Friday, April 02, 2010

A Dispassionate Look at Roswell

I had posted an obituary of Charles Moore because he had a connection to the UFO field and the paranormal. I meant it only as a way to note his passing and not to be a commentary on his beliefs about the Roswell UFO crash or to generate a long discussion about it (which to this point has generated the most comments to any post). I thought that should come later.

Well, now is later.

Let me say that I am often astonished by the way skeptics and proponents can ignore evidence and argue right passed one another. Want an example or two?

The skeptics will quote from the July 9, 1947, article in the Roswell Daily Record in which Mack Brazel said he picked up a bundle of debris that was very flimsy. According to the story, which does not quote Brazel exactly, "When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches think. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds."

Following the lead of the late Phil Klass, the skeptics will often suggest this is pretty flimsy stuff to be part of an alien spacecraft.

The proponents of the extraterrestrial explanation will quote from the July 9, 1947, article in the Roswell Daily Record, pointing out that Mack Brazel said that he had previously found two weather observation balloons on the ranch but that what he found this time did not in any way resemble either of these.

The article ends with a direct quote. Brazel said, "I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon... But if I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard time getting me to say anything about it."

What we find in that one article is information that supports both sides of the argument. It was flimsy and probably a balloon, but the witness saying that he knew what the balloons looked like and this wasn’t one of them.

How do we reconcile the two points of view. The answer is obvious to me, but I’ll allow you to draw your own conclusions about this and move on.

Let’s take a look at the report Charles Moore wrote about Mogul Flight No. 4. He said, using the winds aloft data I supplied to him, Dr. Albert Crary’s diary that covered the events in New Mexico, and his memories, that he believed Flight No. 4 headed off to the northeast and he remembered it near Arabela, New Mexico, when they lost track of it. His calculations placed it within 17 miles of the Brazel (Foster) ranch, which to him proved that what had been discovered by Brazel and what fooled Major Jesse Marcel, was one of those balloon arrays.

David Rudiak has suggested, in rather strong language, that Moore’s calculations were in error and that the math might have been manipulated in such a way as to provide the outcome that Moore desired. Rudiak, along with Brad Sparks, worked the numbers and came to a different conclusion. They said that the projected Mogul flight didn’t come close to the Brazel ranch (though I must note that the 17 miles that Moore suggested doesn’t seem all that close).

The one factor that isn’t mentioned often is that the winds aloft data used to figure this out was gathered rather sporadically in 1947 and then only to 20,000 feet. Any deduction about the winds above that level, and the Mogul flights were designed to fly at much higher levels, would be speculative.

And another factor that is only rarely mentioned is that winds aloft data were not collected at Alamogordo, home to the New Mexico end of the Project Mogul. Winds aloft were deduced using data from Tucson, El Paso, Albuquerque and Roswell. While it might be possible to be fairly accurate using that data, it is also possible to be wildly in error, especially when complete data do not exist.

The one part of these arguments that continue to amaze me is that one side roundly criticizes the memories of Major Jesse Marcel, Sr. because his memories, as he related the tale to researchers, were decades old. These same people accept the memories of Charles Moore, whose memories were even older when he began to comment on the Roswell case, and were certainly tainted by that time with all the information that had been published and broadcast. This was quite clear in my discussions with him in Socorro.

Moore said that he remembered the balloon array disappearing near Arabela and that is accepted as accurate. He told me that he had been fascinated with the exotic place names... Arabela, Carazozo, Cap Rock, Tularosa, so he remembered these things. But remembering a balloon flight near Arabela is not the same as evidence that it did disappear somewhere around there, especially when there was a tracked flight that was part of the record that did make its way to Arabela.

What all this tells me is that there is evidence for both sides in the single article published by the Roswell Daily Record, but neither is willing to listen to what the other has to say. Everyone seems to be oblivious to the elements in the article that don’t fit into his or her point of view. Brazel’s description is of something flimsy, suggesting a balloon, yet he says that it was not a weather balloon. The story seems to suggest that everything was retrieved, yet they mention Marcel bringing back more of it.

