Debunkers and UForprofitology

TLDR: The opposition to profit in UFOlogy and subsequent reduction in financial resources aimed at the subject has held UFOlogy back materially - and continues to as “profit” is used as by debunkers as a beat stick to discredit researchers/writers/hobbyists/scientists/etc. who earn a living either in part or in totality from the subject of UFOlogy.

Longer Version:

I was reading an old thread on Keyhoe and his True Magazine ufo article along with a thread about Clark McClelland which were good reads.

What stuck out to me though was how fast people jumped on the fact that McClelland wanted $500 for the ability to share his information and used that as a reason to discredit him. $500... even inflation adjusted, that’s not huge money. Not enough to live on or get wealthy from...

I’ve seen commentary over and over again any time someone receives compensation from the sharing/finding/discussing information on the UFO subject as immediately disqualifying.

I think that’s really silly. Since when did UFOlogy need to be a hippy commune of free PDFs, videos and articles?

Do medical researches who cure disease get paid well? Yes. Does it make their contributions to humanity any less relevant? Astronauts? Doctors? Engineers? You see where I’m going with this...

People need jobs to live - unless the debunkers are now ok with only UFOlogists living off the dole to show their loyalty to the UFO discipline? How would that possibly attract the best and brightest minds?

Would I love to research UFOs all day? Other strange phenomenon? Sure. But I haven’t seen too many postings on The Ladders for said position. So I have to work. Could I turn my passion into a business that pays my bills and then some? Perhaps. But, would that make me less credible? No. Some things that cost money are worth the money, some things aren’t - but the consumer decides that.

From my experience, real advancement in most anything requires investment. So what do you do? Offer $5mm to anyone who comes forward with verifiably credible information? $10mm? Lifetime protection for being a whistle blows with private security? Pay the brightest minds in the world lots of money to develop detection systems/travel the world doing interviews/collecting evidence/lobbying/etc.?

I also don’t see how people can lament there not being a lot of “new evidence” on this subject when we’re still taking the commune/no profit/etc. view point as the way to find “real truth” in a world that has become increasingly competitive and demanding financially.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a spare $10mm lying around to test my viewpoint 😃.

The problem I see with no new evidence is the internet and commonly carried cameras. Knowledge is available to all to just look it up. You have someone saying “I saw a UFO. Here is the video.” I look at the video and it is of a helicopter. The person will not admit that I have identified the object and insists on what they saw as being something else.

Some are so convinced that what they saw is a UFO they do not understand that the very label UFO means they don’t know what they saw. When they are told what it is, they insist it is still an “I don’t know” when it is a common object. The label UFO is the problem.

They show on TV videos of commonly identified objects and already explained phenomena as being real evidence of UFOs. They make money by trying to fool people this way. So why are you suggesting that they need more money to make up more lies.

I really want to see a halfway good quality video of a flying saucer or other space ship not made on this earth and not a blurry, shaky, out of focus video taken on a potato of an “I don’t know.”

UFO does not mean flying saucer, space ship, time ship, dimension ship, etc... it literally means “I don’t know”
Unidentified Flying Object

The wise man does not know how it feels to be thick as a brick with a video recording potato.

originally posted by: beyondknowledge

UFO does not mean flying saucer, space ship, time ship, dimension ship, etc... it literally means “I don’t know”
Unidentified Flying Object

Yet in the general public's opinion, "UFO" is indeed synonymous shorthand for "Alien/ET", hence why the British MoD first opted for "UAP" instead (the acronym had been around previously, but rarely used), now becoming the accepted general acronym in the West.

The problem is that people will just say, "Oh, 'UAP'? That's the new name for potential alien craft coz they were too embarrassed to use 'UFO'..."

And so a brand new term will have to be created to replace UAP, and so on, ad-infinitum...

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
The problem I see with no new evidence is the internet and commonly carried cameras. Knowledge is available to all to just look it up. You have someone saying “I saw a UFO. Here is the video.” I look at the video and it is of a helicopter. The person will not admit that I have identified the object and insists on what they saw as being something else.

