Saturday, November 07, 2015

Additional Ramey Memo Scans

While most of the new scans have been provided to a number of people including several skeptics (though some of them suggested they weren’t all that interested in pursuing the Ramey memo) we haven’t had a chance to learn of their results if there are any.

I have a couple of other files that are small enough to put on this blog and they will follow. But I did one thing that I believe was an idea by Barry Greenwood. In his report, “Ramey Memo Redux – Line 5,” he wrote, “Getting a little weary I noticed a cardboard pair of 3-D red/blue glasses from some leftover movie I had once seen… Looking at it I said, ‘Oh, why not.’ … Oddly enough using the 3-D filters somehow injected a small amount of clarity into the image… It was certainly not enough to make the blobs more readable but it was enough to make patterns stand out.”His article can be seen here:

which is UFO Historical Review No. 13, September 2009).

I have to admit here that (a) I also have some of those old 3-D glasses and I tried it as well, and (b) yes, it did seem to enhance some areas of the Ramey memo. Greenwood wrote, “A few words like ‘…AT FORT WORTH, TEX.” And ‘THE ‘DISC’…” seem to stand out enough to gain a general consensus to these decipherments.” I have to agree with this. Those words do seem to stand out a little more clearly but for those who visit here regularly, notice that Greenwood did agree with those earlier interpretations.

With that in mind, I thought I would add some of the new scans here so that more can take a look at them. While they might look the same, they were created using different contrasts and filters. There are other files that are quite large approaching a quarter of a gigabyte (and yes, I know there are files out there much larger than this, but I really can’t post them to this blog… I have suggested to a couple of people that those with web sites as opposed to blogs could put them up but so far there have been no takers). Yes, I believe that a wider dissemination might provide us with the key to reading the memo and we’re working to accomplish that. (I will remind everyone here that these new scans are copyrighted by the University of Texas at Arlington and by Martin Dreyer so that while fair use is in play publication without proper credit is a violation.)







For those interested, the work continues, but the problem is that the going is slow. I had hoped to have all this wrapped up months ago with everything easily available. We are attempting to get it out there now. Any suggestions on how to do this will be appreciated. 

70 comments:

TheDimov said...

Wow, I didn't realise there was another photo of the memo, without Ramey holding it. I tried the 3D glasses and yes, 'balloon' and the third last word 'land' in particular appear quite clearly to me, in the photo sans Ramey.

Just an out-there left field suggestion after the 3D glasses idea : how about trying the photos under a VP8 image analyser, just like they did with the shroud of Turin, which brought the image out in much greater detail? I know its not what it's for but who cares, why not give it a shot I reckon.

Sasquatch said...

Per my prior post regards contacts at IBM... you might want to reach to the authors of this patent in IBM for current interest and assistance.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20120087582.PGNR.&OS=DN/20120087582RS=DN/20120087582

came across this nice intro article by a Russian guy on image analysis

http://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration1.htm

Just suggestions. There are quite a lot of folks out there who work in this field.

Unknown said...

Michael Mu

AFAIK the photo was sent to Colman von KEviczky around the 1990 by an anonym. source.

That´s all we know about this picture.


Now stop behaving like this, it is embarrassing

Brian B said...

@ Michael -

Ah....Michael? That's a photo of a either a dead Asian person, or the wax Roswell alien prop that was made up for an event in Canada many decades ago. Probably the latter by the looks of it. That's not what you think it is....read here:

http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/et/nonet03.htm


uhr said...

Kevin,

I was told there has been some chatter about the Ramey document on your blog as I'm not a regular visitor. Thinking about the 3-D glasses, I would rather not overestimate the importance of this. What probably happened was when I used them, it not only visually set slightly different contrasts but maybe more importantly forced me to take my glasses off to use them, consolidating with my more blurry reading vision the fuzzy noise of the reproduction into connected letters. What is more important still is the reading of line 5. The word I read as "Haught" is not two words as some suggest, but one as fill can be seen in the so-called space where the "U" is. Same for what I called "relations" with a bend in the paper at that point making it hard to read a letter there. But the context of the rest of the letters, plus existing journalistic statements misspelling of Walter Haut's name and his position at Roswell, reads like normal language. I challenge anyone to interpret line 5 as something other than what I suggested that would make perfectly good sense in an English sentence, punctuation and all. That is more important than the 3-D glasses. Barry Greenwood

Jeanne Ruppert said...

Kevin wrote:

"I have suggested to a couple of people that those with web sites as opposed to blogs could put them up but so far there have been no takers)."

Where is that spirit of disinterested cooperation and colleaguiality so loudly and broadly proclaimed during the attempts to decipher the Roswell slides placard? What accounts for this inconsistency in motivation? It occurs to me that it might in some cases be prejudice based in theory-laden approaches to Roswell, if not to the ETI hypothesis in general.

Jeanne Ruppert said...

Actually, 'reluctance' would have been a better word choice than 'prejudice' in the above post. Lawyers are advised not to ask a question they don't already know the answer to.

Brian B said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brian B said...

IMO, based on what I see in the images above it would seem your efforts may yield better results using the photo of the memo without Ramey's hand in the way. It just appears cleaner overall.

Unknown said...

A little scenario. They find something and release a statement about a flying saucer. They then discover it's simply a balloon and quickly retract the statement. A memo is sent asking that they send the wreckage of the "disc" to the them. Could it be possible that whoever sent the memo to Ramey was poking fun at him? (The word disc does look like it can be seen between quotation marks). He takes the statement out to the press conference with him to show the press the humour around the error but doesn't get a chance to show the memo.

I actually dreamt that is what happened last night and thought I'd share ha!

Paul Young said...

Jeanne Ruppert said..."Where is that spirit of disinterested cooperation and colleaguiality so loudly and broadly proclaimed during the attempts to decipher the Roswell slides placard?"

Astonishing,isn't it!
On a subject like the "Roswell slides" where the vast majority of sensible "ETHers" were already convinced that it looked like some kind of mummy, (but, like myself, were still interested what the "big reveal" in Mexico might "reveal") ...the sceptics were all over those slides like s**t on a blanket.
A cynical person might think that, MAYBE, there is an acceptance, amongst the sceptical crowd, that there might be something in the Ramey memo that might not allow them to feel so smug anymore.

As you say..."Lawyers are advised not to ask a question they don't already know the answer to."

Brian B said...

@ Paul

"A cynical person might think that, MAYBE, there is an acceptance, amongst the sceptical crowd, that there might be something in the Ramey memo that might not allow them to feel so smug anymore."

Keep dreaming buddy...maybe eventually you'll convince yourself of that. By the way are you unemployed? Why do you post everyday on this blog? Bored?

Steve Sawyer said...

Back on topic:

@ KR:

"We are attempting to get it out there now. Any suggestions on how to do this will be appreciated."

Well, it would seem the best first step is to post the larger images online somewhere, with variable contrast settings, so that everyone could then check them out if interested, for a crowd-sourcing effort.

Didn't "Isaac Koi" offer to temporarily host the big 250 meg images on one of his sites?

If not, that still shouldn't be a problem, as there are various ISP's that offer large storage / cloud capacity for little to no cost. I cited a few in the previous blog post thread, but got little reaction. I can do the additional research if you want, Kevin, to find a couple good sites to recommend for that kind of hosting.


Steve Sawyer said...

@ JR:

"Where is that spirit of disinterested cooperation and colleaguiality so loudly and broadly proclaimed during the attempts to decipher the Roswell slides placard? What accounts for this inconsistency in motivation?"

Uh, well Jean, the reason is because that's not actually how and why the RSRG came about, how things came down, nor was the "spirit" or motivation behind the slides placard being deciphered particularly of "disinterested" cooperation, completely transparent, or entirely collegial in nature.

The RSRG was more of an "ad hoc" effort with one specific goal in mind, which was to decipher the placard in order to empirically and effectively discredit the wild hype, misbegotten secrecy, and stridently erroneous claims that the slides showed a Roswell-related alien body by some of the advocates like Carey, Schmitt, Bragalia, and Maussan.

They succeeded, and they deserve kudos and all credit for that significant accomplishment. But that effort was not completely, um... neutral, per se.

[Sidebar]:

[The Ramey memo is a different, and technically much more difficult "kettle of fish to fry," since to confirm certain words are provably in the memo (or not) does not seem to be of equal interest to most in either the skeptic or debunker factions, perhaps in part since it might contradict certain parties stated positions and rejection of the "Roswell incident" as anything but mundane and prosaic weather balloon and rawin debris. The phrase "VICTIMS OF THE WRECK," if that's really in the memo, raises a whole host of controversial issues and questions that Mogul, as an explanation, does not answer or resolve. Problematical, to say the least, you see: Who or what kind of "victims"?]