Then we have Moore using records to extrapolate wind direction and speed above the levels for which data exist, and some accept it as the final evidence. They reject other information that simply falls outside their world view when some have raised legitimate questions...

And, I mustn’t forget that proponents reject Moore’s work that suggests the balloon array drifted toward the ranch. Instead they attack his character, which isn’t fair... and yes, I know that Phil Klass was famous for attaching the character of those with whom he disagreed, which, I believe proves my point here.

What we end up with are people unwilling to look at the evidence... regardless of that evidence. They select that portion that fits into their views of the case and ignore the other. They scream that they have the truth, but rarely have looked at the larger picture...

And in this case that picture happens to be all the contradictions in the July 9 article. How is it that both sides can cite the same source and not understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with that? How can one article support everyone while answering none of the questions?

Or how can one side review the various documents and not understand that they simply don’t hold the answers? How can two groups of people use the same set of data and come to such wildly different conclusions?... Okay, I know the answer but this is a rhetorical question.

Nothing positive will ever be accomplished until those on both sides realize that each has some evidence for their points of view. Nothing positive will be learned until both sides realize that the evidence is contradictory and there is an overall reason for that. We won’t know what happened until we look beyond our own near-sighted beliefs and expand our vision to the big picture.

257 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 257 of 257
David Rudiak said...

last part reply to Gilles:

What about the brittle, black paper ash-like material, what happens to the neoprene rubber balloons after exposure in the N.M. hot sun for 2 or 3 weeks (Moore’s demonstrations). Is that in the FW photos? Nope, just a seemingly, mostly intact and still pliable balloon (easily seen stretch marks and striations). That’s actual forensic evidence the balloon in the photos couldn’t have been from some early June Mogul or a balloon found by Brazel on “June 14”. Sorry… ~:(

Ramey’s SINGULAR balloon and radar target in the photos also does NOT match up with the many balloon, supposedly multi-target Moguls. In addition to the huge disagreement in the quantity of debris, debris fields described were much too large for the tiny quantity supposedly recovered and also varied in area by two orders of magnitude.

Yes, your “match” with “NYU balloons + ML307” is truly “perfect”. ~:)

So they acted legitimaly. They weren't stupid. But in 1978, some participated to build progressivaly a myth. Enjoy the myth !

Yes, after 1978, some participated to progressively create a myth: witnesses ALL suffering from “false memories” or “retrospective falsification” (except for THEIR witnesses), a “canceled”, non-existent balloon to explain the debris, the alleged huge balloon train that mysteriously left none of its hundreds of yards of rigging behind, the huge balloon train that instead left only tiny quantities of balloon garbage, the tiny quantities of balloon garbage that would invoke intense interest by a base commander and his two top intelligence officers and require an investigation, that this tiny quantity could rationally be scattered over a “square mile” and require two vehicles to transport back, that at least two of the officers apparently WERE “stupid”, thus couldn’t distinguish flimsy balloon garbage from the widely reported supersonic “flying saucers” (thus leading to the press release), supposed “proof” “flower tape” nobody can find in surviving photos of what was supposedly found or any other document or photo, etc., etc. Did I mention the crash dummies from the future to “explain” the reports of bodies?

Enjoy the myth Gilles! ~:)

cda said...

In response to Larry, no I am not 100% certain of anything connected with Roswell, nor am I returning to all Larry's probabilistic arguments, as nothing will be gained in our knowledge of what really happened.

In fact I am not even 100% certain that the sun will rise tomorrow.


To DR:

Re the 'silence' on the skeptics part on your questions, your points CAN be answered by anyone motivated to take the time but you will never accept such answers so why should anyone bother?

However I shall have a try at some, but not all, of them. We 'babbling and drooling idiots' must at least make the effort, as Gilles would agree.

Gilles Fernandez said...

"An important clue that Mogul is a modern myth is the fact that for decades after the Roswell event, no one so much as mentioned the name “Mogul”"

Dear Larry,

What do you mean ? Mogul never existed ? ^^

OR during decades, Mogul wasn't pronounced related to Roswell ? What a surprise.

If that, I'm not surprised Mogul and Roswell weren't associated in decades.. cause Roswell is a non event during decades too !