It's too bad MUFON doesn't have a comment section, although if it did I'd probably just be screaming at people all the time time on it, "That's a lens flare, you idiot!" or "That's a bird!" "That's a window reflection!". I wish they had a little video on the homepage that showed common junk images and video that you had to look at before you post. ""Think you filmed a UFO? Think again, pal!"

Fortunately, the number of people who think they're going to get a wad of money for proving the existence of aliens is not that high anymore. There's a market surplus in proof of aliens.

Is anybody getting rich from UFOs? I highly doubt it. It's still a fringe interest. A person can make way more money by commenting about some dumb tweet posted by a Kardashian than some fuzzy video of an indistinct floating "orb.". I ain't gonna pay for that crap.

a reply to: EnigmaChaser
Most unidentified flying objects that get reported end up being identifiable objects or natural phenomena.
If they were all identified as such there would be no interest in the topic, so the problem I see is that instead of doing genuine research, most people trying to make a buck in the "UFO field" rely on NOT trying to identify all the UFOs or artifacts, to keep the mystery alive, which keeps the money rolling in.

This topic was discussed on a black vault episode where a caller asked Greenewald who in the UFO field could be trusted, and he replied he couldn't think of even one single person in the field he would trust to do honest research. The caller agreed that they've all "sold out". The problem isn't so much that they want to make money, since Greenewald is asking for donations too, but he apparently sees himself as one of the only people still seeking the truth instead of promoting whatever corny misprepresentation is going to maximize their UFO profits. Here is the episode, where the discussion takes place in the Q&A session at the end:

The relevant discussion starts with the caller Jessie at 1 hour 22 minutes:


So, it's not so much of a problem for honest researchers to get some support for their research, but the problem as Greenewald and his caller discuss, is the lack of any more honest researchers, since according to them, just about everybody in the field has "sold out" and is in it just to make a buck and not to seek the truth, so that is the real problem.

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
The problem I see with no new evidence is the internet and commonly carried cameras. Knowledge is available to all to just look it up. You have someone saying “I saw a UFO. Here is the video.” I look at the video and it is of a helicopter. The person will not admit that I have identified the object and insists on what they saw as being something else.

Some are so convinced that what they saw is a UFO they do not understand that the very label UFO means they don’t know what they saw. When they are told what it is, they insist it is still an “I don’t know” when it is a common object. The label UFO is the problem.

They show on TV videos of commonly identified objects and already explained phenomena as being real evidence of UFOs. They make money by trying to fool people this way. So why are you suggesting that they need more money to make up more lies.

I really want to see a halfway good quality video of a flying saucer or other space ship not made on this earth and not a blurry, shaky, out of focus video taken on a potato of an “I don’t know.”

UFO does not mean flying saucer, space ship, time ship, dimension ship, etc... it literally means “I don’t know”
Unidentified Flying Object

The wise man does not know how it feels to be thick as a brick with a video recording potato.

Fair but for the purposes of this discussion let’s consider the “average person” or AP for short.

Does the AP have any clue how to actually use a camera beyond clicking the button? No.

Does the AP have knowledge about aircraft beyond they fly, have engines and you use them to go on vacation? Nope.

Does the AP critically think about much of anything? Doesn’t appear that way - lots of people take lots of things that are easily disproved - or proved accurate more importantly - than actually take even a little time to dig in on a subject. Or have the tools to actually do that beyond the smart phone in their pocket - I mean analytical skills.

Said another way, I can put my mom in a Ferrari F1 car but it doesn’t mean she’ll turn a fast lap. It means she has a tool that can turn a fast lap if used properly - which few people (myself included) actually know how to use properly.

Point here is that relying on the AP armed with cameras is going to net you the majority of sightings that get posted on MUFON. People see a light in the sky and think “omfg ufo!” - because they don’t know enough about what they could be looking at to accurately or reliably go through a process of elimination to realize it’s nothing fantastic.

This is why I put a lot more weight in accounts from pilots than I do the AP - they have a much better understanding of what’s in the sky than the AP.

This isn’t intended to crap on the AP or getting on a soap box. It’s pointing out that there might be 350+ million people in this country but a very small fraction of that is actually in a position to use the tools they all have effectively.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Maybe he’s legit. But one thing I’ll add there is that his schtick kind of sounds like a marketing ploy to drive revenues.

