good considering UFOlogy is mostly based on wild speculation and a lack of anything factual (or fact based proof, whichever you prefer).

Don't judge a book by its cover? The problem is Nick Pope is MERELY a cover. There is no book underneath. Maybe the one that he keeps under lock and key with the MoD...

Like I say when he accepts and goes on record stating he was a pawn in a bigger game, I'll find that inch of respect.

Post a photo of a blurry object? No thanks. Post someone elses video? No thanks. Post a personal experience? Done that a hundred times. Speculate on an angle of UFOlogy? People are doing that every day. So I think I'll stick to calling Nick Pope bull#


Of course, there's the polar opposite:

"Nick Pope is great, what a legend, he has so much thought provoking information, detail and experiences with UFOs and UFOlogy! He's certainly a proponent for the truth and not just in it for TV appearances!" ... I'm sure there would be as many people to counter that verbal vomit (and support it, sure).

Another issue is that there is only a finite amount of information about any one topic in UFOlogy. I'm sure such resrtraints exist outside of it. I mean, you can read about Rendlesham 100 times, and 99 readthroughs you're going to read the same things, maybe 1 time you might read a line you hadn't read previously, uncover one new fact (for you). Often what's available is enough to satisfy curiosity. But with N.P. the "finite amount" is infinitesimally small compared to even a persons personal sighting experience (because you can usually dig into those with the experiencer to get a much clearer picture of the situation) let alone an actual case like Rendlesham or whatever case interests you, Phoenix Lights etc. My point is, there's only a small amount you can ever say about Nick Pope, presumably why for the most part no-one ever talks about him. He is not "substantial reading". Is that our fault? No. He keeps his life secret...

Imagine if you tried to trust someone in your every day life but they actively averted talking about themselves. How the F could you trust someone like that? Like I say if you put yourself into the public sphere especially one like UFOlogy with its global reach and mass following, and you want people to take you seriously and yet your substance as a person is wafer thin, expect people to start veering off into character profiling -- it's all you're giving them after all. UFOlogy is about connections and honesty, and that is exactly why I say Nick Pope is bull#. I'm not gonna care til you (he) gives me something to care about, even if for you guys the minimal things he ever says is all the substance you need. It ain't for me, is all


Has anyone had a one on one, deep conversation with Nick? One that became personal at any point (and no you don't need to share such details here). Does any one have a connection to him outside of his wife? Because it seems like no-one has. Yet other UFO pundits have nice stories connected to them, about how they engage not only with the UFOlogy community, but with INDIVIDUALS. Connection and honesty. Not obfuscation and punditry. When you have some friends in UFOlogy they mention others in the field or with the interest and the pundits too - like they're real people, well except Pope, who no-one ever seems to want to talk about, not even in passing. It's easier (for me) to connect with people who step away from the script, and honestly who writes Nick Pope's scripts? If you live in the UK like me you'd know he's prone to sticking to a particular script. Anyway yeah sure, you and I both have better things to do than talk about this lol, I just wanted to rant about something I've felt for many years now, my mind on this was made up a long time ago and it hasn't changed lol, if it pissed you off, so be it and apologies, if it didn't and you contributed some thoughts, thank you!
edit on 5-6-2018 by markymint because: tidy up



posted on Jun, 5 2018 @ 06:31 AM
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a reply to: markymint

Nick has a right to his privacy as long as that doesn't conflict with his work. Be that his time with the MoD or working freelance afterwards.

You seem to be suffering from "X-Factor" syndrome. A cheap talent show (for those not familiar with British TV) where it is not enough any more for a singer to sing their song and be judged. There has to be a back story of how they were bullied at school, their grandad only had one leg and their pet cat sings Karma Chameleon with them at home.

None of that stuff is relevant. You do not need to know about Nick Pope's personal life to be able to judge his UFO work in the public domain. He is a media opportunist rather than a UFO researcher. He's probably made more money than most of us in this thread too. We get that you don't like him and feel his modicum of fame is undeserved in relation to the person you think he is. This should have been placed in the rant forum really.



posted on Jun, 7 2018 @ 06:18 AM
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a reply to: markymint


LOL TrueBrit. I appreciate your candid nature, as always. But I don't fully agree with you. I don't think he's very intellectual at all. Far from it, in fact. He probably got handed the UFO stuff in the office because he was the less competent one. I mean think about it. By receiving UFO reports, he's not doing the important, essential busywork that you describe. Yes he may be the funnel for the important "sightings". But you honestly think the buck stopped with him? Like, those that needed to know, didn't already know, via military generals, air force base operations managers, radar operators etc? That Nick Pope was really the first to know about what we now, in 2018, with TTS footage and just general progression of our understanding, consider to be the real meat, the real "other wordly" stuff? Nah, and to think he was really ever a part of that is naive IMO. He was mail handler for the riff raff, and that's about it.