Mogul have been pronounced probably "first" in 1990 when Friedman meet Charles Moore. It seems CB Moore never read W Moore book before, or Roswell books, as probably many Mogul person still alive too at this period.

But, in the traditional proceessings to make selective choices, it have been decided by Friedman to not present this prosaic CB Moore testimony. Todd exhumed later Mogul, BEFORE USAF. Parallely, Pflock too (I remember Pflock is ET proponent, so I doubt he is part of the conspiracy !).

Despite Mogul wasn't the fact of USAF, some today are always accusating USAF to have invented Mogul hypothesis, despite it was Pflock & Todd who first have "exhumed" this prosaic very best candidat for the myth. But well, conspiration and patternity is sometimes linked : Mogul is an USAF cover-up !

Another piece to see how Roswell (ET) is a myth is the fact despite Marcel alive never spocke of alien bodies, by a strange coincidence, when bodies are introducing in the myth (around 1989), second hand witnesses revealed he saw the bodies ! But Marcel passed out in 1986. No problem, he will speack of bodies by second hands.

Same with Brazel : never introduced interacted with bodies before the introduction of bodies in the myth. When bodies introduced, by another coincidence, now he was discovering the debris with the little Proctor (already dead by the way), and they saw the bodies, etc.

No one mention before a new element (fraudulent) is introduced (bodies). Abracadabra ! : Brazel and MArcel are interacting with bodies by second hands witnesses.

In other words, when new "pieces" come, in a sort of second myth stade - bodies and craft - (despite how the fraud have been exposed - Dennis, Kaufmanm, Ragsdale, Anderson), the narrative proceedings were devoted to introduce first hand witnesses now interacting with bodies.

In other words, some are preffering second hand version than first hand version, and this despite first hands witnesses (Dennis, Kaufmanm, Ragsdale, Anderson) of bodies and craft are totaly fraudulent, or first hand witnesses of debris never have spocken of bodies themselves (Marcel for example).

Out of this little comments, I share Lance previous picture of course.

NYU stuffes were good candidat, and legitimaly, for Flying Saucers contextualized, exciting etc in the social 1947 ambiance. Period.

For few hours only, cause those few protagonists have had the answer few hours latter. 3 decades period !

Even if Larry seems to assume I have a fantasy prone personality (or Skeptics have), I think it is a total inversion of FPP semantic lol

Best Regards,

Gilles F.

Gilles Fernandez said...

David,

"the one that was “canceled” on account of clouds and never flew."

I think it is difficult to discusse sometimes with you. A sonobuoy cant levitate in my world (crary's diary june the 4th entry). It can in your world.

If you believe in "psyphil" levitation, why not. Sorry, I dont share (joke)

"No documented"

Service flights weren't documented one more time, they were the "jumped" number flights in the appendixe reporting "research" flights.

"Brazel was allegedly misquoted"

How do you think DXR54 is quoting Brazel (he is not mentionned) ? Who is quoting who here ? I dunno.

I dunno how the 509th press release was redacted exactly (probably dicted by phone ?).

I dunno what informations have the actors (Blanchard & Haut, Haut alone?). Dunno. You know ?

But reading the DXR54, seems "redactors" have not too much infos : no name of the rancher ie. Wilcox is bad spelled (Wilson). "A disk have landed" (burlesque !)."Sometime last week" is very vague, not a precision.

Several elements showing how this text have been based on non "accurated" dataes, I mean the lack of "precision" is evident. How this depeach is "laconic".

Anyway, Blanchard gone to hollidays and to organize the Air Force Day, demonstrating the (non) magnitude of this event for him. How do you explain ?

I suppose it is a super supra artifice too, part of the cover-up, decided by Army Heads ?

Best Regards.

Gilles F.

cda said...

Part 2

To DR:
The two primary press reports are the ones in the "Roswell Daily Record" July 9 and the "Fort Worth Star Telegram" July 9. (Complicated by there being 3 editions of the latter!) True, there are plenty of other press reports, and also the wires on July 8, but the above are the ones where the primary witnesses were present. The wires were essentially 'quickfire' messages while news was changing fast on July 8 and are subject to errors of date, time, description and so on.