“I’m the only real voice left - listen to me!”

Where have we heard that before....

originally posted by: EnigmaChaser
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Maybe he’s legit. But one thing I’ll add there is that his schtick kind of sounds like a marketing ploy to drive revenues.

“I’m the only real voice left - listen to me!”

Where have we heard that before....

Where have you heard that before? I don't know.

But that's not his schtick.

His schtick is making lots of FOIA requests, and saying that those are what people should be paying attention to, the actual documentation released by FOIA or other official documentation. You don't sound like you are familiar with what he does.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: EnigmaChaser
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Maybe he’s legit. But one thing I’ll add there is that his schtick kind of sounds like a marketing ploy to drive revenues.

“I’m the only real voice left - listen to me!”

Where have we heard that before....

Where have you heard that before? I don't know.

But that's not his schtick.

His schtick is making lots of FOIA requests, and saying that those are what people should be paying attention to, the actual documentation released by FOIA or other official documentation. You don't sound like you are familiar with what he does.

The first name that quickly comes to mind is Greer.

I’m not saying Greenewald is a hack at all. Nor am I saying the FOIA route isn’t a good one - it is - and has loads more cred than some random dude with a grainy smart phone picture. And you can usually do further research from what gets unearthed in the FOIA releases.

But - look at Bigelow. He’s a billionaire - doesn’t need more money. Runs multiple successful business. Has military and NASA contracts. Could actually hurt the business with his name on them if really sounded loco. Everything to lose and little to gain IMO financially from the UFO subject.

He spent millions of his own money and goes on 60 minutes saying they’re real and here. To save himself and his contracts, that’s all he said.

What happened after his 60 minutes interview? Not much. His juicy YouTube videos got taken down. I haven’t heard of him doing another major media interview on the subject. Nothing. Silence is how you know you hit the nail on the head with UFOlogy from my perspective. If you fly too close to the sun you either end up dead or told you’ll end up that way if you keep talking.

To me, he’s proof you need a big war chest if you want real answers here. FOIA is fun but you’re banking on someone making a filing error (which does happen) to get something really good - but I do like that FOIA shows that the Feds have looked into some really out there stuff that to me legitimizes that reality/bleeding edge of tech is way out there - particularly when we did these things 60 years ago.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
The problem I see with no new evidence is the internet and commonly carried cameras. Knowledge is available to all to just look it up. You have someone saying “I saw a UFO. Here is the video.” I look at the video and it is of a helicopter. The person will not admit that I have identified the object and insists on what they saw as being something else.

It's too bad MUFON doesn't have a comment section, although if it did I'd probably just be screaming at people all the time time on it, "That's a lens flare, you idiot!" or "That's a bird!" "That's a window reflection!". I wish they had a little video on the homepage that showed common junk images and video that you had to look at before you post. ""Think you filmed a UFO? Think again, pal!"

Fortunately, the number of people who think they're going to get a wad of money for proving the existence of aliens is not that high anymore. There's a market surplus in proof of aliens.

Is anybody getting rich from UFOs? I highly doubt it. It's still a fringe interest. A person can make way more money by commenting about some dumb tweet posted by a Kardashian than some fuzzy video of an indistinct floating "orb.". I ain't gonna pay for that crap.

You’re right about a lot of that from my perspective. This also highlights the point of the “average person” not knowing what they’re looking at or for. All of the cameras that are supposed to allow us to find “proof” also arm the average person to make a lot false identifications.

In terms of getting rich, you’d have to be more playful than snapping a pic with a smart phone. I’d start with a team of at least a dozen scientists with expertise in different areas. Advanced cameras, time on or the purchase of an imaging satellite, private doppler radar, develop new systems that scan the sky for various forms of energy or emissions beyond a radar signal - list goes on. Now we’re talking research.

To the extent people are in it for money, a cell phone pic is like trying to win the lottery. If you invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the subject and you found something, you’d had a brand that could be marketable for eternity and turn basically anything sci-fi (or at that point science reality) into a money making venture - global public interest would spike beyond belief. You could write a book on how you did it that would be read for generations.

