Saturday, April 17, 2010

Brazel in Custody in Roswell

As the debate in the last posting rages, and as we race toward 300 comments on it, there was one discussion in the debate that demonstrates the original point. I had suggested that we look at the evidence in a dispassionate matter. Instead, in some cases, it became a rejection of evidence because of a belief that such things just couldn’t happen.

Some of the skeptics have rejected the idea that Mack Brazel had been held by military authorities for about a week. Christopher Allan, for example, wrote:

Karl Pflock [seen here] went into the question of Brazel in his book, p.169-171. He concluded that it was very doubtful if such incarceration took place. But ETHers will insist it did. What on earth would they need a whole week to detain him for anyway? If they were determined to silence him they could do it in maybe 2 hours by getting him to sign a secrecy oath on July 8. That supposes the affair was already classified top secret. In which case he wouldn't have been permitted to even give his RDR [Roswell Daily Record] interview later that day.
But Karl Pflock is not the final authority on this, and in fact, he dismissed some data simply because he didn’t like it. That it agreed with the skeptical attitude doesn’t make it right. Let’s look at some of the facts.

Karl pointed out that I hadn't recorded the conversation with Easley, which is true. But I do have my notes written at the time, meaning as I was talking to Easley. About Brazel at the base Easley said (quoting from my notes and seen here), "Brought him to base... talked to him for several days... not involved in that (Easley saying that he was not involved in the interrogation). Brazel at the guest house."

This was, of course, the "top cop" at the Roswell base and who had not been interviewed by anyone until I talked to him. He was careful in what he said because, as he told me repeatedly, "I’ve been sworn to secrecy." (Which is an argument for a later time and one that I do have on tape.)

Not to mention that Pflock is, in essence, calling me a liar about this testimony. Yes, I sincerely wish I had it on tape, but that doesn’t change the fact that Easley said it to me and I was the first, and as far as I know, the only researcher to have talked to him... Karl presented nothing to refute this testimony other than mention it wasn’t on tape... just like some of the interviews he conducted but which he says he reported accurately.
Then we reject what Bill Brazel said about seeing the stories about his father in the newspapers and going out to the ranch to help him. Mack returned two or three days after Bill got there. Testimony provided by Brazel during my first interview with him in 1989.
Then we reject Marian Strickland, who actually said on video tape (I made the recording in 1990) that Mack sat in her kitchen and complained about being held in Roswell. (Lyman Strickland also said this but not to me. He had died before I traveled to Roswell.)Then we reject what Loretta Proctor said about Brazel being held in Roswell... As well as the testimony of several others who saw him in Roswell including Floyd Proctor and even Walt Whitmore, Jr. who said he saw Brazel at his father’s house, not to mention his being at the newspaper office sometime on July 8 to give the interview. Which, I point out again, puts Brazel in Roswell after his initial visit.

Floyd Proctor told Bill Moore, as reported in The Roswell Incident, about seeing Brazel in Roswell being escorted by the military. Now, given that Bill Moore described his own book as a "disgraceful hodgepodge of fact and fiction," and given that we have seen him manipulate witness testimony to fit his vision of events, skeptics would be well within their rights to reject these statements attributed to Floyd Proctor. And, if Proctor was stand alone, I would reject it as well.

However, I do know that some of the testimony reported in The Roswell Incident was accurate because the witnesses told me the same thing. And, Loretta confirms what her husband said. So, we can, if we want suggest this testimony is accurate. We might assign less weight to it than that given by other witnesses and reported by other writers, but it still has some value in the overall understanding of the Roswell case.

We also reject the testimony of other Brazel friends, Leonard Porter and Bill Jenkins, who talked of Brazel under military escort.

And, we reject the story told by Frank Joyce about Brazel visiting him, at KGFL in Roswell after he had been to the newspaper office. Brazel told Joyce that he was under orders to give this new tale or it would go very hard on him. We reject this because Joyce’s story has grown over the years... however, when I first interviewed Joyce, he made it clear that there were things he knew that he just hadn’t mentioned to anyone. In fact, he showed me a letter he had sent to himself, which was postmarked so that he could verify that he hadn’t "just remembered" or that he was now embellishing his account. But reject him anyway.
We accept what Bessie Brazel said, even though she said that she had accompanied her father into Roswell on the first trip and didn't remember the military following him back out (which is fairly well documented... I mean even Cavitt admitted that he went out to the ranch, which, of course directly contradicts her). She said that her father didn't return to Roswell, even though that also is documented. She said that no military came out to the ranch.

She also said that she knew it was a balloon when they gathered up the material, all of it, leaving none in the field for Cavitt and Marcel to see. It strikes me that if a 14-year-old girl could identify this as a balloon, why then Jesse Marcel, an adult with intelligence training, surely would have recognized it... but I digress.
So, what this means is that we reject all the evidence from several different sources including documents and testimony that does not support our point of view and accept the statements from a single source, even when that source has been contradicted by documentation, because it does.
Not to mention that Bessie Brazel herself repudiated the testimony. Said that she had confused the 1947 event with something that happened a couple of years later. So, even she isn’t sure about all this, but her story suggests balloon and nothing extraordinary so she is considered right and everyone else is wrong.
And now I have to hear, again, about how Karl Pflock had refuted the idea that Brazel was held in Roswell... The evidence shows that he was. Period. The length of time is an estimate based on what Bill said. That he arrived two or three days after his father left and his father return two or three days later. Four to six or seven days based on the man who should know.
These would be facts and no, they do not lead to the extraterrestrial but do suggest something out of the ordinary happened. The point here is that the skeptics are flat out wrong on this point. It will interesting to see if they will attempt to spin it in some fashion.

207 comments:

1 – 200 of 207   Newer›   Newest»
cda said...

We'll hopefully avoid the 'multiplication of probabilities' fiasco again.

There are problems galore with Easley's interviews. You give a transcript of one in "Roswell Crash Update" and it is an eye-opener. Easley goes on and on about "I can't tell you anything" or "I can't talk about it" saying he is sworn to secrecy.
In that case why carry on with the interview? If the guy genuinely cannot, because of a military oath, talk about Roswell then why does he say later things like seeing the bodies (p.142 of "The Truth About....") ? You assume he was at the ranch. Did he tell you this himself or did someone else? In the interview quoted above (p.157-161) you inform Easley that a counterintelligence agent has said the "provost marshal (Easley) was on the crash site". Easley replies "he doesn't know what he's talking about". So who is right? Was Easley there or not?

Kevin, this interview only persuades me that you were talking to someone who not only does not want to speak to you but who invents an "oath of secrecy" tale to avoid doing so. You then suggest things to him like the cordon at the site, trucks being loaded, roads being blocked by the military, etc., i.e. you were suggesting & telling him things whereas he ought to be the one telling you! See p.161. Was this your first interview with him, or the second? There is nothing in it about Brazel at all, so presumably this came in another interview. I am afraid that based on this transcript, I have no faith in anything Easley said, either in that interview or elsewhere. It sounds like a mish-mash. And I repeat: if he was really sworn to secrecy, that should have been the end of it. A clear case of embellishment with time.

In your "The Truth About ....." book p.9 you say that Easley told you his MPs even rounded up the archaeologists and took them to the air base. So now we have not only Brazel being imprisoned there but the archaeologists as well! The latter were not present at the Foster ranch; they only got associated with the case from the San Augustin angle, and even that is highly dubious. So how did Easley learn the story of the archaeologists? Finally on p.14 we read that Easley promised his oath of secrecy "to the President". Oh really? Did Easley EVER meet President Truman or contact him, or is this another fanciful tale? The man is clearly in a confused state.

You say the skeptics are "flat out wrong" about Brazel's imprisonment. Until we resolve these Easley anomalies (or absurdities) it seems pointless to discuss the Brazel affair any further.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Greetings,

I think Christopher previous and first reply, illustrated, pointed, showed perfectly that contamination is a crucial point, probably THE crucial one, here (in our subject). To avoid this in the equation is very questionnable.

"avoid the multiplication of probabilities' fiasco again", yes.

It was previously a good example of "Confirmation bias" done by David, out offense and an out good usage of probabilities theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Of course, Sceptics, as ET proponents, can be victims of this bias too. Sure.

But dont forget a thing : sceptics aren't formulating an extraordinary claim to explain "our" affair. Multiplying ad hoc, causes, "what if?" etc...

We are invokating "ordinary things", which are respecting Occam's razor.

I dont see where is "the double standard", sincerly.

I dont see when ordinary things, claims and demonstrations using ordinary parameters, are a double standard-like "against" people proposing extraordinary things.

Realy and sincerly. Maybe to much part of Descartes country La Belle France, but well...

I dont understand how it is so used by some, a sort of "make more complex, what is simple and evident".

Best Regards,

Gilles F.

starman said...

cda;

Lol, KDR certainly did NOT assume Easley was at the ranch! He had nothing to do with Brazel. These facts should've been obvious from "The Truth...." book. Nor were the archeologists at the Foster ranch, which should've been just as clear. You omitted Easley's indirect confirmation to KDR: an ET spacecraft was not the wrong answer.

starman said...

Correction:

I meant the archeologists weren't at the fictitious san agustin site but at the IMPACT SITE (as opposed to the ranch debris field) where Easley took them into custody. KDR noted someone--Shultz--knew archeologist Holden and corroborated that aspect of it.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Starman,

Anderson's Archeologists, have been demonstrated as an hoax, but again part of Roswell myth, despite concerning San Augustin...

But Easley is making them part of Roswell (because he have been contaminated by litterature or dunno what, for sure).

I think it is exactly what cda is pointing (I did too in my humble book).

They were at Jails too !

"-Shultz--knew archeologist Holden and corroborated that aspect of it."

This is a re-introduction of archeologists of the myth (by tom Carrey investigations). Despite archeologists (Dr. Buskirk) have been prooved as an hoax made by "Anderson"...

In other words, something demonstrated as false is corroboted and part of the story. Typical of a myth step by step construction.

May I remember here what Holden's daughter testimoned about this investigations and how was Holden when appraoched by Tom Carey ?

David Rudiak said...

Gilles quoting Starman wrote:
"-Shultz--knew archeologist Holden and corroborated that aspect of it."

This is a re-introduction of archeologists of the myth (by tom Carrey investigations). Despite archeologists (Dr. Buskirk) have been prooved as an hoax made by "Anderson"...


It is obvious here that Gilles is confusing the Plains of San Agustin archeologist story, involving hoaxer Anderson & his fabricated Dr. Buskirk, with a completely different archeologist story closer to Roswell, related first by Dr. C. Bertrum Schultz, who said Dr. W. Curry Holden told him about the crashed saucer, alien bodies, and a government cover-up back when it happened.

Another person to confirm hearing the story from Holden was Dr. W. Frankforter.

Schultz also happened to be passing through Roswell at the time and witnessed the military cordon thrown up north of town along the highway, no doubt to keep out sightseers while the military completely retrieved Mack Brazel's five pounds of balloon debris made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, balsa sticks, and Scotch tape. It was very sensitive stuff.

Schultz's two daughters have confirmed that their father had long told them stories about a saucer crash and aliens in N.M. In fact, they were the ones who originally tipped off investigators about their father.

Kevin managed to find Holden just before he died, and the 96-year-old Holden sort of confirmed being there. (Yes, I know, too old and probably suffering from dementia at the time to place high credibility on his confirmation.)

Holden's daughter and wife, however, said they had never heard the story from him. (Even if they had, no doubt the skeptics would have written it off to "false memory" or "retrospective falsification" or not believable because it was second-hand.)

Another interesting detail is that when Holden's personal papers were gone through at Texas Tech where he taught, only his tax returns from 1947 were missing, another of those many Roswell "coincidences".

In other words, something demonstrated as false is corroboted and part of the story. Typical of a myth step by step construction.

Skeptics are also frequently guilty of myth building by not getting their basic facts straight.

cda said...

Perhaps I should clarify the point about location.

It is obvious that in Kevin's interview with Easley (p.157-161 of ROSWELL UFO CRASH UPDATE) the Foster ranch is being discussed. The references to Brazel (as 'landowner') & Marcel make this clear. Easley then denies being at this site, even though an intelligence officer told Kevin that he was. Later, however, Easley says "I just know intelligence people were stationed there" (even though he denies being there himself). This interview makes no mention of the 'other' site just north of Roswell (Ragsdale's site, I believe).

But in THE TRUTH ABOUT... we read that Easley WAS at the Ragsdale site as were the archaeologists (how many?), and that Easley rounded them up and took them to the base. In a later interview Easley presumably talked about the bodies.

Easley claims he was sworn to secrecy, met or contacted, the president and so on.

A bit of a shambles. So I ask Kevin the following:

Which site was Easley at, if any? Or was it both sites?

Did he really round up the archaeologists and subject them to search & interrogation like Brazel?

Did he ever see any bodies?

Did he ever meet or contact the president?

In fact is there anything we should take seriously about Easley's testimony, or should he have heeded his own secrecy oath and kept his mouth shut?

David Rudiak said...

cda wrote:
We'll hopefully avoid the 'multiplication of probabilities' fiasco again.

Oh, you mean the "fiasco" where simple probability analysis demonstrated that any halfway plausible number assigned for alleged (totally unproven) witness "contamination" and "false memory" induction resulted in an absurdly low probability that a dozen witnesses to Brazel's detention by the military would ALL be victims of "false memory". That fiasco?

If I didn't misread cda, even he ended up admitting I was right. E.g., I used a hypothetical figure of 75% false memory induction (vs. maximum numbers of 25% obtained by Loftus through deliberate, extended manipulation of subjects), and still got only a probability of 3% that 12 witnesses could ALL be so afflicted. Even cda admitted that 75% seemed way too high, and the probability that ALL had "false memory" was indeed low.

(...this was then followed by the usual nitpicking about the validity of multiplying probabilities, even though what I did was completely valid.)

What it comes down to is skeptics don't like the absurdity of their own debunking arguments exposed, or being hoisted by their own petards.

David Rudiak said...

I wrote:
"Another interesting detail is that when Holden's personal papers were gone through at Texas Tech where he taught, only his tax returns from 1947 were missing, another of those many Roswell "coincidences"."

I would like to elaborate on this. According to research by Tom Carey, records show Prof. Holden made a huge deposit of $4800 (like $60,000 today) to a Lubbock bank account immediately afterward. Also, his '47 tax records are the only ones missing out of 40 years.

Obviously not proof, but damned suspicious that he may have been bribed to stay quiet.

Gilles Fernandez said...

@ David,

Ah oki, Archeologists were part in an Anderson's hoax concerning (San Agustin), which was part of the MAIN CORE of some Roswell related books later.

But the previous archeologists have no links with Roswell affair.

They aren't the same. Gilles : See no link, it is totaly a different matter, you know... A PURE coincidence.

Archeologists are very statistiscaly probable in different story. Sounds logic !

And it is a totaly pure coincidence, probabilities prooved (huu !), there are archeologists in an hoax, and already now in Roswell Myth or recent "chronology".

Yes, no doubt I must have... Noone drived by common sens must have.

Seriously, David...

Gilles Fernandez said...

"It is obvious here that Gilles is confusing the Plains of San Agustin archeologist story, involving hoaxer Anderson & his fabricated Dr. Buskirk, with a completely different archeologist story closer to Roswell, related first by Dr. C. Bertrum Schultz, who said Dr. W. Curry Holden told him about the crashed saucer, alien bodies, and a government cover-up back when it happened."

David,

If you have a Davidcopyright inyourworld model to explain me how ARCHEOLOGISTS can be part of an hoax + which have been part of Rowell litterature during YEARS + prooving false and hoax AFTER, BUT already and AGAIN part of Roswell recent chronology.

I'm curious... Super open of YOUR calculation.

Not use ad hoc "what if ?" etc.

It have no one sens... Despite to invoke ad hoc arguments.

Open your eyes...

KRandle said...

CDA –

This is truly unbelievable. You’ll reject anything if it doesn’t fit into your view of the world, regardless of the facts. True, it is my job to prove what I say, but you are not allowed to reject evidence because you don’t like it.

Edwin Easley was an honorable man who had taken an oath in 1947 about the events near Roswell. It was quite clear to me that he was torn between the oath he had taken and telling the truth about what had happened. He did not want to lie about it but he wasn’t going to let it go either. The information he supplied was that which he felt was not part of the overall secret.

So, we put Easley on one of the debris fields (but not at the Brazel ranch) based on information from others such as Lewis Rickett who had been out there with Sheridan Cavitt. We based it on information obtained from Chester Barton, who had worked for Easley in 1947... and rejected the information supplied by Sheridan Cavitt, that the Provost Marshal was a fellow named Dardan because we knew that Darden had followed Easley in that position.

Easley told me that he had promised the President that he wouldn’t talk about it. That does not mean he talked to Truman personally, but could have talked to Truman’s representative in Roswell, saying that he wouldn’t talk about it. To Easley it would have been the same thing.

Twenty years ago a skeptic here in the US said that Easley had used the “I’ve been sworn to secrecy” ploy as a way to get me off the telephone. I’d buy that, except before I hung up, I asked if I had other questions, would he mind if I called him back. He said, “No.” And we had a couple of other cordial conversations.

When we talk of Easley’s MPs doing something, it is because the MPs were involved and Easley, as the Provost Marshal was in charge of them all. They could have been members of either of the two MP units at Roswell, but all of them fell under the umbrella of the Provost Marshal.

And we have Easley’s family and his doctor telling us that he did see the bodies. No, he did not say this to me... He made one comment, “Oh , the creatures...” to family members while in the hospital with a fatal illness. He had said, at other times according to one of his daughters, something about alien creatures.

And I am tired of everyone assuming that all these people were contaminated sources. To follow that line of reasoning to it’s ultimate conclusion we can eliminate all historical research... don’t believe what anyone says about the Normandy Invasion because they’re all contaminated sorts filled with false memories of those long ago events. And no, I don’t need another argument about it because I have read Loftus, but I have also read Ofshe, Cece and Ulric Neisser. I truly get it.

But again, Easley is not stand alone and the idea that Brazel was in Roswell is both documented by the newspaper articles and shown by multiple eyewitnesses. You reject it simply because it does not fit into your world view.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Kevin :

"And I am tired of everyone assuming that all these people were contaminated sources."

Sorry to be franckly speacking, (you asked for a dispasionate debat), but as a great author in myworld, "opened", and you are probaly the ultimate pro Roswell I have confidence ("confiance" in french) (at least after to have followed some controverses you never hesitated to be franck, despite against pro ET Roswell investigators)

You have defended some super masters witnesses by the past.

Now Easley, despite what was pointed ?

But what is pointed to you, you have already faced to be pointed by the past ? And accepted.

Sorry to be direct :(

David Rudiak said...

I recently mentioned the 1963 crash of a top-secret A-12 near Wendover, Utah, operating out of the top secret Area 51, as an example of how such crashes were covered up. I mentioned a security guard stationed at Area 51 who recently went public saying he was flown up to the crash site, they deliberately scared some civilian witnesses into silence, the witnesses were made to sign security oaths, and CIA bribery money was also involved (the CIA at the time ran the secret spy plane programs at Area 51). He said the CIA routinely bribed civilians who stumbled onto secrets to keep them quiet.

Here’s a series of articles that details what happened in the A-12 crash. It doesn’t confirm that witnesses were threatened or bribed, but does indicate one clear instance of press suppression and hints at possible bribery.

http://www.dreamlandresort.com/pete/oxcart_down_5.html

There was first a cover story acknowledgment that a plane had crashed, but giving a phony plane and base, followed by denials that there was such a crash or knowledge of what happened from the very military agencies named as being involved. (inconsistent cover story)

There is also mention of quickly flying in security personnel from Area 51, cleaning up most of the crash debris as quickly as possible (but not completely sanitizing the site by picking up every small piece, despite a document to the contrary), carting off the big pieces on tarped flatbed trucks (reminiscent of Roswell and Kecksburg), confusing the trail leading back to the Area 51 by not trucking back there, but instead flying in cargo planes from two different distant bases to fly it back (again reminiscent of Roswell), putting out an inconsistent cover story, monitoring the media, and, as mentioned, killing at least one news report (with a hint that maybe the reporter was at least bribed)

Here’s an excerpt with comments:
Security concerns necessitated creating a cover story [Nope, couldn’t happen at Roswell] to prevent public exposure of the OXCART program. Brig. Gen. Boyd Hubbard Jr., commander of the 4520th Combat Crew Training Wing at Nellis Air Force Base, announced to the news media that a Republic F-105 operating from Nellis had crashed 14 miles south of Wendover. The pilot was described as a Hughes Aircraft Company employee who was testing electronic equipment. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was given as the home base for the F-105.

… The pilot's name was not initially released [which article explains is contrary to normal procedure], leading the press to speculate that he was involved in the space program or was possibly a famous test pilot. Attempts by reporters to follow up various details of the story led to confusion as personnel at Nellis, Wright-Patterson, and the Pentagon denied knowledge of the aircraft and even the accident. In spite of such glaring inconsistencies, the cover story held up and news coverage was minimal.

[Same sort of “glaring inconsistencies” also show up in the weather balloon cover story in Roswell, the hastily conceived “alibi” that was all over the place. Also read attached documents about how they monitored the media afterwards, and how the media was suspicious in part because they couldn’t get straight answers from the various military organizations named as being involved. But as with Roswell, the story was quickly dropped. There was no way civilian news agencies were going to get through the wall of official secrecy even if they tried.]

cda said...

Kevin:
What has the fact that Brazel was seen in Roswell with the military got to do with being detained by the military at the AF base for several days?
Please tell me the connection.

I do not doubt for one moment that Brazel was seen in the town, even accompanied by USAF men, for a few hours on July 8. I repeat: how is that evidence in any way supportive of the allegation that he was held at the base against his will for 7 or 8 days?

I shall return to the Easley matter later.

Having launched this debate, you are not going to be let off easily, I can tell you.

David Rudiak said...

(part 2)
The only serious threat came from reporter Art Kent of KUTV television news in Salt Lake City. Kent claimed to have pictures of the accident scene and planned to show them on the evening news. OXCART project personnel debated how to approach Kent in attempts to suppress the photos. Brig. Gen. Hubbard made arrangements for an Air Force representative with Office of Special Investigations (OSI) credentials to contact Kent and request that he not air the pictures. Kent, surprisingly with no reluctance, agreed to mail the pictures to Hubbard at Nellis. Hubbard felt strongly that Kent should receive some credit for his actions, especially since he was being denied his right to a bona fide "scoop."

[Note suppression of news story and involvement of AF counterintelligence, namely AFOSI. Did reporter really agree with “no reluctance” and what exactly was the “credit for his actions” for not getting his “scoop”? Here's the hint that maybe bribery or a payoff was involved.]

Col. Charles E. Wimberley headed the accident investigation board. He took sworn statements from [pilot] Collins and [chase pilot] Weeks…. Collins submitted to an intensive interrogation while under the influence of sodium amytal - a drug used to enhance memory following a traumatic event - to insure that he remembered all pertinent details.

[Also mentions use of hypnosis on pilot, followed by drugs. Not so much Roswell-related, but reminiscent of some airmen claims at Rendlesham that they were intensively interrogated afterward by AFOSI, including the use of drugs. Deputy base commander Charles Halt would later state he was aware some of his men had been worked over in with drugs.]

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

I wrote in regards to a covered-up 1963 top-secret A-12 spy plane crash:
"Attempts by reporters to follow up various details of the story led to confusion as personnel at Nellis, Wright-Patterson, and the Pentagon denied knowledge of the aircraft and even the accident. In spite of such glaring inconsistencies, the cover story held up and news coverage was minimal."

[Same sort of “glaring inconsistencies” also show up in the weather balloon cover story in Roswell, the hastily conceived “alibi” that was all over the place. Also read attached documents about how they monitored the media afterwards, and how the media was suspicious in part because they couldn’t get straight answers from the various military organizations named as being involved.]


One more comment here. The press eventually gave up in frustration, even though it was obvious they weren't being told the truth. Look at the declassified Secret and Top Secret documents, and you see they weren't declassified until 2000. In other words, the whole thing was kept secret for 37 years, including the fact that it was indeed covered up and press manipulation was involved.

But with Roswell, the skeptics vacuously argue that since the story was quickly dropped by the press, largely (but not entirely) forgotten for 30 years, this somehow "proves" that nothing of much significance really happened.

But back in the REAL world, governments suppress sensitive information and issue cover stories all the time. It is often the case that it may be decades before the REAL events finally come to light, either through somebody stumbling onto it and burrowing into the story, or because governments decide there is no point in covering it up any more and declassify it. There are numerous examples.

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

"Not so much Roswell-related, but reminiscent of some airmen claims at Rendlesham"

Clear.. dunno how Rendlesham is linked to the topic, or Roswell linked.

A new probalistic formula, you have the secret, David ? Show us ! Dont hesitate !

I wait how you will multiple the occurence(s) of ARCHEOLOGIST, in 2 distinct tales, you are pointed how they are totaly different. But ciaming I'm obvious and idiot one, to not understand (the occurence).

Archeologists are now part of the Roswell Gospel, and were, despite it was prooven an hoax (Anderson episode in the myth).

How a "yourworld probability law", will reconciliate an hoax occurence (archeologists), and what is part of recent book officialy claiming archeologists part of the "event" and this (ad hoc ) chronology accepted.

I'm very excited, how you will reconciliate (ad hoc) this new no-sens.

David Rudiak said...

And I am tired of everyone assuming that all these people were contaminated sources. To follow that line of reasoning to it’s ultimate conclusion we can eliminate all historical research... don’t believe what anyone says about the Normandy Invasion because they’re all contaminated sorts filled with false memories of those long ago events. And no, I don’t need another argument about it because I have read Loftus, but I have also read Ofshe, Cece and Ulric Neisser. I truly get it.

No Kevin, obviously you don't "get it". 8-) The skeptics adhere to an Orwellian "1984" view that there is no true history. Any of it can be invalidated with "scientifically proven" psychosocial skeptical arguments.

If this is insufficient, merely assert something is "extraordinary", then misuse Occam's razor by saying any "ordinary" explanation is always correct. Thus Normandy also never happened because I assert that it is an "extraordinary claim" that the Allies could ever assemble a fleet of thousands of ships and keep the details of the operation secret from the Germans.

No crimes are ever committed either. Any witnesses who say otherwise during a trial are necessarily ALL "contaminated" by police and prosecutors and implanted with "false memories", or suffer from the usual bugaboo unreliabilities of human memory, thus "retrospective falsification."

Nobody can ever be believed about anything: your parents, your sibs, your spouse, your children, your friends, your colleagues, etc. With such a grim, nihilistic version of the world, I'm surprised that CDA and Gilles can even get out of the bed in the morning or carry on any sort of normal life.

Lance said...

Hi Kevin,

I'm pretty sure that taking things to an absurd extreme, doesn't strengthen your point.

This is a common Rudiak tactic and I see he has eagerly agreed with and expanded your premise, always a bad sign if you are aiming for reasonable discourse.

I'm sure that you don't really think that the evidence for the landing at Normandy and the evidence for Roswell crashed saucers are equal in quality!

Even without oral testimony of Normandy, the evidence would still be overwhelming and clear.

For Roswell, you would have...

Well, you would have almost nothing without witness recollections.

Remember when I dogged you for info on the Roswell nuns diary entry? I knew that this would be a real piece of historical evidence for your case. Unfortunately, as you remember, the evidence proved to probably be non-existent.

I was surprised at how disinterested you were in that evidence because I would expect you to value hard evidence more greatly than 50 year old memories.

And as someone who has done a fair amount (but nowhere near as much as you) of witness interviewing (for the Otis Carr story) about long past events (mine were mostly 1959 so more recent than Roswell) I know just how amazingly unreliable such testimony is.

I found that several people, all viewing the same event, saw things so completely differently that there was no way to tell what happened just from such testimony.

Add in (as you innocently and infamously did) a bunch of lying frauds and you really do have a big mess on your hands.

It is not credible to suggest that your case is clean and your interviews were conducted without flaw, without your own suggestions tainting the testimony, without your own bias contaminating the answers in some way.

Nor is it credible to say that everything you collected so carefully is worthless and meaningless.

The truth is somewhere in between.

And yes, if history was written just from 50 year old memories then it would indeed be rather pointless.

As you know, that is not how history is done.

Lance

Gilles Fernandez said...

David,

Your stylistic figures are not very impressing, but rethoric only.

Easley told his MPs even rounded up the archaeologists and took them to the air base.

It have been pointed that it sounds evident this "claim" is highly coming from the cultural ambiance Easley have been contaminated (reading the book or dunno what). He added this from what ? Because it is a true memory ?

But the "worst" is that archeologists are currently part of the myth, even if Anderson have been demonstrated as an hoaxer.

Schultz tale have been demonstrated as not realy reliable taking into account he was in Nebraska July, the 10th, a minima. So, the possibility he have seen a "cordon" in US 285 road is problematic (July the 7th or the 8th ?). There is a 800 miles time and space gape, driving a car in 1947 you have probably a formula to explain us ?