The two reports above are generally consistent in dates.

RDR July 9:

June 14: initial discovery with son Vernon.
July 4: returns to site with wife, son & daughter, gathers it up.
July 5: goes to Corona, first hears of 'flying discs'.
July 7: comes into Roswell, then meets sherriff & Marcel, returns to ranch with Marcel and A.N.Other.
July 8: returns to town at unknown time, then late afternoon interview with Jason Kellahin and RDR.

FWST July 9 (morning ed.)

"3 weeks previously" -
initial discovery (i.e. mid-June)
July 5: visits Corona, etc.
July 6 (Sunday): digs up the remnants.
July 7 (Monday): goes into Roswell, etc.

So far the two accounts are consistent. However, the evening ed. of
FWST has the first discovery as "several days ago". A 2nd morning ed. has the discovery "3 weeks ago", with the July 6 & 7 events the same as the 1st edition.

"Roswell Morning Dispatch" July 9 has discovery "3 weeks previously", using the Ft.Worth dateline.

RDR July 9 (another report, using Ft.Worth AP dateline) gives discovery as "several days ago" but gets Corona visit correct.

This difference in the date of the discovery is due to editorial mistakes. Writers get hold of bits from earlier dispatches, mix them up and put out wrong dates and times, nothing more. Some writers probably confused it by putting in things from the wires of July 8. Lack of editorial control is the reason for the discrepancies. Everyone was out to be the 'first with the news'.

Since June 14 is the only instance of an exact date being given and this date is from the main witness (Brazel), that is good enough for me to say it is the correct date. Pflock agrees.

All the other dates tally (as far as they are given).

The most likely reason Brazel ignored the stuff for so long is that he did NOT initially think the debris merited attention. And that is the simple plain truth, whatever the ETHers may try to put over.

45 years later we hear that he saw and smelt those bodies. Yeah sure.

This is good place to emphasise that Brazel did NOT come into Roswell on Sunday July 6, as is proved by the two primary accounts above. It was Monday the 7th. Some writers have tried to forcefeed the July 6 date into their timeline of events, based on interviews done 30 - 40 years later, but the primary accounts above show that the correct date is Monday July 7.

Gilles Fernandez said...

I agree with cda about monday.

Another "argument" is that sunday is, in a sens, a "bad" day to come in town if you have something to "sell/buy". Many organizations are "closed" and it is a little risked to come a sunday where people are, normaly, at home, in family, etc.

I doubt if it was sunday, Marcell was in the base when called by Wilcox, for example. Was probably in family, at home, this independance day week end ?

Dunno if it is clear what I wanted to point.

As cda pointed, some change the events agenda because they are forced : due to the testimonies to have an "Exterrestrial" events compatible agenda. The agenda have several times changed in the different books I believe, in order to adjust the things to have compatibility with extraordinary claims.

The agenda MUST be compatible when new elements comes alimentating the myth.

Another strange thing, if I follow ET proponents, 1947 US sky was "invaded" by super ET crafts, with the technology that this implicates.

Intelligence abble to travell space and time. AND in numbers. No one ET craft, but several.

Despite the degre and magnitude of this technology, one (or 2?) have crashed ! Idiots ET !

Despite USAAF was abble in few HOURS to all recover, those ET's for several DAYS the craft have crashed, tried nothing as "recovery operation". Better, if we follow the myth, they dont care of "funerals" for bodies, as they have a "citizen" still alive if we follow the myth. They dont care too.

They are closed than us, visiting Hearth with "metal craft" and with habitated crafts, but they dont care for recovery technology, bodies and one of them still alive.

It was a gift they give to USAF, gift where are sitting from 63 years special persons in a supra secret hangar.

Definitly, I'm a person suffering very high fantasy prone personality !

Regards,

Gilles F.

cda said...

