CSICOP (I mean CSI)

Let’s talk for a moment about CSICOP which has changed it’s name to CSI which I suppose it a marketing ploy to snag the unwary. I mean, if you type CSI into your search engine, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many do and have, you’ll eventually find your way to what used to be CSICOP. They’re probably less than pleased to have me decode their plan.

CSICOP, which originally stood for Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (a worthy endeavor) is now know as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, another worthy endeavor. Unfortunately, my experience with them, and the experience of others suggest that they are more of an advocacy group rather than an organization that investigates the paranormal, including UFOs. They would rather make pronouncements about the non existence of these phenomena than actually investigate them. And it seems when the few investigations they conduct provide no real answer, they are willing to accept any conclusion as long as it does not suggest the reality of a paranormal phenomena (With the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting, they continue to offer solutions that make no sense. Recently it was suggested that Arnold had seen B-47s in flight. None of the skeptics, and here it wasn’t a CSI explanation, bothered to learn that the first B-47 hadn’t flown until December, 1947, six months AFTER Arnold made his report.)

Just what does this mean? Well, in one of the anti-Roswell UFO crash books CSICOP, I mean CSI, published, the author wrote, "Finally as the pro-UFO Roswell researchers will admit when pressed, Beverly Bean is the only person in the Brown family who has made these claims about her father. Bean’s sister and her own mother have never confirmed the account."

The Brown in this statement in Melvin Brown who was a sergeant assigned to the Roswell base in 1947 as a cook. He told family members that he had seen the bodies of the aliens killed in the crash, but for several years only his daughter, Beverly Bean, made this claim. Later Brown’s widow, and his other daughter, confirmed that they had heard her husband and their father make similar statements.

The CSICOP inspired statement, is, of course, not true and since the author referenced the 1991 interview conducted with the Brown family (video taped by Brad Radcliffe), he should have known that both Bean’s sister and her mother confirmed the account on video tape. So, even though he must have known the truth but rather than writing, "In 1991, both Bean’s sister and mother who had failed to corroborate the story earlier, are now on the record..." he chose to conceal this evidence from his readers.

This withholding of information is exactly the same thing that the writer had been complaining that I, as well as my colleagues, had been doing. And while I can show, repeatedly, how I attempted to present all the information about the case, allowing the reader to make up his or her mind about the validity of the case, CSI, through this writer was not engaging in scientific analysis, but was involved in a debate. In debate, you never give the other side information favorable to its argument. You allow them to find it on their own.

In on
e more example, on page 91, the author wrote, "After initially refusing to confirm to Randle that he was even there at Roswell, Randle claims that Easley [that would be Major Edwin Easley, seen here, who was the provost marshal Roswell in 1947], on his deathbed, eventually confessed that not only had he "been there," but that he had also seen bodies."
This is a mishmash of testimony and statements. In my initial conversation with Easley, he not only confirmed he had been there, but that he was the provost marshal. In the taped interview conducted on January 11, 1990, I said, "I’m doing some research into the 509th Bomb Group and I understand you were the Provost Marshal there at one time."

Easley said, "That’s right."

I said, "At the 509th?"

He said, "Yes."

And I said, "During July of 1947?"

And he said, "Yes."

I wrote to CSI and asked them, based on their claims of scientific investigation, if they shouldn’t be held to a higher standard than a publisher of books on the paranormal. I mean, if you look at Berkley Books, for example, you’ll find that they publish books on both sides of the controversy. I suspect they don’t do this because they want to provide both sides of the case but because there are business reasons for it. Berkley Books, like so many other publishers, desire to make money and make their publishing decisions based on that.

CSI, h
owever, publishes books only on one side. Karl Pflock told me once that CSI (when it was still known as CSICOP) refused to publish his Roswell in Perspective because it wasn’t skeptical enough. Not that the information might be inaccurate, or that there might be flaws in the reasoning, but because its tone wasn’t skeptical enough. Eventually they published it as Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe.