Archeologists have been re-introduced later by Holden approached, who was a very old man, and "confused" as her daughter have well explained. That's not a problem for you ?

I mean that : 1. Easley is suggestionable, as Christopher pointed.

2. The possibility to have a "detail" like archeologists again, in another site despite Anderson's archeologists was prooved an hoax (but was part of Roswell litterature) makes any common sens person dubitative, mainly when you "know" how it have been RE-introduced.

Lies (archeologists presence in San Agustin plains) become a true (archeologists presence in one the 3 retained Roswell impact sites) ?

Because I'm confusing 2 Archeologist teams (Holden and Bruskirk) ?

No, I'm just pointing how it is difficult inmyworld to see again archeologists re-introduced in the Chronology of the event, and how it smells "strange".

That's all, useless to become nervous ! BTW, I sleep well and I have a normal life, if you are worry ;)

Best Regards,

Gilles F.

cda said...

Kevin:
"Easley was an honorable man who had taken an oath in 1947 about the events near Roswell".
He then tells you information "he felt was not part of the overall secret". So he then tells you about the two crash sites, the guards who were there, the military trucks, the archaeologists, and so on. At some point he tells his daughters about the bodies! This was surely the biggest part of 'the overall secret'. Yet here was Easley, who had sworn an oath of secrecy, telling his family the great secret. And you call him an honorable man? All this proves is:
1. Easley violated his secrecy oath and should have been severely punished, or 2. His secrecy oath never existed.
I have decided on 2. Which is your choice, Kevin?

As for meeting the president or his representative (who?), in Roswell, I say this tale is poppycock. You can believe it if you wish. The man is clearly in a confused state, is making up tales, adding bits here and there and generally wants to avoid talking too much about something far back in time on which his knowledge is very hazy. Yet you seem to regard him as a star witness. Tell me Kevin: did you think to ask Easley if he had ever read THE ROSWELL INCIDENT, or heard about it from others? Yes, it is highly relevant to the case.

If you want testimony that Brazel was held at the base, his son seems the best source. But Moore & Friedman (your rival investigators) had already published this, so you naturally prefer your own sources. You can certainly cast out the testimony of those who merely saw him in Roswell with AF officers. This is not false testimony, but it has NOTHING to do with his supposed incarceration at the base. You also realise that anyone who got the story from Brazel jr is not an independent witness to the Brazel affair, and can be discounted from the 12. I suspect that, in the end, your so-called 12 witnesses can be reduced to just one useful witness, Brazel jr.

So we can cut out all those silly probability multiplications, can't we?

starman said...

Regarding Shultz being in Nebraska on July 10th: we don't know when the cordon was established. Some accounts put the crash as early as July 2. Shultz could've had several days to reach NE.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Starman,

I think you will strangely revisiting Roswell chronology in order Shultz have time to join Nebraska ;)

If you examine a map of the area too, you will see by yourself how to be in US 285 near Foster Ranch ("North" Roswell then) when you want to join Nebraska is "curious" and Torturous (I think Tim Printy did already this job).

Klass pointed too how these "cordons" or "sheckpoints" are very strange, as if the militaries wanted to be "showed", with no one discretion.

Concerning Holden, he was 96 old, and have finaly said "laconic" little sentences. His family pointed how very tired and confused he was.

And they are several other points skeptics have pointed, for example and among the others, about Holden "sudain" archeological interest for the aera vicinity of the crash. I think it was a vilain british whom pointed this by the past ;)

But well, we are "focused" on Brazel in custody. Sorry for this "out the topic".

cda said...

Re Dr.Holden's big bank deposit and the disappearance of his tax records for one year only (1947) this is similar to all those 'mystery journeys', incurring a lot of expenses, that Dr Menzel made to New Mexico during '47-'48 when as a member of MJ-12 he had to keep up to date with everything that was going on in Roswell.
Stan Friedman uncovered all this years ago!

Bruce Hutchinson said...

I find two points regarding this part of the Roswell Saga interesting:

1) Maj Marcel, the base intelligence officer, made no mention whatsoever about the detention of Brazel, his supposed programming and/or questioning, or even if he was questioned at any point after the debris was retrieved. If he could recall fairly small details (such as there was no gouge), one would think he would have remembered Brazel's detention/interrogation which he surely would have been a part of.

2) I find it facinating that so many people seem to be able to pin-point a specific date when they saw Brazel accompanied by military personnel, when the event happened 40-50 years ago. Marcel, when first questioned, was not even sure of the year of the Incident.

KRandle said...

Lance -

My point was that no matter who was broght forward, no matter how the interviews were conducted, no matter what we presented in corroboration, the answer was always the same... False memory. Contamination. Now the attack turns to Edwin Easley and we know that he wasn't reliable because nothing happened at Roswell...

As I explained before, I was not involved in the Nun end of the investigation. That was something carried out by Don Schmitt and in the last seven years there have been other things that have required my attention restricting my ability to travel widely.

My point about Normandy was that we could just junk all the oral history because they are all false memories and contamination... Certainly it was hyperbole, but with a purpose. I would have thought you would have picked up on that.

CDA -

You prove my point over and over again. If it doesn't fit your view of the world, why then it simply isn't right. Easley shared with me what he believed he could say and what was not classified. Brazel at the base was not classified. What was picked up was. Two different things.

The reason to point out that Brazel was in Roswell again, was because some believed that Bessie Brazel was absolute reality and that was refuted by the documentation.

So, here's where we are. Gilles seems to believe that every Roswell memory is the result of contamination or false memory. CDA has his own view of the world that is perfect and if something doesn't fit then it is wrong. But the point is that they will not listen to an alternative opinion but would rather formulate arguments against everything about Roswell.

starman said...

Gilles F:

In fact, in an interview with KDR, Shultz said he passed the cordon days before the dates you suggested--the 7th or 8th. There's nothing strange about a cordon visible to the public. They wanted no unauthorized personnel anywhere near the two (or three) sites west of the road.

Bruce Hutchinson:

Marcel drove back from the ranch by himself AFAIK, stopping by his home before reaching the base and reporting the material. After that, it was on to Ft. Worth. I don't think he had anything to do with Brazel after his departure from the ranch.

Bruce Hutchinson said...

"I don't think he had anything to do with Brazel after his departure from the ranch."

More or less my point! Marcel was back on base by July 10 at least. He was the Intelligence Officer. He would have known if Brazel had been detained and questioned as this would have been under his jusridiction. And yet...

cda said...

Kevin: I just cannot get through to you. Let's try again.

You are interviewing Easley (ROSWELL UFO CRASH UPDATE, p.157-161). He keeps saying he can't talk about it as he is sworn to secrecy. You try and get round this. He then tells you a little (very little). Then you put to him that MPs cordoned off the area, local police were turned away, soldiers cleared up the debris field and trucks were loaded with debris. This was his first interview, so Easley had recalled none of this until you prompted him. At the start of this interview, when you raise the whole subject of the saucer crash, Easley indicates only that "I've heard of it".

Sometime before, he told his daughters about the crash & the bodies. He also told you in a later interview that the object had not been manufactured on earth (THE TRUTH ABOUT.... p.141), later adding that there were alien "creatures" (p.142). It is not clear whether you got this directly from Easley or from his family.

My point is: Here is a military guy sworn to secrecy, yet he has seen fit to tell his family the most important parts of the great secret (i.e. about the crash & the bodies) yet you tell us in this blog that he related only "what he believed he could say and what was not classified". If Brazel being at the base was not classified, we may be certain the info about the crash and bodies was. Yet Easley divulges to his family the great secret! And you still accept Easley as a reliable witness and a man of honor. Now you see why I do not trust him as a witness. Further, it is obvious that the 'president' tale is false. Maybe it did not come from him but his daughters. I am indeed skeptical of anything he told you, and am even more skeptical that he was ever sworn to secrecy. The man is simply confused, reluctant to talk about 40-year old hazy memories, and does not seem to know which crash site he was at, if any.

No my view of the world is not perfect. I believe your best witness for Brazel's detention is his son. But that story came from your predecessors, Moore & Friedman. For some reason, you have decided Edwin Easley is a better witness, a man of honor.

David Rudiak said...

Some quick comments:

C. Bertram Schultz's 800+ mile drive from Roswell to Nebraska, having to be there by July 10:

Believe it or not skeptics, the USA in 1947 was not a third-world country. Most highways were paved, even back then (yes, I know it's very hard for you to believe, but true).

Suppose Schultz left Roswell the morning of July 8 and saw the cordon along Highway 285 north of town (as confirmed by Roswell resident William Woody). Schultz could easily drive 800+ miles in two days. My family did it all the time in the early 50s on old two-lane highways in the mountainous West before the Interstates went in. Schultz would have been driving mostly in the Midwest, i.e., mostly flat and straight road, in very sparsely populated areas, i.e., little traffic to impede him.

Also, believe it or not, those old cars even back then could easily drive at 60 or 70 mph speeds on these two-lane highways. Really! I had an uncle who liked to drive 80-90 mph on them, though I wouldn't recommend it.

But Schultz supposedly couldn't make such an "impossible" 800 mile drive in two days just because Tim Printy says so. Talk about gullible and irrational if you believe that!

Another of Printy's "it's so because I say so" claims is that Schultz would not have traveled north out of Roswell on Highway 285 but taken another more direct route back. (Like most skeptics, Printy apparently has paranormal powers enabling him to read minds in the distant past and know for a fact what people would know or do.)

Then why does a route-plotting service like MapQuest suggest exactly the route that Printy says Schultz would not have taken, i.e. initially on Highway 285?

Even today, the suggested ~840 mile route is mostly 2-lane highway, estimated travel time 13 hours 20 minutes, which seems a little fast (except for my speeding uncle). I would add a few hours to that for somewhat poorer highways, pit stops, and more cautious driving, but 16-17 hours in 2 days is not that big a deal. Really! Skeptics with the will-to-believe otherwise must not get out much.

David Rudiak said...

cda wrote:
My point is: Here is a military guy sworn to secrecy, yet he has seen fit to tell his family the most important parts of the great secret (i.e. about the crash & the bodies) yet you tell us in this blog that he related only "what he believed he could say and what was not classified". If Brazel being at the base was not classified, we may be certain the info about the crash and bodies was. Yet Easley divulges to his family the great secret!

According to his family, he only spoke about the "creatures" at Roswell practically on his deathbed. The rest of his life, he wouldn't tell them anything.

In the world I inhabit, people will often reveal deep secrets to the one's closest to them, the one's they trust the most: spouses, children, etc. This is particularly true when people are dying and want to get something disturbing off their chests. Such deathbed confessions are often considered admissible even in courts of law under the theory that a person is unlikely to be lying when they believe they are about to die.

To Kevin, Easley never explicitly confessed that Roswell was an ET event, but did it implicitly, as Kevin has reported in the past:

RANDLE: "Are we following the right path?"

EASLEY: "What do you mean?"

RANDLE: "We think it was extraterrestrial."

EASLEY: "Well, let me put it this way. It’s not the wrong path."

This is not a violation of a security oath, since they are not directly admitting to anything, but nevertheless dropping a great big hint. It's like asking someone a question and rather than say a simple "No" to flatly deny the assertion, instead they say, "I can neither confirm nor deny", which is practically like saying "yes".

Grant Cameron asked Dick Cheney on a PBS radio show whether he had ever been briefed on UFO's when he was in the government, and again, rather than just answering "No", Cheney instead answered, "Well, if I had been briefed on it, I'm sure it was probably classified and I couldn't talk about it." Again, an indirect admission.

Politicians generally do not like to give direct answers if they can avoid them.

Similarly I asked Gen. Wesley Clark about his "faster-than-light" Presidential campaign statement and if he had ever been briefed on UFOs in the military, and he indirectly responded, "I heard a bit. In fact, I'm going to be in Roswell, New Mexico tonight. There ARE things going on. But we will have to work out our own mathematics."

Thus again, no simple "No" to my question, but dropping a lot of hints that he did indeed know quite a bit more than he would directly admit to.

David Rudiak said...

Starman wrote:
"I don't think he had anything to do with Brazel after his departure from the ranch."

Bruce Hutchinson responded:
More or less my point! Marcel was back on base by July 10 at least. He was the Intelligence Officer. He would have known if Brazel had been detained and questioned as this would have been under his jusridiction. And yet...

So Hutchinson essentially acknowledges (correctly) that Marcel wouldn't have even been around when Brazel would have been initially grabbed and detained.

(Marcel was gone from the base from the early afternoon of July 8, stayed in Fort Worth, then didn't return until the next night, on the return leg of the mystery B-29 crate flight that flew from Roswell to FW the afternoon of July 9. For B-29 flight, see:)

http://roswellproof.com/B29_flight_July9.html

Marcel was indeed the intelligence officer. But he was NOT the counterintelligence officer or the provost marshal in charge of the MPs, the actual guys who might be in charge of grabbing Brazel, detaining and interrogating him. That was NOT Marcel's jurisdiction.

Whether Marcel eventually knew of Brazel's detention and interrogation I can't say. Unlike the skeptics always seem to do, I cannot time travel to the past and read minds or hold seances with the dead. He may not of known because it wasn't his department. Compartmentalization may have prevented it if he had no need to know. If Marcel did know, he didn't say so publicly. Such a revelation would damage our reputation. Things like that are not supposed to happen in the USA.

Marcel did say there were some things he did know that he would never talk about "For the sake of my country." (Linda Corley interview)

Did this include a probably illegal detention and interrogation of a civilian at the base? Maybe, maybe not.

David Rudiak said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David Rudiak said...

Here’s a lengthy account by Dr. George Agogino about the Roswell Incident and the archeologists, as reported by Tim Shawcross, “The Roswell File”, 1997, pp. 22-23.

Key points:
1. Agogino denies direct knowledge by actually being at crash site
2. BUT Agogino was interrogated by the military about the Roswell Incident, as were all archeologists at the Univ. of N.M. (KEY POINT!!!)
3. Agogino said the military was trying to find out identities of all archeologists who were at the site of a crashed spacecraft and bodies (HUGE KEY POINT!!!—Note that Agogino is stating direct knowledge of the military interrogations concerning the spaceship crash; the reason they were interrogated was that the military had good reason to believe a team of archeologists was at the crash site and wanted to know who all of them were.)
4. Agogino knows the identities of a Canadian archeologist and his group who where in the area and he believes were involved, but all have denied knowledge or direct knowledge. The Canadian archeologist told Agogino he was told the story by his people.
5. Agogino says he knows a combination of financial threats to their livelihoods plus bribery (carrot and stick tactics) were used to silence them

------------------
Other accounts of the ‘Roswell Incident’ have referred to a group of archaeologists who were digging in the area and came across a crashed flying saucer. The story has become somewhat apocryphal as no one has succeeded in identifying the group or their university. It may just be a rumour but one distinguished archaeologist has a story which lends some credence to the accounts. Dr. George Agogino is one of America’s foremost archaeologists and is famous for his work on sites containing the bones of mammoths killed by humans, particularly at the Black Water site in New Mexico, one of the most important and historic mammoth ‘kill sites’ in the Americas.

DENIES DIRECT KNOWLEDGE
When I met him he was amused to be still associated with such a celebrated case. “Well, I was claimed to be one of the archaeologists who saw the site,” he told me. “It’s not true! But I was working at the University of New Mexico on a degree—I forget which one it was—and went out to the field very frequently with surveys, so when this incident occurred and…”

BUT HE & EVERY ARCHEOLOGIST AT UNM WERE INTERROGATED BY THE MILITARY!
four archaeologists were supposed to have been at the scene of the crash, the only institute in the whole state which taught archaeology was the University of New Mexico, so we were all interrogated, so that’s the first time I heard about it.”

Clearly, the rumour had also reached the eyes and ears of the military because, according to Agogino, a deputation arrived to question the faculty, along with some journalists. ”We had military, we had some newspaper people from Albuquerque heard about it, the Roswell Incident, and they came up and more or less accused each of us of being there and I think some of our people were there but everyone denied it, but I had my own suspicion but I don’t want to mention it.”

AND THEY WERE QUESTIONED ABOUT (drumroll) … A CRASHED SPACESHIP AND DEAD CREW (What? No Mogul balloon?)
According to Agogino, the military officials questioned several people at the University, including him. ”They asked me what we saw, if we saw the disabled rocket or spaceship with dead occupants.”

THE MILITARY DIDN’T SEEM TO KNOW WHO ALL THE ARCHEOLOGISTS WERE
“The nature of the queston was: were we the people? They wanted to identify the individuals, the archaeologists who were at that site.

David Rudiak said...

(part 2)
AGOGINO KNOWS OF CANADIAN ARCHEOLOGIST OR GROUP THERE
“Now the only group I knew of who was out there is a Canadian archeologist and I don’t want to mention his name. He had five people with him and one of the people was a woman who was supposed to be the one who died in Florida. [This is the story of nurse Mary Anne Gardner, who said the woman told her the crashed saucer/alien body story while dying in 1976 or 1977 and was extremely paranoid about the government finding her.] Now this person from Canada tells me that he was not at the site and never saw it but some of the people on his crew talked about a flying saucer wreck after he had left the area.”

AGOGINO CLAIMS JOB THREATS AND BRIBERY HAVE SILENCED WITNESSES
“Now everybody has denied it and I don’t now what the reason is. I know originally what the reason was. If they found those archaeologists in 1947, there was about seventy professional jobs in the whole country, archaeologists who graduated and made their living by doing salvage work, getting grants from government to clear up river surveys and things like that. Those people were contacted by the military—they gave them two choices: talk at all, ever, and you don’t get any more grants, don’t talk and we will be very liberal and you’ll be given your grants. I’m sure that’s what happened there.”

Gilles Fernandez said...

"Then why does a route-plotting service like MapQuest suggest exactly the route that Printy says Schultz would not have taken, i.e. initially on Highway 285?"

There is a nuance : you "must" take US285 for AROUND 5 miles and then Turn RIGHT to take N/US-70 east direction, to join Nebraska.

5 miles North Roswell in US285 is "fare away" of Foster Ranch inmyworld...

cda said...

David Rudiak raises the case of Dr George Agogino. He takes the quotes from Tim Shawcross' book. It looks very much like Agogino is relating his experiences of 1947 to Shawcross, but a closer examination throws doubts on this.

First, Agogino says he was not directly involved at the crash site. Second, Agogino was not a fresh witness when Shawcross met him. He had been interviewed by two others during 1993, once by Tom Carey in July and again by either Randle or Schmitt in September. When Carey showed him the notes he (Carey) obtained from an 'anonymous source' (see chapter 14 of "THE TRUTH ABOUT..." about this anonymous source) Agogino admitted he had heard the same story from this source. Agogino told Shawcross that this man came from Canada. He then says the Canadian told him (Agogino) that he was NOT at the site but only heard the story from someone in his crew who was. Oh dear.

Randle & Schmitt do not say anything in their book about Agogino telling DIRECTLY TO THEM about the Air Force quizzing him at the university in 1947. Yet his story to Shawcross makes it appear that he (Agogino), and others, was indeed interviewed by the military, and the Albuquerque press, together (!) at the faculty in 1947. Strange there were no press reports in '47 about journalists interviewing any archaeologists at the university, let alone having the AF there as well. An impossible scenario anyway, if it was all supposed to be top secret!

My suspicions are that once again we are faced with the likely contamination of a witness (Agogino) and that he is confusing memories of what he did in 1947 with what he has learned from the anonymous Canadian archaeologist and from his two 1993 interviews. Who was the 'anonymous source' anyway?

DR can therefore drop the large print in his posting. The Agogino story has a lot less value than DR thinks it has.

cda said...

part 2

I picked up the below from a 'googled' obituary on George A. Agogino.

"As George Agogino was an archaelogy student in the late 1940's and early 1950's in New Mexico and had lifetime connections with many ranchers in New Mexico, he was tapped for information concerning the July 1947 "Roswell UFO Incident". Kevin Randle's book and its updates claim to have received confirmation from George Agogino in regards to the name of the archeologist doing work near the Plains of San Agustin who reported the incident. George Agogino's daughter Alice recalls that her father had narrowed the mystery archaeologist down to 3 possible candidates, the son of one told him on his deathbed that his father could not reveal information for fear of losing government contracts. Alice Agogino says that her father never had any first hand knowledge that any one of his candidates was indeed the one reported to have been involved with the Roswell incident. "

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

@David,

A friend suggested me another argument about Schultz strange route directions, out your mapequest "anachronism'.

Pflock's book produced a 1947 map of NM on the inside cover.
We can see that RT 54 between Vaughn NM and Santa Rosa was an undeveloped/Graded road. This agrees with Connoco map of NM from 1947.

It is roughly 40 miles between the two locations. We must admit he would go to Vaughn and take 54, where he would have to take an unpaved road for over an hour when he could drive on paved roads by taking US70 !

This is why, Tim Printy noted US 70 was the most likely route imho, as I did too indirectly, using your "mapquest" anachronic argument (which forgotted to present the readers the "nuance" and "bemol" I did however.

Best Regards,

Gilles F.

cda said...

Just in case DR tries to trip me up, I now see that the anonymous archaeologist who Randle & Schmitt heard from (ch 14, p. 103 of their 2nd book) and the anonymous Canadian archaeologist Agogino knew, but won't identify, are not one and the same person. But further confusion arises because Agogino hinted that he had heard the Roswell story from an (yet another?) anonymous source. So Agogino got his story from 4 people instead of 3!

The mind boggles at it all. But the three mystery archaeologists may still be one & the same person. Can DR or Kevin enlighten us further?

I suppose it is not really relevant to the Brazel question, is it?

Gilles Fernandez said...

I think it did "indirectly" cda imho.

Because in a particulary point of view, it shows a lack of "internal consistency" of the "tale".

I mean if we follow what is defended by some here, Brazel was 1 week in Jails. But other first hand witnesses seems to have received grants for silence, intimidations, etc. But not at jails for a week.

And this, even if as Brazel, they have shown bodies, but more they show the craft ! And have been identified.

I have a "new" problem with the internal consistency.

So, it goes back to your initial question quoted in the original post :

"What on earth would they need a whole week to detain him for anyway? If they were determined to silence him they could do it in maybe 2 hours by getting him to sign a secrecy oath on July 8. "

Best regards,

David Rudiak said...

I wrote:
"Then why does a route-plotting service like MapQuest suggest exactly the route that Printy says Schultz would not have taken, i.e. initially on Highway 285?"

Gilles wrote:
There is a nuance : you "must" take US285 for AROUND 5 miles and then Turn RIGHT to take N/US-70 east direction, to join Nebraska.

5 miles North Roswell in US285 is "fare away" of Foster Ranch inmyworld...


No "nuance" and sorry Gilles but you are wrong again inyourworld. You apparently don't understand the map or the directions on MapQuest, which actually reads, "Turn RIGHT onto N MAIN ST/US-285 N/US-70 E. Continue to follow US-285 N. [for] 95.1 mi"

But you are ignoring the big point here. There are numerous routes that Schultz could have used to return to Nebraska, with US-285 north out of Roswell being one of them to start the trip. There are any number of your "ordinary" reasons he might have preferred it over an alternate route such as US-70.

Maybe US-70 had extensive road work and delays or on some connecting highway further on. Maybe he wanted to stop somewhere along the route that 285 took him, to see a friend perhaps. Maybe overall route started by 285 was more scenic. Maybe Schultz wanted to try something different. Get it?

But Printy, using mind-reading powers, insisted there was only one route that Schultz would have taken and this somehow completely ruled out the rest of his story of seeing the cordon along 285, which in my book is a totally idiotic argument.

Gilles Fernandez said...

No David,

Vaughn to Santa Rosa must have been taked then, and see the state of these roads in 1947, with Pflock map, or Connoco 1946 N.M. roads map.

Dont forget the guy must join in Nebraska : he is additionning miles and time with your route directions like an "idiot".

Shultz have a conférence to do, I doubt he is in a tourist trip, meeting friends, as your "waht if?" suggests. And have 1 or 2 days to join Nebraska (840 miles ? + what you are adding as miles) ? Maybe he is like your uncle ;)

I'm not convinced. But well, out the thread.

TY for the exchange anyway ;)

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote:
Pflock's book produced a 1947 map of NM on the inside cover.
We can see that RT 54 between Vaughn NM and Santa Rosa was an undeveloped/Graded road. This agrees with Connoco map of NM from 1947.

It is roughly 40 miles between the two locations. We must admit he would go to Vaughn and take 54, where he would have to take an unpaved road for over an hour when he could drive on paved roads by taking US70 !

This is why, Tim Printy noted US 70 was the most likely route imho, as I did too indirectly, using your "mapquest" anachronic argument (which forgotted to present the readers the "nuance" and "bemol" I did however.


Screw the "nuance" Gilles. Claiming you can absolutely know what route Schultz would have taken just by looking at a map is nothing but mindreading.

As I noted, there are any number of possibly ordinary reasons why Schultz would have preferred route 285, including road conditions that no map would show, like highway work, a bridge washed out, Highway 70 being paved but in really bad condition, full of treacherous potholes, etc. Maybe he had some business along the way that route 285 would take him more directly to. Get it?

I have often not taken the slightly more direct route for any number of reasons--haven't you? And the guy was a paleontologist, for crying out loud. He was used to traveling really bad dirt roads on digs. 40 miles of gravel highway is nothing (assuming he even went that way) and would probably delay Schultz no more than 30 minutes. In fact, well-maintained gravel road can sometimes be faster than a paved road in bad condition. I've driven the AlCan highway back when it was still unpaved, 1200 miles of gravel road (followed by paved road in Alaska, but full of treacherous giant potholes). Now that I would have preferred to avoid. But 40 miles is not a big deal. Really!

Finally, I have heard no comment on another bogus claim that Schultz could not have driven ~800 miles back to Lincoln, Nebraska to make it back by July 10. In the REAL world, he could easily have done it in 2 days, maybe even one day if he was willing to put in one very long driving day.

David Rudiak said...

cda wrote:
Randle & Schmitt do not say anything in their book about Agogino telling DIRECTLY TO THEM about the Air Force quizzing him at the university in 1947. Yet his story to Shawcross makes it appear that he (Agogino), and others, was indeed interviewed by the military, and the Albuquerque press, together (!) at the faculty in 1947. Strange there were no press reports in '47 about journalists interviewing any archaeologists at the university, let alone having the AF there as well. An impossible scenario anyway, if it was all supposed to be top secret!

Agogino in his Shawcross interview does NOT say that the military and the Albuquerque press questioned the UNM archeologists "together", just that they were questioned by both.

The key point is that Agogino DID say that the "military" (not "Air Force") DID interrogate all the archeology people at UNM, including himself, about their knowledge of the Roswell incident, specifically about whether they were at the crash site of a "spacecraft" with dead bodies. (What, no Mogul balloon questions?)

But since nothing was reported in the newspapers at the time of the local press also quizzing the archeologists, then this is somehow "proof" that it never happened, cda's usual argument. Basically cda is calling Agogino a liar.

The press could have been tipped off in any number of ways that archeologists were involved. Agogino did not say what questions the press asked of them, only the military, which had specific questions about who was at the spaceship crash. And Agogino said everybody denied knowing anything anyway, even though he had suspicions that maybe some were involved. If all the press hears are denials of knowing anything, there isn't exactly a story to report, now is there?

In the REAL world, even when the press investigates, not everything they investigate makes it into the newspapers. (Duhhhh!) E.g., the Roswell Morning Dispatch reported Sheriff Wilcox talking to: "papers in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, St. Louis, Denver, Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Santa Fe, Chicago, Washington, and Mexico City. The longest call came from London, England where the London Daily Mail and other newspapers desired information."

I think I've checked all or nearly all of these cities and their daily newspapers, and the ONLY one I can find quoting Wilcox is the Albuquerque Journal (the one where he stops answering questions, saying he was "working with those fellows at the base").

But by DebunkerLogic, we can conclude that the calls to Wilcox from the other newspapers never ever happened, because they were never reported in the newspapers making the calls.

David Rudiak said...

Vaughn to Santa Rosa must have been taked then, and see the state of these roads in 1947, with Pflock map, or Connoco 1946 N.M. roads map.

Yeah, maybe he had to take 40 miles of gravel highway (just a guess anyway by you or Printy), and no big deal. Really! It's not remotely the killer argument you or Printy make it out to be.

Dont forget the guy must join in Nebraska : he is additionning miles and time with your route directions like an "idiot".

Oh, I didn't forget Gilles. E.g., you can plot an alternate route with MapQuest, taking Highway 70 to Amarillo, instead of going up 285 to Vaughn initially. Highway 70 route: Total distance to Lincoln, Neb., 813 miles, estimated drive time 13 hours 27 min. Highway 285 route: 836 miles, estimated drive time 13 hours 21 minutes.

So on modern highways, basically no difference in drive time, maybe even a tiny bit less for the 285 route, even though the 285 route is 23 miles longer overall. Maybe it was a slightly longer drive time for 285 back in 1947 because of a short stretch of unpaved road, or maybe not. Maybe the shorter route had overall poorer road conditions that Schultz was aware of (but you and Printy are not).