Part 3 (final)

I state here that Haut's press release is USELESS in respect of dates and descriptions.
He uses the word 'disc' four times yet the stuff was not disc-like at all. He says the object "landed sometime last week". It did no such thing, as NOBODY, even Brazel, saw it land. His 'facts' are a hotch-potch, gathered from Marcel (not Brazel), in a rush to get his press release out, and it goes to show how Blanchard simply did not exercise enough control over it. It was a rushed, premature attempt to show the world: 'look we did it, we have found a flying disc' that was responsible for this shambles.

Other discrepancies in the area of the debris field and the size and shape of the object are due to editorial 'rush jobs' to get the news out, nothing else. The 25-ft diameter for the radar reflector is confused with the balloon diameter, the 48-inches (or 50 inches) likewise. Writers are mixing up descriptions here and there. The area of the debris field? If I find some debris, then some more similar debris say 200 yards away, a careless reporter will write it as "the debris was spread over an area of 200 yards square" (or even as "200 square yards"!).
Thus very little can be gleaned from the differing areas quoted. Nor can we tell if all the stuff was recovered, or only a small portion of it, or in fact what percentage of it. Did the collectors cover the whole area or did they give up after a while? How dense was the debris? Were there large gaps or was it tightly packed? We simply don't know, and speculation is pointless.

As I said, it is all due to newspaper inaccuracies and rushed reporting & printing.

In the end readers have to sort the wheat from the chaff, and decide for themselves where the truth lies. I would always accept contemporaneous reports narrated by the primary witnesses to what is related, by memory alone, 30-40 years afterwards, but we do need reasonable consistency in the original reports too.

So I say: forget Haut's release. It is next to worthless. It is a hotch-potch, nothing else. Try your best to make out some consistency in the July 9 reports, and ignore a lot of (probably most of) the anecdotal testimony from 1979 onwards. And above all, drop the dotty conspiracy ideas. After all, I may be a drooling babbling CIA agent. So may Gilles!

Over 200 postings Kevin. World record?

Gilles Fernandez said...

Excellent replies cda, out my modesty.

Curiously, it is approximatively exactly what I have presented in my book about this "Haut release" chapter.

Your common sens, parcimony principle respect, your use of ordinary arguments before to invoke extraordinary ones (and not to do the inverse as several seems to prefer) to explain something are "precious".

"look we did it, we have found a flying disc' that was responsible for this shambles."

It is how I read the release too, absolutly not "we have an ET aircraft!" .

When I "take" Blanchard place and imagine he wanted to press release about an ET craft discovery, I think I have cancelled my hollidays or depeached my second commander to organize Air force Day and meet N-M Gouvernor.

But no, this guy prefered to go out the place where a discovery of an ET craft have been realized !

Sounds absurb !

Regards,

Gilles F.

Gilles Fernandez said...

David wrote : "(The only major significant difference between the two I'm aware of is Brazel Jr. said he saw a "gouge", Marcel said he didn't see anything to indicate an impact.)"

Maybe me, but I found no mention of gouge in "The Roswell Incident" by Brazel junior (1980).

The gouge mentionned by Brazel junior (as Tim Printy already pointed imho) appears in Kevin D Randle, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, I think (1994).

One more time, when new things are introduced (here a gouge by others), witnesse (here Brazel junior) "conforms" to this new introduction they never mentionned before.

Of course, "false memory", "retrospective falsification", "psychosocial contamination", are out the matter... ?

Regards,

Gilles F.

cda said...

A piece of evidence from Marcel in THE ROSWELL INCIDENT is the idea of an explosion in the sky before the object fell. This is interesting because there was no mention of any explosion in the '47 accounts (DR will soon correct me if I am wrong). Yet Marcel says early in the interview: "Whatever it was had to have exploded in the air above ground level". Why did it "have to explode"?

In the text just before this testimony is given, we read that Moore & Friedman talk about the Plains of San Augustin 'crash' that Friedman still swears was real (but no-one else does now). This causes me to wonder if Friedman told Marcel of the San Augustin crash and then put the idea in his head that SA UFO was the same as the Roswell UFO. Parts of the explosion fell on Brazel's ranch and the rest on the Plains of SA.

That is the way the narrative appears, and although we have no proof of this, I can easily see Marcel being a victim of suggestibility here.