The RSRG effort was not public, or transparent, until shortly after a leak occurred that the placard text was deblurred with a reliable confirmation as to most of the full text, especially the first line: "MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY"

Even now, the source of the placard image sent to some members of the RSRG has not been disclosed (apparently due to it's being sent by an "inside source" within the Beason/Dew camp, the slides owners, on a confidential basis). Nab Lator, a pseudonym, the (French?) guy who used SmartDeblur to initially decipher the placard, is also still not publicly known. Which is fine with me, btw, although I'm still rather curious about who the "inside source" might be, and the motives involved.

More specifically, the effort to decipher the placard was a "pent-up" reaction mainly by some skeptics (and debunkers), with a few "pro-UFO" or semi-neutral parties, to the over two years of unfounded claims and incessant drum-beating about the slides on another blog by a couple of people for largely self-aggrandizing and self-promotional reasons. Some people did not take kindly to that persistent campaign of leaks in dribs and drabs, and how they were treated by the promoters, since it amounted to a kind of hoax and fraud.

To paraphrase and spin the infamous quote from Michael Corleone in "The Godfather," this was not just "business" -- it became very "personal" to some involved.

And, there are still a few intriguing "back channel" secrets about all that are still to be disclosed.

But, this summary about the slides is somewhat off-topic, although related, so we should return to discussing the Ramey memo.

Sarge said...

This reminds me of those internet "tests" in which a paragraph is began written in English, and as you read on the letters are gradually replaced by numbers and symbols until the words are a jumble of chaotic shapes and letters.
Yet you can still read the paragraph. Your eyes just adapt to reading the whole word by its shape rather than sounding out the letters.
Perhaps reading one of those exercises first would sharpen the eyes.

cda said...

Paul wrote:

"A cynical person might think that, MAYBE, there is an acceptance, amongst the sceptical crowd, that there might be something in the Ramey memo that might not allow them to feel so smug anymore."

I can promise you, Paul, that my pulse has not quickened one iota out of fear of what might be on that scrap of paper in Ramey's hand. Not one minute of sleep have I lost either (at least certainly not for that reason).

Lance said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lance said...

Hi Larry,

"or entirely collegial in nature"

Your evidence for this?

"The RSRG effort was not public, or transparent, until shortly after a leak occurred that the placard text was deblurred with a reliable confirmation as to most of the full text, especially the first line: "MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY"

True, I suppose but it all happened within a day of us finding out about the deblur. Why do you seem to assign some conspiratorial value to this? Additionally, we freely shared information with anyone who asked. I remember you wrote to me in March and I IMMEDIATELY replied with the requested information, did I not?

"Even now, the source of the placard image sent to some members of the RSRG has not been disclosed (apparently due to it's being sent by an "inside source" within the Beason/Dew camp, the slides owners, on a confidential basis)."

Not true and as far as I know, none of us has ever said this. Our understanding is that the source was inside the Maussan camp. And we immediately abandoned that image AS SOON as the high rez scan was officially released.

"skeptics (and debunkers)"

Do you mind explaining what you mean when you say "debunkers"?

Thanks,

Lance

Bob Koford said...

Here is my final contribution, for what it is worth. Take it with a "grain of salt", as I do not claim anything about this memo, and I am not one of the experts.


2 [*****]...AND THE VICTIMS OF THE ML_104 TOP FORMATION TO THE
VERMINS [** ***]POD ***NATION
VIEWING COUNTRIES
3 [*****][ ] AT FORT WORTH, TEX.
4 [*****][ **SON IN TU4 "DISC". [****] TRUCK AWAY TO: A1 GAHQ NEWMEX.
4 [ ] [ TOR IN THE "DISC" MUST BUS ARMY TAC A1
L1 GA90[********] 5 [ ] WRIGHT, BOWLES [***] [******] TUESDAY AT ROSWELL, SAID:
5 ER CUE, ROBLEY HAS AAF 145 :
5 MAX APT 145
6 [ ] WEDNSDAY--DATE 1947.[ ] FOR UTILITY OF STORY ARE ON THE
6 MFG TO47 MYSTERY
6 SAFE 1047 MNT ZONE
7 [ ] THEY TURN OUT TO BE WEATHER BALLOONS. [ ] IN THE ]
8 [ ] A8t/h LOAD IN A RAWIN CRATE.

9
[******]

Isaac Koi - New Uploads said...

Kevin wrote : "I have suggested to a couple of people that those with web sites as opposed to blogs could put them up but so far there have been no takers). Yes, I believe that a wider dissemination might provide us with the key to reading the memo"

Hi Kevin, All,

Well, the offer I previously made to put make the scans online for everyone still stands.

(At the moment, I've shared the scans with other members of the RSRG/RMRG but not posted the relevant link online).

Paul Young said...

Brian Bell said ..."By the way are you unemployed?"

No. Full time, lowly worker bee on the railway. (Comms engineer)

Brian Bell said... "Why do you post everyday on this blog?

My increased contribution, as of late, is due to my particular interest in the RFI being discussed on the other thread. (I sincerely hope others here consider it to be "contribution" as opposed to simply making noise...)

Brian Bell said ..."Bored?"

No. Happy and interested to read the most up to date views of some the most respected investigators in this field. (Though baffled as to why one debunker in particular seems to want to shout louder and longer than everyone else.)

''''''''''''''

cda said..."I can promise you, Paul, that my pulse has not quickened one iota out of fear of what might be on that scrap of paper in Ramey's hand."

While I'd agree with you that it could appear to be a last desperate attempt to have tangible evidence, it would appear that the powers that be have managed to successfully hide other evidence. Not just for Roswell but for many other cases. I mentioned some months back the stills and footage of the hovering, then landed craft that were taken by Gordon Coopers film crew. By all accounts, these images are the best around...but once Cooper sent them to his superiors...they were never seen again!
Don't you ever ask yourself WHY?
Why are these images not available to the public arena more than half a century after the event?
Why are the US military still insisting Roswell was just a balloon crash when clearly it wasn't...and why were reports of dead aliens being passed off as dummies when it's obvious to everyone that it couldn't possibly be that? (Even you agreed with me some time back that the "dummies" explanation bothered you.

So we're left scratching around looking at a photo in Rameys office...because all the good evidence has already been snatched from us.

Nitram said...

Paul wrote:

"So we're left scratching around looking at a photo in Rameys office...because all the good evidence has already been snatched from us."

Yes, I agree, in the unlikely event of ET being the correct answer for what crashed in Roswell 1947, there is no other "good evidence lying around".

If BB, CDA or anyone else has any suggestions for other avenues of investigation please feel free to share them with us.

Regards
Nitram

cda said...

Paul:

In saying my pulse rate will not rise one iota out of fear of what the Ramey memo might show, I did not mean the Roswell case is totally solved. One does NOT need to explain each and every facet of a case to be satisfied with the general solution. I take the view that there is NO WAY an ET visit to earth, with the wreckage, bodies and the huge amount of associated documentation can possibly be still secret to a few high-up military guys from ONE country for 7 decades. Just think of the scientific implications. In the end, by saying there is a lot more hidden from the public, you reveal yourself to be another conspiracist.

If you disagree, that is your choice. I shall not try and persuade you any further.

Probably someone like James Oberg can answer your query on the Gordon Cooper case. If you want my opinion (which is based on very little knowledge of the case) I'd guess the photos he took are worthless to science, and the facts as you believe them to be are not the whole story of the case. But I simply do not know the answer, so will say no more.

Gilles Fernandez said...

David Rudiak, and All,

I taked a look on your "rebuttals" on the Randle/Houran paper.

In essence, and no offense, you (David) are asserting that if you dont prime people to read what YOU read, the paper and experiment Randle & Houran did, is invalidated and what neutral readers NOT decyphered is invalidated, but what you read is validated.Wow, that's scientific...

Imho, you are not understanding few "basics" here :

1) For the "Ramey memo" scans, it is IMHO impossible to have a forensic "technic" / serious methodology, in order to separate in a FIRST "and must be" step (and before the chararacters decipheration itself) what is the "ink" (signal) and what is the noise (grain of the film -artefacts -). It is not like to deblur a text "black on white", here so to speack...  

2a) Cause 1), and because langage reading is quasi automatic, irrepressive, "you will see what you want" for the complex words (more than 3 letters ie) as for shorter words too...  

2b) For language decipheration,the CONTEXT is very important and will drive you/us on the words you "want to see" depending on the context you will offer (or YOU have here). We call it in Psychology "Priming". Aka EACH of us here are in fact in a "typical" lexical decision task, then subjective, influenced...
In essence, pardon if "rude", or "tant mieux" if I'm wrong, I dont see any neutral or scientific method to decypher the "memo".


I saw only you were reading what you want to read.

Anyway, free to present your previous study in a scientific journal, I'm only offering my "blogger" opinion.

Regards,

Gilles.





zoamchomsky said...