So it is anything but improbable or impossible for Schultz to have taken route 285 out of Roswell and seen the cordon. Again, he may have had personal or other reasons (like road conditions you don't see on a map) for taking a slightly longer route.

Shultz have a conférence to do, I doubt he is in a tourist trip, meeting friends, as your "waht if?" suggests.

Back into mindreading I see. I have often gone, not 23, but 100 miles out of my way, including taking some poorer roads, because I had some other short-term business or simply wanted something different or something more scenic. Or maybe I knew weather or road conditions were better the longer route. I bet you have too.

And have 1 or 2 days to join Nebraska (840 miles ? + what you are adding as miles) ? Maybe he is like your uncle ;) I'm not convinced.

Either way the guy still had PLENTY OF TIME to drive from Roswell to Lincoln, Nebraska and make it back in time for his conference on July 10. As we say here, you and Printy are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.

You are treating some truly MINOR differences in distance, roads, and arguable drive times as some sort of show-stopper argument that Schultz's story is false. It's not! I'm sorry, but that argument is truly idiotic and does constitute little more than mindreading, inconsequential nitpicks, and the usual psychological denial, because you just don't want to believe the story.

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

Oki doki,

This guy have choosen an awesome and no economic route direction, and is a STAR for the balsa-like spacecraft. Amen.

Canadian Archeologist have been granted to be silent, and Brazel 1 week emprisonned. Amen.

Holden was part of this episode too in the "impact site". Amen.

Holden meeted Canadian archelogists (or he have his own team too "mergin"). Why not ? in the ID week end. Amen.

Fianly, all of this, will depend how some want to write the Gospel. Finaly, who cares ?

Sorry to have blasphemeted the Gospel... Not seducing me, I regret. You are multiplying causes and effects against parcimony.

Well, if I think differently, or others did or do, will do : they are idiots for you...

Make sens, really.

cda said...

In response to DR, I am next to certain that Dr Agogino was NOT relating to Shawcross the events of 1947, however the interview appears at first sight, and however much DR wants to believe it. No I cannot prove anything given below, but here goes.

After reading the Shawcross book and Randle/Schmitt's 2nd book chapter 14 I feel confident that Agogino's story is largely a concoction and mixture of different events.

Agogino had seen the UNSOLVED MYSTERIES program of Sept 1989, as had Mary Ann Gardner, in which Roswell and the archaeologists were talked about. Soon after this Agogino heard a story from an unknown archaeologist (who had seen the same TV show). This person also contacted Randle & Schmitt, via the TV company. Mary Ann Gardner did likewise. Tom Carey then interviewed Agogino, after which Randle (or Schmitt) interviewed him. This was in 1993. Gardner had already been interviewed 3 times in 1990 by Randle/Schmitt. At some point Agogino got the information about the female archaeologist (from Carey, Randle or Schmitt) that Gardner had met the dying woman in hospital and heard her 'story'. We know this since Agogino refers to this woman in his interview with Shawcross, where Agogino says his Canadian colleague was with 5 people and that "one of the people was a woman who was supposed to have died in Florida".

How else did Agogino link the woman he thinks he knew 40+ years ago with the one who died in Florida? There was nothing to link them, apart from information gleaned since the TV broadcast. How did Agogino KNOW she died in Florida anyway? Notice how Agogino refers to "The Roswell Incident", suggesting he either read the book or got the name from the TV show. The idea that the military and the press interviewed the archaeologists at the university either together or separately in 1947 is very dubious. Had the press done so, there would have been some mention of it in the newspapers, whatever DR thinks. Had the military done so, they would never have referred to the episode as a "spaceship with dead occupants" (these are Agogino's actual words to Shawcross). After all, it was all top secret, so the military would simply NOT use giveaway phrases like this. The "spaceship with dead occupants" is either an invention or arose from the TV show, or from one of his 1993 interviews. Agogino had ideas put into his head. (Or possibly Shawcross has slightly reworded the conversation). Either way, I remain convinced that Agogino's story is not a genuine recounting of the events of 1947.

David Rudiak said...

The idea that the military and the press interviewed the archaeologists at the university either together or separately in 1947 is very dubious. Had the press done so, there would have been some mention of it in the newspapers, whatever DR thinks.

Oh cda is always so sure of everything. I gave a clear counterexample of where large numbers of newspapers clearly did NOT report interviewing Sheriff Wilcox, despite Wilcox saying he was called by these very newspapers.

I can also dream up any theory of events, just like cda always does, to rationalize away the absence of reporting. Sheriff Wilcox obviously dreamt up all these newspaper phone calls to make himself appear more important. Or maybe Wilcox was "contaminated" by one phone call and the rest were nothing but "false memories". Or Wilcox was obviously drunk.

A much simpler and more likely explanation is that almost all the reporters or editors didn't find Wilcox's statements very interesting, revealing or different from that reported by major news agencies like AP or UP (thus not quoteworthy).

What we repeatedly see from cda (as well as Gilles and others) are the logical fallacies known as argument from personal incredulity, belief, or conviction. These are assertions that because one personally finds a premise unlikely or unbelievable, the premise can be assumed to be false, or that another personally preferred but unproven premise is true instead.

This is then followed by whatever rationale, usually very flimsy, they can conjure up to dismiss what they find to be personally distasteful or unbelievable.

Newspapers, as a general rule, if they follow the usual standards of good journalism, will not print mere rumors, particularly if they cannot verify the rumors from more than one reliable source. The Albuquerque papers already knew that a "flying disc" had been recovered, because the Roswell press release said as much. If they received a tip that NM archeologists had been there, then they might very well contact the archeology department at UNM to try to verify the rumor. If they could not (since Agogino says everybody denied knowing anything about it), they had no story.

KRandle said...

All –

This began as a discussion of Brazel held in Roswell for four to six days and now we’re off on the route that Schultz took from Roswell to Nebraska. Based on my interviews with him, it was on US 285 north...

CDA –

Your imaginative interpretations of interviews never cease to amaze and amuse me. Have you ever interviewed someone in a situation like that I faced twenty years ago? I mean, we had Moore’s book and Friedman’s unending claims, testimony manipulation and witness contamination and I’m trying to sort through all this to get to some kind of view of reality... not your reality or my reality but what I think of as the consensus reality.

You look at the published transcripts that I provided of my first interview with Easley, the very first interview conducted, and you believe that I have supplied him with information that he didn’t already have. How could you come to such a conclusion?

Well, I think I know. If there was no UFO crash at Roswell, then anything he told me must be the result of either contamination or false memory. But if you read the transcripts carefully, you should understand that he knew exactly what I was talking about without my having to provide him with any clue.

Something else you don’t seem to understand is that the biggest hole in any security program are the spouses, children and family of the secret holder. Easley was remarkably restrained in what he said to his family until the secret was being told all over the media.

Pappy Henderson, when he saw a story about the Roswell crash in a tabloid, told Sappho that now it was in the newspaper he could tell her about it. Actually, security regulations make it clear that he couldn’t tell her about it but he was unaware of that little problem.

So you reject Easley for reasons that you invent and then suggest that I don’t mention Bill Brazel because Moore and Friedman interviewed him first... well, Moore did. But I talked to Bill Brazel myself and have him on tape telling me that his father was held in Roswell for several days... something you do not believe because you just don’t believe it.

David Rudiak said...

Kevin wrote:
Something else you don’t seem to understand is that the biggest hole in any security program are the spouses, children and family of the secret holder....

Pappy Henderson, when he saw a story about the Roswell crash in a tabloid, told Sappho that now it was in the newspaper he could tell her about it. Actually, security regulations make it clear that he couldn’t tell her about it but he was unaware of that little problem.


Well again you just don't get it Kevin. Henderson never violated security because there was no security to violate. There is a very simple explanation.

We have it on the authority of Karl Pflock that Henderson was a "practical joker". Thus the whole story Henderson told about seeing the alien bodies and being the pilot to fly pieces of the crashed saucer to Wright Field was just another of his "practical jokes" that Henderson played on his wife, his daughter, his son, his business partner, and his old WWII plane crew, all of whom he told the story to.

Similarly we can dismiss all other testimony we find unbelievable, such as Brazel being held by the military, as due to "contamination", "false memories", and "retrospective falsification".

These explanation must be the correct ones because they are more "ordinary" and thus more "parsimonious" than the "extraordinary claim" of a flying saucer crash. QED

The saucer faithful just refuse to accept such absolute proofs dictated by "Occam's razor", and instead cling to the "Gospel" of the crashed flying saucer "myth".

Have I missed anything?

Lance said...

Has Rudiak missed anything?

Just the fact that he has no idea of what he is talking about.

The entire Pappy Henderson involvement is based on hearsay evidence. There is no direct testimony from him (on Roswell) whatsoever.

There is a reason that such testimony is not allowed as real evidence in court. Because it sucks: it can be twisted (a Rudiak speciality), misremembered and cannot be cross-examined.

Here among the buffs, of course, it is VERY highly regarded.

Here is how such evidence might be met in a real court:

Rudiak: I have here the testimony of what Pappy Henderson said to his widow...
Judge: That's hearsay and inadmissible.
Rudiak: Okay, I have what his daughter says he told him.
Judge: Are you stupid or insane? That's hearsay, too. Anything else on Henderson
Rudiak: Can I use stuff that I made up about him?

This is the level of scholarship that Rudiak brings to the table.

Kevin, I am surprised how you also mention the Pappy stuff as though it were reasonable evidence. Are your standards really that low?

Lance

Paul Kimball said...

Lance,

Not to be pedantic, but things are not quite as cut and dry as you make them out to be. There are exceptions to the hearsay rule.

Not that I place any credence in Henderson's story, but I wouldn't hinge an attack on it on the hearsay rule.

Paul

cda said...

If DR will reread the Agogino story as told to Shawcross, Agogino told him that the press turned up IN PERSON at the university, along with, or about the same time as, the military. The press did not just 'contact' the faculty and get a quick brush off. In view of the above it is pretty certain that some report of it would have appeared in the Albuquerque press, in July 47. Did it? DR has access to all such newspapers. He will, I am positive, not find a single reference to a visit to UNM (i.e. a visit connected with Roswell).

DR keeps talking about the 'real world' he lives in. His real world consists of the USAF incarcerating civilians for a week, threatening others (and their families) with death and paying bribes to others, all to force people to keep their mouths shut over this earth-shattering event. Kevin's real world is similar but he is nowhere near as vehement about it. Nuclear Physicist Stan Friedman's real world is one where MJ-12 member Dr. Menzel makes numerous secret trips to NM to keep abreast of the Roswell news (and gets generous expenses for so doing).

And so on. And my real world? I just enjoy to the full reading all this stuff. Far better than SF.

Amy said...

I appreciate your PO very much the picture with the article. Continues to refuel!!

KRandle said...

Lance, Lance Lance --

I suppose the flippant response would be to say that there are exceptions to the heresay rule and since Henderson is dead it just might be possible to get his statements into a court, depending on what court and what was being argued. Paul could probably expand on this, if he wished to do so.

Second, Henderson's tale, whether believable or not, was used as an example. Henderson, upon seeing the newspaper story believed that he was now free to tell his wife about a classified event. My point was not whether or not the Henderson tale was true but to point out his reasoning was false.

Anyone who has been privy to a classified briefing is not released from telling details even if the whole story, acurrately, is printed in the newspaper. According to the rules, you deny any knowledge of the event or classified information regardless of how ridiculous such a denial might be.

Yes, I know that seems like locking the door after the horse is gone, but the simple fact is that additional release would underscore the validity of the classified information. In other words, you can't talk about it, no matter what has happened, as long as it remains classified.

My point was that one of the biggest holes in any system of secrets is the personal relationships of the person told the classified material regardless of what someone might believe to be true.

Lance said...

Hi Paul, (and Kevin--I wrote most of this this morning prior to your response -- hopefully my points are clear anyway).

The legal rules of hearsay do include exceptions (though I don't think that any apply in this case, I'm not a lawyer so maybe I'm wrong).

This doesn't get away from the heart of my argument, which is that such evidence is crap.

In light of the story that one of Henderson's friend's says that he used a piece of of a crashed rocket and told folks that it was from a crashed saucer as a joke, it would appear that the Henderson tale would be set aside in a reasonable argument.

Not here, of course.

Here is the basic saucer logic on evidence:

Contemporaneous Reports < 50 Year Old Memories
50 Year Old Memories < Hearsay Evidence

So yeah, maybe a bit pedantic here in a thread where the main argument of one side seems to be that we must take 50 year old memories as unerring and hearsay evidence as gospel. If you stand on that side then, good on ya, I think you can rest easy now that the all of the factual errors in the thread have been corrected by your post.

Notice how I spoke above about my experience of interviewing many folks about the Otis T. Carr story and finding fundamental differences in how they remembered events. Since I had no particular axe to grind, my conclusion was that I could make no conclusion as what happened.

But here among those who want Roswell to be true, what happens is that negative testimony is discarded (experimenter bias) and postitive evidence is kept.

The implications of this should be sobering for those of us who are interested in the truth. In my interviews, some of the events were either/or. One thing happened or it did not. So one group of my interviewees was right. And one group was wrong. But I don't know which!

And like Roswell, the Carr case is unlikely to turn up more traditional and hard evidence one way or the other.

Now, I happened to find folks on both sides but what if I had only found folks from the wrong group? I know that there are a few readers here who can appreciate what this means: Testimony from old memories is QUITE fallible and should be viewed with much more skepticism than it gets, especially here with Roswell, where the whole house of cards rests on these old memories.

Lance

Lance said...

You know, now that I see my response in cold hard electrons, I want to clear up some things.

I am afraid that I did the same thing Rudiak always does and only presented a dogmatic opinion.

To be clear, I know that some of the Roswell supporters (or whatever they may want to be called) like Kevin DON"T think that all of the testimony they collected is unerring. I was wrong to say that.

I do think that Kevin (and others) gives too much credence to such testimony when, without supporting other evidence, it is quite unreliable.

And by quite unreliable, I mean really really unreliable, especially the older it is.

===
Another point:

Kevin, when you mention what Pappy Henderson thought, etc. etc. I think you are making an unsupported logical leap, ascribing stuff to Henderson by just accepting that the hearsay stuff is true.

It seems even beyond pedantic to point out that there are exceptions to hearsay while ignoring the basic reasons why it is generally frowned upon in the first place.

Lance

David Rudiak said...

Kevin wrote:
I suppose the flippant response would be to say that there are exceptions to the heresay rule and since Henderson is dead it just might be possible to get his statements into a court, depending on what court and what was being argued. Paul could probably expand on this, if he wished to do so.

I suppose an even more flippant response would be since when did Roswell become a legal case being tried in a court of law? Hearsay is strictly a legal term applied to admissibility of evidence in legal procedings.

Even in legal procedings there are indeed many exceptions, particularly in civil cases. Standards also vary from state to state, between Federal and state law, and between countries. England, e.g., has laxer hearsay rules than the U.S. and Canada. E.g., hearsay is generally admissable in civil proceedings in England.

Hearsay in law is usually defined as anything asserted as true said out of court, not under oath, and not under potential cross. By that standard, EVERYTHING ever said by any witness about Roswell, including Mack Brazel in the newspaper, would be "hearsay".

But we're not in court here people. We're trying to reconstruct an historical event.

"Hearsay" is also NOT the same as second-hand evidence, which anyone can use any way they want outside of court. Historians use it, sociologists use it, biographers, psychologists, police investigators, doctors, etc., etc., and ordinary people use it, to gain information they may not be able to obtain some other way (e.g. the primary witness is dead or otherwise unavailable).

Is some doctor going to blow off what relatives tell him the patient was experiencing before lapsing into an unexplained coma? Is a police detective going to ignore statements from witnesses because they would be inadmissible in court under hearsay rules?

Suppose Mrs. Schwartz tells the detective that her husband told her that Smith promised to kill him? That would be hearsay in court and probably couldn't be used against Smith, but the detective would have to be an idiot not to start investigating Smith as the murderer.

Even in criminal court, second-hand evidence, may sometimes be used (exceptions to the hearsay rules). E.g., Jones hears from others that Smith committed the murder is hearsay, since Jones did not have direct knowledge of who committed the murder. Jones hearing Smith admit to the murder is still hearsay (since Jones still didn't witness the murder and the statement was made out of court), but may be admitted, under the theory that a confession like this was against the declarer's self-interest (admitting to a crime), and thus more likely to be true.

Legal-eagle Paul Kimball is welcome to correct me if I have any of this wrong.

Lance said...

I knew I could count on Rudiak to jump on the hearsay exceptions without addressing the underlying problems of such evidence.

One might suppose that he rejoices when a murderer gets off on a technicality as well.

KRandle said...

Bruce -

I just caught your comment about Marcel saying nothing about Brazel being held in Roswell. But, as the intelligence officer he wouldn't really be in a position to be told and there would be no reason for the Provost Marshal to tell him. Two separate military functions that overlapped rarely. It is completely logical and possible that after Marcel returned to base after his trip to Fort Worth (and we have pictures of him in Fort Worth with time and date stamps) the Provost Marshal wouldn't have mentioned it to him. No reason to.

Gilles Fernandez said...

"Legal-eagle Paul Kimball is welcome to correct me if I have any of this wrong."

Tim Printy did it, Dave Thomas too (to correct your awesome claim about flight4 and ad hominem attacks to C.B. Moore).

Here some did too, to another "episode".

It is like an head against a wall (of paper)...

BTW : if some can explain me (later or in another topic) why the "Gospel" chooses Sunday as Brazel coming in Roswell, and not monday, the 7th despite historiographical 2 independant sources (RDR and FWST newpapers).

It is awesome for me to read it in sort of auto-proclamed chronologies of the event.

Later maybe ;)

cda said...

Another approach to the evidence we DO have (whether hearsay or first-hand testimony) is to see what evidence we do NOT have. Evidence that commonsense tells us we ought to have, i.e. voluminous documentation. If this was indeed the landing of a spaceship manned by ET intelligence, does this not make it perhaps the most momentous scientific discovery of all time?

Great scientific discoveries of all kinds, in astronomy, mathematics, physics, medicine, geology, earth sciences, etc are documented as they are made. Scientists write papers, committees meet, university departments get interested, conferences are held. Volumes of paperwork are produced and filed for posterity. Today such stuff is available on-line. But not so with Roswell. Nothing whatever has turned up in 6 decades. ET proponents have a ready answer: it is all top secret and kept so by the military (of just one country). But is this really credible? I would say emphatically: "No it is not". The only logical conclusion is that no such ET landing (or crash) took place. And all the anecdotal testimony bolstering the ET nature of the event is therefore wrong. That is the way I shall regard it, until such time as the said documentation or, better still, the actual hardware, is publicly available.

I am not persuaded by the argument that says the human race is not ready to be told the news. Keyhoe put this idea around in the 1950s, followed by Friedman in the 1980s and 90s. Certain high officials are ready for this news. But the rest of us are not. A likely scenario!

starman said...

Long before Keyhoe and Friedman, the 1938 Orson Welles broadcast demonstrated the possible consequences of disclosure. Some people can handle it but many others just can't.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Starman,

this panic due to the emission is a "myth", an total exageration...

Sociologist Pierre Lagrange have demonstrated with US contemporan newspapers, etc. what realy happened in 1938.
And show that this "panic" have been totaly exagerated after time, but it wasn't in 1938.

Exageration by journalist a posteriori, for example in 1968, by Richard W. O’Donnell (Boston Globe).

Lagrange, P.: La guerre des mondes a-t-elle eu lieu ?, Robert Laffont 2005

Dunno if translated in english, very interesting book to have "a different perspective".

starman said...

Lol, despite any exaggeration in 1938, such an experience is hardly conducive to what was later termed the "orderly functioning of the body politic." It would be highly irresponsible to openly reveal the presence of visitors well ahead of us, especially if their motives are not known, as Vandenburg and Saunders have said.

Gilles Fernandez said...

I meant there was no panic in 1938, Starman !

It is a "legend" (the USA in panic) (as often or always in what is concerning ufo).

The exageration is an "invention" a posteriori. No sign of panic for sociologists or historians having researched the contemporan sources (one or two anecdotic incidents only).

It is a collective memrory construction, step by step, having no one reality taking into account what's happened in 1938 really.

David Rudiak said...

Starman wrote:
Lol, despite any exaggeration in 1938, such an experience is hardly conducive to what was later termed the "orderly functioning of the body politic." It would be highly irresponsible to openly reveal the presence of visitors well ahead of us, especially if their motives are not known, as Vandenburg and Saunders have said.

Things were just getting back to relative "normal" after the Great Depression and the horrific WWII. But the public was still on edge about many things: shortages of goods, inflation and jobs, a still devestated and unstable Europe, the early stages of the Cold War, the implications of the A-bomb on the future of human survival, what would happen when the Russians got it, that the Russians were stealing our atomic secrets, stories during early 1947 right through Roswell times about how germ warfare was an even greater threat than the A-bomb and how the Russians already had that capability.

And in the midst of all these worries came Kenneth Arnold and these exotic new supersonic flying saucers, yet another thing to worry about. Were people just suffering the aftereffects of "war nerves"? Were they a new American weapon? Were they Russian (perhaps a spy craft or bacteriological warfare delivery system)? Were they some strange effect of atomic testing? Could they even be space ships from Mars?

All these theories and more were trotted out for the flying saucers. Denials were issued from governnmental and military authority figures to each of them.

Denials to the "men from Mars" and Russian theories came as early as June 30 and July 1 from no less than Gen. Ramey and his intelligence chief Col. Alfred Kalberer.

And interestingly, the Pentagon issued another denial that they were Russian, bacteriological, or "space craft" (that is the word they used) on July 8, just before word came from Roswell that they had recovered one of the flying saucers.

Judging by the HUGE media frenzy that followed the Roswell announcement, plus some explicit newspaper statements that the public was indeed worried, including the ET angle ("What if they really were men from Mars?" was one news article statement), plus the fact that the next day it was explicitly stated that the miltary was running a debunking campaign to stop all the saucer rumors ("they're nothing but weather balloons and radar targets folks"), I think it is pretty clear that the military and government was concerned about public panic, if not over what happened at Roswell, at least over all the flying saucers in general.

The point was to calm the public down while they studied the situtation to try to figure out what was going on.

Let us not forget that Gen. Schulgen's air intelligence saucer study started the day after Roswell, involved the FBI, and concluded that "something was really flying around". Then this was followed by Gen. Twining's Wright Field engineering and air intelligence study, which likewise concluded that September that the phenomenon was not imaginary, the saucers were real high-performance aircraft exhibiting intelligent control, and they demanded further broad study from multiple government agencies. (the beginnings of Project Sign)

Apparently Schulgen and Twining's analysts did not confuse the saucers with weather balloons and radar targets, like some hick farmers or dummy officers at Roswell base.

Neither did Swedish air intelligence, when they informed the USAF Europe in 1948 in a Top Secret document that at least some of their analysts thought the "ghost rockets" of 1946 and then the flying saucers were of non-Earthly origin. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1948_Top_Secret_USAF_UFO_extraterrestrial_document.png

Gilles Fernandez said...

Exactly David,

Few guys in RAAFB have "succumbed" to the rush of the subject (Flying Saucers), provoked by press.

It was sure the subject will be solve fastly.

And a press release was published "we, first, have recovered a Flying Saucer".

And Blanchard gones in hollidays and to organize Air force Day, so important the event was for him !

But later, some have decided it was THE event of all times.

It is funny, in fact how human made "Legends" and "myths". Very pedagogic case ;)

cda said...

We have strayed way off Kevin's original topic. I state here that if Kevin looks closely at the evidence for Brazel being detained at the base, it boils down to one person's testimony, his son's. All the rest (and I mean all) is due to either people who happened to see Brazel in the town with AF officers (big deal), which is zilch as evidence that he was detained at the base, or from others who got the story from Brazel jr. Easley's testimony is useless.
Therefore this so-called detention boils down to just one person's oral testimony.

Why does DR bring in the Twining memo again? This has been gone over time & time again ever since it was first published in 1969. Twining suggests the devices may be of 'domestic', i.e. US, origin or possibly of foreign origin. He specifically says NO physical evidence has been found such as 'crash recovered exhibits', and never once hints at ET vehicles.

Yes I have heard all the pathetic excuses used by ET proponents for why it denies the existence of physical evidence.

The plain truth is that the Twining memo, more than anything else, is a very powerful indicator that what fell at Roswell was NOT a 'crashed disc' of any kind, US, foreign or ET.

Yes Gilles, you do get it. Spot on!

Gilles Fernandez said...

Dear Christopher,

Twining memo is part of the conspiracy, you know (no?). Hoooo... Christopher is then a debunker, granted by the CIA and USAF.

Twinning ignored a spacecraft was recovered in Roswell ! He had no "need to know" ! You understand nothing and your argument is an idiotic one...

Ultra Compartimentation you ignore, dear...

I think in the absence of ONE proof of a ET spacecraft, the ignorance by Twinning of any spacecraft recovered, is the best proof of a supra super mega secret too.

Sorry for the joke, and my english, but well, dear readers, maybe it is time to wake up after a nice dream. Dont you ?

David Rudiak said...

Why does DR bring in the Twining memo again?

Perhaps because Twining states that the saucers are NOT imaginary and they were real, high performance aircraft (high speeds, high maneuverability) under intelligent control (mention of formation flying and evasion upon pursuit--must be them radar targets).

Twining suggests the devices may be of 'domestic', i.e. US, origin or possibly of foreign origin.

Twining says they are real high-performance aircraft and therefore CANNOT be explained by then debunking explanations of weather balloons, radar targets, etc., or ridiculous psychosocial rationales and denial mechanisms dreamt up by armchair debunkers many years later. That's the point of bringing up the Twining memo.

That was also the point of bringing up the Top Secret memo of Swedish air intelligence telling the USAF Europe the same thing the following year. Not only were they real aircraft, but their analysts explicitly state the opinion that no country on earth could make them, therefore they concluded they were extraterrestrial.

Like Twinings intel and engineering analysts, I presume the Swedish ones also studied the top reports and hard data on hand (photos, radar, etc.) instead of reflexively dismissing absolutely everything as "false memories", "retrospective falsification", researcher "contamination", observer error, mass hysteria, Stan Friedman/Donald Keyhoe googly-eyed book readers and satanic cult followers, etc., etc.

He specifically says NO physical evidence has been found such as 'crash recovered exhibits', and never once hints at ET vehicles.

Yes I have heard all the pathetic excuses used by ET proponents for why it denies the existence of physical evidence.


There is nothing "pathetic" about the "excuses", merely a statement of how security really works. The Twining memo is classified at only a Secret level, and also has a wide distribution list.

A crashed saucer would be classified Top Secret and information about it simply would NOT appear in a lower classified document, particularly one with wide distribution.

It would be like a document classified as Secret in 1944 mentioning the development of the A-bomb and spreading word around to 10 different government agencies. It's not a very good way to keep secrets.

In the case of the saucers, Twining was recommending a widespread study. Even if you have a smashed saucer and alien bodies in your basement, there are things you simply can't learn from them without additional information, just like you can't learn how many Russian MIGs there are, their performance characteristics, where they are based, Russian intentions, etc., by having one badly smashed MIG and its pilot. That requries much further intelligence gathering and observation.

Same with the saucers. Twining said they were real and needed to be further studied. Twining is communicating they should be taken seriously by those on the distribution list and properly investigated. Just saying they were physically real aircraft served its purposes. There was no need to mention actual physical proof existed.

Don Maor said...

Regarding the Twining Report, it is quite strange the following part, in which it is written:

“(2) The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these subjects.”

Indeed, why would Twining speak precisely about a lack of crashed recovered exhibits? Why not to speak about a “lack of radio contact with one of these crafts” (which also would have proven the existence of these objects). Or what about a “lack of a capture of one of these crafts”, which would have been a much more general and convenient phrase that would have included a wide variety of cases, for example, the case of a craft that had landed voluntarily and was subsequently captured by Air Force or Army, or the case of a craft that was forced to land by Air Force planes, or even the case of a downed craft, and also a crashed craft.

But not. Twining chose to speak only about one possible case: the recovery of crashed exhibits. Why? May be because he knew only of a case like this?

Another big question raised is: why in the world was Twining so positively sure that the recovery of crashed exhibits would prove “undeniably” that these crafts existed? Certainly, the recovery of crashed somethings would help to understand the situation, but to prove existence undeniably? That is a more risky proclamation.

It is possible that the explanation for this strange paragraph from the Twining Memo is that Twining knew about the Roswell crash, and of course knew that it had proven undeniably that flying discs existed.

Saludos a todos.
Mauricio

David Rudiak said...

Don Maor wrote:

"Twining chose to speak only about one possible case: the recovery of crashed exhibits. Why? May be because he knew only of a case like this?"

Good point. Why bring the subject up at all, and why specifically a crashed saucer? Maybe to deny rumors that were undoubtedly going around.

Shakespeare said it best, about showing your hand by protesting too much.