I think your assessment of what does and does not require or constitute intellectual prowess, is somewhat flawed. He collated a massive amount of data, data which came in several different forms, had to parse the data which was chaff from the data which could be said to contain wheat, all of which required a significant amount of research capability. I know from my own small efforts here, that depthy research requires a certain dogged sort of intelligence, the kind which allows significant focus and self control, requires a mind capable of entertaining ideas without automatically accepting them. These things are possessed by intellectual people, not by people who cannot be so described.


Whilst his nature is of course, by no means an "issue", I think it's just a "tell" for the deeper vagueness about him. You can't apply the notions of "professor", you can't apply the notions of even "loving husband"

Are you suggesting that the man ought to have a professorship to his name, in order to be worthy of the time spent on his work by elements within the media and indeed the UFOlogy community? If so, should we all pack up and go home on this issue? Does every word I have spoken, every word spoken by our resident researchers here at ATS, every word written by commenters and citizen led efforts to figure this out, have no value? Do we have nothing to offer? I only ask, because the access Nick Pope had to raw data, outweighs the amount of raw data collected by any one of us by some significant degree. He had access, direct access to information and sources thereof that most researchers can only dream of getting. He was in the machine, a cog in the workings. I distrust his conclusions and his message because of that, but I do not doubt his credentials in terms of the role he played in research. If he says something inaccurate, its because he has been told to, not because he was too dumb to get it right, or ask the correct questions.


-- I mean he's just a blank slate. And we all know blank slate people exist and they are generally low-key, never made much of themselves, take what little they can cos they can't manifest things for themselves so easily kinda people. That doesn't = a bad person. It just = a certain structure of a person. It = their mettle. Whether they have any or not. And UFOlogy needs people with mettle, not people with.... admin skills and access to a glorified MUFON database (when they had it, they don't anymore LOLZ). Anyway, I'm not very PC, not at all in fact, and if I want to call admin jobs unskilled I will. I broke free of those structures for this very reason, to call those structures bull# whenever I feel like it. But you are right - people do fill important roles with work and jobs I would never want to do and I do respect that. But # me is Nick Pope not one of them.

I think there is a big difference between data entry work (which can be done by people with severe impairments under the right circumstances), and data parsing work. Data entry is a see it, say it situation. See this here, enter it there. See that there, enter it here. Data parsing has to do with establishing which information is of use, when trying to conclude the meaning and import of a given event, and that is an entirely cerebral operation, requiring at least a decent level of higher reasoning capacity, the ability to read between lines in an effective manner, and the ability to make connections between disparate data forms and sources of data. Its not something that your common or garden, life long checkout operator has necessarily got the wherewithal do accomplish.

And what, really, has his marital status go to do with anything? Look, he does not need to be or have a personality of any particular interest, in order to do the sort of work he is assigned to now, nor the sort of work he was assigned to before. I really am having trouble understanding what the obsession is with him as a person. His private interests, his private life, whether he screws and whom he does it with are utterly irrelevant factors. They have NOTHING to do with his ability to do the sort of work he does and has done, nothing at all. In fact, its perfectly reasonable to say that some work is best done by those who are totally free of distractions of the sort that relationships and hobbies can often become, and arguably, this sort of research is one of those things.

I think its wise to avoid thinking of his role as purely that of administrative. Its also been investigative and research based, which are very different things. I have always maintained that those involved in shuffling paper should never be as well paid as those who cut steel and turn wrenches, because its the people with the grease up to their elbows who make the world go around, and anyone who tells you different has probably got some deep seated insecurities about the soft and pointless nature of their work. But... there are certain roles which must be filled, regardless, and where huge amounts of information are concerned, someone has to sift them. Its not pretty, its not cool, but the work needs doing in this case. We aren't talking about people who collate phone survey results, we are talking about a person who has been the clearing house for official information on the UFO phenomenon. Thats important stuff!

... continues in next post.



posted on Jun, 7 2018 @ 06:26 AM
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a reply to: markymint


(EDiT: and, are there any trustworthy journalists out there? I thought in this day and age they were all considered disinfo agents ..? so "journalist" isn't exactly the greatest title one could earn, at least, again, in my mind its very "meh" lol)

I wonder how much of this is to do with the age we are living in. Would the people who broke the Watergate story have had to contend with this sort of automatic opposition and distrust?


Anyway, as I say, if he can do the right thing and get out of all our faces, that's all that's needed. If he will continue on, then he can expect people like me to call him out for being a relatively paper-thin, unnecessary, not transparent at all, part of all this. Sorry not sorry I suppose, I don't want to incite hatred, it's just, well don't show your #ing face where it may not be welcome if you don't want the vitriol. Have freaking substance if you're going to be in the public sphere - not whatever Nick Pope is. To be honest, the more UFO celebrities we can take down the better, cos then UFO TV programming will need to become investigative, you know, like it always should have been...
It's okay to like Pope. I did. And he is much less of a voice in this whole thing now which I am glad about. But clearly he's been perking up again here and there, cos this thread exists due to a comment about him on a recent TV show. And honestly feel, he needs to be "the bigger man" and just step away. His time came and went, he's history now. Enjoy that redundancy paycheck and Green Card but stay away from the LA tv studios, for the love of god, and UFOlogy, if you really care about it beyond the $$$, please.