"James Oberg can answer your query on the Gordon Cooper case."

Right you are, he has, long ago, and I don't know why such nonsense persists.

It's pretty much the case that any "saucer" story Cooper told was a fairy tale.

The Coop wasn't even there; the case was widely reported and investigated by Blue Book, the pictures were published, they're worthless, and completely explained.

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~psmith/cooper.html

Brian B said...

@ Nitram

"If BB, CDA or anyone else has any suggestions for other avenues of investigation please feel free to share them with us."

I already did. The evidence you want, if it exists, is hidden in the private sector contract companies that build and analyze weapons for the defense department.

If you want it, you'd probably have to engage in illegal corporate espionage or bribe someone well enough that they would provide it.

I don't think any of it, should it exist, will ever surface on its own. Money runs the world and those who have it rule with power. They want to keep it that way.

Unknown said...

@Kevin -- At what point do you put a stop to Brian Bell's antics? I don't mind when he challenges other posters' comments, but when he insults others, don't you think this is pretty much making a joke of your blog? I refer specifically to this:

@Paul: Keep dreaming buddy...maybe eventually you'll convince yourself of that. By the way are you unemployed? Why do you post everyday on this blog? Bored?

I'm not fighting your battles for you Paul. Instead, I believe this blog should be about debating the issues versus insulting people.

Go ahead Brian, continue insulting other posters on the blog when all they are trying to do is find answers to valid questions. It only reflects negatively on you. Oh, and I have read every UFO book in existence since 1947, lol.

Brian B said...

@ ufo dude

Thanks for the insult. Obviously you're not adhering to KR's wishes butvI guess that's OK. So what do you think the memo says?

Wind Swords said...

UFOdude,

I don't want to speak for Brian, but he is responding in kind to an insult that was directed at him (with almost the same words IIRC). The problem is that if person A insults person B and then person B responds in kind to person A it would be improper to shut down B's retort when you let A's original insult go without a reprimand.

Which brings me to my real reason for posting. We expect Kevin to "police" this site and keep the "inmates" in the "asylum" from misbehaving. But have you considered that Kevin is quite a busy man? He just did an interview on the UFO Podcast, which I hope to listen to soon. He may be writing a new book, but he can't tell us that he is (authors sometimes have ND agreements with publishers). He could be traveling to speak somewhere. The point is, that he has (IMHO) neither the time nor the energy to do something that we should be capable of doing ourselves. We are all adults here. We could stay on topic and not require Kevin's intervention if we would just CHOOSE TO STOP IT ourselves. I've made a couple of pleas to this end before and Steve Sawyer has recently as have others. I don't know what it's going to take. Maybe I'll have to start waving my virtual finger at each of you when you cross that line, but it's high time for some behavior modification here. And - in my best authoritative parental voice - no, I don't care who started it, it needs to end. Otherwise this blog will lose people who don't want to go down this road, including me.

KRandle said...

All -

I have tried to be fair here... I have asked that the insults stop. I have let some things slide because in the course of the posting there is some good information. But there are some who just don't get it. So, from this point, if there is an insult, a perceived insult, or I think there is an insult. It will be deleted... So, if you spent time creating a posting that you believe might cross the line, I'd advise you to write it off line to post. That way you'll have a copy if I delete it... you could then repost providing the insults are removed.

David Rudiak said...

"So, from this point, if there is an insult, a perceived insult, or I think there is an insult. It will be deleted..."

But this will render some posters here speechless.

KRandle said...

David -

Not my problem.

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote: (1/5)
I taked a look on your "rebuttals" on the Randle/Houran paper. In essence... you are asserting that if you dont prime people to read what YOU read, the paper and experiment R/H did, is invalidated and what neutral readers NOT decyphered is invalidated, but what you read is validated.Wow, that's scientific...

No that is absolutely NOT my argument. I appreciate that you at least read my webpage even if you didn’t get it. (I also understand that English is difficult for you, so not all your fault.)

What I am criticizing is their central thesis, which was actually disproven, their methods, the results they incorrectly reported or didn’t report at all, and bad statistical analysis. It has NOTHING to do with whether their readers read “what I wanted them to read.” Where did you get that idea?

The central thesis of the paper was that readers were heavily influenced by the context they were given (what they call a “priming” effect), but when put to the test, the statistics didn't show that at all. Among the nearly 180 subjects (divided into 3 groups of about 60 each, one told it was about Roswell, another “atomic testing”, and the third told nothing, about 640 words total were read. Except for 11 words they called "exclusive words", i.e. unique to a particular group, half of everything else they called "common words" (~320 words like WEATHER BALLOONS), and the other half they didn't say, though they had to be one or the other. They were probably the easy short words like THE, OF, AT, etc. which would have been "common" across all groups. (Thus probably at least 95% of words read were actually read across all groups, NOT “exclusive” to a particular group because of some claimed “priming” effect.)

As for the "exclusive words", the list for the Roswell group was only 4 words: "remains", "crash", "fundamental", and "UFO". Obviously "crash" and "UFO" might be suggested by a Roswell context (though "UFO" in 1947 would have been an anachronism), but what is specific about a Roswell context to "remains" or "fundamental"? These are very NEUTRAL words. How are those “primed” by Roswell?

Similarly, with the "atomic testing" group, they had "glasses, "meaning", "morning", "atomic", "flash", "laboratory". Obviously "atomic" would be influenced by context and maybe "flash", but how about neutral words like "morning" and "meaning"? What's "atomic" about them? The other words are also debatably the result of context. But we can see at least 4 out of these 10 “exclusive” words are clearly NOT context specific. In fact, words like "atomic", "meaning" and "laboratory" have ALSO been proposed by purely Roswell readers. "Meaning" was a strong consensus word among 9 readers.

Thus you have 640 words total and only 6 might or were influenced by context. Another HUGE problem with the study is the number of instances of each allegedly primed or biased "exclusive word" was NOT given, but their whole thesis depended on that. Within the paper they admit that a referee asked for these numbers, but state they didn't have them because the graduate student doing the statistics had thrown them away! How can you claim to have “proven” something when the supporting data doesn’t exist?

Even if we were to assume GENEROUSLY 10 instances of each of those "exclusive" words (instead of probably closer to one or two examples each), that would still be less than 10% of the words influenced by the context, probably more like 3% or less. That is NOT remotely some huge contextual "priming" effect.

So, Gilles, it isn't because their readers didn't read “what I wanted them to read.” I am critical of the paper because it badly misstated what the real key result was.

David Rudiak said...

(2/5)
Imho, you are not understanding few "basics" here :

1) For the "Ramey memo" scans, it is IMHO impossible to have a forensic "technic" / serious methodology, in order to separate in a FIRST "and must be" step (and before the chararacters decipheration itself) what is the "ink" (signal) and what is the noise (grain of the film -artefacts -). It is not like to deblur a text "black on white", here so to speack...


IMHO, you do not understand that I DO understand the basics here, long before you, as have others. The primary problem with the Ramey memo is the signal to noise (i.e., small letters embedded in film grain noise). I have also completely understood from the beginning that it is not a blur problem. Please give me a little credit here. I have been at this for 15 years now. How about you?

You are also suggesing that the noise is so bad that there is absolutely no signal, and reading is based purely on bias, or I and others “are reading only what we want to see.”

First of all, that is completely false because clearly some words can be read unambiguously (which wouldn't be possible if the signal was completely drowned out by noise). One good thing about the R/H study is that it DID demonstrate such words and phrases as FORT WORTH, TEX., WEATHER BALLOONS, LAND, and STORY were read across all three groups, including the “no context” control and the misleading context ("atomic testing"). This alone disproves your statement.

In addition, in my group of 9 comparison reads at my website by people who spent considerably longer than 17 average minutes trying to read the message and tried to fill in most of the visible 70 or so words (instead of the 3.7 average of the R/H study), there was STRONG CONSENSUS on considerably more, words and phrases like IN/ON THE “DISC”, AT ROSWELL, MEANING OF STORY AND, CREWS, WOULD, RAMEY, and, yes, even VICTIMS in the long and well-agreed above sentence fragment THE VICTIMS FO THE WRECK YOU FORWARDED TO THE .... AT FORT WORTH, TEX. There is similar strong agreement on some other less words and word fragments like AT THE and "...ATION W.."

About 40% of the memo has this level of strong agreement and about 50% at least majority agreement. You will no doubt attribute this solely to bias and cross-contamination, but even the three skeptics I included in my comparison read of 9 people agree on most of these reads (with bias the other way, coming up with something else for VICTIMS in all three cases and DISC in 2 cases)

E.g., William McNeff and Glenn Fishbine, who said they were assuming the memo was about a Mogul balloon, not a flying saucer crash, on the strong-agreement words agreed with them almost entirely, except for the critical “VICTIMS” and “’DISC’” words. I could easily argue they were seeing only what they wanted to see there, because BIAS CAN WORK BOTH WAYS. But how do you explain that other than that they were still in about 90% agreement with everybody else? If anything, they were in more agreement with my overall read on these words than anybody else, yet they were self-proclaimed Roswell skeptics. How do you explain that Gilles if people are “reading only what they want to read”? All this demonstrates is that reader bias or context has SOME affect on what people read, but it is far from the ONLY determining factor, in fact it is a relatively MINOR factor.