Regardless of how one wants to interpret this, Twining stated AMC studies by the intel and engineering branches absolutely confirmed the physical reality of the saucers and that they were advanced aircraft. They weren't some dumb "psychosocial" illusions, as our resident debunkers want to spin it.

cda said...

I never expected the Twining letter would pop up in this blog. But it has, so.....

It amazes me that any normal thinking person would ever conclude that Twining's memo is from someone who knew a UFO had crashed somewhere. The text and tone of it reflects current thinking and ideas among the military in 1947. Objects are seen, some appear disc-like, some travel at high speeds and appear to change direction rapidly. There was no concept then of psycho-social explanations, even if hysteria was possibly being considered as a cause. Certainly the Air Force was concerned, it being a critical post-war period.

The memo refers to the possibility of domestic aircraft or foreign aircraft. It talks about meteors & other natural phenomena. Twining says that the opinion was arrived at in a conference, attended by various bodies. It stresses the lack of physical evidence, i.e. no hardware exists to be examined. It concludes that the phenomenon is real, not fictitious.
Hardly surprising in those early days.

What is so special about this memo? DR repeats Friedman's tired old excuse about 'Top Secret' vs 'Secret' and so on.
Twining did NOT need to mention physical evidence at all. He did so to emphasize that none existed, and to inform those above him in Washington. But no matter, the conspiracists will always insist otherwise.

Pflock located other similar documents from the 1947-48 period that repeat this 'lack of physical evidence', but again the conspiracists will dredge up silly excuses to explain them. The upshot of this is plain: there was NO hard physical evidence on 'flying discs', i.e. UFOs, in 1947 or 1948. Therefore Roswell was not a crashed UFO, a landed UFO or any such thing. If I am wrong, it is up to people like DR to produce a document from that time period (or any time period) saying that such 'physical evidence' does exist. He never will.

And that is about all that need be said

David Rudiak said...

cda wrote:
Objects are seen, some appear disc-like, some travel at high speeds and appear to change direction rapidly. There was no concept then of psycho-social explanations, even if hysteria was possibly being considered as a cause.

"Mass hysteria" IS a so-called psycho-social phenomena, and if anything it was at the top of the list in 1947 newspaper "explanations", along with associated psycho-social suggestibility, "war nerves", summer "silly season" news stories, "seeing things", drinking, hallucinations, optical illusions, etc.

The Gallup poll the following month even dealt with this, with "imagination, optical illusions, mirages, etc." heading the list of public beliefs at 29%, and "hoax" adding another 10%.

But, of course, air intelligence was too stupid to even consider any possible psychological or social aspect. We have that from our resident authority cda, so it must be so. Armchair European psycho-social theorists decades later know better, unlike the naive military analysts who actually studied the case evidence in detail.

Unlike those bozos, we now know that psycho-social hypotheses can be used to explain anything, just by thinking about it and denying evidence you don't like. Even Holocaust deniers use the psycho-social methodology, including the line that there are no reliable or believable Holocaust eyewitnesses. Yes, literally every one of them has been "discredited". They are all liars, contaminated, senile, suffering from retrospective falsification or false memories, etc., etc.

What an easy way to do historical research. All you need is belief, imagination, and paranormal abilities to figure out what is true and what is not.

Gilles Fernandez said...

"The Gallup poll the following month even dealt with this, with "imagination, optical illusions, mirages, etc." heading the list of public beliefs at 29%, and "hoax" adding another 10%."

The designers of the poll forgetten to propose an "ET answer". Awesome, no ? Gallup is part of the conspiracy ?

Of course no. That's normal : FS and disks have not this connotation (ET), massivaly admitted by ET believers, a posteriori, exepted anecdotical mentions in newspapers.

Another big indicator why few guys, LEGITIMALY have though NYU stuffes were good candidat for FS (HAND factured things).

Never they acted facing an ET craft : just facing something which could be a legitimate candidat of "the so called flying saucers" contextualized.

Well, it is suffisant to make THE event of all times...

Gilles Fernandez said...

"Even Holocaust deniers use the psycho-social methodology, including the line that there are no reliable or believable Holocaust eyewitnesses. Yes, literally every one of them has been "discredited". They are all liars, contaminated, senile, suffering from retrospective falsification or false memories, etc., etc."

It seems you have no one bounderies for analogies to proove your balsa ET craft...

I'm very disapointed and shocked by this claim and amalgame.

No my respects,

cda said...

Optical illusions and mirages would hardly count as 'psycho-social' explanations.
Yes the USAF upper echelons took the flying discs seriously in 1947. Twining said as much. But as the years went by they took them less and less seriously (with the exception of occasional sudden bursts or flaps in the reports). By late 1969, encouraged by Condon, they had had enough and called it a day.

I repeat: if DR insists that Gen Twining's memo means the exact opposite of what it says re 'physical evidence', then let him please find ONE official memo from '47 - '48 (or any other period) that states the USAF does possess the physical evidence for ETs. That would clinch the case for Roswell. Period.

His only hope (what a hope) is that ghastly illegible Ramey memo. Oh dear, perhaps I have re-introduced a dangerous topic....

Sorry Kevin.

Well done Gilles, again!

Lance said...

Although it pains me to admit it, Rudiak is right that the idea of psychological cause was at least considered in summary given by Twining. Twining alludes to such, I think, when he says that the "phenomenon reported is real and not fictitious or visionary."

I think we may do well to remember that this military opinion was given very early on in saucer mythology, perhaps before the mechanisms that cause UFO reports were fully appreciated.

I am not certain of how many mass (and mass media) hysteria cases were known in 1947 (although the War of The Worlds broadcast fallout is often cited as one, the scholarly opinion is that this story has been exaggerated over the years, with little panic actually occurring). I do believe that such ideas were known (even if they were rejected in Twinings memo).

Of course the memo also mentions natural phenomena like meteors as a possible cause This is something the ever-duplicitous Rudiak neglects to mention in his oh-so-honest recounting. Note how carefully he avoids it above. At least with Rudiak you know that there is not even a pretense of fairness.

Even so I believe that the military, at this early date, genuinely believed that there must have been something more tangible to the reports that flooded the country after Arnold.

It was only after investigating the cases and seeing how they ALWAYS yielded nothing of significance (just the same as the situation today) that the realization came that there is nothing to UFO's and the field became the realm of the eager buffs and hangers-on (like me).

P.S. All the stuff about top secret/secret, etc. is idiotic on the face of it.

Lance

Lance said...

Oh, CDA!

I must have been typing my somewhat identical response just as you were doing the same, apologies.

Lance

Don Maor said...

CDA said:
“It amazes me that any normal thinking person would ever conclude that Twining's memo is from someone who knew a UFO had crashed somewhere.”

Well, call me an abnormal thinking person, but as I explained above, the following paragraph of the Twining Memo suggests it.

Twining wrote:
“The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these subjects.”

First of all:

Why did Twining pointed out this specific possibility? Why not to point to the lack of a more general physical type of evidence or other kind of corroboration?

Maybe he did it to suffocate the real crash of a flying saucer.

Or, maybe he did it to suffocate the problematic rumor of the Roswell incident, which was NOT a crashed flying saucer.

Maybe this last possibility, but then why did Twining thought that the “hypothetical crash recovered exhibits” would prove “undeniably” the existence of saucers? History of ufology has a known case (and may be others) in which some fragments of a crashed UFO has been recovered (see the “Ubatuba Case”), but lamentably this case has NOT provided “undeniably proof” of the saucers existence.

So why, then, does Twining become so specific and confident about some kind of ’undeniability’ in one paragraph?

(((if you CDA ask my very personal, unproven, and conspiranoidic opinion, the only kind of crash recovered "exhibit" that would prove undeniably the existence of saucers would NOT be some strange material. This kind of "exhibition" would have to be a very good one. One probably including some dead body. That is why Twining was so confident about the ‘undeniability’ of such an evidence. They recovered dead bodies!!!))).

KRandle said...

CDA -

Why is the Easley testimony worthless? You don't like it, but there is no reason to reject it, other than your personal bias.

And we have Marian Strickland on video tape saying that Brazel was held for a number of days. She heard Brazel complain about it. Why do you reject her testimony?

Sorry, you're way off base here. The moment I mentioned the UFO crash, Easley's attitude changed... he became cautious. He knew exactly what I was talking about and needed no help from me.

Finally, you have it backwards on the Condon Committee. They were told by the Air Force what to find. The Hippler letter proves it.

There is all sorts of correspondence about this in the Blue Book files as well. Hire a university to study the question and then conclude it the way the Air Force wants it concluded. The Condon report was an excuse to end the public investigation of UFOs, but not end the investigations. Moon Dust told us that.

And now I have dragged this discussion off the original point as well...

starman said...

Don Maor:

You make a very interesting point about the Twining memo. Is it your original idea or did you read of it somewhere?

David Rudiak said...

cda wrote:
Optical illusions and mirages would hardly count as 'psycho-social' explanations.

On the contrary, optical illusions are very much a psychological phenomenon (what does cda think an "illusion" is anyway?). So is misidentification of mirages, or any similar misidentification of any conventional phenomena.

Look up the psychosocial hypothesis and you will almost always see that key components of the theory include misperception, misidentification, imagination, and poor human memory.

Interestingly, even Kenneth Arnold thought the vast majority of sightings that followed his were the result of people just seeing things or mass hysteria. Only a few he thought to be genuine sightings of craft similar to his own. Among these were the United Airlines pilot sighting of July 4, the Richard Rankin pilot sighting of June 23, and the William Rhodes photos over Phoenix of July 7.

Just to be clear, I totally accept that there are psychosocial aspects to what anybody believes (skeptics usually fail to realize that this extends to themselves as well) and may affect to a limited and varying degree what we may perceive or remember.

What I contest are the absurd and often hypocritical extremes the PSH is pushed to when it comes to debunkery of UFO cases. Instead of some witnesses may have their memories or testimony become "contaminated" by various psychosocial mechanisms, it becomes ALL witnesses I the psychosocialists personally don't want to believe MUST be contaminated, have implanted "false memories", be suffering from "retrospective falsication", etc.

However, this never seems to apply to the witnesses they want to believe (the hypocritical double standard part of PSHers). It also doesn't seem to apply to tiny bits and pieces of witness testimony of "unreliable" or "discredited" witnesses that they also want to believe, in other words, careful cherry-picking of evidence.

What we keep seeing here over and over again is total misuse of the PSH by skeptics with very obvious deep personal biases, but trying to dress up their personal prejudices and psychological denial as being being solidly and objectively based in psychological and social science research.

It is really misuse of science, thus pseudoscience, as we have also seen here repeatedly.

Thus (getting back to the original topic of this blog) "false memory" research, some of which says that a fraction of the population (roughly 25% in some studies) can have vague false childhood memories created by deliberate manipulation and repetition gets badly twisted into the claim that literally ALL witnesses (roughly 12) who says they saw or know of Brazel being in military custody were ALLEGEDLY "contaminated" and implanted with "false memories" by allegedly unscrupulous researchers, UFO books, other witnesses, etc.

Again, this is merely asserted as true without evidence ever being presented. But the claim can at least be tested for validity with probability analysis, as I attempted to do. Unless you assume absurdly high probabilities (like >95%) that witnesses have false memories (not remotely backed by any actual study), you end up with absurdly low probabilities that literally everybody is the victim of false memory. (This is followed by more squeals of denial and hand-waving by the PSHers who have just had their cherished pseudoscientific theory debunked as utter rubbish.)

PSH debunkery is bias masquerading as "science", much like putting lipstick on a pig to make it look better. But it is still a pig.

Don Maor said...

Hello Starman:

Regarding the analysis of the word “undeniability”, I think it is mine, but I am not sure.

Gilles Fernandez said...

It is awesome how David revisited false memories litterature using HIS 25%
Totaly under-exagerated in order to serve HIS believings.

There are studies where you obtain 60 % of memory conformity effect when people discusse together.

I give you just an example in the following pdf :

ie : http://abdn.ac.uk/~psy282/dept/Gabbert%20et%20al%202003.pdf

And for those who have no time to read, a little extract of the discussion.

"Combining data from both younger and older adults, we found that a significant proportion
(71%) of witnesses who had discussed an event with a co-witness reported items of information that they had acquired during the course of the discussion. Furthermore, 60%
of participants in the co-witness condition reported that the girl was guilty of a crime they
had not actually witnessed taking place."

Gilles F.

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

@ David

As you see SPH is a good hypothesis of what happens in testimony : your previous caricature (25%) is totaly pseudo scientific (60 71 % in the previous experiment.

As usual, you use 2 mn your time to write false assertions it takes 1 hour to find an experience which contradict, not by rethoric, but with a SCIENTIFIC experiment, your "inventions". You see the nuance...

Readers must realize that this previous experience dont use other parameters to provoke conformity memory effect, like reading "books", multiple co witness, journalists, investigators encounters, and all other parameters which in essence

have a "supra-additive" effect to provoke conformity memory effect.

It is realy tiring to heard revisiting cognitive sciences by some ET proponents.

QED.

Best Regards,

Gilles F.

cda said...

Though we have moved on, the vexed question of Brazel's incarceration boils down to this:
How do those who say he was incarcerated find this out? There are only two possible ways: 1. The witness actually saw him continuously at the base for a period, or 2. Brazel told the said witness about it.

(Seeing Brazel in the town with the military is NOT valid evidence, since it means precisely zero re the alleged imprisonment).

The only people who could have seen him continuously at the base are military people. All right we have Easley, whose testimony I say is confusing & useless. (Read it and see). Kevin says otherwise. Several people claim to have seen Brazel in the town. Big deal, as I pointed out above. Where did the others get the story? From Brazel? Possible, but in that case he was being very loose with his tongue after being warned to keep his mouth shut. From Brazel's son? Again possible, but if this is so then all such 'witnesses' are non-independent witnesses. They all got it from one second-hand source, so although it does not destroy the evidence it certainly means they cannot be regarded as independent and therefore cannot be counted among the 12 or so alleged 'witnesses'. (The same also applies if they got it directly from Brazel sr, though it is now second-hand instead of third-hand). This seems clear enough to me.
The 'independence' is a myth, nothing else.

Assuming anyone still wants to continue this thread, please will they point out the fault in my reasoning.

starman said...

Hello Don Maor,

Twining's use of the word crash was suspicious to one author, who expressed much the same view on that issue but it's just a POD book.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Of course Christopher, the independance is hightly questionable.

The researchers I posted the pdf link concluded themselves :

"In conclusion, it is human nature for people to discuss their shared experiences,especially if they concern something out of the ordinary such as witnessing a crime.
However, as the present results clearly demonstrate, if witnesses have discussed an event
with one another then the police should take great care not to give undue weight to the consistency of their independent statements when judging their accuracy."

ET proponents dont care of False memory scientific knowledge which is imho a very economic pist to trie to solve the "case".

And note too that in Roswell affair, we are not in the same conditions than "in laboratary" experiments.

SP researchers cant manipulated after decades period between the event and the post-event "recall". And several variables which are manifest to "explain" or to question the (false) independance of testimony. They are independant in "disguise".

In the previous experiment, only one independant variable have been manipulated by experimentators.

Any common sens person could have an idea of the renforcements of others variables to provoke memory conformity, like authority soumission (I'm nuclear physic searcher), multiple confrontations, exposures to TV, books and socio ambiant culture, absence to present distinctive informations (a method well studied to minimize false memories), etc, etc.

which can explain why conformity memory can reach > 60 % or 71 %.

But the point was to show readers how DR manipulated "numbers" to claim in disguise "it is really misuse of science, thus pseudoscience, as we have also seen here repeatedly."

It have been demonstrated previously, by only one research, how DR magical 25 % is a usual a total misuse of inrealworld scientific cognitive researches.

False memories researches demonstrate we can reach more 25 % of memory conformity.

So, the probability game DR proposed for several weeks now is not acceptable and a total science personal revisit.

And back to the topic, "Brazel in custody" can be very questionable to in the SP perspective proposed here, but caricaturized by David Rudiack.

Best Regards,

Gilles F.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Again about David Rudiak "accusations".

For your knowledge and in order you avoid to revisite researches, there exist an interesting one completing the previously presented.

http://www.parapsych.org/papers/56.pdf

And where is your 25 % again ? One more time, this experiment concerns adults and not childern.

"Overall, 75% of witnesses in
the co-witness condition (i.e., 15 out of 20) reported incorrect items of information that could only have
been acquired during the discussion whereas no witnesses in the single witness group did so."

You see, we are fare away your 25 % in short experiments manipulating co-witness variable, and concerning very short period of time, no mutiplying the common discussion session between the witnesses, not manipulating exposure to "book" and several other parameters.

But well, such experiment have been made in UK, so maybe Christopher, as super secret agent have orchestrated all of this, and such experiments are part of the cover-up.

More seriously, even if I'm little nervous due to your accusations, dont be surprised a large portion of people can be contaminated.

A contrario to your "impression' (because it seems you have no one knowledge of False memory investigations), it is really easy to provoke conformity memory effect to adults, and your 25 % is fare away the experimental studies...

In short experiments (WITH FEW VARIABLES experimentaly manipulated), experimentators are "abble" to reach 75 % of informations integrated cause conformity memory and to ADULTS.

If you want more researches, I have already suggested several other studies in the other topic meriting to be read in order to understand Testimony have no one Evidence value.

It have nothing to do with investigators manipulating witnesses consciously or what you have joked, caricaturized previously.

It is how works testimony. And one more time, I think it is important to have the general picture of Roswell case.

Best Regards,

Gilles F.

cda said...

Yes Gilles you are quite right. My point is that really the 'independence' of these witnesses is non-existent. End of story.

I did omit one other possible source for the 'Brazel imprisonment' story. By the time Kevin did his interviews, 9 or 10 years had elapsed from publication of THE ROSWELL INCIDENT, and resulting publicity. Any one of Kevin's witnesses could have got the story from that book (or from people talking about the book). I don't suppose Kevin ever asked any of them if they had read, or heard of, the book (or even asked Easley if he had read it).

So again it looks suspiciously like one man (Brazel jr) is the ONLY real source.

Don Maor said...

CDA wrote:
So again it looks suspiciously like one man (Brazel jr) is the ONLY real source.

I would say that it is a very good source. The son of Mack Brazel would be very interested in the safety of his father. How likely is to be mistaken on such a serious matter affecting a parent?

(This is not to say that i agree with CDA's brutal anihilation of the other witnesses. I don't agree).

Don Maor said...

Someone said:
"The 'independence' is a myth, nothing else."

I think it is wrong to kill a witness just because it is not independent. Let's define the non independent witnesses as "branch witnesses".

Clearly, it is better to have one original witness + 2 branch witnesses, than to have only one original witness alone.

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote:
For your knowledge and in order you avoid to revisite researches, there exist an interesting one completing the previously presented. http://www.parapsych.org/papers/56.pdf And where is your 25 % again ? One more time, this experiment concerns adults and not childern.

So did the Loftus-type experiments (do you even carefully read the literature you cite?). About 25% of adult subjects could be tricked into having a typically vague childhood (not adult) false memory. Their reported “memories” of the fake event were not nearly as detailed as those of real events. Similar experiments on more vulnerable and suggestible children yielded about a 35% false memory rate.

Of course, the flip side to this is that ~75% of adults could NOT be manipulated into having a false memory, no matter how hard the researchers tried. Most people do know their own minds.

In the Roswell case, the witnesses were almost entirely adults when it happened, and they weren’t having childhood memories but adult memories. Futhermore, the events were in the real world, not in some manipulated lab experiment, which is relevant to the second paper you cite.

"Overall, 75% of witnesses in the co-witness condition (i.e., 15 out of 20) reported incorrect items of information that could only have been acquired during the discussion whereas no witnesses in the single witness group did so."

Let’s quickly review the experiment and what was really said, vs. what Gilles is again exaggerating all out of proportion.

Show a pair of subjects a FAKE (not real) crime on a VIDEO (not reenacted in the REAL world). But do not show the same video to both subjects; instead rig one of the videos with additional details of the “crime” not seen in the second video (thus second subject could not be aware of them). Then have subjects tell you what they viewed when interviewed separately (control case), or have them talking about it together first, then interview.

Under these MANIPULATED LAB circumstances, the “co-witness” was “contaminated” about 75% of the time with a detail or two from the witness who viewed the more detailed fake crime.

So we have:
1. Fake event viewed on a TV in a lab, not a real event in the real world, which is much richer in sensory cues, such as being familiar with what is being witnessed in a familiar setting. (e.g., knowing Mack Brazel, being familiar with the layout of Roswell, and seeing him being marched out of the Daily Record by a military escort.)
2. The co-witnesses did not even view the same event, but a deliberately created somewhat different one, quite unlike the real world where witnesses are viewing the same thing, though perhaps from different vantage points (like a car accident).
3. IMPORTANT POINT IGNORED BY GILLES: The study says the co-witness may be contaminated with details by another witness. It does NOT say, that both witnesses imagined they had watched a video of a crime, or told different stories of the basic sequence of events that they had viewed. In other words, it does NOT claim the witnesses had a false memory of being in the lab, participating in an experiment, and watching a very similar fake crime scene.

Let us repeat. The study NEVER claimed that 75% of the subjects have fake memories of the ENTIRE event they witnessed, only bits and pieces of it if “contaminated” by another witness. So Gilles is again either unable to draw PROPER conclusions from a study, or is deliberately misrepresenting the study because of his very obvious hardcore debunking agenda.

David Rudiak said...

(part 2)
Let us go back to Mack Brazel’s military detention and intimidation. In some instances we have pairs of people together witnessing the same event, similar to how the experiment was set up Two rancher friends saw Brazel surrounded and being led around by a military escort in downtown Roswell. Two reporters saw him being brought to the Daily Record for his interview by a military escort. Two other rancher friends saw him being led away from the Daily Record by military escort.

Of course, quite unlike the experiment, the pairs were NOT witnessing different versions of the events. They were witnessing the same events. Even if they talked to each other about it (the “contamination”), maybe 75% picked up DETAILS from the other that maybe they hadn’t noticed originally, perhaps the number of men escorting Brazel or their ranks.

But you CANNOT conclude from the cited study, that the witnesses imagined or had a complete false memory that the main event occurred, namely Mack Brazel being led around by a military escort. Yet this is EXACTLY what Gilles is claiming. The actual main event was completely imagined by every single one of these witnesses. Talk about an “extraordinary claim”! Just as extraordinary is how witnesses would even be talking to and "contaminating" each other about an event that none of them had ever witnessed. How does that work?

Even if you accept this nonsense, how about witnesses who it is unlikely even knew one another and thus never had an opportunity to “contaminate” one another, such as Bill Brazel and Provost Marshal Edwin Easley? Both knew of Brazel Sr. being held at the base, but for different reasons. Bill Brazel found out about his father being in trouble from the newspapers, went to the ranch to help out, but his father wasn’t there, and didn’t return for several days. He said he called the base to find out what was going and was told his father would be released soon. When his father came back, he was extremely bitter about how he had been treated, complaining how the military thrown him in jail, and also forced him to sign a security oath. Bill Brazel was talking about this from the very beginning, as written up in the 1980 “Roswell Incident”. What other witnesses or books “contaminated” him?

In contrast, Easley, being provost marshall, would have been in charge of detaining Brazel, even if maybe he never interacted with him. But as head cop at the base, he definitely would have known about it. But I suppose cda and Gilles will still claim he was “contaminated” by books or TV specials or some similar imaginary source of “contamination”, and Easley just imagined the whole thing. Just how they “know” such things is beyond me, debunker psychic abilities again I suppose.

And I’m going to bring up the subject of statistics again, even though Gilles will again squeal that I’m misusing them. But even assuming an extraordinarily high 75% TOTAL (not partial) false memory rate from ALLEGED (never demonstrated) “contamination”, what are the odds that about 12 different witnesses will have a 100% “false memory” (i.e., totally imagined, never happened, not talking about possibly imagined details of a real event, etc.). I have already done this calculation: .75^12 = ~3%.

So even if we totally abuse Gilles’ cited study, assume an absurd 75% complete false memory rate, the odds of literally everybody completely imagining something that never happened is still only 3%. And this is after factoring in some totally unproven, heavy witness “contamination” that allegedly leads to such monumentally high rates.

David Rudiak said...

(part 3)
Again, what this comes down to is Gilles' self-servingly misuse of scientific studies to give his obvious personal biases the veneer of scientific respectibility, instead of the pseudoscience debunkery it really is.

Just think of how absurd his claim of 100% “false memory” rate for all witnesses that he doesn’t want to believe, vs. the 0% false memory rate for the witnesses he does want to believe.

If he accepts that even one witness to Brazel being detained by the military and coerced, then his whole skeptical argument that Brazel was an “independent” witness when he told his balloon story collapses as the farce that it is.

By the mass of witness testimony, Brazel was very obviously a coerced witness. Just as Sheriff Wilcox practically admitted when he refused to answer more questions, saying he was “working with those fellows at the base.”

This is in addition to Wilcox family members later telling us he was threatened if he didn’t cooperate. But no doubt they were “contaminated” as well and 100% suffering from “false memory”, just because Gilles or cda don’t want to believe it.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Well David,

You are an amazing person ! You are hallucinating me ;) Really.

I have discovered by MYSELF how you post without none knowledge... I was "virgin" and honnest. Very open.

BTW : I will never forget your " shoah revisionist" tacitaly you acusated me without no one moderation.

You have passed my limits, to be franck.

I have prooved above how "memory conformity" can reach 60, 71, 75 % in ADULTS samples used SCIENTIFIC experiments, and how your multiplication of probabilities are fallacious.

No no, you continue to contest... It is a joke, realy... It is a joke ?

You continue, same for your flight4 trajectory and ad hominem accusations you did to C.B. Moore.

And the many replies you have received to proove how you are wrong, about it.

In summerize, a good sentence can summerize you :

"Rudiak's charges of us "cooking the books" are much stronger evidence of Rudiak's incompetence than they are of us alleged scientific malfeasance."

I paraphrazed a quote you have received and you well know.

For me only some things count only : you have no chance in a court of law (what are you waiting ?), you are injuring and insulting persons, revisites cognitive sciences, but mainly deserve Roswell case.

Take it easy dear, Roswell will have the same success ;)

KRandle said...

Okay CDA --

You win. Clearly Easley can be ignored because he was confabulating, confounded, contaminated and unable to separate reality from fantasy. I was able to lead him astray. He just didn't have a mind of his own.

Marian Strickland can be ignored because she wasn't really part of the conversation in the kitchen. She was just handing out coffee so that when Mack Brazel mentioned that he had been in jail in Roswell, why, that was just so much confabulation, invention, and embellishment.

Of course we can ignore all those men who saw Brazel in Roswell because we don't know that Brazel was being held and they didn't either. Why, he was just walking down the street, to the newspaper office, and a bunch of soldiers were on the sidewalk near him. Means nothing at all.

We can ignore what Walt Whitmore, Jr. said because he only mentioned that his father took Brazel out of the base and that means nothing. Brazel had to go out there to talk about the balloon debris that he and his family had collected because no one had anything better to do.

We can ignore what Bill Brazel, Jr., said about his father being gone two to three days after he, Bill, arrived at the ranch because we don't know what Mack was doing. We only have Bill's word that his father was gone those days and only Bill's word that his father said he had been held in Roswell.

We all know that these people have been influenced by books they didn't read because there is just no way that anything extraordinary fell at Roswell and if they suggest otherwise, why they are all caught up in the fun of the mystery, influenced by those of us who live so far away that they are contaminated, even when we say they hadn't been exposed to the books because, clearly they had, they are confabulating because there is no other logical theory...

And this would include every member of Blanchard's staff we were able to interview with one exception... why here is the real conspiracy. We have been able to create this whole story by our powers of persuasion, getting these people to agree with us, even when we have little contact with them.

So, let's just ignore everything we don't like, make statements about the situation that are clearly out of order, and continue to say that all the witnesses have been caught with their confabulations hanging out.

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

So dear Kevin ?
Now ? what we do ?

You guys will attack USAF, or your gouvernement ? In a court of law ?

Some skeptical people have just tried to propose an "explaining" the case, cause, there are NO ONE evidence (this word have a scientific semantic inmyworld) of an ET crash at Roswell.

And have choosen to propose other HYPOTHESIS. Taking into account you proove NOTHING and it is common sens to be dubitative ones. No, for "you", we are "debunkers". Realy our goal ? No the same of your one : we are convinced to another hypothesis (call it SP one if you want, dont care).

So they humblely proposed a different perspective. You are not convinced. That's oki and normal. Same for "us".

Period. But then ?

Then, my question was : and now ? What we do ?

Roswell must be discussed in your blog or forums, or in best sellers books ?

In monologues-like where "we" will not listen, "you" will not listen.

What do you propose as next step ?

Cause our debats are sterile ones imho ^^

In essence, what are you proposing ?

Respects,

Gilles Fernandez said...

To David,

For several days now, you are playing probabilities game using a Loftus experiment concerning CHILDERN. And YOU decided 25 % was the maximum for false memories induction, and how it is absurb for Roswell adults. AMEN !

I showed you how you are out the reality by other experiments.