But then you’d be more-less a privatized three letter agency - and real three letter agencies might take interest in your venture

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit

originally posted by: beyondknowledge

UFO does not mean flying saucer, space ship, time ship, dimension ship, etc... it literally means “I don’t know”
Unidentified Flying Object

Yet in the general public's opinion, "UFO" is indeed synonymous shorthand for "Alien/ET", hence why the British MoD first opted for "UAP" instead (the acronym had been around previously, but rarely used), now becoming the accepted general acronym in the West.

The problem is that people will just say, "Oh, 'UAP'? That's the new name for potential alien craft coz they were too embarrassed to use 'UFO'..."

And so a brand new term will have to be created to replace UAP, and so on, ad-infinitum...

I still take this back to the “average person” argument.

What the average person may associate with the idea of a “UFO” doesn’t really matter from my perspective - at least not in the context of in depth research.

The average persons are same people who freak out about utilizing nuclear power because nukes bad, get your flu shot because you don’t care about humanity if you don’t, the planet is warming only because of humans, etc.

Is there some nuggets of validity to those beliefs? Yes - but the counter points require more understanding and patience than the average person has or else they wouldn’t buy what they’re fed.

And all of this is before we get into theology/organized religion, the flat earthers, etc.

The average person stuffed “UFO” into the box of “its little green man and crazy” once the government told they it’s not a threat and there’s nothing there. So they dogmatically think the way they’re told.

The average person is also pretty damned apathetic to most things that aren’t entirely about themselves or directly impact them, don’t ask a lot of questions and prefer ignorant bliss and fitting in. These aren’t the people whose opinions we should be caring about at all IMO.

As an aside - if you’re a poster on ATS who actually tries to contribute you’re not an average person. There’s an enormity information contained in the threads on this board. If you’re here, take the time to read threads/links, do your own research and post you’re light years ahead of the average person in terms of understanding the complexity that is reality, what’s actually happened and what’s plausible in our world. IMO - of course.

originally posted by: EnigmaChaser
As an aside - if you’re a poster on ATS who actually tries to contribute you’re not an average person. There’s an enormity information contained in the threads on this board. If you’re here, take the time to read threads/links, do your own research and post you’re light years ahead of the average person in terms of understanding the complexity that is reality, what’s actually happened and what’s plausible in our world. IMO - of course.

Hm, except that the typical UFO thread on ATS is as follows:
- Posts about sighting 1.
- Sighting 1 is debunked.
- "Ok so maybe sighting 1 isnt a UFO but have you heard about sighting 2?!"
- Sighting 2 was debunked years ago
- "Ok but have you seen sighting 3???"
- Sighting 3 was inconclusive and uninteresting as it showed a single white light on a black surface
- "UFOs are real!"
- [Months later] Posts about sighting 2 and refers to sighting 3 as proof it is real
- "Ok so maybe sighting 2 was fake and sighting 3 is bad, but have you heard about sighting 1, that's probably real!"

originally posted by: EnigmaChaser
But - look at Bigelow. He’s a billionaire - doesn’t need more money. Runs multiple successful business. Has military and NASA contracts. Could actually hurt the business with his name on them if really sounded loco. Everything to lose and little to gain IMO financially from the UFO subject.

He spent millions of his own money and goes on 60 minutes saying they’re real and here. To save himself and his contracts, that’s all he said.

I don't see why anybody is impressed with anything Bigelow said. The fact that he has more money than most people doesn't make his statements any more scientifically valid than anybody else's statements.

If he's not willing to back up what he says with evidence, then he is just another of the thousands or millions of people who have beliefs but have never shown any real evidence to back them up. One thing we see with the latest round of TTSA vids is one camp saying they are "proof of UFOs" whatever that is supposed to mean, it's sort of like Bigelow's unsupported statements. In the other camp, we have analysts saying maybe we don't know exactly what it is, but the people saying the videos show something anomalous have misinterpreted the videos and the behavior isn't that unusual. Most egregiously, TTSA claimed on their Unidentified show the go fast video UFO was going 2/3 the speed of sound and analysts have calculated the object isn't going over something like 50 miles per hour. It does look like it's going fast, but it's not and in that nutshell is the vast majority of UFOlogy...misinterpretation. It's why the only way to get any real answers is with scientific evidence (like the TTSA videos would be if they showed anything unusual, but they don't).