PEOPLE SEEING WHAT THEY THINK IS ACTUALLY THERE AND ALSO USING RULES OF THE LANGUAGE ARE FAR MORE IMPORTANT DETERMINING FACTORS IN WHAT IS READ. That should have been the real takeaway of the R/H study, which demonstrated this fact, instead of some EXTREME “priming effect”, which their own data showed DID NOT EXIST.

David Rudiak said...

(3/5)
2a) Cause 1), and because langage reading is quasi automatic, irrepressive, "you will see what you want" for the complex words (more than 3 letters ie) as for shorter words too...

You own extreme bias is showing here. People USUALLY read words NOT because they “want to see them”, but because THAT IS WHAT THE LETTERING LOOKS LIKE. Ever think of that? If there is some ambiguity, people also factor in things like proper spelling, word length, grammar, and meaning. I.e., they also apply HIGHER information processing than just simple letter-by-letter reading, namely deep knowledge of the language or linguistic analysis. This is VITAL componet of human language abilities (reading or speech recognition) that the skeptics to date always seem to pretend don’t exist. Thus your extremely simplistic statement implying little or nothing can be read because of the noise problem.

WRITTEN LANGUAGE IS NOT JUST A BUNCH OF RANDOM DOTS. LANGUAGE HAS RULES that enable us to read letters and words that are far from crystal clear. On my website I have one example from a book of visual psychophysics demonstrating just how good we are at reading even very bad printed language with only partial letters. I also throw in examples of how context from one or two surrounding words (even if they too are not complete) can indeed help figure out some of the more difficult examples:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Word_completion.html

So is providing context causing us to “see only what we want to see”, or giving us ADDITIONAL INFORMATION to do SMART READING that might help us figure out some bad writing? If you know the general theme of what someone is talking about in a noisy room, or know them well and know how they speak, or maybe try to do a little lip reading, are you “hearing only what you want to hear” or using additional information to help pull the actual signal out of the noise? You might still misunderstand what they are saying, but overall you will be MORE SUCCESSFUL if you use all the information available at your disposal.

As we shall see from the R/H study, they actually demonstrated this: the Roswell readers were MUCH BETTER than the other groups at picking out “common” words like WEATHER BALLOONS that even R/H were forced to admit were there because all groups read them.

2b) For language decipheration,the CONTEXT is very important and will drive you/us on the words you "want to see" depending on the context you will offer (or YOU have here). We call it in Psychology "Priming". Aka EACH of us here are in fact in a "typical" lexical decision task, then subjective, influenced...

Please see my comments above. As usual, you are badly overstating your case. If I or anyone else “pro-Roswell” were reading the Ramey memo strictly from bias, why do NONE of us read words like “aliens” or “space ships” or “men from Mars” in there? (The latter two, BTW, were COMMONLY used in the newspapers duirng the Roswell period in speculation about what the saucers represented) That’s because none of the words in the memo look like these and aren’t there, that’s why

People are obviously influenced by context (which provides us with ADDITIONAL INFORMATION that might be useful and help us, like the theme of a crossword puzzle, and yes may bias us in a certain direction). But that does NOT mean we read “only what we want to see” because of that context. That is what YOU want to believe, but it is patently false. CORRECT CONTEXT IMPROVES ACCURACY OF READING AND SPEECH COMPREHENSION, including with computers. Studies PROVE this, and it really shouldn’t come as a surprise, since every one of us, even YOU, does this every day. Here is just one example of research PROVING this:

www.audiology.org/news/impact-cognition-word-recognition

David Rudiak said...

4/5

“The Impact of Cognition on Word Recognition ...the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) required for correct word recognition is inversely related to the probability of the same word occurring in the sentence context. After exploring the effects of aging, hearing acuity and cognitive ability with regard to spoken word recognition, they note age and cognitive ability contribute significant variance across all contextual conditions tested, while hearing acuity ceased to be a significant contributor to recognition thresholds in the high context conditions. Specifically, even with a moderate hearing loss, linguistic content provides a powerful effect with regard to improving recognition , and linguistic context may "virtually override differences among listeners" with regard to hearing acuity. Their regression analysis indicates cognitive ability is a significant predictor of word recognition—even after statistically controlling for hearing acuity.”

I dont see any neutral or scientific method to decypher the "memo".

If you don’t see, you haven’t been paying attention. For one, I have defined a scientific methodology for attacking the memo to include the following: 1) Using correct letter counts for each word (which can be determined objectively) and assuming no misspellings; words with incorrect numbers of letters are rejected; 2) resulting sentences must be grammatical and sensible, not disconnected gibberish (thus, e.g., words that would be the wrong part of speech or don't make sense in context are rejected).

I have also done statistical comparisons between readers to determine what parts have good agreement and which don’t, a form of polling. Google, e.g., does something similar with their project to convert old text documents into online, searchable computer files. Old text may be in bad shape, thus computer OCR may have difficulty reading them. Google is using those words as part of their “Captchas”, thus using the brains of millions of online users to read the difficult text. They then compile the statistics of what MOST human readers think the word might be, to augment the computer OCR.

Such polling techniques could be extended to more readers to give statistical ratings to various words in the Ramey memo. This has already been done for the controversial “VICTIMS” word. Ross Evans, who sometimes posts here, posted on the Reynolds blog that he had a friend with a website who used Captchas to test for him the “VICTIMS” word letter by letter, convincing Ross (who I think professes to be a skeptic) that VICTIMS was indeed there. I did a follow-up email to Ross for more details, and Ross wrote back:

“My specific interest was in attempting to validate the words VICTIMS as it disproves unequivocally all official explanations thus far offered.. From a sample dataset of over 2000 for characters served individually without context the vast majority of people identified the V for VICTIMS, the I and the ending I, M and S. The C and T were overwhelmingly the cause of the captcha being rejected, and there seemed no meaningful consensus on those characters.”

So tell me Gilles, are these people also “seeing only what they want to see”, even though NO CONTEXT at all was provided? The ONLY explanation for these results is a “vast majority” of people see those letters there because THAT IS WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE. (BTW, the ONLY POSSIBLE English word with V I ? ? I M S is VICTIMS.)

I have also used my own computer OCR to rate the probability of individual letters and words, thus giving an objective means of rating the probabilities of conflicting words. It too finds that “V”, “I”, “I” “M”, and “S” are high probability letters and VICTIMS is indeed the standout, best word by probability of all those proposed. Thus the computer “sees” the same thing as the “vast majority” of human readers.

These are ALL scientific techniques for evaluating the Ramey memo and testing readings.

David Rudiak said...

(5/5)
I saw only you were reading what you want to read.

I have no idea what this means. Was I a reader in the R/H study? Most of my comments and criticisms of the paper are based strictly on statistical FACTS from their own published results. These have NOTHING to do with what “I want to read”.

My main critique is, that what R/H claimed to have proven was NOT proven, if anything the exact opposite was demonstrated. Words read had VERY LITTLE to do with the context readers were given., probably affecting only a few perscent of the words.

Further, proper context helped a GREAT DEAL in reading clearer words that are now universally agreed upon. Thus the “Roswell” readers were MUCH BETTER at picking out words like FORT WORTH, TEX. and WEATHER BALLOONS than the “atomic testing” group (and better still than those given nothing to work with).

If you look at the compiled statistics at the bottom of my webpage, the “Roswell” group successfully picked out 196 common words (WEATHER BALLOONS, etc.), the “atomic” group only 78 words, and the neutral group only 42. The proper context enabled the Roswell group to properly read words 2.5X better than the atomic group and 4X better than the neutral group. Discussion of this one flagrantly obvious result in their paper was almost nonexistent

I had other criticisms, such as the very short time spent on average per person (illustrating low motivation) the lack of properly prepared materials for the readers to use, and bad statistics, like identical impossible standard deviations for words read.

But worst of all, they TOTALLY IGNORED fully HALF of the words their statistics say were read. They were neither the “common” words nor the “exclusive” words, but they had to be one or the other. Almost certainly they were truly “common” words, namely the commonest words in the English language, the 300 most common ones making up to 65% of written English, words like THE, OR, OF, AT, AND, etc. (Though in the Ramey memo I think the percentage is closer to 40-50%).