You might wondering, by now, what was CSI’s response to my inquiry. Well, there hasn’t been one. They have never really responded to anything I asked of them. The main example comes from the late Phil Klass. We corresponded regularly over the years. We traded barbs a number of times and I have often thought that Phil got backed into his anti-saucer and therefore anti-Roswell corner in the 1960s. Phil came up with the idea that ionized air, glowing in the night, was the cause of UFO sightings. The idea was quickly killed by physicists, and Phil went on to other, similar ridiculous explanations but he had become the resident UFO expert.

In the 1990s I hosted a radio show on KTSM radio in El Paso, Texas (as seen here). The topic was the paranormal, and Phil appeared on the show a couple of times. I asked for others from CSICOP (as it was kno wn then) but never got any response. Phil said he’d arrange some interviews, but no one ever came on. I thought this a strange response from a group of skeptics who wanted to get their message out.

My philosophy on the show was to allow the guest to make his or her point, talk with the listeners, and to defend his or her points of view. I was more of a facilitator than a participant. If the guest had a point of view I didn’t like, well, it was his or her opinion and on the next show we might discuss that or move on to another topic.

Irene Hughes, one of the most celebrated psychics in the country appeared once. During a commercial break, she commented that I was protecting my guest very well. I figured if she was a good psychic, she’d be able to defend herself and didn’t need me to step in. Her comment sort of annoyed me because when the tables were reversed, meaning I was on someone else’s show, I always felt it was my job to defend my position rather than rely on the host.

I will note here, apropos of nothing at all, that I asked Hughes who was going to win the Super Bowl. There were four teams left in the running because the companionship games had yet to be played. She said it would be the Packers. After she left the show, I said, on the air, and recorded on tape, "Everyone knows its going to be the Cowboys over the Steelers by 11." In fact, it was the Cowboys over the Steelers by 10 (27 to 17 if you must know). She didn’t even get the two teams right and I missed the spread by a single point.

The point here, however, is that I provided the guest a chance to present his or her point of view without a challenge from me. CSICOP (or CSI) had nothing to fear from me and Phil Klass did the show a couple of times. No one else from CSI even bothered to respond to my invitations.

So I’m not surprised that they didn’t answer my question about having a higher standard. It is clear from some of the books they have published that reality means little to them. Debunking is their business so why allow facts to get in the way.

I could, of course, support their cause because I have debunked my share of stories. I have provided answers to mysteries when I have them. But I do not create answers out of nonsense, I do not invent witness testimonies that do not exist, and I do not enter an investigation believing in one answer because that answer happens to be my favorite. I can, of course, provide more examples of CSI caring little for the truth but there is no point.

And I will mention, once again, that yes, those of us on the other side of the fence are often guilty of selective use of the data (cherry-picking it), or of leaping to far-ranging conclusions, but we do not hold ourselves up as an authority whose only mission is to explain the nearly inexplicable. We don’t claim to be the only rational thinkers on the planet with a self-selected mandate to remove the paranormal, the unusual, or the exotic from the minds of those too dumb, stupid or ignorant to see the light.

CSI does and with that comes an obligation to get it right. Tell us that UFOs don’t exist, that the evidence for the Roswell UFO crash is thin, but don’t wrap that pronouncement around poor research, sloppy investigation and half-truths. Make your case without a superior attitude and you probably will have an easier time with it.

CSI won’t answer questions. They will not consider alternative answers which explains why they believe some of the dumbest things on the face of the planet. Oh, it removes the extraterrestrial from the discussion but it certainly doesn’t explain anything.

(Yes, I know you all want to know what I mean. Remember Lonnie Zamora, the New Mexico police officer who saw a landed UFO and two occupants back in the 1960s? Well, Phil Klass explained the case. Zamora and the mayor of tiny Socorro, New Mexico were attempting to create a tourist interest in their town and would build a museum close to the site where the UFO was spotted... on land already owned by the mayor. No evidence of this ever surfaced, but to many in CSI, the Socorro case is explained as a hoax. It is not.)

CSI should do a better job of policing themselves and they shouldn’t accept a solution because it is mundane rather than exotic. They should take their own advice and they should do what they originally set out to do, which is investigate claims of the paranormal... Oh, wait, they took that out of their name. Now they’re just the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. I guess investigation was too tough for them. Now they’ll just ask questions and ignore the answers they don’t like. They have become what they have accused us on the other side of becoming... True Believers... The evidence be damned.