But sure if some person, even Bigelow, watched the gofast video and got the impression it was going fast, we can understand how that can happen, since it sort of looks that way, but it's an illusion, and our minds are very susceptible to that and many other illusions. That's why UFOlogy will never progress if all it does is interview eyewitnesses. What it needs is hard scientific evidence, but it never seems to have that, or when it does, it's disappointing, like the TTSA videos.

At least Greenewald comes upwith something more substantial than more flawed eyewitness statements trying to tell what they really think they saw such as an object going fast in the gofast video, but not realizing their eyes and brains are deceiving them and the object is not going fast at all.

I should add that I have no tools/resources/etc. that’s more advanced than the average person other than I do a lot of data analysis/analytical understanding as that’s part of my job. So I don’t really have better information than anyone else. Therefore, I’m no more an authority on this subject than anyone else as much I’d like to be.

This is why I say it takes real investment at the scale of tens of millions of dollars and unbiased, orthodox and unorthodox lines thinking to actually make progress.

There is nothing wrong with people being funded for proper research and then presenting their findings publicly. But ufology is infested with dishonesty from all sides.

I can think of scientific UAP studies like Hessdalen that have been given limited funding and so far produced limited results. But remain within the scientific realm.



So far no one has labelled this Norwegian Study a cover-up even though it's been ongoing for four decades. There are of course a number of skywatch cameras set up too across the world. Our Australian cousins have even set up an app to track unidentified fireballs in the sky. No one I know has accused them of covering up UFO sightings either.

The problem is America and the toxic pollution from both Scientology and its intelligence services.

The US Government controls about 6% of the world landmass and around 4% of the global population. Yet is deemed to have ultimate control of the information pertaining to UFOs and alien visitation. So obviously they are covering up the existence of aliens. That is at least the story that many people in America and even beyond believe. Although most other nations are not as credulous as America.

Hence the rife market for UFO entertainment or UFOtainment that certain personalities now occupy. I won't name them because I don't have to. They have never proven any UFO case to be extra-terrestrial of course. But they also refuse to dismiss almost any classic UFO case as having a prosaic explanation. They even revive long dead cases as well.

Look at the recent Alien Autopsy crap. A memo to Bigelow by the Vegas UFO Mafia claiming it was real long after it had been resolved as a fake was still promoted because they were desperate to keep taking his cash. All the usual UFOtainers talked it up as being real and about aliens. Whilst avoiding the obvious fact that by that time Bigelow seemed to realize he'd been duped by these people and wasted enough money on them. He closed down NIDS very soon after. Ufology ignored it completely keeping up the pretence that there was a real alien autopsy.

There is a road that would lead to unemployment for hundreds of mainly American people involved in the UFOtainment industry if we ever established the existence of ET. But so far the lie works on people who want to believe in the ways of the Force and that ET phones home.

Good luck America.

"I used to want to believe" - Goth

Skeptics will never believe. It goes against their cherish dogma which they are unwilling to rehash.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
Skeptics will never believe. It goes against their cherish dogma which they are unwilling to rehash.

Believers will always believe. It goes against their cherish dogma which they are unwilling to rehash.

Who cares about disclosure and what the masses receive in terms of new information...no one cares about the Abductees...no one gives a rats hass …. the FIRST STEP IS TREATING THE VICTIMS OF THE COSPIRACY WITH HUMANITY COMPASSION CARE AND FISCAL ACCOUNTABILITY.

Obviously ANY HUMAN WHO GAVE A DARN would be concerned about the PEOPLE FIRST.

Yes,80-90% of the information out there is bupkiss….created to make a few Pesos.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Hey Blue Shift,
You said “ it’s too bad MUFON didn’t have a comment section.”

Where do you want to see a comment section?

I’m the Chief Investigator for MUFON.
We always want to hear from the public as to what they want Or see from us.