When you throw those into the mix, readers were picking out double the number of words that R/H claimed were “common words” seen, probably 98% to 99% of the words read had NOTHING to do with reader bias or the given context. They were reading them because they were really there, or something close to it, This again demolishes your claim that it is impossible for readers to separate the words and letters from the film grain noise.

And BTW, Gilles, there is more to reading or speech recognition, whether by human or computer, than a simplistic notion that everything is a signal to noise problem. Written language is NOT random, like tea leaves. There are definite fonts, correct spellings, word lengths, proper grammar, proper syntax, semantics (meaning). Therefore, problemmatic written messages or noisy speech can be further attacked using LINGUISTIC analysis. That is why we can read even really bad handwriting or understand people talking in a really noisy environment. It is why computer text and speech recognition dramatically improve when statistical methods are applied. E.g., knowing the word THE in a teletype is very likely followed by a noun rather than an adjective, greatly restricts the number of possible similar-looking words by eliminating those that are the wrong part of speech.

Language with all its rules plus proper context puts a LOT OF CONSTRAINTS on what can be there or not be there. Because of this, human beings are very good at correctly reading or hearing things in noisy environments, well beyond what a simplistic signal to noise argument would predict.

cda said...

DR:

You say that none of the words 'aliens', 'space ships' or 'men from Mars' is there, i.e. present in the Ramey memo. How are you so certain of this? I accept that 'aliens' is not there because that word, when referring to extraterrestrials, was not in use in 1947. Probably not used until c.1960 though I cannot be sure.

Also, if you insist the term 'weather balloons' is there (which I tend to agree it is), does this not make it very likely that the said memo is mainly to do with such balloons (or an object resembling one), and not an ET visit to planet earth?

If you are saying 'weather balloons' was only brought in by Ramey to inform the recipient that such a balloon was going to be substituted as a diversion to fool the press & public, you are having to invoke conspiracy theory again to get out of your dilemma.

Why were the two words 'weather balloons' brought in at all? You are surely not telling us that a visiting spaceship just happened to resemble such a balloon!

What I am getting at is this: have you ANY reason whatever, based on what is decipherable so far from the text in that memo, to suppose that it reveals the presence of ETs on earth in July 1947?

TheDimov said...

I think what is fascinating is that both the words "weather balloon" and "disc" are quite discernible. But I think that the fact that there was movement of something or other to Fort Worth, and the possibility that there may have been 'victims' only further lends credibility to the UFO theory and many of the witness testimonies, so the memo even being able to be deciphered to an incomplete extent could be extremely helpful to the overall case.

David Rudiak said...

CDA curiously wrote: (1 of 2)
You say that none of the words 'aliens', 'space ships' or 'men from Mars' is there, i.e. present in the Ramey memo. How are you so certain of this?

Don't know the point of the question. NOBODY to date who has studied the message has proposed anything like this. Thus very likely NOT there, unless hidden in shadow, under Ramey's thumb, etc.

And if somebody had read something like this, would you believe it? You don't even believe VICTIMS.

MY point was that if we were all so bloody "biased", why are the readings so restrained? Why not go all the way with "Martians", "space ships", etc?

I accept that 'aliens' is not there because that word, when referring to extraterrestrials, was not in use in 1947. Probably not used until c.1960 though I cannot be sure.

A very small point, but I have found one or two instances of the use of "aliens" in 1947 in reference to extraterrestrials. But it was indeed VERY uncommon. When speaking of hypothetical ETs piloting flying saucers, typically terms like "Martians", "men from Mars", or "space people" were used. "Aliens" was much more likely to be used in reference to illegal immigrants.

Also, if you insist the term 'weather balloons' is there (which I tend to agree it is), does this not make it very likely that the said memo is mainly to do with such balloons (or an object resembling one), and not an ET visit to planet earth?

There are two contexts within a Roswell context in which "weather balloons" might be used: 1) It is what was found; 2) it was the official story of what was found (which might reflect what was found or NOT).

The previous line everyone agrees is a reference to the base press release (often read as "misstate meaning/release of story" whereas the next line with "weather balloons" there is general agreement is about the next PR (press release). Thus in this context, "weather balloons" was going to be what the press was told next what was found, whether it was or not.

David Rudiak said...

(2 of 2), response to CDA:

If you are saying 'weather balloons' was only brought in by Ramey to inform the recipient that such a balloon was going to be substituted as a diversion to fool the press & public, you are having to invoke conspiracy theory again to get out of your dilemma.

If by "reciprient" you mean the reciprient of the message (who I believe to be Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, acting AAF chief of staff at the Pentagon who was reported placing phone calls to Ramey), then Ramey was briefing him their next public story was going to be "weather balloons". Ramey would be informing a superior officer of their plans in a CONFIDENTIAL INTERNAL communication not designed for public distribution. How in the world is this a "conspiracy theory"???? That's the way something like that would likely be handled.

Why were the two words 'weather balloons' brought in at all? You are surely not telling us that a visiting spaceship just happened to resemble such a balloon!

Again you ignore the obvious SECOND alternative: it was the next official story they were going to put out, which historically WAS the case. (without the plural "balloonS")

What I am getting at is this: have you ANY reason whatever, based on what is decipherable so far from the text in that memo, to suppose that it reveals the presence of ETs on earth in July 1947?

For one, the memo clearly is discussing "THE "DISC" and something of importance "IN THE "DISC"". As you know, the word before this I believe is CADAVERS (with CA hidden under Ramey's thumb, but the other letters mostly checking well for probability. And as you further know, further on the line I think is the word PREP, as in mortuary prep of a body. That and THE VICTIMS OF THE WRECK being forwarded to a possible TEAM AT FORT WORTH, and two or three other words I've been holding back, all pointing to body recovery, and there aren't a lot of scenarios here that would work, certainly not a Mogul balloon one.

Even ignoring CA)DAVERS or PREP, VICTIMS I consider to be VERY solid, for all the reasons I outlined in my 5-part reply to Gilles. I think one of the most compelling pieces of evidence verifying VICTIMS was done by Ross Evans using Captchas. The letters "V" "I" "I" "M" "S" were overwhelmingly the choice of over 2000 readers who had no inkling whee the letters came from, thus completely context free.

We also know from crew members of that B29 flight to Fort Worth the next day of a large crate in the bomb bay surrounded by an armed guard and met at Fort Worth by a mortician that one of the crew had gone to school with.

And further there is now a large mass of first and second-hand testimony of alien bodies being recovered. In my mind, this makes a strong circumstantial case that words like VICTIMS are talking about alien bodies, not human ones, and THE "DISC" was an alien craft, not a human one. A human craft and bodies are the only other semi-viable alternatives.

David Rudiak said...

TheDimov wrote:
I think what is fascinating is that both the words "weather balloon" and "disc" are quite discernible. But I think that the fact that there was movement of something or other to Fort Worth, and the possibility that there may have been 'victims' only further lends credibility to the UFO theory and many of the witness testimonies, so the memo even being able to be deciphered to an incomplete extent could be extremely helpful to the overall case.

That's the way I see it. You don't necessarily have to get every word. There are some critical ones that demolish all official stories to date.

VICTIMS is a VERY STRONG word, for all the reasons I've given elsewhere. As mentioned, even totally ignorant readers of Captchas shown individual letters from this word overwhelmingly chose V I ? ? I M S as being the letters. I had nothing to do with this experiment.

So VICTIMS were FORWARDED to FORT WORTH, and next sentence, something of importance IN THE "DISC" was dealt with. Of course, I think the "something" inside was the recovered forwarded bodies again, but even neglecting that is the fact that the word "DISC" was being used to describe the object (not an "airplane" or "drone" or "rawin" or "missile" or anything like that). And something like a RAWIN target (which Ramey publicly was equating the the Roswell base recovered "flying disc" and displaying on his floor at that very moment) have no insides nor have anything of importance worthy of mention. They were flimsy balsa wood kites, period.

Brice said...

David Rudiak said :

"Because of this, human beings are very good at correctly reading or hearing things in noisy environments, well beyond what a simplistic signal to noise argument would predict."

BTW your posts and sentence above reminded this trick almost anyone has done I believe, which somehow show our hability to read even with a kind of noise in the information, which here is the mixing of some letters within the words. With common/simple words as in the example, it's just amazing how fast we can read even with the mixing.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/

Jeanne Ruppert said...

Bravo, David Rudiak.

Brice said...

@David Rudiak : you said
"There are two contexts within a Roswell context in which "weather balloons" might be used: 1) It is what was found; 2) it was the official story of what was found (which might reflect what was found or NOT)."

In all fairness, I think we can also take into account the weather balloons demonstrations that were done afterwards (of course it should be replaced in its proper context in the text of the memo for this sense to be meaningful)

David Rudiak said...

Brice wrote:
"In all fairness, I think we can also take into account the weather balloons demonstrations that were done afterwards (of course it should be replaced in its proper context in the text of the memo for this sense to be meaningful)"

Good point. The sense of the last two lines is that "weather balloons" would be the next press release but it was also thought the story would work better if they added weather balloon ("rawin") demonstration crews.