BUT SUDENTLY, when it is pointed to you, some experiments are abble to reach 60, 71 or 75 % to ADULTS for inducing false memories cause conformity memory effect, YOUR game probabilities (YOU proposed) is MAGICALY out the matter, cause, finaly, those experiments are different of what happened to Roswell witnesses.

The experiments were not out the matter when your 25 % was "on the way", cause it served YOUR game.

Now, when pointed 75 % is possible, abracadabra, YOU contest the same false memories field YOU have used previously to make YOUR (falacious) probability game.

You have demontrated your bad faith imho, only.

KRandle said...

Gilles --

First, let me point out that I served for twelve years as an Air Force officer and during that time I was writing magazine articles critical of their UFO investigations. If it didn't bother them, I see no reason that it should bother you... and yes, I was even granted a top secret clearance.

I have quoted, in the past, a study conducted by Ulric Neisser to test memory. He found that about 25% of the subjects' memories about a specific event were completely wrong and about 25%were dead on. The other 50% ranged from slightly in error to mostly in error.

What does that mean to us here? Well, it could mean that the majority of all testimony gathered would be suspect if not corroborated by other witnesses and other sources. It would mean that if the majority of those interviewed about an event, say, Brazel being held by the military for several days, confirmed that, then that testimony would be corroborated and we could attach a higher level of confidence in it.

On the other hand, if a witness made a statement about, say, the team in New Mexico not even knowning the name of the project for which they worked, but documented evidence had been found showing that not only did the team know it, but that witness had known it was well, then we could suggest that his memory was in error.

Now, if we were rabid in our positions, we'd call that man a liar and reject all that he told us. If we were serious in our research, we'd make that point and move on.

So, where do we go? How about we all stop rejecting, out of hand, the testimony and evidence we don't like and listen to what the other side has to say?

Instead of calling the testimony of Edwin Easley "worthless" as some have, how about noting that he was not alone in what he reported... Yes, I know the fall back position here. His testimony was contaminated, though no evidence for that has been presented.

How about we note that Charles Moore had known the name of the project long before Robert Todd reminded him of it and say, simply, Moore forgot.

How's that for starters.

Don Maor said...

Gilles said to Rudiak:
“Now, when pointed 75 % is possible, abracadabra, YOU contest the same false memories field YOU have used previously to make YOUR (falacious) probability game.”

Well, as I saw it, Rudiak was doing a favor to Gilles by putting Gilles’ over-abusing 75% value into Rudiak’s probabilistic modelation of testimonies. I believe that Rudiak was unable to put the bogus 75% value in Gilles’ probabilistic modelation because such modelation simply does not exist! Or maybe we have to believe in Gilles implicit, hidden, automatic, magic, probabilistic modelation, that is deeply written inside his brain?

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote:
You have passed my limits, to be franck. I have prooved above how "memory conformity" can reach 60, 71, 75 % in ADULTS samples used SCIENTIFIC experiments, and how your multiplication of probabilities are fallacious.

Well Gilles, you have passed my limits as well. You have “proved” nothing, instead misused research. What I’ve seen you do over and over again is totally misrepresent and grossly exaggerate the scientific literature on false memory induction. Then you start fuming and ranting and insulting me, because I call you out on it, but I notice you don’t bother to refute anything that I say (maybe because you can’t?)

The so-called “memory conformity” literature you cite NEVER claims that people have ALL of their memories of an event being made up (which is what you’re claiming about with Roswell, isn’t it?). It says that their memories may be somewhat “contaminated” or altered or added to by interaction with researchers, other witnesses, etc.

Thus in the very “memory conformity” study you cited and I commented on, a subject who witnessed a staged crime on a video lacking details that another subject was allowed to see, might add a detail or two they hadn’t seen if allowed to talk to the other witness before being “debriefed” by the researcher. This is where the 75% “contamination” number came from. (A big weakness in this study was not determining whether these were true false memories, or whether the subjects inferred the details were probably true because they were told about them by the other subject who had viewed a very similar version of the event.)

But this percentage has nothing to do with whether the “contaminated” witness remembers watching the video or whether they accurately remember what they WERE allowed to see. (another weakness--never discussed) You are falsely and disingenuously assigning the high percentages to the witness never witnessing anything at all--i.e., 100% false memory--which is totally absurd, and again a gross distortion of what the paper actually reports.

So yes, I have to ask, do you bother to read the sources you cite, do you comprehend what they are saying, or do you read and comprehend but then deliberately misrepresent the results to further your debunking arguments? I suspect you what you probably do at most is maybe read the abstract and seize on a percentage, like 75%, without even vaguely understanding what it represents or how it was obtained.

You also previously cited literature on “imagination inflation”, which I haven’t commented on until now. Allegedly this also, according to you, “scientifically” “proves” Roswell witnesses are a mess of “false memories” (but as usual magically only applies to those witnesses that Gilles doesn’t believe, not to those he does believe).

Here’s one recent example study:

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/2/186.full.pdf+html

Basically the researcher presents a list of possible early childhood (again not adult, like at Roswell) events and ask subjects to rate their “belief” that they had happened. Then they have the subjects “imagine” that it may have happened (vs. a control group that doesn’t so imagine). What usually happens is that if they initially have a low belief that it happened, then their belief that it did happen goes up by a usually small amount on average (needs to be teased out by statistical analysis to even show that the effect is likely there), whereas if they have middling or high belief that it happened, then there is no change or even a decrease in belief when they imagine it, compared to controls.

One obvious criticism of this approach is that there is no way for the researcher to even know if the list of events really happened in the subjects’ childhood. So in the above paper, they try to control this by throwing in a minor surgical procedure never used in the UK in young children (removing skin from a finger). They also use another comparison surgical event that is fairly common, namely extraction of a baby tooth.

David Rudiak said...

(part 2)
On a scale of 1 to 8, where 1 = Never happened and 8 = Definitely happened, when first tested, the nonexistent event had a low average level of belief (2.31), whereas as the common event had a middle range (3.91). After imagining these events happened, the means of belief went up a small amount to 2.59 & 4.53 (one week later) and 2.73 & 4.77 (two weeks later).

If subjects were instead “contaminated” by being asked to read one page about the events (called “exposure”), instead of “imagining” the event, the level of belief actually went down by a small amount (2.46 to 2.39 to 2.16 and 4.96 to 4.41 to 4.24), as it did on three other common nonsurgical “control” events (that the researchers again had no way of knowing occurred or not). These were finding a small monetary bill, going to the emergency room, and feeling an earthquake , all before the age of 6 (again, early childhood events, not the almost entirely adult events of Roswell witnesses).

Interestingly, this is the exact OPPOSITE result of what Gilles and cda have been claiming about “contamination” from ALLEGED reading of UFO books. This experimental result would predict that Roswell witnesses would be slightly LESS likely to believe the event occurred if they had read about it, not more likely.

In any case, these “imagination inflation” effects are not all that robust, which is what you would need to support your belief that every single witness you don’t want to believe is suffering from false memory.

The experimenters also tested whether subjects thought they had actual “memories” of the skin and tooth events (again, the tooth event could possibly have been real since it was common). The scale was 0 = No memory, 1 = vague memory but no details, 2 = At least two alleged details.

The results were with the tooth event (the common, possible event) the memories were ~.7 if exposed to the idea vs. ~1.0 if they imagined it (thus “vague memory” with no details on average). But with the impossible skin event, the memories were ~.08 if exposed to the idea vs. ~.45 if they imagined it. Because the number remained low even after imagining, it meant that most who said they had a “memory” of the impossible event had only a “vague memory” with no details.

If you also look at the percentages of actual false memories in the skin event, it was only about 5% if the subjects were just exposed to the idea after reading about it vs. about 25% if they imagined it, but again the previous result indicates that most of these “false memories” were of the very vague type that maybe it happened (and with still below average level of “belief”), vs. being able to provide any sort of false details of what happened.

I do not consider such weak results of “imagination inflation” to be very impressive. In fact, I would call them completely underwhelming when applied to Roswell.

So much for Gilles ridiculous “scientific” “proofs” that Roswell witnesses are universally infected with “false memories” (but never the witnesses he wants to believe).

Lance said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
KRandle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KRandle said...

Lance -

Please tone down the rhetoric. I have removed your comment. Please restate in it less volatile terms.

Gilles -

I had another thought. The way to make all this work is to not regard it as a debate but as an inquiry. In a debate you supply no information that might help the opposition. In an inquiry, you look at all the data.

Lance said...

Note above that Rudiak quotes Gilles as saying that he had scientifically proven something.

Rudiak uses quotation marks as though Gilles actually said this.

Gilles did not say this and the words Rudiak has in quotes were just made up by Rudiak.

Since Kevin removed my more strongly worded protest of this outrageous and dishonest post, I must leave it to the reader to stand where he may on the matter.

I would think that, if anyone, Kevin would be sensitive to people making stuff up in support of Roswell. Even using the very low standards of UFO research, making up quotes is unusually substandard but alas, typical of the offender involved.

Lance

Lance said...

Just to be crystal clear, here is part of the text from Rudiak (referring to Gilles):

===
Allegedly this also, according to you, “scientifically” “proves” Roswell witnesses are a mess of “false memories”

===

Gilles never used the word "scientifically" above.
Gilles never used the word "proves" above.
Needless to say, he never used them together.

Hilariously, Rudiak actually seems to be LECTURING Gilles on how to cite things in his long-winded and, as we see, dishonest, message.

I would love to hear anyone explain to me how they can possibly tolerate such obvious (and here, clearly documented) dishonesty? And yet no one here except the skeptics ever challenge the Rudiak in any way.


Lance

Gilles Fernandez said...

(Part 1)

Greetings Kevin.

Dunno if it is my english, but DR deforms totaly the "big picture" hypothesis "I" shared here, and proposed, closed more or less to the others persons dubitative about what your inquiry presents.

I have never writed "Nothing happened" or "people have invented a story".

BTW and one more time, If I writed DR passed my limits, it is cause his implicite and tacite remarks you have not moderated, where he assimilated me to a Shoah negationnist, and not cause his strange multiplication of probabilities or what is related to our "discussion" about Roswell.

In 1947, first hand witnesses have participated to the "recuperation" of a flying saucer, but 1947 "contextualized" : each things with a particular insolism, due to the particular summer 1947 sociopsychosocial context, provokated by the press mainlyn could be FS. A wave of paper saucers if you prefer.

The saucers were mainly admitted as handmanufactered things, even if you can find anecdodic quotes in newpapers refering to Mars or Buck Rogers ie. It exists many examples in newpapers where people have tried to touch the rewards, or to recover and to give to authority or press prosaic materials.

Not because they confounded balloons and radar targets (or other stuffes) with extraterrial materials, but cause they were good candidats for such saucers recontextualized, where handfactured things can "surprise" them and then becomes legitimaly in this particular context a good candidat for the so-called FS.

It was possibile the same for Brazel, Marcel and some others witnesses and this for few hours ONLY. The affair is an non event. They have nothing more special imho.

Decades later, Brazel is died when starts a second phase :

Which is in essence (I paraphrase Rawcliff) is a complex process of telling a story that is FACTUAL to some extent, but which gets distorted and falsified over time by retelling it with embellishments. The embellishments may include speculations, conflating events that occurred at different times or in different places, and the incorporation of material without regard for accuracy or plausibility. The overriding force that drives the story is to find or invent details that fit with a desired outcome. The process can be conscious or unconscious. The original story gets remodeled with favorable points being emphasized and unfavorable ones being dropped. The distorted and false version becomes a memory and record of a remarkable tale.

Examples of this process include stories of miraculous events, reconstructions of alleged psychic predictions, and the development of the belief that aliens crashed in Roswell, New Mexico.

Gilles Fernandez said...

(part 2)

In this process, because each here know how Moore, Friedman, Schmitt worked (or works now too), before and when you started your own inquiry (with honnesty one more time), several others mecanisms can be addited to this first "Big picture" : inconscious authority soumission to a nuclear physician is an example.

Parralely, it is well known that memory incorpores false memories by several other cognitive processes (the list is long and the key words have been already presented). In such studies, it is shown how it is human to add details, however you have never seen by co-witnesses exposition for example. Add to this the possible multiple exposures to investigators, books, TV DECADES after, etc.

For "me" even if it cant be summerized in one short reply, all these effects are supra additive between themselves. This hypothesis is for me at least the best explanation I find.

Why too ? Because a contrario to DR whom have the art to speack for me, I have not choosen MY witnesses, ignoring the same things and mecanisms can be applicated to them too.

Others witnesses participating for Mogull explanation are corroboted by documents (ie Crary's diary, NYU reports). This is a BIG nuance.

Same for protagonists like Marcell or brazel, two "independant" newspapers DRR and FWST explain the same story.

For example, I cant accept Brazel came the sunday in Roswell you (Kevin) prefers, as I'm convinced he have sounds of the FS and the rewards during the week end by Proctor or "visiting" Corona. All started like this.

What is described at this period in newspapers, but decade later with some embelisments (properties of the material) are without (my) doubts Merri-Lei radar targets + balloons.

And Mogull flights 3 or 4 are the best candidats, or I must utilize ad hoc explanations my universitar cursus warned me to not us. Cool zen, period !

The coincidence and "match" is too high, and cant be fortuit, a coincidence, when you PROPOSE to recompose the big "puzzle".

Anyway, if this hypothezis made crazy some ET proponents, or "suprise" person like you Kevin who is "zen" finaly,

it is the best explanation today until a strong evidence appears.

I doubt it will (my conviction is no doubt, but impossibility cause there was no one ET craft in Roswell case), but as several skeptics (I think), I will incline to the ET explanation if such evidence comes.

For the moment, any common sens and dispassionated person could admitt it is the best candidat for this story.

Concerning probabilities calculation "in my brain" DR make a priviledge to do for "me", we have already discuted it is risked and a non sens to do it, cause not independant sample.

(How to say in english ? it is risked in the sens it is like to do the same with the subjects and sample in previous presented experiments who have been contaminated, and to have a DR-like coming and claiming : you see, they weren't contaminated cause my calculation !).

Best Regards,

Gilles. F.

cda said...

I repeat my remarks, chiefly directed at Kevin:

Marian Strickland refers to Brazel being "in jail". Where did she get this dotty idea from? Did she really think Brazel was held in the town jail? Kevin: this statement of hers (if she really said it) is poppycock. Why cannot you admit this? Brazel did visit Wilcox (maybe at the jail, I don't know), but that is a very different thing to saying he was held in jail.

Thus Marian is talking garbage. Period.
Similarly anyone else who claims Brazel was held in jail is talking garbage.

ALL those witnesses who saw Brazel being 'escorted' round the town merely saw him with perhaps one or two AF men (or are we to believe an entire posse 'escorted' him?) to and from various places, and probably for one hour or so on one day only. So what has ANY of this to do with him being held at the base for a whole week?

I do not know how you conducted your interviews, but if you put to each witness a question like "I have heard that Brazel was held at the base for a while", what do you know about it?" you were putting ideas into their heads. The point is this: Why should you or any other interviewer suggest to such people that Brazel was held in custody? Why ask them such a question, unless you suspected the answer (from what Bill Brazel said to Moore)? Did any of them volunteer this information?

I am not reiterating the Easley testimony. I have read some of it in UFO CRASH UPDATE, and it sounds like the ramblings of someone who is confused and incoherent. Note that even Easley does not claim to have interrogated Brazel.
Easley repeats the "sworn to secrecy" and the "I can't talk about it" story, then proceeds to tell you, or his family, about the bodies. Shades of Melvin Brown! (There are several variations on HIS story too).

What do you think an intelligent outsider, wanting to discover the Roswell truth, would make of such tales?

The 'multiplication of probabilities' is a joke, as Gilles has said.

Kevin and DR: an Air Force base is NOT a jail. Seeing Brazel being 'escorted' in the town for an hour or so is NOT evidence that he was held in jail, or at the base. And yes, the scope for witness contamination is vast. Finally, none of these is evidence that an ET craft fell at the ranch.

cda said...

To Gilles:
I think I can sum up where you and me, and maybe Lance, agree. It is this: The ET proponents cannot produce the real evidence that would prove their case, such as hardware, bodies or volumes of documentation. They have not done so in 6 decades and never will. Therefore they have to resort to the anecdotal testimony of hundreds of various 'witnesses' (some first-hand but mostly second- and third-hand) gathered over a period of time from 32 to 50 years after the event. The ET proponents hope that by adding occasional new 'witnesses' they are adding to the probability that the ET hypothesis is correct, forgetting that each new 'witness' further removed in time from 1947 is in fact devaluing the ET hypothesis not enhancing it.

If these people (e.g Carey & Schmitt) were to try hard enough even now, they could certainly come across someone new who would 'confirm' that Brazel was indeed held as a prisoner at the AF base. (And we would then have another 'probability' to multiply into the equation!). As the ET proponents cannot get their hands on any real evidence, they have to resort to this continual and very tiresome anecdotal evidence.

And that is all they will ever produce. Such is their 'science'. As for me, and probably you, I await the real physical evidence. Is that too much to ask?

Gilles Fernandez said...

@cda

I think it is really closed to "my" view.

In my humble book, one my re-readers (dunno the term in english : persons reading your book before publication in order to suggest, correct, etc) remarked how Roswell is different as what's normaly happened in History (the human science). Normaly, the number of sources decreases by time, but it is the exact opposite here for 32 years in Roswell and it is really questionnable for an historian perspective too. I know the argument of end of pressure, no fair to speack, etc. Hum not convinced by.

"Pics" are possible, but in a period of 32 years, it "must" decrease, but it is a contrario increasing drasticaly in each book for 3 decades !

As you suggest before, I similary humblely remarked in introduction of my book that quantity of witnesses is not a gage of quality. And when you analyze how the quantity is made (by second hands testimonies, third hand) in "our " affair, I'm agree the "rethoric", consciously or not, is to resort continualy new anecdotical evidences (to be short and without offense).

But imho and without offense again, to addition few quality "evidences" like it is the case in Roswell affaire gives no one gage of quality in this case.

A contrario, more you have things like this collection of anecdotes, more it "smells" the "myth" in progressive construction. It is "how" I have readed "the books", and among others details, it is how I "understand" Roswell.

For example, I have joked about Bagralia liquid proofs (the alcoolism as evidence of a Roswell post traumatic event, or obesity, divorce, to have been half of a father, etc). Out the joke, I regret but these "evidences " have no one quality.

So, in essence, Roswell is a accumulation of poor quality evidences. It is imho a chimeria, a dream to believe it is synonym of quality to addition level of evidences like this.

After, some can trie or propose to reconstruct the puzzle if some are convinced that it is a "myth". It is a legitimated ATTEMPS, propositions, etc.

It have been tried as example (and succefuly for me) in "UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth" by Benson Saler, Charles Ziegler and Charles Moore.

***
Modestly, it is how is my "school" and what is interesting me in Roswell case.

Dont get me wrong, I'm not "here" to claim "Kevin is bad" or dunno what ad hominem. To be franck, but sincere, I regret Kevin was not in the case in 1978. You came too late for me and it is a pity:(

But Kevin (and other), you must "accept" taking into account you cant and have "failled" to get your hands on any real evidence (and for me, never you will), some are interested or are devoting time to "capture", to understand, to propose other hypothesis, to have the "big picture", with a different perspective your own. Period.

So yes, as for me, I await the real physical evidence, but taking into there is noone ( and I doubt it will), "we" are interested to "solve" the case with other "tools" your own.

It is bad ? No, it is how "sciences", counter investigations, counter inquiries proceed, taking into account you are "deadlocked" for 6 decades now concerning ufology, and around 3 concerning "Roswell".

Best Regards.

David Rudiak said...

cda wrote:
The ET proponents cannot produce the real evidence that would prove their case, such as hardware, bodies or volumes of documentation. They have not done so in 6 decades and never will. Therefore they have to resort to the anecdotal testimony of hundreds of various 'witnesses' (some first-hand but mostly second- and third-hand) gathered over a period of time from 32 to 50 years after the event. The ET proponents hope that by adding occasional new 'witnesses' they are adding to the probability that the ET hypothesis is correct, forgetting that each new 'witness' further removed in time from 1947 is in fact devaluing the ET hypothesis not enhancing it.

If these people (e.g Carey & Schmitt) were to try hard enough even now, they could certainly come across someone new who would 'confirm' that Brazel was indeed held as a prisoner at the AF base. (And we would then have another 'probability' to multiply into the equation!). As the ET proponents cannot get their hands on any real evidence, they have to resort to this continual and very tiresome anecdotal evidence.

And that is all they will ever produce. Such is their 'science'. As for me, and probably you, I await the real physical evidence. Is that too much to ask?


The Mogul proponents cannot produce the real evidence that would prove their case, such as crashed balloon hardware or volumes of documentation. They have not done so in 6 decades and never will. Therefore they have to resort to the anecdotal, changing, recanted, and conflicting testimony of a HANDFUL of various 'witnesses' and 60-year old newspaper articles that can't even agree on basic details, gathered over a period of time from 32 to 50 years after the event. The Mogul proponents hope that even though they can never find any new 'witnesses' or evidence, they are adding to the probability that the Mogul hypothesis is correct by endlessly repeating the mostly discredited and inconsistent testimony of the few 'witnesses' they have, forgetting that their inability to find any new or credible 'witnesses' or evidence is in fact devaluing the Mogul hypothesis not enhancing it.

If these people (e.g CDA and Gilles) were to try hard enough even now, they could certainly come across someone new who would 'confirm' that their 'Flight #4' Mogul balloon even existed instead of being a figment of Charles Moore's imagination. (And we would then have another 'probability' to multiply into the equation!). As the Mogul proponents cannot get their hands on any real evidence, they have to resort to their very tiresome and feeble anecdotal evidence, defending Moore's hoaxed 'evidence', gussied up with exaggerated psychosocial mumbo-jumbo that the hundreds of saucer and body witnesses are ALL "contaminated" by unscrupulous researchers with supernatural persuasive powers, talking to fellow credulous zombie ranchers, compulsive reading of Donald Keyhoe and Stan Friedman flying saucer books, and thus through "supra-additivity" of these psychically-deduced "contaminating" effects, 171% of the 'witnesses' are unreliable because of induced "false memories" and "retrospective falsification". Remarkably, none of these human failings has ever affected any of their alleged Mogul witnesses.

And that is all they will ever produce. Such is their 'science'. As for me, and probably you, I await the real physical evidence. Is that too much to ask for a mere stupid balloon?

Gilles Fernandez said...
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Gilles Fernandez said...

Kevin (or anyone),

Just for my knowledge, a little question

Taking into account July, the 8th, Colonel Jennings takes the base command officialy (cause Blanchard gone to hollidays and for AFD proclamation/organization,) - Roswell Morning Reports source if I'm correct.

(Out the fact, I dont understand Blanchard gone if he have sounds and confidence of an event your inquiry pretends),

I ignore if it have been possible to contact him ? Never read it. Was he passed away or it exists something in the investigations about him approached to have his testimony ?

TY to enlight a question I have always asked me.

Regards,

EDITED : I meant Jennings testimony of course, not Blanchard (wasn't clear imho about who I asked if approached.

cda said...

To DR and Kevin:

There IS documented evidence (proof) that Mogul existed and that flights 3, 4 and 9 took place. The last two of these are candidates for what was recovered on July 7-8.

There is NO real evidence that extraterrestrial craft existed either in 1947 or now, nor that ET beings existed then or now. THAT is the clear difference between what you are trying to prove and what Gilles and me (and the USAF) are saying is the most probable cause of the event.

So please stop trying to kid yourselves that you have any evidence acceptable to science that ETs ever landed, or crashed, at Roswell. You have not. Period.

cda said...

To Gilles:
Blanchard took the great secret to his grave! (like all those others).
Jennings did also, but his 'grave' was in the Bermuda Triangle.

Lance said...

CDA,

Yes, I agree with your summary.

As a skeptic, I cannot say that all of the testimony that Kevin (and others) found is false. I can say from experience (doing the same kinds of interviews about long-past events) that such testimony is not reliable.

Indeed the differences we seem to have here on this blog all boil down to one side proposing that these old memories are much more unreliable than the other thinks that they are.

All the blah blah about Mogul also relying on the same kind of testimony is disingenuous at best since there is, at least, some documentary evidence for that explanation and none on the other side.

One side is stuck with foil, balsa wood sticks and rubber (or, as they would have it, stuff that diabolically only looks like foil, sticks and rubber!) that they call a space ship.

As I have said before, I believe that Kevin's unfortunate contact with a parade of liars led him down the wrong path initially but he was too emotionally invested in the story to turn back once he realized that these witnesses had imploded.

The attempt to reconstruct the Ramey memo (a real potential piece of evidence) met with failure, unfortunately and only the most deluded true believer would accept any of the non-prosasic stuff that has been proposed for that text.

Since apparently both sides mostly agree that there is a lack of hard evidence, how can anyone fault the skeptical position that this might not be the case to hang crashed ET space ships upon?


Lance

Gilles Fernandez said...

Yes, to "jump on Christopher's reply :

There exist evidences that US citizens recovered Balloon componants as candidats for FS in summer 1947 (will not explain again "why?").

There exists documents indicating Blanchard takes out the place for an event of this (pseudo) magnitude.

There exists evidences that ML307 must use scotch to reinforce the assembly (a blue print of 1946) and Merri Ley corp conceived the radar targets at this period used by NYU. Witnesses mentions the tape and the symbols. They cant invent this detail.

There exists evidence ML307 are composed by balsa, laminated foils, etc, and witnesses mentions balsa and laminated foils.

There exists documents that Mogul existed.

There exists evidences such Mogul apparatus used those radar targets.

There exist evidence it was concomitant IN TIME and SPACE of the event.

There exist evidence how for secret studies like Manhattan project, V2,etc or super complex ones, like lunar conquest, it needs tons of papers and manpower and the use of the BEST scientists in several domains to succeed in those projects. ET Roswell is the exception.

Etc.

....

In essence, when two hypothesis are in concurence (Mogul versus an ET crash), personaly I choose the one using the less of the multiplications of effects, causes, parameters, ad hoc, additions of probabilities, "strange" coincidences, etc...

When it is claiming something extraordinary, and "I" have a collection of ordinary parameters explaining and predicting EXACTLY the same event, I choose the second one between the hypothesis.

Some have decided differently. Well...


PS : TY Christopher, I ignored for Jennings.

KRandle said...

CDA -

Since you asked so nice... or rather said, "If she really said it..."

I quote from my interview with her on January 4, 1990.

MS: (Marian Strickland) He came in with the stuff , Mack did, and somehow he was turned over to the military. I don’t know if he went to them first or not. They detailed him in jail...

KR: When you say jail for a fact or...

MS: Yes, I know it for a fact.

KR: They held him in jail?

MS: I don’t know whether it was the Roswell jail or it was some kind of affair they had at the base. But Mack had things that he wanted to get done and planned to go right straight back to the ranch. Instead they detained him and they were really rather rude. He sat at my kitchen table and told about how ugly they were. The military. They treated him like he was, well, they probably considered him a country bumpkin, nincompoop. They wanted to make him feel put down. Get him under their thumb. He was a person who was... he had plenty of authority in his own area but he didn’t make an appearance that would amount to much in town...

MS: Well during the time they held Mack incognito here... well I don’t what kind of jail but they wouldn’t let him go home. They went up there raked up every scrap of every scrape of evidence. The Army did.

This also seems to answer the question of where she got the idea. Mack Brazel told her.

Gilles and CDA -

Yes. I truly get it. You do not find the level of evidence of sufficient height to overcome your built in bias against the alien explanation (and I mean bias in the most benign way... We on the other side need to present the evidence to prove otherwise).

Yes, I understand your desire to have artifacts or bodies or a government statement saying it happened. I get it.

On the other hand, you accept the idea that there was tape to reinforce the balloons, created by some novelty company with purple writing on it but there are no examples of this tape anywhere. No one has shown that it exists. It is the long ago memory of one man, but you except this as established fact.

Now I am not suggesting that the existence of this tape is on the same level as alien visitation, just that you reject memories from some but not others.

And I note that you all insist that Mogul was so secret that no one knew about it... even when it was openly discussed in Crary's diary using the term, pictures of it appeared in the newspapers, Moore and friends traveled to Roswell to tell them about it and enlist their aid in tracking, and they were required to announce their flight in NOTAMS because the clusters of balloons were a hazard to aerial navigation.

But once again, we have moved away from the point of the original post which was Brazel in custody. Believe it or not, but the comment from Marian Strickland came without me putting the idea in her head.

KRandle said...

CDA -

I don't believe that was accurate... that Jennings' grave was in the Bermuda Triangle. I know some have suggested it, but I don't think it's right.

Gilles Fernandez said...
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Gilles Fernandez said...

At Kevin,

"On the other hand, you accept the idea that there was tape to reinforce the balloons, created by some novelty company with purple writing on it but there are no examples of this tape anywhere. No one has shown that it exists. It is the long ago memory of one man, but you except this as established fact."

Pardon me, but it is not exactly a "novelty" in my own inquiry and my humble book.

One man ?