Now, here we can come to some common ground. Personally, I believe that his role within the UFO field has always been one of a disinformation agent, a smoke screen, which makes him about as useless as the privately funded guys, like Collier and Greer (both of whom are charlatans, who have about as much scientific acumen between them as a bag of damp dog turd). But, should Pope back out on a chance to make money? After all, he lives in a country which is increasingly incapable of permitting people to live, unless they have vast tranches of wealth to fall back on. As far as I know he now lives in the US, which means he is obligated to absorb as much petrodollar as he can lay his hands on, and that because of the horrifically corporatist nature of the way the US works, is only doing right by himself to do so. I don't like it or agree with it, but there again, I don't like anyone making these things into money spinners. But he is no better or worse than any of the others, except that unlike many of his contemporaries, his professional experience is directly connected to the area of study we all indulge in, so it makes a damned sight more sense for him to comment on it, than it does that crazy haired fellow who claims that everything from his mailbox, to his school dinner lady has to do with the "Aliens".



posted on Jun, 7 2018 @ 08:36 PM
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a reply to: TrueBrit

Hehe.

I always love reading your posts, fathoming the unfathomable to the fallible. You have a way with words.

Is Pope a shady man?

Potentially, probably in fact. But he isn't exactly lying to our face in a point blank fashion, he's a professional, acts within a formal and decisive way. If nothing else it's respectable, I think you place the words better whence ascribing his intellectual capability.



This is a salty thread on a topic where people tend to get salty, cheers for reminding me of that.



posted on Jun, 8 2018 @ 10:12 AM
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a reply to: RAY1990

I think the saltiness of the post, and the frequency with which saltiness is involved in discussion on this topic generally, is because there are so few things we can know for certain about the topic. This is because the vast majority of the information we have about UFO comes from sighting reports, abduction reports and other eye witness testimony. What we see very little of in these cases, is forensics, physical, testable chunks of evidence, things that can be run through a GCMS machine, or examined with electron microscopy, or run through a DNA test of any kind.

The absence of anything solid to base a solid hypothesis on, other than the aforementioned reports, is very frustrating, almost as frustrating as the idea that the sorts of evidence I mention, DO exist, but only in these unreachable, untouchable storehouses, controlled by intelligence agencies in the US, UK and elsewhere. The potential for these things to be the case leaves believers and skeptics in a sort of limbo, in a place where the absence of evidence is absolutely not evidence of absence, but also makes even the most well formulated theory utterly impossible to put to proof.

So all parties concerned are somewhat tetchy about the situation, and I think that is justified. People like Pope are automatically going to be controversial, because they are at once part of the machinery which denies regular citizens access to the full story on UFO, but are also involved in disclosing information on UFO to the public, making them bones of contention with all people with an interest. The skeptics will insist that people like him are literally there to dupe the unwary into continuing an interest in the subject, while the true believers will have an issue with him because he has been employed by the MoD, which is a singularly untrustworthy entity according to most real UFO fanatics. The salt will fly from all sides in any discussion about the man, but it is necessary to be fair when talking about him, and play the ball, not the player when doing so. If there is something to attack in his delivery or information, then I say go for it, but the man himself is not a legitimate target for attack, if only because doing so serves no purpose and removes legitimacy from those who choose to assault his character, without any particular evidence or reason to do so.



posted on Jun, 8 2018 @ 10:15 AM
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Ia reply to: markymint

I take it you don’t like Nick Pope.



posted on Jun, 11 2018 @ 11:40 AM
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New profile of Nick, here --science.howstuffworks.com...



posted on Jun, 11 2018 @ 02:02 PM
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a reply to: JimOberg

Well, at least he wasn’t actively peddling the doctorate of philosophy in Ufology in that ‘profile’. :eye roll:

MM has nailed it for me; Pope was some ‘middle management’ civil servant tasked with being the clearinghouse for all things of “high strangeness” kicked down the MoD’s public pike. He was never ‘in the know’ and has a semblance of respectability and credibility because of his run at the MoD.

That tweet is the first I’ve heard of his “UFO desk” taking on “crop circles, ghosts, etc.”. It appears that the MoD had some ‘fat’ years and his time at the UFO desk was the beneficiary (as I understand it, he was at the UFO desk from ‘91-‘94 — 4 years max). Honestly, Pope gets a pass with me, but that tweet didn’t help the credibility cause.



edit on 11-6-2018 by BeefNoMeat because: ATS mobile is killing me... cut half reply text out...maybe I got the remainder close to the first cut



posted on Jun, 20 2018 @ 05:34 PM
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Pope lost all credibility with me, although I was never much impressed by him, when he started attacking another person in ufology and was quoting what some very nasty trolls had written about the person.
Personally I had always thought that he was a mouthpiece for the mod, certainly in the early days but what makes me laugh is that he is considered to be an expert on all things unexplained when as pointed out earlier, he was just a desk jockey.







 
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