Regardless of whether people accept this interpretation, it is indeed a historical FACT that the newspapers the next day reported the Army and Navy running a debunkery campaign to stop the saucer rumors and multiple such weather balloon/radar target demonstrations were carried out, the usual line being that these explained the flying saucers. This is all documented at my website:

www.roswellproof.com/militarydebunk.html
www.roswellproof.com/balloondemos.html

Re

Brian B said...

So the leap of logic here is to assume that the other news articles and the balloon demos were a massive plan of debunkery.

The only way to come to that conclusion is to read the Ramey memo as something pertaining to an alien crash. And believing it.

Did the press run articles about the saucers perhaps being balloons? Yes. Did the military demonstrate these balloons for the public? Yes.

So a more logical conclusion could be this:

What crashed on the Foster Ranch was something to do with balloons. The military thought it might be a good idea to demonstrate for the public that balloons may be accounting for much of what they are seeing. Especially if their own military somehow made a mistake themselves.

So someone high up, like Vandenberg, said we better help people understand that what they're seeing isn't what they think it is. In other words, if they really are balloons then let's demo for them so that they have an idea of what they are looking at.

The fact that some UFO's have really turned out to be misidentified weather balloons proves this point. People do in fact report spaceships when what they are really seeing is a high altitude balloon.

Gilles Fernandez said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gilles Fernandez said...

David wrote: Obviously "crash" and "UFO" might be suggested by a Roswell context.

Hello David,

As VICTIMS for you and your Roswell "immersion"/ context? For the moment, I/we found none neutrals reading victims. And more seriouly, to asserts the written stimulus + his noise is 100% sure "victim"s is not serious. I/we can read several English propositions/wrote depending how I'm we are "primed" (so to speack).

2) I have been at this for 15 years now. How about you? I have full respect for all you did (but mainly your compilation of press releases). No offense, but these 15 years could be a bias too. Some people doesnt read the words you are insisting as "can be read unambiguously", David. I regret that.

3) You mean that RAMEY is unambiguously readed? It will or would be if people not having an idea who RAMEY is in a particulary context here (ufology, Roswell) read RAMEY unambiguously. We are far away to have seen a protocole demonstrating it... Do we?

4) LANGUAGE HAS RULES. Yeah, but your favorite decypheration/result of the Ramey memo doesnt respect such rules. It makes few sens even if I'm not an native english speacker.

5) the vast majority of people identified the V for VICTIMS, the I and the ending I, M and S. Again, many of the people we/I proposed the "memo" doesnt see or read it, nor a "V". As the first "what could be a letter" is more or less matching others stimuli - which could be a letter - in the "memo", elsewhere, excepted the guesses for the other words in full where we can found it CANT have a "V" in the word.

For example, do you have occurences in English from books, dunno what as text regarding the proposed "victims of the wreck?" I mean how this "syntagm", victims of the wreck is frequent in English texts/language? An honnest question.

Regards,


Gilles.

KRandle said...

Brian =

The staged launch of a Mogul array from Alamogordo on July 10 certainly smacks of a cover up.

Don Maor said...

Gilles wrote:

"...dunno what as..."

Gilles, regarding this word "dunno", I am not sure if it really applies as an equivalent to the wording "I don't know". I am not a native English speaker, so an English speaker might help us with that. In any case, given that I myself make some mistakes when I write in English, I would not have the courage to use the word "dunno" with the confidence you are using it. I realize that your english writing ability is much, MUCH WORSE than mine, so I am baffled about how you really dare to use 'dunno' so often. I suggest to you to stop using it. It looks odd, like an old lady dancing in a dance club for teenagers.

On the other hand, I find rather impressive the fact told by David Rudiak about the image with the unclear 'VICTIMS' picture being used as a "Captcha" in a website, with the result that the letters V I...I M S were chosen by random people as the more likely. The OCR analysis by Rudiak is also an impressive result, because it is a sofware wich makes the veredict. I believe David has done a great job with the Ramey Memo.

Brian B said...

"The staged launch of a Mogul array from Alamogordo on July 10 certainly smacks of a cover up."

Possibly, but we don't have anything tangible to back that up, specifically a document that orders such events to be held (other than the Ramey memo in which DR claims they were ordered by Vandenberg).

If the July 5 Circleville event was any indication of things, one can equally presume that over a span of a few days the media was having a field day claiming weather balloons were the saucers people were seeing. After events at Roswell the military may have simply said let's put an end to this nonsense and demo some balloons so people stop reporting them as disks.

In fact the Circleville Herrald actually claimed several balloons were found in the area over a few days, so that may have influenced a decision to explain it to the public.

David Rudiak said...

(1 of 2)
Kevin: "The staged launch of a Mogul array from Alamogordo on July 10 certainly smacks of a cover up."

Brian Bell:
Possibly, but we don't have anything tangible to back that up, specifically a document that orders such events to be held (other than the Ramey memo in which DR claims they were ordered by Vandenberg).

If the July 5 Circleville event was any indication of things, one can equally presume that over a span of a few days the media was having a field day claiming weather balloons were the saucers people were seeing. After events at Roswell the military may have simply said let's put an end to this nonsense and demo some balloons so people stop reporting them as disks.


More spin from BB.

First of all, MULTIPLE military demos from multiple bases, not just one, both Army and Navy:

http://www.roswellproof.com/balloondemos.html

This was right after UP and INS their Roswell stories stated:

UP (July 9): "Reports of flying saucers whizzing through the sky fell off sharply today as the Army and Navy began a concentrated campaign to stop the rumors."

INS (July 9): "Reports of the saucers fell off sharply as the Army and Navy began a concentrated campaign to stop the rumors."

And Scripps-Howard newspapers reported July 13: "Army Playing Saucer Joke? Don't laugh too hard at those flying disc stories. There's considerable evidence of [an] organized Army campaign to make you laugh. And not all that's known on them has been printed."

But according to BB, there is nothing "tangible" to back up that there was some sort of debunkery campaign going on, such as the Alamogordo launch, or that they and other bases were ordered to do it. Really? They all just spontaneously and simultaneously decided to do it without orders? Truly amazing.

Then BB hypothesizes it was all very innocent: "After events at Roswell the military may have simply said let's put an end to this nonsense and demo some balloons so people stop reporting them as disks." So again, how as all this carried out without some sort of coordination and orders? Brian's doing a Schroedinger's cat argument again: the military both ordered and didn't order these demos.

A common thread in all these military demos was clearly to debunk the flying saucers as undoubtedly being rawin targets, as can be seen in the comments of those involved. Another common comment was that the saucers were only being seen where rawins were used. A good example of this was the Atlanta Naval air station demos on two different days, July 9 & in which they state they had NEVER launched one of the targets before. This was just more sponteaneity on their part--orders, what orders?

http://www.roswellproof.com/Atlanta_July9a.html

They called it "Operation Saucer", with comments such as the following (first launch July 9):

"Lt. Comdr. Thomas H. Rentz, of the Naval Air Station, said the mysterious sailing discs that have been baffling the nation are without doubt "ray winds,"

"People are just beginning to see these things," reasoned Comdr. Rentz, "and that's probably why they are all excited about them now."

The usual snide people-seeing-UFOs-are-drunks comment: "Well, there'll be a lot of people who won't have to rely on the bottle to see a 'flying saucer' today!

David Rudiak said...

(Part 2 of 2)
2nd Atlanta demo, July 10 (added chase plane to rawin launch)
"It undoubtedly is the 'flying saucer,'" said Cmdr. Rentz, who added he heard a $3000 reward was offered "by someone" for a real "saucer." "Do you suppose we could collect the reward?" he asked, smiling.

"Chief Frank F. Roberts... said he had checked newspaper reports of persons who had spotted "flying saucers," and in every case they were near a radar unit using 'raywins.'"

Well, I guess that solves cases like Kenneth Arnold or the United Air crew sighting of July 4: they "undoubtedly" just saw disc-shaped "raywins" flying at supersonic speed--or they were drinking.

I guess Gen. Twining and the Engineering and Intelligence Divisions at Wright Field didn't get the memo that the flying disc mystery had already been solved. Remember Twining's memo that the flying discs were real, not imaginary, high performance aircraft and recommended a general investigation? Why would the Air Force then set up Project Sign on Twining's urging if the mystery was so easily explained? Why did Sign come to the conclusion in their infamous Estimate that the truly baffling cases were most likely ET in origin?

Drooling idiots! Cmdr. Rentz and other military balloon demonstrators could have told them they were "without doubt" "raywins". Hah, hah, hah. Move on, nothing more to see here. And stop drinking.

cda said...

DR:

And you really think that the military would do all this debunkery just after they had actually captured a saucer and its ET occupants?