USAF report, appendixes 23 et 24.

Trakowski recalls John E. Peterson, in charge of the acheminment of the radar targets and produce an anecdote.

***

To reinforce the sticks of radar target with scotch is in note 22 of the blueprint of ML307.

Annexe 29, p.303/304 USAF report, "Blueprint, Corner Reflector, ML307-c/AP Assembly", 9 juin 1946.

(Sorry for little french.)

***

Merri-Ley ?

Bergen (New Jersey) Evening
Record July, the 12th ==> Victor T. Hoeflich is mentionned as in charge of the radar targets manufacturing... I researched about him and... well, he was Merri-Lei and in Brooklyn as manufacturer.

Guizzeti in charge of ML 50 balloon manufacturing, is mentionned too. and it is right in my inquiry.

"La Tribune de Sherbrooke", Friday 11 mars 1955, p.6 et p.14. mention him (Hoeflich) again continuing to be in charge of mading stuffes for army = pist merri-ley again.

So, well...

Gilles Fernandez said...

Correction : Merri-Lei of course, and no "y".. Sorry.

So, again, even if "out topic", we have documents here.

To plaid the "coincidence", super "cover-up" cant convinced me, sorry.

Yes I know Christopher, I have not to be sorry ;)

cda said...

Thank you Kevin for elucidating a bit on Marian Strickland. So first she said Brazel was held in jail, then she backtracks and says he was more likely held at the base. This reinforces my view that her testimony is tainted. Moreover she says Brazel told her all this in late July or early August (UFO CRASH..., p.43), in which case Brazel violated his oath of secrecy very quickly. Far too quickly. He did not have to tell Marian this and arouse suspicion. So why did he? He could easily have found another explanation for his absence. I notice on p.44 that certain neighbors began claiming that Mac Brazel was paid by the government (to keep his mouth shut presumably). His son Paul denies this, but again we have the start of a rumor, a piece of tittle-tattle from unnamed witnesses.

Kevin: the jail story is garbage, so Marian revised her story a little. I do wonder if she got it from Brazel's son, not Mac himself, but I admit there is no way to prove anything. I also wonder if the story reached her in July or August '47 as claimed. In any case she is NOT an independent witness to the story. She got it from someone else, and initially jazzed it up by saying Brazel was held in jail, which is pure fiction.

Still, thank you for elucidating a bit on this.

David Rudiak said...

Gilles has written that “SCIENTIFIC” psychosocial research (he likes to use and capitalize "scientific", I suppose to claim the high ground that he is supposedly being “scientific” in his claims, while crashed saucer advocates are not) has supposedly “proved” (another of his words) his thesis that Roswell witnesses, whose testimony is used to support the crashed saucer scenario, are necessarily “contaminated” by exposure to other witnesses, books, and unscrupulous researchers, thus literally none of their stories has an validity, credibility, or truth.

(Example Gilles quote: “I have prooved above how ‘memory conformity’ can reach 60, 71, 75 % in ADULTS samples used SCIENTIFIC experiments…”

So let us review his cited “scientific” literature, to see if it really “proves” what he claims it does (literally 100% “false memories” or “retrospective falsification” in all Roswell witnesses he doesn’t like)

1. “False memory” of event. Through deliberate manipulation and repetition, you can eventually get about 25% of adult subjects to believe that some non-existent childhood (not adult) event may have happened, though these false memories are typically vague with few or no details, unlike memories of real events. Of course, this also means that about 75% of the adult population is NOT capable of being manipulated this way and does NOT have false memories of totally nonexistent events from their childhood no matter how hard you try to convince them otherwise.

2. “Imagination inflation”. If adults strongly don’t believe some childhood (not adult) event occurred, there will be an overall SMALL increase in their belief that it occurred if they “imagine” it happened, but the details of any “memory” are again typically vague or few. If they started with a strong belief it really happened, then imagining it happened typically DECREASES their belief that it happened a little bit. Also if they instead read about the event instead of imagining it, their belief also typically decreases a little bit on average. There seems to be very little true false memory induction with this process and even when it occurs, it is typically weak and lacking in vividness and detail.

3. “Witness contamination”: If witnesses to the same event (but with different details to what they witnessed) are allowed to speak to one another about what they witnessed, they will typically (70-75%) add some details to their narrative of what happened that they could not have personally witnessed. So this is a common and robust effect. Some undefined fraction of these may come to believe that these added details were personally witnessed (true false memory), but some other undefined fraction know they were told about it or have less confidence in these added details. (weak or non-existent false memory) Though adding non-witnessed details is common, there is nothing in this research to indicate that these added details from other witnesses are necessarily false or imagined, or that the rest of their memories of what they DID witness are necessarily false or imagined (entire event a false memory). Instead, most of what they do recall seems to be based on what they did personally witness, not what they were told.

David Rudiak said...

(part 2)
So let’s get back to the main topic—witnesses to Brazel being detained or coerced by the military. I have listed a dozen or more, almost all of them first-hand and adults when it happened. Thus we are not dealing with early childhood memories, as does much of the “false memory” research.

About half of these people were alone when they witnessed something or for other reasons would be unlikely to have spoken to anyone else about it who told a similar story. E.g., Marion Strickland said she was alone with Brazel in her kitchen when he complained bitterly to her about his incarceration and treatment by the military. Provost Marshal Easley, who confirmed they held Brazel at the base for several days, was unlikely to have spoken to Brazel’s son or Brazel’s rancher friends and neighbors, so it is hard to see how he could have been “contaminated” by speaking to any of them, or vice versa, or why any of them would come up with a completely imagined story of Brazel being incarcerated at the base. Reporter Frank Joyce said he was alone with Brazel when Brazel confessed to him that the military had been "hard on him” and forced him to change his story. Bill Brazel was unique in saying his father told him he swore an oath never to talk about what had happened. So where did that story come from and who “contaminated” Bill Brazel with it?

The other half of the witnesses were in pairs, all of them witnessing at different times Brazel in Roswell being accompanied by multiple military people, and in some instances Brazel refusing to acknowledge their presence, even though they were friends. Two (rancher friends) saw him being paraded around in downtown Roswell, two (reporters) witnessing him being brought to the Roswell Daily Record for his interview, and two (rancher friends) saw him being led away by a military escort from the RDR and placed in a car.

It is certainly conceivable, maybe even likely, that these pairs of witnesses would have discussed this very unusual (thus also very memorable) event between one another afterward. So some minor “witness contamination” could have taken place. But what was there to contaminate? Witness contamination research indicates people will often add details they did not witness, perhaps because of different vantage points or maybe something they didn’t take note of originally. But it does not say their personally observed details are inaccurate or imaginary, nor those of the other witness who “contaminated” them with other details, which is what you would need to totally dismiss every single one of these stories.

Here there weren’t even different vantage points since people were together, and there wasn’t all that much to remember and discuss. The basic and important event was somebody usually well-known to them (a friend) having a military escort, a exceptionally unusual and memorable event. (quite unlike the cited artificial psych lab experiments) Details might have been how many military people were with Brazel, what they looked like, what their ranks were, what clothes Brazel was wearing, exactly where they were when they saw this, etc. Even if witnesses "contaminated” one another with some of these relatively minor details, what is the likelihood that all six of these escort witnesses could have ALL “imagined” that Brazel had a military escort just by talking to one another, supposedly reading books, or supposedly manipulated into believing it happened by allegedly dishonest zealot researchers?

Gilles argument was so weak, he was even forced to invent his personal, hand-waving, “supra-additivity” effect, where ALL of these supposed “contamination” effects that ALLEGEDLY happened to every single one of these witnesses ALLEGEDLY added up together to produce ALLEGEDLY imaginary or false memories in every single witness that Brazel was detained and coerced by the military.

David Rudiak said...

(part 3)
But the actual “false memory”, “imagination inflation”, “witness contamination” research cited by Gilles does not support any of this 100% false memory nonsense. False memory induction is typically weak (few or nonexistent details) and occurs in only a minority of adults (~25%) even after very intense, prolonged, and deliberate manipulation by researchers. There is also no evidence that any false memory details that might be provided are the same or highly consistent across witnesses.

“Imagination inflation” is even weaker and even tends to decrease a little bit in subjects if they were inclined to believe the event was real all along, or if they instead read about an event, real or not, instead of “imagining” it.

“Witness contamination” is very robust and common but is an effect of adding details not personally witnessed or remembered by discussing with other actual witnesses, not inventing or imagining events that never occurred or never witnessed by anybody.

In the end, all we have is Gilles grossly exaggerating and misrepresenting the results of the psychosocial research literature simply because he doesn’t personally want to believe the Brazel would be detained and coerced this way. This way he can convince himself that absolutely none of these witness stories of military coercion is true. And the reason he doesn’t want to believe this is because there is no rational reason for the military to treat Brazel this way if nothing of much significance happened, namely his RDR story of finding nothing but 5 pounds of rubber strips, wooden sticks, foil-paper, and Scotch tape, which Gilles does want to believe, because he is a Mogul balloon “believer”.

And note that Gilles never deals with the inherent contradiction that not a single one of the witnesses he does want to believe is vulnerable or suffers from “contamination”, “false memories”, etc., despite similar exposure to books, researchers, other witnesses, etc. Where is the “science” or logic in that position?

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

David,

More and more awesome ! Continue please...

First, allow me to claim is not me who writed the RDR article AND the FWST one, if you have some doubts about it, dicted by your conspiracy auto-reflex ^^. You must add "what if" ? and ad hoc to counter argument the historiographical sources : The conspiracy ! It is not serious dear, I regret.

You have provided ad hoc explanations cause your believings (Whooo, the big conspiracy !), but, they are independant sources for "us" (I mean the 2 newspapers). They are written the same scenario. Sorry for you.

Yes, Brazel came in Roswell the monday, and it change many things in your auto-proclamed RIGHT scenario (+ many other things writted in the real sources, and not post 1978 ones).

Nono, your Chronology presents many dubitative auto proclamed things details for any common sens person.

"And note that Gilles never deals with the inherent contradiction that not a single one of the witnesses he does want to believe is vulnerable or suffers from “contamination”, “false memories”, etc., despite similar exposure to books, researchers, other witnesses, etc."

As writed above : such testimonies are corrobated by concomitant documents, or documents, dear David.

Not yours. NO ONE.

I know you have proofs of a big cover-up and supra conspiracy, but well, it is just speculations... Just what if ? The "what if?" must be prooven by strong evidence. Or it continue to be a "what if" without no one reality excepted the speculation, the "I Want to believe on".

You know or discover it (inyourworld, never you will admit !), a method to "explain" the maximum likehood of an event is the use of historiographical sources and to cross testimonies and such sources.

It is how some have "decided" to choose between two hypothesis.

When source match with maximum likewhood, as it is the case, allow me to pretend here, your ET version is a joke, cause no one historiographical sources provided by you, but prosaic hypothesis have provided documentS.

Yes, very sorry for you :(

David Rudiak said...

CDA confabulated:
To DR and Kevin:

There IS documented evidence (proof) that Mogul existed and that flights 3, 4 and 9 took place. The last two of these are candidates for what was recovered on July 7-8.


CDA making up his "facts" again. There are no flights 2, 3, 4, or 9 recorded in Mogul flight summaries because all of these flights were canceled, as is actually documented.

If a planned constant-altitude flight was actually launched and tracked, it was ALWAYS recorded, even if it was noted as a failure, such as Flight #6, whose constant-altitude equipment was noted as damaged on launch. It went rapidly straight up to high altitude, balloons popped, and it came rapidly straight down, all documented with flight summaries and recorded trajectory plots.

However, the planned and unlisted #2 (back East) was noted as being a failed launch, thus never went up and never recorded. The planned #9 is known to have been canceled because the coordinated V-2 launch was also canceled. Reusable equipment like altitude-control or radar targets would have been stripped off before the inflated and non-reusable rubber weather balloon cluster was released.

Constant-altitude flights probably planned for June 3 and June 4, the putative #3 and #4, are both listed in Crary's diary as being "canceled" because of cloudy weather. If they had actually gone up, as CDA claims, they would have been recorded in Mogul records. They were not. They never existed as real launched balloons, only planned flights.

Instead, it was the real #5 that is listed and DOCUMENTED in Mogul records and official Air Force and NASA flight histories as being the "first" NM constant altitude balloon.

So it all comes down to Crary also stating that they sent up a balloon cluster with a sonobuoy after the flight that was "canceled" because of clouds on June 4, the alleged "Flight #4" by Mogul "believers".

But this couldn't have been a true constant-altitude, tracked flight, because every single one of these that was sent up was recorded, as was its tracked flight path.

But the mentioned balloon cluster/sonobuoy launch was not. Instead Crary's talks about the sonobuoy reception on the ground and air. This would have been one of the non-constant-altitude "service flights" that tested equipment, but did not have the necessary constant-altitude control equipment demanded by the Flight #4" claims.

Like the real but failed Flight #6 a few days later whose constant altitude control failed, such a balloon cluster service flight would have gone straight up and down and could not possibly have traveled the necessary distance to the Foster Ranch. It is also unlikely to have carried tracking equipment such as radar targets. In fact only the real Flight #8 the following month was noted has having any radar tracking of these early June/July balloon flights. All the rest of the constant-altitude flights were instead documented as being tracked visually and by radiosonde.triangulation.

David Rudiak said...

CDA confabulated:
To DR and Kevin:

There IS documented evidence (proof) that Mogul existed and that flights 3, 4 and 9 took place. The last two of these are candidates for what was recovered on July 7-8.


CDA making up his "facts" again. There are no flights 2, 3, 4, or 9 recorded in Mogul flight summaries because all of these flights were canceled, as is actually documented.

If a planned constant-altitude flight was actually launched and tracked, it was ALWAYS recorded, even if it was noted as a failure, such as Flight #6, whose constant-altitude equipment was noted as damaged on launch. It went rapidly straight up to high altitude, balloons popped, and it came rapidly straight down, all documented with flight summaries and recorded trajectory plots.

However, the planned and unlisted #2 (back East) was noted as being a failed launch, thus never went up and never recorded. The planned #9 is known to have been canceled because the coordinated V-2 launch was also canceled. Reusable equipment like altitude-control or radar targets would have been stripped off before the inflated and non-reusable rubber weather balloon cluster was released.

Constant-altitude flights probably planned for June 3 and June 4, the putative #3 and #4, are both listed in Crary's diary as being "canceled" because of cloudy weather. If they had actually gone up, as CDA claims, they would have been recorded in Mogul records. They were not. They never existed as real launched balloons, only planned flights.

Instead, it was the real #5 that is listed and DOCUMENTED in Mogul records and official Air Force and NASA flight histories as being the "first" NM constant altitude balloon.

So it all comes down to Crary also stating that they sent up a balloon cluster with a sonobuoy after the flight that was "canceled" because of clouds on June 4, the alleged "Flight #4" by Mogul "believers".

But this couldn't have been a true constant-altitude, tracked flight, because every single one of these that was sent up was recorded, as was its tracked flight path.

But the mentioned balloon cluster/sonobuoy launch was not. Instead Crary's talks about the sonobuoy reception on the ground and air. This would have been one of the non-constant-altitude "service flights" that tested equipment, but did not have the necessary constant-altitude control equipment demanded by the Flight #4" claims.

Like the real but failed Flight #6 a few days later whose constant altitude control failed, such a balloon cluster service flight would have gone straight up and down and could not possibly have traveled the necessary distance to the Foster Ranch. It is also unlikely to have carried tracking equipment such as radar targets. In fact only the real Flight #8 the following month was noted has having any radar tracking of these early June/July balloon flights. All the rest of the constant-altitude flights were instead documented as being tracked visually and by radiosonde.triangulation.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Sorry to spam, but :

Lance wrote :

"All the blah blah about Mogul also relying on the same kind of testimony is disingenuous at best since there is, at least, some documentary evidence for that explanation and none on the other side.

One side is stuck with foil, balsa wood sticks and rubber (or, as they would have it, stuff that diabolically only looks like foil, sticks and rubber!) that they call a space ship."

I think Lance summerized better "my" walls of texts.

Short and clear. Direct "uppercut" !

OMG, I must improve my english ! ^^

TY so much Lance, for your rare interventions full of common sens.

Gilles Fernandez said...
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KRandle said...

CDA -

Are you a politician? I ask because of your ability to spin anything into what you want it to be. Marian Strickland didn't back track on anything. She merely clarified. She didn't know if the jail was in Roswell or on the base... And I suggest that if you are held against your will, regardless of the accommodations, then it is the equivalent of being in jail. There might not be bars on the windows, but if you're not allowed to leave, what would you call it? House arrest.

I believe there is nothing that I could present that would ever convince you that Mack Brazel was held, for several days in Roswell. It doesn't matter how many people have said this, it doesn't matter when they said it, you just don't believe that such a thing could happen and therefore it did not. Well, to each his own.

Gilles -

I'm afraid that I didn't make myself clear. I have gone back through the Air Force report and found nothing to support the idea that a special tape, with pastel symbols that looked like Japanese ideographs, was documented. Yes, they used tape to reinforce the balloon and balloon envelop, and they used Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing cellophane tape to reinforce other pieces of the Mogul equipment, but I found nothing that suggested this tape described from memory.

Don Maor said...

Gilles wrote:
“OMG, I must improve my english !”

Indeed you should. For various reasons.

First: Respect to other participants. (I always try to revise my own bad english, of course one can not be perfect, but at least has to do some check).

Second: People could think you are emotionally affected by this debate, and that consecuently, anger or dissapointment emotions have forced your ortographical mistakes. Is not a good thing to be affected emotionally here, because it shows that your own believes are being damaged. (by the way, I think that Lance is being emotionally affected too.)

Or, they could think that you a are a lousy Roswell “Myth” researcher. Basically, they would think that to understand the Roswell case there has to be read a big lot of english papers, newspapers, documents, books, etc. They could question: How does this guy read/understand the case without having a good english? Or maybe they could think that you learned the case reading Roswell books, written only in other languages, which is not a very good sign.

Don Maor said...

Gilles said:
“Concerning probabilities calculation "in my brain" DR make a priviledge to do for "me", we have already discuted it is risked and a non sens to do it, cause not independant sample.”

Yes, I know that you found that Rudiak’s calculation was wrong. I think that Rudiak calculation is fine, and I later will explain you why. My point here was that at least Rudiak offers a calculation method, but you do NOT offer any calculation method. Thus, we are faced to trust your personal implicit “brain” calculation. ¿Why do you bring up the value 75% if you will not able to use it in an equation? ¿When will the psychosociologists will become serious?

Personally, I find that the calculation of the global probability Q=P^12 is correct when “P” is the individual independent probability of being wrong or false.

Let’s try to become for a moment a psychosociologist (PS), and interpret the study that yields a 75% of individuals being “contaminated” by partners. Basically, a PS will conclude that the study shows that 75% percent of people are potentially stupid and credulous. (Actually, that is NOT what the study shows, but let`s tolerate it for the sake of the inquiry). Probably, because PS don`t like equations, and prefer more general, vague ideas, the overall conclusion of PS after reading the study will be that “MOST people are stupid and credulous”. After that, the PS may reject any story told by witnesses, that he does not like, because “most people are stupid”.

But let’s return to the numbers, without forgetting the stupidity assumption. Accepting that 75% of people are stupid and credulous, that means directly that there is a magnificent 25% of people that are lucid and will not believe bullshits told to them.

Here comes the good part. Intelligence is not contagious. So we may regard intelligence or stupidity as an independent state. Smart John will not become stupid after talking with stupid Peter. So if we are asked to use the 75% study, we can calculate safely the probability of 12 witnesses being stupid. It is clear the the calculation Q=75%^12=3%, is correct, so the model used by Rudiak is basically correct, in my view. Admittedly, it is far better that the NON EXISTENT calculation proposed by skeptics here.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Kevin,

Note 22 stipulates (by memory, not the USAF report here, I'm at mum's house^^) :

"Shall be acetate scotch film tape [??] as made by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing or EGAL."

I used caps locks to emphaze EGAL.

As newspaper sources presented above, American Merri-Lei, which is a toy's manufactury, was in charge of the ML307 used in Almogordo first expedition.

So, Merri-Ley have possibly used egal scotch, the same they used for gift packtage, etc, like some USAF witnesses remember.

I have some screenshots and captures of 40's such tapes, as a National Geographic TV emission about Roswell have presented several of the tapes.

So, several elements suggested this tape described from memory.

But as usual in Roswell, each of us (Skeptics versus ET proponents) demands more to the others.
And we are "trapped" is a circular debat ^^

***

@ Don Maor : I'm not very interested to discusse with persons using the fallacious ad hominem argument in first interventions : does it smell they are emotionally affected too ?

For your "need" of calculations, I dont make calculations with non independant samples. Enjoy if you like. If I choose other sample, ie witnesses remembered Brazel was escorted by W. E. Whitmore, when coming to the interview, or sleeped at WEW house, I will obtain what I want too and "proove" he was not in custody. However, this "method" is fallacious imho.

cda said...

To Don Maor:
I disagree with your, and DR's, probability calculations. The events MUST be truly independent before any such calculations are done.
Example: 10 totally unconnected people (i.e. none ever heard of the others) tell you that it rained on a given day in the past. Probability of each being separately right is, say, 90%. What would you say was the probability that it did rain on that day?
Applying your ideas you would say that the probability of them ALL being wrong is 0.10^10 = 1 in 10 billion, i.e. making it a virtual certainty that at least one was right and that it did rain that day.
Would you revise your figures if it turned out that some of them did not have first-hand knowledge that it rained but got it from a radio broadcast later that day? And what if some of these people were not so sure which day it was, only that it 'could' have been that day?

There is no way you can separate out these interdependencies, any of which renders the calculations worthless. You have an initial assumption, namely that these people were completely independent. Later it transpires that they were not, because some (maybe all) got their information from the same source and were a little unsure of their dates anyway. The whole picture is transposed, and the calculated 1 in ten billion becomes instead the original 1 in 10. The probability that it did rain on that day is indeed very high since a radio broadcast said so at the time. A sort of 'documentary' confirmation. Fair enough. But it is quite false to base your calculations purely on what those 10 people told you.
Of course if the radio broadcast turned out to be on the wrong day, the whole case would collapse. Even the 1 in 10 figure would be doubtful.

Look at the shambles of the Blue Book 12 'Good Unknowns' I wrote about. Each one was, on the face of it, a good unexplained case, the 'cream of the crop'. But was it? Half of the 12 were not unexplained at all! (according to the USAF later). So again you are left with worthless figures and calculations.

Such is ufology. Such is Roswell.

cda said...

To Kevin:

You accept the testimony of Marian that Brazel was held in custody, be it in jail or at the base, for a week. Tell me this: why do you accept her story but reject other stories (rumors) that Brazel was paid a bribe to stay silent? Clearly you did not follow up on the latter because it seemed far less probable than the story Marian & Bill Brazel told. It was also denied by another person. Had you felt motivated, I am certain you would have been able to track down those gossipers claiming Brazel was 'paid off'. Even if you had not, other, less scrupulous, investigators would have. Then we would have had a wonderful contradictory story!

'Jail' is an emotive term here. It conveys the impression that Brazel was literally held in the town prison, not an AF base. Yes I would describe the latter as a form of 'house arrest'.

Concerning bribes, I seem to recall you talk about a Roswell military 'slush fund' in your first book. I have not checked out who told you or anything further, but I do recall mention of it. I guess you have long abandoned this fanciful story.

To DR:

Flights 3, 4 and 9, or their substitutes, did take place and the documentation proves it. It may not be official records, but it is recorded in diaries and field notes. This is sufficient to show that flights 4 & 9 (neither was officially recovered) are candidates for the debris recovered on July 7 and 8. You do not know exactly what these flights contained. Neither does anyone else. So it is all speculation, like so much else, in the Roswell 'saga'.

Kindly produce some documentation, official or otherwise, dated July-August 1947, that gives any indication that what descended on the ranch were portions of an ET craft. When you have done so, we can then examine it critically.

Please avoid, if you can, the following: The MJ-12 papers or the Ramey memo.

David Rudiak said...

cda fantasizes:

Flights 3, 4 and 9, or their substitutes, did take place and the documentation proves it.

And I say that pigs can fly, and the documentation proves it.

It may not be official records,

Exactly, my pigs and your "flights" are not in official records. They didn't exist.

but it is recorded in diaries and field notes.

Why aren't they in official records? Because the "diaries and field notes" or project summaries indicated they were "canceled". Does CDA know what the word "canceled" means?

Back in the REAL world, if any constant-altitude flight went up, it was recorded, even if noted as a failure. (#6 is a good example) If it never went up, it wasn't. It's very simple. Even a two-year-old should be able to understand it.

is sufficient to show that flights 4 & 9 (neither was officially recovered) are candidates for the debris recovered on July 7 and 8. You do not know exactly what these flights contained. Neither does anyone else. So it is all speculation, like so much else, in the Roswell 'saga'.

My flying pigs weren't officially recovered either and remain candidates for the debris as well. You do not know exactly what these pigs wore and neither does anyone else. But I say they were real, so they were real. I say the documentation proves it, so it is proved.

Kindly produce some documentation, official or otherwise, dated July-August 1947, that gives any indication that what descended on the ranch were portions of an ET craft. When you have done so, we can then examine it critically.

Kindly produce some documentation, official or otherwise saying that your Flights #4 or #9 even existed. Or Flight #3, or Flight #2. I'm talking about REAL constant-altitude Moguls flights, you know, ones that actually left the ground and are recorded in official records, not ones said to be "canceled", but claimed to be real by skeptical fantasists.

Also I would like to see the actual official documentation that says a Mogul balloon descended on the ranch. Mogul tracked and documented any of their REAL flights (not the canceled ones). This included crash sites if known.

So supposedly a totally undocumented "canceled" Mogul flight crashed at the Foster ranch, the Mogul people like project officer Trakowski were allegedly told about it, yet not a single thing is written down anywhere to confirm that such a flight ever existed or crashed.

This is brilliant. Kind of reminds me of "North by Northwest" where the CIA creates an imaginary spy for the bad guys to chase.

If you want some sort of official acknowledgment of a disc crash, try the initial base press release, which said as much. Oh yes, we know, the fly-guys at Roswell were all drooling idiots who confused rubber balloon debris, balsa sticks, tinfoil, paper, and Scotch tape, all of which could easily fit on a table-top, with the remains of one of those very widely reported supersonic flying discs the size of an airplane. Psychosocial humbuggery can dream up any rationale it wants to explain away anything.

Marcel was also so confused, he thought that it could scatter over a "square mile", and Gen. Ramey thought the "tinfoil" "box-kite" (not balloon) would be "25 feet across if reconstructed". That's an awfully big "radar target" kite.

Oh yes, Ramey also wanted it known that it was too flimsy to have carried a man, just in case there was any question of whether his "tinfoil" "box-kite" "25 feet" across and scattered over a "square mile" had a crew. And the Pentagon, in case there was further confusion, made it known the same day that the flying saucers definitely were not "space ships".

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Kevin (or others, but in dispassionated answer please),

A dispasionnated question, just for my knowledge :

Noone of you as investigators have tried to approach possible writters, or dunno who or what to exhume the files, or to have an idea of the contents of :

00- Flying Discs "SIGN", GRUDGE" 1947-1950.

MX-1011 - "ROCKFISH", "MOGUL" Projects acoustical Research (1946 thru 1950)

?

I know they have been destroyed in the 1973 fire in St-Louis:(

But my question is, after Robert Todd effort, this pist to obtain something about have been followed ?

What's "new", after Rob Todd, about this "quest" ?

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote erroneously:
Note 22 stipulates (by memory, not the USAF report here, I'm at mum's house^^) : "Shall be acetate scotch film tape [??] as made by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing or EGAL." I used caps locks to emphaze EGAL.

Easy on the caps lock Gilles. What it REALLY says is “OR EQUAL”, just like it says at the end of Note 19 about the eyelets, or Note 20 about the twine, or Note 24. If you don’t have the specified manufacturer’s eyelets, twine, tape, etc., use the EQUAL or equivalent.

Don Maor kindly warned you how your marginal English skills were getting you into trouble, and here is a good example. You are arguing nonsense because you don’t fully understand what you are reading

As newspaper sources presented above, American Merri-Lei, which is a toy's manufactury, was in charge of the ML307 used in Almogordo first expedition. So, Merri-Ley have possibly used egal scotch, the same they used for gift packtage, etc, like some USAF witnesses remember.

“EGAL” Scotch tape is a figment of your imagination. All the radar target schematic shows is that they used common, every-day, household Scotch acetate tape made by 3M company (“or equal”) to help make a balsa kite, just like kids did.

You have taken this and now your misreading of “EQUAL” as some sort of special “EGAL” Scotch tape, which you further imagine to be the mythical Mogul “flower tape”, as one of your “QED” “proofs” that the radar targets used by Mogul had “flower tape”.

If you actually read the radar target schematic properly, the Scotch tape was added along the various paper-foil seams to help hold them together, just like kids do when building kites. This isn’t exactly rocket science.