See "The Roswell Incident", p.64 (UK edition).

An 'explosion' suggests a big solid craft of some sort.

David Rudiak said...

I wrote that Gilles dismissed the press release with “sometime last week” because Gilles thought:
"Brazel was allegedly misquoted"

So Gilles then asks:
How do you think DXR54 is quoting Brazel (he is not mentionned) ? Who is quoting who here ? I dunno.

"DXR54" is the surviving UP bulletin of the Roswell press release with "sometime last week" for the find date, with the next bulletin "FRR8", now quoting and adding information from Sheriff Wilcox.

Since we are dealing with the base press release in DXR54, the most logical source for “sometime last week” would be Marcel, the primary investigator, who interviewed Brazel both in Roswell and out in the field. One of my points is that the press release mentions the early July date of the event, but about 2 hours later down in Fort Worth, Marcel, acting under Ramey’s orders, is now putting out “3 weeks ago”. How could Marcel be so “mistaken” initially? What source of new information would make Marcel/Ramey “correct” “sometime last week” into “3 weeks ago”? (Sheriff Wilcox also put out the conflicting dates to UP and AP. Why was he also so confused?)

I would guess that Marcel conveyed the date information found in the press release to Col. Blanchard, when he briefed him after returning to Roswell, Blachard being the one who actually authorized and put out the press release through Haut. (Despite cda’s usual absolute certainty, neither Haut nor Marcel would have had the authority to put out such a release on their own. Both would have suffered dire consequences if they had for violating the chain of command.)

I dunno how the 509th press release was redacted exactly (probably dicted by phone ?).

There are three known versions of the press release that came out of Roswell: AP, UP, and the Roswell Daily Record. They are similar but not exactly the same:

http://roswellproof.com/RoswellSummary5.html

UPs version was put on the wire by Frank Joyce of radio station KGFL. He said the press release was hand-delivered by Haut, not over the phone. Joyce was the UP "stringer" in Roswell. There was at least one more relevant bulletin that preceded this, since DXR54 starts off "More flying disc" and references DXR53, which didn't survive.

(Gilles, can you at least admit that you were wrong that nobody thought Roswell significant enough to save any documentation of it? Clearly Joyce did, as he managed to save some of the original telexes—an hour’s worth—and kept them all his life.)

According to Pflock, APs version was phoned into Albuquerque by George Walsh of radio KSWS and dictated to AP reporter Jason Kellahin (who later covered the Brazel interview that evening). Kellahin claimed he took it down word for word, yet there is clearly at least one mistake. (the disc was "loaned" instead of "flown") There are also another anomalies, such as Marcel being mentioned by name, whereas UP mentioned only a “major” being involved and the UP bulletins don’t mention “Marcel” for nearly another hour.

The RDR version appears to be an editorial rewrite for newspaper consumption of whatever was given to them by Haut. (The Roswell Morning Dispatch also was hand-delivered a copy by Haut, but never published anything about it, since by the next morning the story had changed to weather balloon, which they dutifully reported.)

http://roswellproof.com/RoswellSummary5.html

I asked Walter Haut about this and he said he didn't know why there were any differences. He didn't think they received different press releases. That would not have been standard procedure.

In any case, despite some differences in text and circumstances of getting the story out over the wire, BOTH AP and UP used "sometime last week" in describing when the disc came down on the ranch. That can't be coincidence or a misquote. The RDR story that afternoon said nothing about the time of the event.

KRandle said...

CDA -

This is, by far, the most comments appended to one of the posts on this blog...

Lance -

You help prove my point. You mention that Marcel said that he was in the pictures with the real debris. This was quoted by Bill Moore in his book, which I would reject simply because I can know that Moore alters quotes to bring them into line with the evolving nature of the case... Take for example, Moore's discussion of the number of pictures taken in Ramey's office. He changes his quotes as the number grows.

However, Marcel makes the same claim in the Stan Friedman film, so we hear Marcel say it... This would be a dispassionite point. I bring it up in case you didn't know. I'm not debating the issue but attempting to discuss it.