You are kidding yourself beyond comprehension if you suppose this. The USAF, the government and the intelligence services would have been so shocked and taken aback by the discovery of ETs visiting the earth that they would have been in a total quandary as to what to do. The idea of some demonstration to debunk them, if they knew or even suspected the truth, is dotty.

For all they knew a mass ET invasion was imminent. What then?

cda said...

DR:

Oh, and General Twining too would have had a VERY severe shock if Roswell was ET. And his memo of Sept 23 would never have been written. Instead a few dozen or maybe a hundred other documents would have appeared by then, with very different contents. Where are these documents now? Still top secret? To a conspiracist of course they are. They would have to be, wouldn't they?

Brian B said...

@ Rudiak

"But according to BB, there is nothing "tangible" to back up that there was some sort of debunkery campaign going on, such as the Alamogordo launch, or that they and other bases were ordered to do it. Really? They all just spontaneously and simultaneously decided to do it without orders? Truly amazing."

Press articles poking fun at the Army isn't proof of anything. Those same agencies were just days prior hungry for information and stories of crashed saucers to publish. It's good for business.

Besides you have stated previously that you can't believe everything the press writes because it's not always accurate. Now you want to use the press as evidence?

Standard flip-flopping mental gymnastics to prove your point.

Show us the military memos documenting official orders of a massive day-after Roswell pentagon debunkery strategy ordeted by Vandenberg, Twinning, or some of stature. Clearly there would be a massive amount documentation under such circumstances.

Until then it's equally plausible the military simply wanted to put a quick end to nonsense reports since they discovered many reports were misidentifications of weather balloons and "ray wind" targets.

It may "smack" of a campaign, but that campaign may have simply been to ease the public's mind that they weren't really witnessing Martians, Soviets, Nazis, or other intruding aircraft.

Don said...

Brian: "...that campaign may have simply been to ease the public's mind..."

Why do you think the campaign may have been for that purpose?

Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

CDA wrote:
And you really think that the military would do all this debunkery just after they had actually captured a saucer and its ET occupants?

Two choices in this situation: Let the public know with all your uncertainties about why they were here, probably creating a huge panic, or suppress the information while you try to figure out motivations and if there was some way to defend ourselves if they were hostile.

With choice #2, you do indeed engage in debunkery and propaganda to calm the public down while you buy yourself some time.

You are kidding yourself beyond comprehension if you suppose this. The USAF, the government and the intelligence services would have been so shocked and taken aback by the discovery of ETs visiting the earth that they would have been in a total quandary as to what to do. The idea of some demonstration to debunk them, if they knew or even suspected the truth, is dotty.

Everything is "dotty" with you when YOU can't absorb it into your world view. However "shocked and taken aback" the government and military may have been, it's their job to deal with it, just like for Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Talk about "shocked and taken aback." But the government/military didn't curl into a ball and stop functioning. That got about the business of responding to the threat whatever personal panic they may have felt.

Setting up some rinky-dink balloon demos to try to bolster the cover weather balloon story for Roswell, make light of the whole saucer phenomenon, and help calm the public down would have been a super-simple first measure. Such balloon demos would have been the absolute least of their problems.

For all they knew a mass ET invasion was imminent. What then?

If for all they knew a mass ET invasion was imminent, all the more reason to keep things quiet until you could gather more intelligence to try to figure out what was really going on. Going public that the Martians were here, this is not a drill, and BTW, we don't know if the Martians are invading or not would be a sure-fire recipe for mass public panic.

If the Martians invaded, then you would have to go to Plan B, if there is a Plan B for such a situation. But until such a situation actually arose, keep it quiet while you scramble behind the scenes to figure things out and try to mount a defense.

Of course, if the hypothetical invasion was stealthy, as in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", instead of an in-your-face, blow up your cities "War of the Worlds" type invasion (where further public denial would be useless), the intelligence game would get much more complicated.

Don said...

I don't think public opinion was their concern, at least not near the top. They wanted and did kill publication of saucer stories. They didn't want more publicity. How the army (and navy, too) achieved that is worth considering.

Army top concerns in July 1947 (probably in this order):

USAF
Congress
AEC
Navy
FBI

For me, the public is not in the top five.

Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

And yet Don, newspaper articles DO mention public anxiety over what the saucers might represent, whether Russian secret weapons, U.S. secret weapons, and yes, ET invaders. This goes clear back to newspaper articles on June 27 where Kenneth Arnold described his encounter with a hysterical woman in a Pendleton, Oregon cafe, saying "there's the man who saw the men from Mars", then ran from the cafe sobbing she wanted to be with her children while there was still time. This woman obviously believed the "War of the Worlds" was imminent.

I don't know how common this was, but clearly there was some concern at the top about it, Roswell or no Roswell. The mysterious new flying saucers were clearly perceived as a possible threat by some fraction of the public.

As you know, same day as the Roswell press release, but just before, the Pentagon released another press release saying they didn't know what the saucers were, but they definitely were NOT Russian secret weapons, U.S. secret weapons, or "SPACE SHIPS". No need to issue those denials unless there was at least some perceived public concern about all three.

Two articles about Roswell I did find are very specific about the public being anxious and relieved that the Roswell flying disc was just an misidentified weather balloon. One of these articles also stated, "A [non-prosaic] solution might be more than embarrassing. It might be calamitous. What if there really were 'men from Mars!'"

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote: (1 of 3)
David wrote: Obviously "crash" and "UFO" might be suggested by a Roswell context.

The BIGGER point I made was that the Roswell context had only a MINOR effect on words read by both skeptics and Roswell advocates, both groups coming up with very similar readings. Any bias seems to be very limited among people who have seriously tackled the Ramey memo. That was also true in the Randle/Houran study. Literally only a handful of words seemed to have any connection to the actual context given two groups, making up only a tiny fraction of all words read, perhaps as little as 1%.

E.g., I mentioned self-professed Roswell skeptics Glen Fishbine and William McNeff, who believe in the Mogul balloon explanation, were in nearly complete agreement with nearly everybody on the words in the memo that are strongly agreed upon (40-50% of the memo), except for VICTIMS and “DISC”. Bias can work both ways (even affecting French psychologists).

As VICTIMS for you and your Roswell "immersion"/ context? For the moment, I/we found none neutrals reading victims. And more seriouly, to asserts the written stimulus + his noise is 100% sure "victim"s is not serious. I/we can read several English propositions/wrote depending how I'm we are "primed" (so to speack).

No mention of Ross Evan's experiment that I mentioned, of where over 2000 Captcha readers reading only isolated letters from the "VICTIMS" word, having no knowledge of where those letters came from, overwhelmingly agreed the letters were V, I, ?, ?, I, M, S.

Maybe Gilles can tell us what “Roswell immersion” or "priming" effect was at work here, since none seems possible. I would really like an answer to this instead of you obviously dodging it.

Similarly, my computer OCR program made VICTIMS the most probable word by far (average letter ranking of 2.8 after throwing out low-ranked 4th letter that the Captcha readers also couldn't read). Next closest proposed word was FINDING, average 5.2, then REMAINS at 5.8, with VIEWING at 7.0. Nonsense control words VIRGINS was 4.7, or BETTER than any of the other proposed words. Broken down by letters, "V" and "M" ranked #2, "S" #1. The two "I"'s ranked #4 & #3, with "C" #5.

So the computer OCR obtained very similar results to Evan's Captcha readers. Considering just the #1 and #2 ranked letters, thus V ? ? ? ? M S, VICTIMS is the ONLY SENSIBLE word in the English language that could possibly fit there. (Unless you think VALIUMS or VACUUMS make more sense.)

Exactly what “Roswell immersion” or “priming effect” was at work here? Computers don’t care about outcomes.

2) "I have been at this for 15 years now. How about you?" I have full respect for all you did (but mainly your compilation of press releases). No offense, but these 15 years could be a bias too. Some people doesnt read the words you are insisting as "can be read unambiguously", David. I regret that.

As Gilles well knows, my 15 year remark was made in response to his EXTREMELY patronizing remark that I didn't understand the basic problems in reading the memo (unlike him), namely film grain noise, and that it wasn't a blur problem. Oh really? Like I or others had never noticed before, only Gilles? Yet this is something anyone spending a few minutes with the memo should recognize very quickly. But he has "full respect" for what I did.

And "no offense", but everything I did in those 15 years was just done from “bias” (curiously Gilles never suffers from this). As for the "some" who don't read the "unambiguous words", who are these "some" (native English speakers?), what were the circumstances, such as how much time did they spend and what images did they use, in other words show us your "scientific" methodology that you are always demanding of me. I’ve had my methodology up on the Net since 2002.

David Rudiak said...