Charles Moore’a alleged Mogul “flower tape” was something else altogether, and NOT specified in the schematic. Moore claimed it was added at request because the regular ML-307 was not strong enough and the paper foil glued to the central core balse sticks was tearing loose. Therefore, he claimed a broad strip of a non-transparent tape was added by the toy manufacturer to reinforce the foil-paper/stick joint to prevent tearing.

Could be. I’ve actually built a replica radar target based on the schematic and the paper-foil does indeed easily tear loose from the central sticks.

There is a very simple way to test your hypothesis that Moore’s “Mogul” “flower tape” was found at the Foster Ranch. (You do know about testing a hypothesis when you can?) Since you and other debunkers also claim that the ML-307 radar target in Ramey’s Fort Worth photos is exactly the same thing Brazel described as finding, then you should have no problem finding the “flower tape” along the same sticks in the photo that Moore said it was added to for re-enforcement.

The problem is, nobody can find any evidence of it in the photos. The Air Force OSI debunkers in 1994 were probably the first to look for it using their mystery “high-level” photoanalysis lab (“We have no secrets, but we can’t tell you who they are.”) They couldn’t find “flower tape” even though they desperately wanted to. Nobody else can either. And these are very high-resolution photos from press camera 4”x5” B & W negatives.

Remember, Moore said it wasn’t transparent like regular tape (even said to be whitish), it had definite markings on it, according to Moore it should be on certain sticks that can be seen in the photos, therefore it should be clearly visible (unlike transparent Scotch tape), but it doesn’t seem to be there.

No doubt our resident skeptics will come up with some other psychically-deduced rationale why it isn’t there (“Brazel removed it all”), and continue to insist that Ramey’s singular balloon and radar target totally accounts for an alleged multiple-balloon, multi-target Mogul that they can’t even document ever existed.

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

lol David

Calm down your nerves, it is a discussion.

It is exactly what I understand : If acetate scotch film tape as made by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing "not available, then use an equivalent."

Taking into account there exist several scotch tapes used in Toy's and in 40's with "flowers symbols" like (I have pictures, screenshots if you want),

+

Merri-Lei was the manufacturer of the Alamogordo expeditions concerning radar targets, and a toys manufacturer,

I'm not suprised Merri-Lei used the acetate equivalent scotch the manufacturer have at disposition.

You are ?

cda said...

I wonder where this debate is leading. DR talks about Ramey saying the 'kite' or 'tinfoil box-kite' was 25 feet across. Not the balloon. Most of the press reports I have speak of a "balloon 25 feet in diameter", including the FBI teletype which says "approximately 20 feet in diameter". The word 'diameter' usually refers to a spherical object, not a box-kite. Maybe some of the press writers got confused and mixed up the size of the radar reflector with that of the balloon. Entirely possible.

DR is simply playing with words wherever he can, to suggest to readers that Ramey was bluffing, misleading the public, and covering up the object's true identity, i.e. an ET craft.

Yes there was, and still is, documentation that substitute flights 3, 4 and 9 were launched. Yes the descriptions given in the two primary sources (two newspapers on July 9) give descriptions of the debris VERY MUCH like that of balloon and radar reflector material. But no, DR still insists it was all part of a grand cover-up orchestrated by the Pentagon, a cover-up which, officially at least, lasts to this day.

I asked him to produce some documentation dating from summer '47 indicating that an ET craft crashed on Brazel's ranch. All he can produce is a statement from the Pentagon stating that the flying discs were definitely not "space ships".

But remember: DR is also the guy who insists General Twining's memo may mean the exact opposite of what it says. So perhaps the Pentagon 'statement' also means the exact opposite of what it says.

Perhaps this debate is getting stale, very stale. Why are we not discussing meteorites anyway?

David Rudiak said...

CDA babbled:
I wonder where this debate is leading. DR talks about Ramey saying the 'kite' or 'tinfoil box-kite' was 25 feet across. Not the balloon. Most of the press reports I have speak of a "balloon 25 feet in diameter", including the FBI teletype which says "approximately 20 feet in diameter". The word 'diameter' usually refers to a spherical object, not a box-kite. Maybe some of the press writers got confused and mixed up the size of the radar reflector with that of the balloon. Entirely possible.

BTW, math genius, “diameter” is just as often used for circles. Heard of them? As in “discs” or “saucers”? “Diameter” can also be used less formerly in English as a synonym for “across”, meaning the most widely separated parts of some figure, not necessarily circular.

The earlier stories have Ramey or Pentagon spokespeople saying the foil box-kite was 25 feet or 20-25 feet across if reconstructed. LATER, this got changed by Ramey’s intel officer Kirton, who briefed the FBI, and spoke to Reuters on the phone, to the balloon having a diameter of 20 feet. Kirton claimed he was quoting Ramey
So again, the inconsistent official story, also quite in stark contrast to the radar target allegedly found and on display, only 4 feet across.

EXAMPLES:
Washington Post, July 9
“They [Vandenberg and others in AAF Pentagon press room] got from Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey… a description of the object. It was ‘of very flimsy construction--almost like a box-kite’, made of wood and with a cover ‘like tinfoil’. . . Ramey said he hadn't actually seen it himself as yet. He went to take a look, and called back that it was about 25 feet in diameter.” [The size is referring to the flimsy “box-kite” made of wood and tinfoil]

Early AP story, morning July 9, Fort Worth dateline
“The material had been described as of flimsy construction about 25 feet in diameter, covered with tinfoil-like substance and built on a framework of light wood. It was badly battered.” [Again size obviously referring to the foil/wood part]

Early UP story, July 8, Washington dateline
“AAF spokesmen would say only that the "saucer" was a flimsily-constructed, kite-like object measuring about 25 feet in diameter and covered with a material resembling tinfoil. A telephonic report from Brig. Gen. Roger B. Ramey… said the purposed "saucer" was badly battered” [Story also later says, “AAF sources ruled out the possibility that it might have been an army weather-kite.”]

Early AP story, July 8, Roswell dateline
“Later the A.A.F. said that further information indicated that the object [meaning the recovered disc] would have had a diameter of about 20 to 25 feet if reconstructed.”

ABC News radio, 10 p.m., July 8
“In the meantime, General Ramey described the object as being of flimsy construction, almost like a box kite. He says that it was so battered that he was unable to determine whether it had a disk form, and he does not indicate its size. Ramey says that so far as can be determined, no one saw the object in the air, and he describes it as being made of some sort of tinfoil. Other army officials say that further information indicates that the object had a diameter of about 20 to 25 feet. [again, clearly size is the tinfoil object, but now attributed to “army officials” rather than Ramey]

Reuters, July 8 dateline
“In a telephone conversation with Army Air Force Headquarters in Washington he [Ramey] described the object as a ‘flimsy construction almost like a box.’ …Asked what the material seemed to be, Air Force officials in Washington described it as ‘apparently some sort of tin foil.’ It would have had a diameter of about 20 to 25 feet if reconstructed, the officials added.”

David Rudiak said...

(part 2)

Reuters, July 9 dateline
“Before Brigadier General Ramey's broadcast, Major Edwin Kirtan [sic], duty officer at Eighth Air Force headquarters at Fort Worth, quoted him as saying ‘it looks like a hexagonal object covered with tinfoil or other shining material suspended from a balloon of about twenty feet in diameter. It is possibly a weather balloon flown at the highest altitude but none of the army men at this base recognize it as an army type balloon.’” [Here is where the 20 foot size now gets attributed to the balloon, just as in the FBI telegram. The source is Kirton, though claiming to be quoting Ramey.]

So the vast majority of the press reports clearly attributed the 20-25 foot size to the foil and stick, flimsy, battered, box-kite object, source either Ramey or “other army officials”, “Air Force officials”, or “AAF spokesmen”.

Gilles Fernandez said...

I'm very fan of the zen attitude of Christopher and Lance, offering time to DR, like a kid, who believes in an balsa ET model.

And U2 using your time and resources to explain him, it is a dream and in his imagination.

Well, kid imagination is a gift. Keep it cool with him.

Good luck, friends ;)

cda said...

I am not going to try and count how many times the press reports refer to the box-kite having a 25 ft diameter or how many times they refer to the balloon having a 25 ft diameter. Such would be entirely pointless since nothing useful would be proved, even if we could accurately count each and every press report.

DR and his gang would still claim the story was part of a big cover-up of an ET craft, whilst myself, & Gilles, can safely maintain it was nothing of the sort.

I still want that all-important documentation, from summer '47, that an ET craft landed (or crashed) at the ranch. The documentation need not be official AF docs although it is obviously better if it is. We can then examine it. Where is it?

All I seem to get is evasion. Twining's memo says no physical evidence exists, yet DR tells us Twining could be kidding us. Other documents from 1948 (see Pflock) say the same, but again DR tells us that these are likely smokescreens for the real truth.

And so it goes on and on. Further debate is pointless, as I said before. If you are a determined conspiracist, so be it. But don't expect the scientific world to take you seriously, ever.

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

What "I" like, is how all of us are tacitaly (or not concerning Sceptics) speacking about balsa sticks, rubber, scotch tape, tin-foils, balloons, plastic, etc.

ET proponents are just abble to show minor discrepencies, concerning size, or dunno what. But well, it is handmanufactured things debating here !

As Christopher pointed, dont forget journalists are quoting Ramey, Marcel, Brazel, etc.

They taked notes and use it. Will not quote here a previous good explanation (inmyworld and inyourtong) Christopher made about how it works.

"Flying saucer" as form, and not how moove the objects, concerning K.A. Arnold "objects", is a good example imho of how journalists change what is presented as tale or testimony.

So, where is the extraterrestrial craft without none possible match with balloons + ML307, in this debate,

Each time we use the FIRST HAND witness's testimonies on how "appears" the materials, we have : sticks-like, balsa-like, laminated foils-like, strings-like, etc. balloons-like, but not.

Where is the intrused material which cant match with NYU stuffes, embellished ?

How you ET proponents guys, can imagine an extraterrestrial craft with such materials ?

David Rudiak said...

CDA continued confabulating:
Yes there was, and still is, documentation that substitute flights 3, 4 and 9 were launched.

Of course, no such documentation exists. Planned flights that were listed as "canceled" and never went up don't count. Thus no 3, 4, 9, or 2. Neither do small service flights to test equipment, or cutting loose already-inflated rubber balloons that cannot be reused. These are not "Mogul flights".

True Mogul flights were all attempted and flown constant-altitude flights, whether the constant-altitude objective succeeded or not. True Mogul flights are the ones actually labeled with numbers and documented in flight summaries along with other data about configuration, tracking, evaluation, and crash site, with schematic diagrams showing their configuration, and plots of their trajectories.

I asked him to produce some documentation dating from summer '47 indicating that an ET craft crashed on Brazel's ranch.

And I've asked him to produce something far more mundane and obtainable, namely actual official documentation that there ever was a Mogul 3, 4, or 9. Instead he keeps claiming it exists, but can never produce it, because it does not exist.

I've also asked him to produce an official period document that states a Mogul crashed or was recovered at the Foster Ranch. Again, he should have no problem since so much investigation took place back then and the USAF claimed in their report that Mogul people were informed of it. So where is the Mogul documents that one of their balloons crashed out there?

These should be a much easier task than finding a document of something that would still be highly classified, like H-bomb schematics. Mogul is no longer classified. So produce the Mogul documents you claim exist about these non-existent balloon flights or shut up about it.

Lance said...

Yes, yes, David and if we can't produce documentation that Easter Bunny is not real then you have proven his existence!

Some people cannot see how silly they are.

The funny thing is that the poor reasoning skills of Rudiak would be so obvious and painful in a face to face debate.

Here he hides behind voluminous puffery that takes so long to sort out that I think we have all realized that the effort is just not worth it.

Here in this one set of comments it has been shown that Rudiak does not even know how to properly (not to mention, honestly) cite the words of the person he is arguing with. When someone is at that rudimentary level, it is hard to know why he worth talking to at all.

From my perspective, Rudiak's only use is as a bad example.

Lance

Don Maor said...

CDA said:
"Example: 10 totally unconnected people (i.e. none ever heard of the others) tell you that it rained on a given day in the past".

OK with the indepent probabilities reasoning.

However, as I wrote before, I found a way of aplying an independent state (smartness/stupidity) calculation (of the sort Q=P^12).

However, very bad with your fruitpicking of an excessively naive example, namely, the remembering of a date of a past day that rained. Every person knows that remembering the exact day that rained (about two weeks ago for example) is a very difficult task. There is an abyss of diference between remembering that a relevant incident ocurred, e.g: a known person being jailed, and remembering a largely irrelevant incident such as a rain. There is also and abyss of difference between remembering that an incident ocurred or ocurred not, and remembering the exact day when it ocurred. Clearly, remembering a date is much more difficult. You give this specific example to unfairly amplify the principle “Most people are unreliable witnesses”, and then go on with your analysis.

The bad new here is that you are some kind of a “psychosociologist” ufologist, so it is unlikely that you ignored the fact that your “rain day example” was not clean.

CDA continued:
"There is no way you can separate out these interdependencies, any of which renders the calculations worthless".

To say that any calculations are worthless because there might be some dependence among witnesses is a proclamation of ignorance, and is an admission of the will to only use the “skeptic brain intuition”, which can not fail, of course. I have some serious doubts on the claim that the dependence renders any calculations worthless.


CDA continued:
"Twining's memo says no physical evidence exists, yet DR tells us Twining could be kidding us".

Strictly speaking, Twining’s Memo says only that there is not physical evidence in the shape of crashed exhibits. Technically, it does NOT say that there are NOT other shapes of physical evidence.

Strictly speaking, government people sometimes choose to not tell the truth.

Strictly speaking, Twining was NOT kidding “us”. The Memo was aimed to be read by military personnel, not by “us”.

Strictly speaking, it is strange that Twining was so eager to reject the specific case of the crashed recovered exhibits. Was he trying to specifically debunk the Roswell case?

CDA wrote:
"Other documents from 1948 (see Pflock) say the same"

¿Pflock in which year?
Please, can you share with us those texts verbatim or pdfs extracts? Not to say that I do not trust you.

DM

cda said...

To Don Maor:

The article by Karl Pflock was entitled FOR YOUR EYES ONLY and appeared in the FORTEAN TIMES, Sept 1998. (FT114). You may not have access to it so I shall give a few extracts of the 4-page article.

Pflock talks about USAF documents from 1947-55. First reference is to the Twining memo which we have discussed before. He then mentions a secret letter, which refers to a study, dated October 6, 1947 from Gen George C. McDonald to Gen L.C.Craigie. The study concludes ".....flying discs probably represent something real and tangible, even though physical evidence such as crash-recovered exhibits, is not available". Hence reusing Twining's words.

Colonel Howard McCoy on March 17, 1948 briefed the AF Scientific Advisory Board, saying to them: "We are running down every report. I can't even tell you how much we would give to have one of those crash in an area so that we could recover whatever they are". The remarks are in the proceedings of this meeting.

A few months later on Oct 7, 1948 McCoy asked the CIA for help in learning "whatever they are". In the secret memo he also wrote ".... To date no concrete evidence as to the exact identity of any of the reported objects has been received". He then goes into the possibility of the objects being of domestic origin.

McCoy wrote to General Cabell on Nov 8, 1948 saying "So far no physical evidence of the existence of the unidentified sightings has been obtained." He added later: "The possibility that the reported objects are vehicles from another planet has not been ignored. However, tangible evidence to support conclusions about such a possibility are completely lacking".

Major Dewey J. Fournet is also quoted (about the famous 'top secret' ESTIMATE OF THE SITUATION, of 1948). Fournet was one of the few that had actually read it. In 1992 he replied to a questioner about it: "It very explicitly mentioned that absolutely no artifacts had been recovered". Fournet became a firm believer and served with NICAP at one time.

There is plenty more from Pflock in the article, all negative as far as physical evidence is concerned. You may be able to track it down on the internet. FT114, September 1998.

cda said...

Lance:

You and I probably agree on David Rudiak. He does not seem to realise that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, whereas not- so-extraordinary claims do not require the same degree of evidence (although they still require SOME evidence).

The claim that an ET craft crashed on a ranch and the AF recovered it and has kept it secret ever since requires 'extraordinary evidence', of which none whatever has been produced.

The claim that a Mogul or other balloon plus radar reflector came down does NOT require the same degree of evidence. There is plenty of documentation that this did happen, or at least that it may very well have happened (not conclusive proof I admit).

Thus DR has failed the simple scientific test. If he doubts this, why cannot he prove his thesis to the satisfaction of the scientific world?
Why cannot Stan Friedman or Kevin either?
They all have an 'out'. It is all 'Top Secret' even after 6 decades! Thus the deadlock.

cda said...

To Don Maor:

Re the probabilities question, what is your reaction to the 12 'good unknowns' in the Battelle Institute report?

If you think I chose a bad example in the case of the rainy day, please address these 12 unknown cases. Recall that each of these 12 was considered to be the 'best of the bunch' or the best of all the unknowns. Assign a probability that each is a true unknown (very high, wouldn't you say?), multiply them together and get the prob that all are wrong and that at least one of them is a true unknown. Very high chance, yes?

Then look at USAF list of 'unknowns'. 6 are not there! What about the other 6? How would you revise the probability? Are the calculations of any value?

You are faced with a serious problem: either the initial probability value is wrong (for each of the 12) or: some are very wrong, some may be right, or: the unknowns are not independent, or ....?

You end up with calculations that are meaningless. If you disagree, then how would you address the problem?

Lance said...

Hi Christopher,

I think it goes beyond that for the writer in question. For instance, while I disagree with Kevin about Roswell, I would have every confidence that Kevin is arguing in good faith and that he would never make up evidence.

Not so with this other verbose personage.I have found that virtually every word uttered by him is, at the very least, twisted in some way. In some cases I have seen him simply make stuff up whole cloth.

He is very clever and devious how he does this usually but (as we have seen) he can be caught with some effort.

Such a person is not worth talking to in my estimation and should be exposed at every opportunity.

Believe me, if his kind shenanigans were used by a skeptic here, all of the saucer enthusiasts would be up in arms. It is a sad state of affairs that the buffs here let him further sink their credibility without comment.

And yet I have seen many of them lament the laughter that is the standard response to their field.

Optometrist, heal thyself?

Lance

Don Maor said...

CDA, Gilles, David and Kevin:
Regarding the paraphrase “Witnesses dependence renders any calculation worthless”, I have to put it in doubt. I have made such a calculation based on the Bayes Theorem.

Using the Bayes Theorem is not an easy task, and requires some definitions. Let’s begin:

Adam: The original, independent witness of an event.

Bob: The second hand witness, who remembers being told by his friend Adam about the event. Bob is the DEPENDENT witness here. Bob is the guy who, according to debunkers, maybe a naive guy, who will support Adam no matter what Adam tells him.

As Adam is the original witness of a mundane but very relevant event, e.g: related to the jailing of a parent of Adam, which is a mundane, but very relevant event. Therefore, we can consider him reliable.

i. e.:
Probability P(A)=0.8
A: Adam is right.

Probability P(An)=0.2
An: Adam is wrong.
“An” stands for “A negated”)

Probability P(B) = Probability of Bob supporting Adam. Value is to be calculated.

From the study vehemently cited by Gilles, he claims that people are excessively supportive of what others tell them wrong. That would mean that 75% of people will support a friend’s testimony, even when the testimony is wrong or dubious. In effect, it would mean that:

P(B/An) =0.75
Which is the probability of Bob supporting Adam, when Adam is wrong.

However, and this is important, normal people are always supportive, not only when a friend or known person tells them something wrong. Intuitively, they will be even a little more supportive to the stories that are consistent and sound. So we have to assign a higher than the 75% value, when Bob is told something veridical and consistent. Let’s say then:

P(B/A)=0.9
Which is the probability of Bob supporting Adam, when Adam is right.

Now, we can calculate the probability P(B), i.e. the probability of Bob supporting Adam, no matter whether Adam is wrong or right:

P(B) = P(B/A)*P(A)+P(B/An)*P(An) = 0.9*0.8 + 0.75*0.2
P(B) = 0.87

Now, we are ready to calculate de Bayesian Probability P(A/B), i.e. the probability of Adam being right, when naïve Bob is supporting him.

Bayes Theorem states that:
P(A/B) = P(B/A) * P(A) / P(B)
P(A/B) = 0.9 * 0.8 / 0.87
P(A/B) = 0.83 =83%

Conclusions: I have obtained that when the original witness (Adam) is a reasonably reliable witness, the second hand support of a naïve witness, boosts up the probabilities of Adam being right. In this example, the boost up is from 80% to 83% of confidence.
Putting other initial values gives basically the same tendencies.
For people interested in this calculation, I can send them the Excel sheet. In the sheet you can change initial values to see what happens.

It shows also that despite Gilles and CDA denials, dependent witnesses probabilities CAN be calculated, or at least estimated.

It shows also that it is better to have one independent witness plus a dependent witness, than to have only one independent witness.

It is probably a rough estimation, but may give some interesting clues about the role of dependent witnesses.

Don Maor said...

CDA said:
Then look at USAF list of 'unknowns'. 6 are not there! What about the other 6? How would you revise the probability? Are the calculations of any value? You are faced with a serious problem: either the initial probability value is wrong (for each of the 12) or: some are very wrong, some may be right, or: the unknowns are not independent, or ....?

Here CDA, again, I have to tell you that you are rejecting a rough calculation, which may give you some clues, only to replace it with your implicit magic brain formula.

Let’s calm your doubts about probability calculations. First: the very basic purpose of probabilities, is NOT to be exactly accurate, but to give some notion of what is happening or may happen. So don`t be so scared when probabilities are not so accurate.

Second, regarding your best cases “paradox”. Let’s assume that very good cases have 95% of being TRUFOS. Then the probability of NOT being a UFO is 5%.
Let’s do some math:
Consider the following list of best cases sets, and their studied probabilities of all cases being wrong:
0.05^15=3,05176E-20
0.05^14=6,10352E-19
0.05^13=1,2207E-17
0.05^12=2,44141E-16
0.05^11=4,88281E-15
0.05^10=9,76563E-14
0.05^9=1,95313E-12
0.05^8=3,90625E-11
0.05^7=7,8125E-10
0.05^6=1,5625E-08
0.05^5=3,125E-07
0.05^4=0,00000625
0.05^3=0,000125
0.05^2=0,0025
0.05^1=0,05

So these different results DO NOT tell you that the probability of TRUFOs existing is different in every set of best cases, and that ergo such calculations are worthless.

What these “different” results REALLY SHOW is that if your set of best cases has a number of best cases bigger than 3 cases (3, 4, 5, 6 or more) , then the probability of UFO’s really existing IS HUGE, because for sets with more than 3 cases the probability of all them being wrong is close to ZERO.

So if your personal set of best cases have 3 or more best cases, you should be acknowledging that UFO’s really exist! Ergo, there is not any blue book best cases paradox.

Regarding Pflock documents, I think that such documents rejecting the evidence of Roswell, do NOT prove anything about the Roswell crash validity. In that time, there had to be hundreds (if not thousands) of generals and colonels in the USA military forces, and is ABSURD to believe that all of them would be briefed on such a sensitive matter as an extraterrestrial craft. So Pflock documents do not prove anything, and to some extent, are likely to exist.

I maintain that the Twining’s Memo paragraph seems too specific and suspicius.

Conclusion: Not to be mean, but I find here some guys fond of the psychosociologistic (PS) ufology, who claim to be serious and close to the science, but they ignore that dependent cases probabilities may be handled with probability theorems, they run away from the use of a probabilistic aproach, and they ignore the very essense of the scope of the probability calculations (which is NOT to be perfectly accurate). I tend to agree with Rudiak when he says that PS is pseudoscience.

David Rudiak said...

Don Maor wrote:
From the study vehemently cited by Gilles, he claims that people are excessively supportive of what others tell them wrong. That would mean that 75% of people will support a friend’s testimony, even when the testimony is wrong or dubious. In effect, it would mean that:

P(B/An) =0.75
Which is the probability of Bob supporting Adam, when Adam is wrong.


Thanks for your insights Don. However, the studies cited by Gilles with his 75% figure are not saying that Adam is wrong. They say that if two first-hand witnesses (both strangers) to an event are allowed to discuss the event afterward, there is about a 75% chance (or 71% in another study) that one witness will incorporate some details of the event related by the other witness into their own narrative of the event, even though they could not have witnessed these details (because of the way the experiment was set up).

Thus the terms "witness contamination" or "witness conformity".

However, these studies have nothing to say about the witnesses actually being wrong in their memories, or that the details they may incorporate are wrong. Nor do they say that the witnesses are only imagining having witnessed the event (a true false memory).

But Gilles is falsely claiming exactly that when using the 75% number--that at least 75% the witnesses to Brazel's military detention and intimidation merely believe they are actually witnesses (but weren't) because they were ALLEGEDLY told about it, even though they state they were there when it happened, i.e. real first-hand witnesses.

Thus suppose Adam and Bob say they were two witnesses to a dramatic event like a car crash or a street robbery (for which there may be no physical evidence to prove that it even happened), something that tends to stick in your memory because it is so out of the ordinary and dramatic. (Just like a friend of yours being surrounded by a military escort or complaining bitterly about being illegally detained and mistreated by the military.)

Gilles is claiming you can TOTALLY dismiss anything Adam and Bob may have to say about it, also Charles, Dan, Evan, Fred, George, Henry, etc., because MAYBE they talked to each other, or MAYBE they all talked to the same police investigator, or MAYBE they read about it in the newspaper or saw it reported on TV. Every one of them must be wrong, allegedly because "witness contamination" supposedly proves it, and because Gilles personally doesn't want to believe any of their stories.

But all the "witness contamination" studies say is MAYBE they picked up some details that they didn't personally witness or note at the time, not that they were never witnesses as they said, or that they didn't remember anything on their own, or that their personal memories or alleged "contaminated" details are all inaccurate or imagined.

Gilles argument is not only a misrepresentation of the actual research, it is entirely self-serving to support his very obvious personal biases.

Gilles Fernandez said...

David,

If you are a non biased person telling the true, how you decide between witnesses claiming Brazel was escorted by MP's when coming to the interview and the others claiming he was escorted by Whitmore and/or sleeped the night before in Whitmore home (Pflock) ?

For you, testimony have a total evidence level, or at least are precious indicators. So, I invite you in this world of level of evidence you defend.

Then, you have not to prefer one version to another one for this episode in the story (with who was Brazel when coming to the interview), in a sens.

So my question is very simple :

What is the "thing" you use to decide the "escorted by MP's version" is better than the "escorted by Whitmore version" ? If, finaly, testimonies have a strong evidence level for you.

Same : How do you decide regarding testimonies (which have a strong level of evidence inyourworld) between Brazel in custody and Brazel rewarded to keep silence ?

How do you decide between 1947 newspapers testimonies (DRR and FWST historiographical proofs) between Brazel coming in Roswell the monday and some post-1978 testimonies claiming he came the sunday ?

In essence, you, as a great investigator, and me as a pseudo one, what is your no pseudo scientific method or criterions allowing you to decide where is the true between different testimonies claiming different versions ?

And this, with your "tacite" claim where finaly, testimony have a great and strong evidence level ?

**

As writed above by Christopher, a pre-requite for me, when I have investigated the case, is similar to Christopher's one :

The claim that an ET craft crashed on a ranch and the AF recovered it and has kept it secret ever since requires extraordinary evidence, or at least, more as ordinary one (like a collection of anecdotical testimonies).

No one have been received, excepting anecdotical collections of testimonies, some in contradiction inter-individualy or intra-individualy (embelishment by time).

The claim that a Mogul or other balloon plus radar reflector came down does not require the same level of evidence. And, we have many evidences of ordinary level which show, point, Balloons + ML307 can explain ordinary the case.

Gilles Fernandez said...

(Part 2)

In essence, if you place testimony in general at a strong evidence level, and if you have contradictory ones, you cant both choose and accept one version better to an another.

OR you are admitting testimony have no evidence value.

Yes, testimony are inconstestable evidence. So, the investigator is trapped whith such premisce.

Then, you must use another "tool" to decide what is the best explanation or what is the best picture, because we have contradictory testimonies to be short.

This another tool is finaly how to decide between an extraordinary claim and an ordinary one ?

I think it is exactly in what Christopher presented before about the degrees of proofs or evidence recquired between ordinary and extraordinary ones.

Roswell ET version didn't respect this epistemologicaly principle or first science test.

It is why Balloons + ML307 is currently the best candidat for any non biased person.

So after, you can propose pist, hypothesis to trie to understand why we have however testimonies who point to an extraordinary thing. I think human sciences offer the best answer or attempt to explain despite your rage and nervosity to demonstrate the inverse.

Now, as some asked politaly to you, despite your behavior, send mass mails to universities or to the scientific community in order they show and examine your personal opinion on Roswell matter, and all you have accumulated, if you are sure to be the scientific here and all of us sceptics writting here, the pseudo ones. What are you waiting for ?

Best Regards

cda said...

I bet Kevin never imagined his topic would lead so deeply into probability theory!