But, Johnny Mann, a reporter for WWL-TV in New Orleans said that he took Marcel to Roswell, they walked the desert, and Mann showed Marcel the pictures in The Roswell Incident and said, "This looks like a balloon."

Marcel said, "That's not the stuff I found in Roswell..."

Let the spin begin.

Gilles -

Although I see nothing in The Roswell Incident about a gouge, there is a reference to Charles Moore that is suggestive of disturbance in the desert when Moore is saying that what was found was not one of their balloons.

Wait... Charles Moore said it wasn't one of their balloons... let the spin begin, again.

When I interviewed Brazel, in person in 1989, he told me of the gouge then and said that it had taken two or three years to grass back over... There had been discussion about the gouge prior to this but I asked no question to bring it up. He volunteered it.

And, if you are going to throw out false memory, etc. at every opportunity, then I reserve the right to point out that it was long after the fact that Charles Moore came up with the Flight. No. 4 disappearing from their tracking (whatever that tracking might have been) near Arabela. This is a false memory and we can reject it without another thought.

All -

A dispassionate discussion does not mean that we are not passionate about our points of view, it means that we look at all the evidence without bias. In this discussion, I have seen plenty of bias and I know that my own comes through. But really, we go over the same stuff again and again. The bias is evident. Each time I point out something from witness testimony, I hear false memory. Hey, I've read Loftus, et. al. I get it, but not every memory is implanted, not every memory is false, and sometimes people remember things they had long forgotten.

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

Part 2.

"Normaly", when you recall an event, what is the more sensational comes first, to be short, not AFTER. Of course, later, you will probably remember some (not important) details, etc.

But, examining closely several testimonies in this affair, it is the exact inverse : People remembers sudently, not details, but Sensationnal things. Sorry it makes me sceptic, dubitative one.

You have well seen it with Ragsdale, Anderson, Kaufmann and probably Dennis. People embellished step by step the story. The introduction of the little Proctor is another example. The sudain remembering of Joyce that Brazel told him by phone what he told another. They are many.

So, one more time, sorry to be part of the sceptics and dubitative persons whom see Roswell as a progressive construction of a myth.

If I have seen the opposite, I have been the first happy and enjoyed to see the probability of an event this magnitude. That's not the case, and I regret, too much things calling the common sens.

Best Regards,

Gilles F.

cda said...

Gilles:
There is no need to be sorry about being a skeptic. I am not sorry. For people like us there is always the possibility that we shall eventually be proved wrong, i.e. if and when the hardware, bodies or verified documentation turns up. This may happen at any time. I am confident enough to predict it will never happen.

With the ETHers they know they can never be proved wrong. Science may be united against them, but in the end the ET theory can never really be disproved.

What I am saying is that we, the skeptics, are more at risk of being disproved than are the ETHers. For this reason I see no reason why we should apologise to the ET believers.

People like you, Lance and me are permanently 'at risk'. A very slight risk, but still a risk!

Gilles Fernandez said...

Part 1 (sorry, I forgoted to copy past a paragraph in the worpad file I prepared the answer) and impossible to edit.

Kevin,

I think we have already discussed Johnny Mann "episode" in another thread. We "agreed" it was presented to Marcel the "cutted" picture of Berlitz & Moore Book.

So, it is highly "possible" when you present "cutted" photo, mainly without the radar targets, that Marcel didn't recognize "his" stuffes.

"Yourself" said Mann said previously "This looks like a balloon." or "it is a balloon you have in hands" (dont remember the exact quote (if records exist).

In this sort of "interview" you use "suggestibility", consciously or not, and the answer have been drived, guided (not intentionnaly) in a sens.

The method to question people is not standardized to control those biais as "we" understand and use in criminology experimental studies or in psychology (cognitive method to avoid false memories, drived and guided answer).

Concerning C B Moore, I "well" know this polemic and argument, some pro ET use as a (pseudo) "uppercut" against Skeptics. I tried to present an "answer" in my humble book.

C B moore was presented the Book testimonies and claims. In other words, C B Moore was confronted to all extraordinary things which are affirmed in the Moore's book.