3) You mean that RAMEY is unambiguously readed? It will or would be if people not having an idea who RAMEY is in a particulary context here (ufology, Roswell) read RAMEY unambiguously. We are far away to have seen a protocole demonstrating it... Do we?

First of all Gilles, where is YOUR protocol? I have “far and away” yet to see YOU demonstrating any. As for my protocol with RAMEY, what I keep linking to: the 9 comparison reads of serious readers (including 3 self-professed skeptics) trying to read the whole thing and spending more than a few minutes on it. All now seem to agree on RAMEY.

Proper nouns like RAMEY will always be harder to read without any context, unlike ordinary nouns or other words, which can often be deduced from surrounding words. E.g., the "Roswell slides" placard was NOT read in a vacuum either, and was far from crystal clear even after deblurring. Thus, most of the message was read linguistically, taking advantage of English spelling, word lengths, grammar and syntax, with an overall "priming" context, knowing that it was describing a small body in the photo which most people already believed to be a mummy in a museum setting.

Despite all this, a few words could NOT be read accurately, particularly the proper name "Palmer". It was obviously a name there, but it could have been ANY name of that length. Nobody probably would have gotten that word “unambiguously” without obtaining the original wording. (Another word completely missed was "pull-over", a very uncommon word.) “San Francisco” after “Palmer” was different in that it is a highly familiar U.S. city. “San” could be read by me even blurred, so even one or two letters in the word after that plus word length would suggest S.F. It would have been entirely different if the location was not familiar, like “San Fatucchio”. How many readers would have gotten that? However, readers would probably also be “biased” by the fact that the photo was probably taken in the U.S. by a U.S. couple, thus the location was probably a U.S. location.

The difference with the Ramey memo is that Ramey is holding the message in his hands and is a known player. He was either the sender or the receiver of the message. That and the fact that a few letters CAN be made out by most people (particularly the “RAM” at the beginning) .

Now you call this "bias". I call it LOGICAL REASONING based on knowing full context, just like the slides placard was mostly read. Knowing that Ramey is involved, it is a short signature at the end, and it looks very "Rameyish", RAMEY is the very likely word. The only other proposed word was TEMPLE at the very beginnig when photographer Johnson’s RPIT group did the first attempted modern read. I believe Ron Regher and Neil Morris have since abandoned that and now and accept RAMEY. Remember skeptics Fishbine and McNeff, the Mogul balloon “believers”? That is ALSO their read.

Now of course you could strip ALL context out of this, present only the word, and few if any people would get it, just like nobody got "Palmer". BTW, I have never seen YOU or any other skeptic present the Roswell slides placard deblurred to completely ignorant people and see how well they read it. Probably most of them would not read it very well not knowing the full story behind it. Would they read “Palmer” Gilles, or even “San Francisco”? You guys were also reading from a form of "bias", what I call correct context, which greatly aids in making sense of bad writing or speech. All scientific studies prove this, yet you continue to ignore the obvious. It's hard to believe that you are an experimental psychologist and don't know this. No offense.

David Rudiak said...

(3 of 3)
4) “LANGUAGE HAS RULES.” Yeah, but your favorite decypheration/result of the Ramey memo doesnt respect such rules. It makes few sens even if I'm not an native english speacker.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe you could give actual examples of where I allegedly have no respect for such rules? And yes, you are NOT a native English speaker. Your badly broken English is barely intelligible half the time. (No offense) Now you are also an authority on English grammar, like "it makes few sens"?

5) the vast majority of people identified the V for VICTIMS, the I and the ending I, M and S. Again, many of the people we/I proposed the "memo" doesnt see or read it, nor a "V".

Wow, a real scientific protocol you have going there, which you haven’t told us, with more mystery readers and "we" researchers, and zero details given of how this was done. How many is “many of the people”—90%, 10%? What is your sample size? Obviously some undefined fraction DID see a “V”, but you have told us NOTHING, just use the vague word “many”. How scientific.

Again, you ignore Ross Evan's Captcha study where a “large majority” (Ross’ words, obviously meaning substantially more than 50%) of over 2000 readers of isolated letters from the VICTIMS word DO read V, I, ?, ?, I, M, S there. I'm still awaiting your psychosocial “explanation” for that result.

As the first "what could be a letter" is more or less matching others stimuli - which could be a letter - in the "memo", elsewhere, excepted the guesses for the other words in full where we can found it CANT have a "V" in the word.

Again, the mysterious "we" and the mysterious protocol. Please provide it IN DETAIL. What images were used? Did you scale images properly (removing perspective compression of letters?) Was the image enhanced? Were readers provided a comparison telex font? Did they know where the centers of letters were (by lining up columns of letters above and below)? Were the subjects native English speakers?

How do we know you didn't set it up in some biased way to try to disprove VICTIMS? (I only ask, "with respect", because I have been repeatedly accused of the exact same thing, including by you.

Why can't it have a "V" in the word--because you say so? (no offense) Because of the way you designed the experiment? (no offense) Why does this disagree with the completely ignorant 2000+ Captcha readers who chose your "impossible" "V" as the first letter? Why does my and another image analyst’s computer OCR rank it the #2 letter? Is the computer biased "pro-Roswell". Why do even skeptics sometimes propose alternate words starting with "V", like VIEWING, or VENTING? Even my good friend Lance thinks VIEWING. That’s 3 letters identical to my VICTIMS, with one nearly identical (“N” vs. “M”) Thank you for “proving” Lance wrong because you now know with such certainty that “V” can’t be there, and unlike the rest of humanity, you have no bias.

For example, do you have occurences in English from books, dunno what as text regarding the proposed "victims of the wreck?" I mean how this "syntagm", victims of the wreck is frequent in English texts/language? An honnest question.

Answered elsewhere, particularly by Don Ecsedy. Yes “victims of the wreck” is a common phrase used in description of disasters like train wrecks, ship wrecks, etc., where there are multiple casualties. It can refer to both the dead and the injured in those disasters.

Don said...

David, what I wrote is that it was 'publicity' not the 'public' sentiments that was their concern. The two are related, of course. I'm not saying there wasn't public anxiety, but that was not what motivated the behavior of these men. Maybe public sentiment was number six on the list, but those first five were the army's major concerns, specifically and immediately at the moment, and not just in general (such as army navy rivalry, and the like).

I don't want to get this mixed up with whether or not people were thinking of ET in relation to the saucer stories back then.

Best Regards,

Don

Brian B said...

@ Don

"Why do you think the campaign may have been for that purpose?"

For obvious reasons that escape you. In a Cold War you don't want people thinking your Air Force can't control its skies, and you certainly don't need people reporting ridiculous things like balloons as spaceships that fuel the media's hype about it.

Brian B said...

@ Rudiak

"If for all they knew a mass ET invasion was imminent, all the more reason to keep things quiet until you could gather more intelligence to try to figure out what was really going on. Going public that the Martians were here, this is not a drill, and BTW, we don't know if the Martians are invading or not would be a sure-fire recipe for mass public panic."

And keep quiet they did - the US military was not put on alert, no one was mobilized, and basically nothing happened afterwards. Nothing.

I guess according to your logic, they learned nothing about national defense from their Pearl Harbor experience just six years prior.

An alien recon vessel crashes in the desert, and all they do is kick back, relax, and send up some balloons. So much for national defense...I guess they really were drooling idiots just like you first suggested!

Don said...

Brian: "In a Cold War you don't want people thinking your Air Force can't control its skies..."

Which people? The butcher? The baker?

"For obvious reasons that escape you."

Perhaps, we will find out about that.

Regards,

Don

zoamchomsky said...

DR; Seriously, no one outside the circle of memo "interpreters" is ever going to accept your extraordinary "science by committee" results. Not until the memo itself (or some completely legible facsimile) is produced anyway.

You're operating on a logical fallacy here, David, a billion Chinese CAN be wrong. A large number of opinions in agreement cannot make an objective fact in the world.

The deblurred placard is not only fairly legible, it describes what is obviously in the picture, and it has confirmation in literature. A "saucer" interpretation of the memo faces three major problems by comparison unfortunately.

The only positive result, whether describing saucer or balloon debris, that will ever be accepted by the world is that of a successful--completely objective--computer image analysis.

This could have been done twenty years ago, and there are better programmers now!

Repeating: This is what is required for any chance of success that will mean anything in the world. Okay?

KRandle said...

Zoam -

We always realized that there would be a problem if we read the memo and showed that it said "victims of the wreck." We knew that others, outside our small group, would have to be able to follow our steps to see if they would reach the same conclusions. It is why we have made the new scans available to some of the skeptics out there. At the moment, we have no results from their attempts to clarify the message. If it remains in its current state, that is, if we are unable to clean it up, then everything might fall back on the various interpretations. However, just a little more improvement might reveal more of the text to the satisfaction of many... especially if they are able to do the same thing. So, we await those results, acknowledging that David Rudiak has done a great deal of work to clarify the image.