As far as Brazel's imprisonment goes, I maintain that the only people who can say with certainty that he was incarcerated at the base are those who were with him at the base. Thus anyone who merely saw him being 'escorted' round the town is not a true witness (since he or she witnessed something quite different). Anyone who heard the story directly from Brazel is likewise not a true witness, although he or she is a second-hand one. Anyone who got the story from Brazel's son is a third-hand witness. It follows that only certain military men are true witnesses, since civilians would not be present. Easley could be a true witness, but his testimony is not persuasive, far from it. If we are to trust those who got the story directly from Brazel, we have to question why Brazel, sworn to secrecy about the affair, would ever tell anyone about it, even his son. Yet he is alleged to have told at least two people of his imprisonment within a few weeks of it, thus arousing their suspicions. It is preposterous. Either he kept his mouth shut or he didn't. His son relates how he took most of what he knew "to the grave". Like so much with Roswell, we either get these tiresome 'deathbed confessions' or 'secrets taken to the grave'. Enough said.

To Don Maor:

You miss my point. You cannot assign a 95% probability that each 'good unknown' is a true unknown. You may think 95% is a good starting value (so did I), UNTIL you realise that another investigation (by the USAF) decided half these cases were identified. In which case the 95% reduces to zero for these six. One organisation (Battelle) said 0.95, the other (USAF) said zero. The other 6 cases cannot likewise have 0.95 assigned to them, since they are all tainted by the first 6. Some further 'investigation' might relegate these six to, say, only 0.25 or in fact any figure you like. You can choose almost ANY figure you like, since you have no longer any trust in the original figure of 0.95. Probability theory then becomes useless.

As for Pflock's article, he at least found these documents where certain high ranking officers said "no physical evidence". Your response is that these were only a few out of the thousands who were never briefed about Roswell. A better response would be for you to name even one person who WAS briefed about Roswell (with documentary evidence, please). Pflock located many that say "no physical exhibits". So it up to YOU to produce a memo saying exactly the opposite. I challenge you now to do so. Please do not use the excuse of 'Top Secret' and all that. It is 63 years now.

Don Maor said...

Hello David:

I understand your point. Many thanks for the clarification. I have to check the value (and meaning) of P(B/An).

As I now see it, the result of the study cited by Gilles is for a very specific kind of case, not likely to be applicable here, and is not as dramatic as Gilles claims. Indeed, this study does not prove the “75%” probabilities of Adam succesfully trying to convince his partner Bob, that Bob lived something that he ENTIRELY didn’t. It only proves that there is a 75% of probabilities that one of them, ‘Y’, can assimilate some little details from ‘X’, details which ‘Y’ could not have possibly seen. Translated to mundane reality, this is explainable by simple fact that ‘Y’ may fairly think that he just missed some details, and thus will reasonably believe the details, based on the previous certainity that both watched the same incident. In fact, I would dare to say that this 75% result does not even speak so bad about the 75% percent of ‘Y’ guys assimilating some details from ‘X’.

On my side, I admit, Bayes Theorem aplications have to be cautiously used. For example, I should dig deeper into what I did mean by “support”, when I said that “Bob supported Adam”, etc. I must dig deeper also in the values of P(B/A) and P(B/An), and their relationship, which I claim is intuitively P(B/A) > P(B/An), and assign them values according to some analysis or studies, etc.

Don Maor said...

cda said
You can choose almost ANY figure you like, since you have no longer any trust in the original figure of 0.95. Probability theory then becomes useless.

I disagree.
If you divide your big and complex problem into a group of smaller, simpler problems, and you assign a probability value to each simpler problem, you are less likely to delude yourself when assigning probability values to each one. It is because simpler problems are easier to visualice and handle, than more complex problems. The principle of “Divide and Conquer”.

In simpler/smaller problems, you can NOT choose any figure or probability value you like. You are more likely to be sincere with yourself.

You still should stay with your personal and sincere value of probability for every case. If it is 95%, fine, if you believe it is 85%, fine. 70%? Fine. But the big point is you have to be sincere with yourself.

But do note that a probabilistic aproach will give about the same results if your probability for every best case is now 80%, for example. Lets do some math again:

0,2^1= 0,2
0,2^2= 0,04
0,2^3= 0,008
0,2^4= 0,0016
0,2^5= 0,00032
0,2^6= 0,000064
0,2^7= 0,0000128

Do note that for number 5 and higher numbers, the global probability of being all wrong is again is very small. Ergo, if your set of best cases has 5 or more cases, then again, you have to reach the conclussion that true UFO’s exist. This shows about the same tendency than when we used 95%.

Gilles Fernandez said...

"Indeed, this study does not prove the “75%” probabilities of Adam succesfully trying to convince his partner Bob, that Bob lived something that he ENTIRELY didn’t."

Greetings Don Maor,

I have never claimed they lived something that ENTIRELY didn't, even if David's rethoric seems quoting me indirectly or in disguise claiming it.

Some witnesses based the tale they delivered probably on some Factual things, but details could be added by the processes evokated before.

I just hypothezed that some details are added. ie : Bob have really seen Brazel with MP's in Roswell, but it is embelished and is "coherent" with "source Y" saying he was in custody or under military pressure.

Jeane have really seen Brazel preoccupied, worried, troubled, a day in the past, so it is coherent what Jeane heard, readed about him under pressured by Military.

Peter have seen ML307 sticks, but "heard" they were impossible to cut or they cant be burned

Dunno if it is clearer. Now, I have not a time machine to capture what's happened realy. But taking into account the ET version doesn't convince me or others, this pist is meriting attention. Period

Regards,

PS : I could send you after hollidays, scans concerning Fortean Times n°114 if you are interrested and if I have your coordinates by some way.

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote
I just hypothezed that some details are added. ie : Bob have really seen Brazel with MP's in Roswell, but it is embelished and is "coherent" with "source Y" saying he was in custody or under military pressure.

I have seen several civilian police arrests. But I have never seen a civilian surrounded by soldiers being led around from place to place. I suspect nobody else has too. It is not legal in the United States for the U.S. military to become involved in civilian affairs except in extreme national emergency, and then only with approval of Congress.

What is there to "embellish" here? Why would the military provide an escort for a rancher, especially one who had just come to town saying he thought he found a flying saucer? I think the witnesses who saw this drew the obvious conclusion that Brazel was now under the control of the miltary. There wasn't something innocent going on here, like 3 or 4 Army guys suddenly befriending Brazel and taking him around to bars. If you can no longer do what you want, you are being coerced.

At least Gilles may be slightly backing off his previous stance that it was impossible for anyone to have seen Brazel being escorted by military, that it was nothing but "false memories". There are six known eyewitnesses, four friends and two reporters. The chance of six people all imagining the same thing that never happened is somewhere between zero and none, no matter how much you abuse the false memory literature.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Greetings David,

Back off ? Huuu...

I REPEAT then ^^ : I'm not surprised some people have seen Brazel with militaries. Christopher could probably explain the same "like" me.

Because, he have "cooperated" with them, to be short. I have never writted people INVENTED to see him with militaries.

"I" accept this as "factual" thing. And ?

I dunno how it must surprised us or you. However, it is fare away to be under military pressure, in custody, or dunno what.

That's the details I think which have been added by processes evokated above.

"Why would the military provide an escort for a rancher, especially one who had just come to town saying he thought he found a flying saucer?"

Hum, dunno : because oil and tires were expensive? Because he was. Because MP protected him. Because dunno what.

It is so important ?

In essence, militaries with Brazel sounds normal for me, before to "call" or "invoke" the military pressure, custody and the Vilains.

He was in a matter concerning military. To have seen him with militaries sounds logic for me.

One more time, I have NEVER claimed witnesses based the testimonies they did to NONE factual things, but I'm convinced there are embelishments.

I dont think I abuse the "false memory" litterature in my "claims".

The concern was "Brazel in custody" and not "Brazel seen with militaries", dear, which is very different inmyworld ;)

Regards,

Gilles F.

Gilles Fernandez said...

After the press release, due to the precipitation and probably a bad control by Blanchard (he gones, dear, out the place so it was so important for him !), to be short.

(I hope we will developpe the press realization, even if it have been already done..) (I have another hypothesis, to complete the first one, but latter),

I understand USAAF wanted to explain this press release for what it was in fact and REAL : Balloons + radar-targets in REAL, and the excitation to solve the FS problem explaining the release. Adding it the parameter Mogul goal was secret.


It is "why" this case seduce you, even if it must not be. That's all for me.

After, "USAAF" must explain this precipitated release. Sounds logic... No ?

Cause "FS" (CONTEXTUALIZED) matter was so important for press, and USAAF too, I'm not surprised USAAF devoted some resources and MPs to this (prosaïc) case.

Yeah, Brazel have been probably surrounded by some MPs. Maybe not (latter in this reply). And ?

Probably they "accompagned" him for the interview, maybe not (Pflock witnesses remembering Withmore with him or to have sleeped in Withmore home). Dunno.

Anyway nothing extraordinary here, in any case.

BTW you didn't presented us how you decide between this 2 versions of an episode, witnesses offer us, if testimony have a so hight value for you.

How you do for yourself to decide between the two, David ? When a same episode have2 different versions and "testimoned" you allow a big values ? Explain me please this paradoxe, you as not pseudo scientist ^^


In essence, I think to very factual and ordinary things or facts, it have been added extraordinary details, as it is in "retrospective falsification", and due to cognitive processings evokated before.

Where is my abuse about scientific litterature, dear ?

TY very much.

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote:
I REPEAT then ^^ : I'm not surprised some people have seen Brazel with militaries. Christopher could probably explain the same "like" me.

Because, he have "cooperated" with them, to be short. I have never writted people INVENTED to see him with militaries.

"I" accept this as "factual" thing. And ?


Well you now accept it as "factual" that people saw Brazel with the military. I suppose that is "progress" of a sort. Before I could have sworn you were saying that none of these stories was true, that these were literally all false memories implanted by people reading Roswell books, being manipulated by unscrupulous Roswell researchers, etc.

I dunno how it must surprised us or you. However, it is fare away to be under military pressure, in custody, or dunno what.

Maybe it is customary in Europe or other countries to see a military escort as "cooperation", such as the SS kicking in doors and dragging people out of their homes during WWII, then "escorting" the "cooperating" citizens to newspaper interviews.

In the U.S., it is decidedly not "normal". It is patently illegal, except in extreme circumstances, such as WWII, when Hawaii was under martial law (though technically the residents weren't full U.S. citizens), or Japanese-Americans being detained by the U.S. military in concentration camps (but later ruled by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional).

Brazel did not need any sort of military escort if he was truly cooperating with the military in clearing up some innocent misunderstanding ("cooperating", meaning as in of his own volition). They could request that he go down to the newspaper and speak to the reporters. But sending an escort with him clearly signaled that he had no choice, at last to people without blinders on. They wanted to make sure he did it. Then they led him away from the RDR and put him in a car, according to two friends who saw this happen. That again does not sound like a "Thank you" for "cooperating" in clearing up a misunderstanding.

But of course, the testimony of likely coercion doesn't end there. We have reporter Frank Joyce's testimony that Brazel admitted directly to him (probably right after his RDR interview) that the military had forced him to change his story. There are friends and family like Marian Strickland, Loretta Proctor, and Bill Brazel saying that Brazel complained bitterly to them about being held at the base and abused by the military. (Bill Brazel also stated he called the based to find out what had happened to his father, and they admitted they had him there). And then there is Provost Marshal Easley who told Kevin that they did indeed hold Brazel at the base under armed guard.

This is a very strange form of "cooperation". Maybe "cooperation" is defined differently in France.

cda said...

DR wrote:

"The chance of six people all imagining the same thing that never happened is somewhere between zero and none, no matter how much you abuse the false memory literature."

Reading this, my mind went back exactly 20 years to an event which happened in the UK. I quote from a now defunct zine "UFO BRIGANTIA", May 1990. The editor Andy Roberts talks about whether abductions are real or not. He then relates as follows:

"...You could see it coming the day it happened. As the prisoners teemed out of jail they told stories. People from separate wings of the jail, who didn't know each other, who had no reason to lie or fabricate stories, were telling some very strange tales indeed, tales which matched each other exactly. People had been killed (up to 30), people had been tortured, thrown over balconies, impaled, castrated, etc. Several inmates appeared on TV in a highly emotional state giving lurid accounts of what they had seen, many signed affidavits - many inmates even reported seeing and taking part in elaborate kangaroo courts ending in the luckless prisoner being hurled from a balcony. The police and even some of the up-market papers were saying at first: 'So many people are reporting the same type of incidents that there must be some truth in it'"

But there was no truth in it, as became apparent as the weeks passed and the tales died out after the siege of Strangeways prison in Manchester of March/April 1990 ended and calm was restored. No impalations, castrations or deaths occurred. It was all imagined by the seemingly frightened prisoners as they were released one by one, and related their 'story'.

I offer no insights as to how this imaginary scenario got into the prisoners' minds. I do know it quickly died out. But the episode still happened.

Presumably DR and others would claim it was all true and covered up by the prison authorities.

[I recall the affair myself, the only part new to me being the affidavits].

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

It is difficult to be "zen" by your conspiracy rethoric, dear ;)

You against the vilains ! What a super moovies ^^ Ennio Morricone music please ^^

"But sending an escort with him clearly signaled that he had no choice"

Yep, for conspirationist world and in your speculations only, maybe.

Have Brazel interacted with militaries (509th RAAFB) or not ?

Brazel seeing OR NOT with militaries when coming in the interview must suprise readers ! Hooo.

***

BTW AGAIN : what is your non psuedo scientific method to choose between witnesses claimed "Brazel "escorted by MP's" and witnesses testimoning "Brazel "escorted"
by Withmore and/or to have sleeped in Withmore home".

Reply please.

How do you select "the bad and the good", between two witness's sources, if in your world testimony (ies) are non falsifiable sources.

Do the same probabilities (fallacious) game to Pflock's sample...

How do you explain the 2 different versions ? Are testimonies EVIDENCES as you explain us ?

I wait...

TY very much (again)

Lance said...

I tried to mention my own research (really more of a hobby) into the Otis T. Carr case and how that related to this issue.

I found a LOT of people related to the Carr case over time and talked to many of them extensively. I would be quite surprised if anyone has done more work on this case than me.

I note with amusement that the extensive Wikipedia entry on Carr is almost entirely wrong.

Anyway, I found about 10 people who were at the Carr warehouse, where he stored his small saucer in April of 1959. Of those 10, about half said that there was an attempt made to start the mechanism which resulted in a failure of the device (a failure that was sometimes described as quite loud and spectacular) . The other half said that no such attempt was made.

It stands to reason that one of these groups is right and one is wrong. But how do you tell which group is which? I can't find clear supporting evidence for either side.

Now, this is (if you accept that I am not lying about my results) fairly clear evidence that 5 people CAN imagine something that never happened (and it is testimony from long past events just like with Roswell).

Note above that I tried to use zero rhetoric.

Lance

Gilles Fernandez said...

Lance,

If you use the probabilities game (proposed here by David) inside the first or the second sample (personal choice), you have experienced,

The result will show (in disguise) that first group cant have invented (as for the second) what it is testimoned, so it is true memories.

So, I think; it is why the probability's game proposed by D.R. is fallacious.

***

So my question : How D.R. choose between "2 groups" testimoning 2 different versions for a same episode in Roswell saga TESTIMONED (Brazel escorted with MPs and Brazel seen with withmore and having passed the night in W home, when coming to the interview).

What is the method ?

Same for Brazel coming in Roswell the sunday (ET chronology version) or the monday (newpapers). If testimony are not falsifiable and objects of "suspicion".

cda said...

Gilles:

You are right about Brazel coming into town on Monday (not Sunday). The two primary press reports, i.e. those who got the information directly from the first-hand witnesses, both say it was Monday.

The slight (but only slight) problem is that SOME of the rushed teletypes that went around on the afternoon of July 8 suggest it was Sunday. The wire services & newspapers were racing about to get a quick 'story'.

The reason both DR and Kevin insist it was Sunday is to fit it into their proposed timetable of events. Having it on Monday would destroy that timetable and part of the Roswell 'saga'.

But, as you say, the two primary newspapers do agree it was Monday.

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote:
So my question : How D.R. choose between "2 groups" testimoning 2 different versions for a same episode in Roswell saga TESTIMONED (Brazel escorted with MPs and Brazel seen with withmore and having passed the night in W home, when coming to the interview). What is the method?

The method is mass of testimony, ~12 witnesses, at least 10 eyewitnesses, to Brazel being in the hands of the military, being forced to change his story, being held at the base for days, and/or complaining bitterly about being thrown in "jail" and mistreated by the military.

There is only one eyewitness to Brazel being at the Whitmore home, Walt Whitmore Jr., and he also stated that his father recorded an interview with Brazel that never aired because of threats to the radio station that came from Washington that they would immediately lose their broadcasting license. Whitmore Jr. also stated that his father turned Brazel over to the military (though it was unclear if he had direct knowledge of this--therefore probably 2nd-hand).

No one ever said Whitmore Sr. wasn't involved, as the RDR mentioned in passing. But you have to ask yourself the question why he would go through the trouble of perhaps driving out to the ranch to get Brazel and then never aired that exclusive interview he had with Brazel, instead allegedly allowing the RDR to "scoop" him on his own big story.

Same for Brazel coming in Roswell the sunday (ET chronology version) or the monday (newpapers). If testimony are not falsifiable and objects of "suspicion".

Well, of course, it is not so simple, because we also have the UP quotes from Sheriff Wilcox on Tuesday July 8 that Brazel first came to town to report "the day before yesterday", or Sunday July 6. (Then Wilcox contradicted himself with AP, changing the story to Monday, or July 7. Wilcox similarly contradicted himself on when Brazel first made his find, and also admitted "working with those fellows at the base", a direct admission of witness "contamination" if I ever heard one.)

There are also contradictory accounts in some other newspapers, such as the object being in the hands of the Army for nearly two days when the press release went out, or that Brazel turned the object over to the military Monday MORNING, which is quite impossible if he first arrived in Roswell Monday morning to report.

Then we also have issues of timing, which would take some space to detail, such as how could Brazel drive to town "Monday", report to the Sheriff, the Sheriff reports to Marcel, who drives to Roswell to interview Brazel, drives back to the base to consult with Blanchard, Marcel rounds up Cavitt and equipment, goes back to Roswell to get Brazel, travels back to the debris field, picks up more debris and somehow determines it covered a "square mile" in the extremely limited time available, goes back with Brazel to his ranch-house to supposedly try to reassemble the object into a "kite", then Marcel drives back to Roswell, probably beginning near nightfall, and wakes up his family in the middle of the night? That is a very tight schedule, maybe impossible for one day.

We also have Marcel's later memory of arriving at the ranch late in the day (which makes a lot more sense given the timing) and having to spend the night before examining the debris field for an entire day (again makes more sense).

David Rudiak said...

(part 2)
There were Gen. Dubose’s statements of Ramey being away from the base when he got the first calls from Roswell, which was why he was handling the situation instead of Ramey, and when the first shipment of debris arrived from Roswell for transport to Washington by “colonel courier”. Dubose said the “colonel courier” was deputy base commander Col. Alvin Clark. When I checked regional newspapers, it turned out Ramey was indeed away from the base on July 6 attending an air show in his home town of Denton, Texas, as was the base commander Col. Hewitt Wheless. Again this is circumstantial evidence that Brazel first arrived on July 6.

Finally, we have the conundrum of why Brazel would first hear about the flying saucers in Corona on July 5, then be so excited that he would rush out bright and early Sunday morning to retrieve the bundles of debris 7 or 8 miles from his ranch house (Marcel’s quoted 1947 story in Fort Worth), yet then wait an entire day in his excitement over finding a flying saucer before going to report it (but also somehow failing to bring what he had rushed out to recover with him to show what he had).

Gilles Fernandez said...

Christopher,

I "know" how (concerning monday and sunday) it changes and "destroys" the myth, or the timeline for a "cover-up"... ^^

I'm very surprised too (like you) by this auto-proclamed choice of Roswell investigators telling us the true. Maybe one more indicators...

Ramey becomes then a superman and 120 MPs too ! (in Monday too, EXACTLY the same call to "supermen" is questionable, but well, Tim Printy have already demonstrated how it is a non-sens concerning MPs behavior in the myth).

Well maybe later too ? Hihi ^^

****

But, it is not my humble question (even it rejoins what I want to "proove" and you "denounce" too, I think).

My question is simple :

How David choose between testimonies about a same episode (with who was Brazel accompagnied when coming to the interview ?), when testimonies gived (at least) 2 versions :

1.with MPs,
2.with Whitmore.

What is the Rudiak's method to choose between two "contractictory" samples of witnesses, guiding him to choose which one is the wrong or right, if he is TACITALY accepting testimony as EVIDENCE.

If David can solve this paradoxe...

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

Sorry David,

I redacted my last reply in the time you posted your two ones (my english sucks and it takes time to post ^^).

Marcel and Brazel are first hands, and it is in newspapers. (Dont use the cover-up !)

One is in FW (Marcel) (FWST source), the other in Roswell (RDR source).

2 sources recolted by two different journalists + 2 different witnesses + in two different newspapers + in two different places, + in the time and day of an event.

===> Independant and concomitant sources inmyworld of historiographical sources.

Same scenario. With Monday as the day Brazel came in Roswell.

Brazel heard on FS the ID week end (week end of the first 3000 dollars rewards BTW).

Yeah, he was very motivated to go in Roswell the monday ! It is surprising you ?

Finaly, Schultz is abble to made more 850 miles in two days inyourworld. Maybe in one you claimed !

Dont be sudainly surprised Brazel is fast too and reacted for shorter distances, and for 3000 dollars ;)

David Rudiak said...

How David choose between testimonies about a same episode (with who was Brazel accompagnied when coming to the interview ?), when testimonies gived (at least) 2 versions :

1.with MPs,
2.with Whitmore.

What is the Rudiak's method to choose between two "contractictory" samples of witnesses, guiding him to choose which one is the wrong or right, if he is TACITALY accepting testimony as EVIDENCE.


First of all, I just detailed how I "chose". Did you read it?

Second, there is nothing necessarily contradictory about both Whitmore Sr. and military accompanying Brazel to the RDR. I just wrote that part of Whitmore Jr.'s story was his father handing Brazel over to the military after having finished his interview with him. Further, Whitmore Jr. and radio station co-owner Jud Roberts both said the recorded interview never aired because of threatening calls from Washington that they would lose their FCC broadcasting license.

If the military was concerned about Brazel, they would now be equally concerned about Whitmore Sr. knowing too much. I would suspect they would have pressured him as well, and part of what he may have done to appease them (along with not airing the interview to save his radio station) was accompany the military escort to the newspaper office.

As I vaguely remember, one of the newspaper people told one of the Roswell researchers (its printed somewhere but I forget at the moment--maybe Kevin remembers) that they could tell Brazel was in trouble with the authorities and didn't want to say anything that might get him (and maybe them) into further trouble. That might explain why they said nothing about the military bringing him to the RDR interview (though AP reporter Kellahin and editor McEvoy remembered exactly that).

The RDR did write a subdued but skeptical editorial about the Army's latest explanation in the same issue as Brazel's "balloon" interview, so they obviously did not buy it.

Also Jud Roberts spoke of how they wanted an "exclusive" and quickly did their interview with Brazel plus hiding him from the Army until the interview was done because the Army was out looking for him. So this again raises the issue of why they didn't ever air the interview. Rather Whitmore accompanied Brazel to the RDR and allowing them to do an exclusive instead. Why would he do that and give up his big story unless he had to?

Gilles Fernandez said...

David wrote : "Well, of course, it is not so simple, because we also have the UP quotes from Sheriff Wilcox on Tuesday July 8 that Brazel first came to town to report "the day before yesterday", or Sunday July 6."

David,

Yes, but sounds logic sincerly.

As already evokated, you make a BIG problem and a paranoid reaction (it is an illustration) because of rushed teletypes in the race of Newspapers.

That's prosaic, dear ! Wake up !

It is "normal" you find discrepencies.

Nothing to convince common sens persons to be suspicious or as THE BIG proofs of a big conspiration...

Nonono David,

I'm sorry for you, because I'm sure you defend your opinion cause convinced, but it have no sens.

The ET version needs an extraordinary or stronger evidence, or at least not such ones, you are delivering, versus ordinary claims and prosaic demonstration already done by skeptics.

David, skeptics aren't disinformant agents, Dear...

Same is for the DX54 "sometime in the week before", ignoring the name of the rancher, bad speeling Wilcox, etc :

PRESS RUSH.

After, we have the real protagonists meeted, interviewed, etc..

Marcel and Brazel are such ones...

One more time :

One is related in FW (Marcel) (FWST source), the other (Brazel) in Roswell (RDR source).

2 sources (witnesses) + 2 different journalists + in two different newspapers + in two different places, + in the same hours of an event.

Your "all was dicted by USAAF" is ad hoc, in fact to continue, cost to cost, to be consonant with the ET version.

Yeah, dissonant opinion are hard to admit...

In summerize, your thesis is not devoted to explain the case, or in a quest of the true, but to be conform, COST to COST, to the ET version.

Don Maor said...

Gilles said to David:
"Finaly, Schultz is abble to made more 850 miles in two days inyourworld. Maybe in one you claimed"

Well, it does not seem to be a very difficult trip.

Look ,in this web site, in spanish,

http://mochileros.org/blog/?p=35

Some traveling boys (usually called "mochileros" which means ‘backpack boys’), inform about a standard commercial bus trip from the town of Arica (Chile), to Santiago de Chile, in a total 26 hours.

The distanca between Arica and Santiago is about 2000 km, aproximately 1300 miles.

The bus stopped only to pick or leave people in 5 towns: Iquique, Antofagasta, Chañaral, Copiapó and La Serena.

Probably, 1 hour or less was lost in the town stops, and gas stations, etc.

In contrast, a trip of 850 miles in two days, asumming Schultz drove only 12 hours per day (+8 to sleep, and 4 to eat and restore), thus, driving a total of 12+12=24 hours.
does not seem to be a very fantastic trip, indeed, it seems to be significantly slower and relaxed than the trip made by the "mochileros".

Maybe in Gilles-world, where all the calculations are worthless, such a trip is impossible because he says so.

Gilles Fernandez said...

David wrote : "Rather Whitmore accompanied Brazel to the RDR and allowing them to do an exclusive instead. Why would he do that and give up his big story unless he had to?"

"According to Walter Haut, Walt Whitmore had "practically kidnapped" Mac Brazel" (Pflock).

1 more witness for your own calculations.

(You exposed us ONE)

Roswell Daily Record article :

"Brazel was brought here late yesterday be W. E. Whitmore".

I suppose journalist can be part of your sample ?

"Brazel spent at least TWO nights with the Whitmore’s."

Whitmore’s. Walt Jr (Karl Pflock)

"...having breakfast with him at least twice"

...Walt Whitmore had practically kidnapped him [Brazel]. Walt was an old, old time newspaperman. You never could quite tell whether everything he was saying was all the truth...I think the rumor was that Walt was moving him from place to place. This was a big...it’s a much more interesting story when you move a man from place to place...To my knowledge. I did not know he had been on base"

"Whitmore did his best to maneuver Brazel away from the rest of the press" (Pflock)" : Jason Kellahin.

***

Brazel being upset ? Of course ! That's factual thing + embelishment after.

Jason Kellahin :

"He was not happy about the attention he was getting and the people traipsing around the place".

Bessie :

"They made one hell of a hullabaloo out of nothing"

Carlsbad, N-M, Daily-Current Argus (1947):

"was amazed at the fuss made over his discovery"

F. Joyce first testimony (Friedman and Berlinner Book) :

"The next significant thing occurred in the evening. I got a call from Brazel. He said, "We haven’t got this story right." I invited him over to the station; he arrived not long after sunset. HE WAS ALONE, but I had the feeling that we were being watched."


***

So, how you choose between the samples, David ?

Gilles Fernandez said...

Dear Don Maor,

I admired how your contemporan example, becomes a demonstration and then so matching with 1947 US roads used by Schultz. Strict protocole you used. Then, awesome QED you did.

Clap clap clap, with calculations like this, we have then an ET craft with balsa sticks.

Congrats, you did it ;)

***

Beyong this, I think it is becoming a theatre comedy.

As usual, to trie the discussion with ET proponents is risked, cause, even if you ask them to provide EVIDENCE more than ordinary ones to proove their extraordinary affirmation, they have nothing more than less than ordinary reply to offer.

and "we" counter-ague with ordinary arguments.

At the end, in summerize, and as usual, we are always discussing, debating, about ordinary things...

But some ET proponents have then the illusion, that this inversion of the burden of proof is the evidence they are right.

It is awesome and pseudo-scientific !

Well, I'm assured it have no one chance to succeed in scientific concensus. Or what are they waiting for ?

I regret some are "attracted" and seduced by such rethoric without evidence. "I want to believe" !

As usual, the absence of proof and evidence pro ET can give about something extraordinary, becomes the evidence of their extraordinary claims, in disguise.

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