It seems "logic" when you are confronted to so much extraordinairy affirmations, you cant legitimaly claim the contrario of what CB Moore claimed. His balloons cant do it. Period.

I mean that it is quoting him in a particular context, where he is confronted to particulary extraordinary claims.

In a fictionnal scenario, if CB Moore later never interacted in Roswell investigations, he have becomed, due to this quote, a witness of Roswell (ET version) ! And no offense, it is maybe what you are suggesting or though ?

Concerning Brazel junior : dont make me wrong : I'm not claiming here that you influenced witness(es) volontary or consciously. One more time, all my modesty out, you have well demonstrated your integrity for each of us whom have followed several polemics with other investigators.

But what read Brazel junior ? which intereractions before ? I mean how many varaibles aren't controled here ? Several imho.

Such a detail concerning the grass is "sensationnal" and I find curious a sensational detail like this one, doesn't appeared in first "interview". It "smells" crucialy the embelishment.

I mean for long time here, that some use claims, quotes, etc, concerning interview, testimony, as if what is quoted or claimed comes of a sort of "fixed memory". I mean as if what is recorded in memory is the initial stimulus they are recalling. A sort of Polaroid, instant recall of a real stimulus.

No, memory works in interaction with several parameters, in which, for example you include cultural things, what you have read, what others persons said about the event in question. Even if never you "seen" it, some details, etc, it is tranformed as "real" elements of your memories. You take it true and yours, but that's not yours.

Memory give the impression to investigators to product a "polaroid", and fixed picture, where what is recalled is the initial stimulus and real stimulus.

No, memory and memories comes from a "cinematic", integrating interactions with ambiant culture, interactions with others, suggestibility, imagination, shared opinions, what the interviewer desires, etc...

Many elements in this complex interaction you "mixt" with the initial stimulus : and at the end, your cognitive representation of an event integrates in your memory, elements which aren't yours, in fact.

Gilles Fernandez said...

@ cda

"There is no need to be sorry about being a skeptic. I am not sorry.For people like us there is always the possibility that we shall eventually be proved wrong, i.e. if and when the hardware, bodies or verified documentation turns up."

For sure : It seems only that we have not the same level of evidence means. I wait the hardware too, but there is not, and imho, as you pointed, there will not.

If I feel "sorry", it is because pro ET seems to see "skeptics" as debunkers, aka we want to destroy the ETH, at all cost. Absolutly not the goal.

For example, I remember our discussion about the "a giant thermos jug" mention in the affair (UFO Crash at Roswell, p. 103-l04.). "Good candidat for a sonobuoy, it isn't ?

However, I remember you writed that you believe it have nothing to do with Roswell, no link. You have "prooven" by this, that you are not a "debunker", but investigate, question yourself SINCERLY, and not drived by bad sentiments. That's cool and I realy appreciated (and appreciate !) your attitude (all modesty without, I'm no one to "judge" you, just my feelings).

For the risks, probably. But at least, we aren't inversing the burden of proofs. When something extraordinary is claimed, It is not for us to make the demonstration.

We are however in "right" to point how the demonstration is not convincing cause several points already presented. That's all, useless to insult each others, and again, that's cool to be abble to discusse : you have no idea how it is impossible to have a serious discussion here between pro and skeptics. Again clap clap for this.

Regards,

Gilles F.

cda said...

Kevin:

The skeptics have said what would cause them to change their stance on Roswell, i.e. the production of hardware, bodies or genuine official documents.

I would like to ask you (as an ET proponent) what would be needed to cause you to change your mind on the case? Kent Jeffrey did. Is there any chance of persuading you to do likewise?
Any chance whatever?

KRandle said...

CDA --

Of course there is a situation in which I would change my mind about Roswell. An event that covers all the facts logically... not just some of them, but all of them. Mogul fails to do so, for me (and no, let's not get into a big discussion about Mogul here) it is not the answer.

I believe that Kent Jeffrey changed his mind when he discovered that Frank Kaufmann had been lying all along... that is, when Kent became convinced of it. He also made an assumption that is not valid... that everyone at Roswell would have been in on the secret and many of those pilots he interviewed knew nothing about it. To him, that meant nothing happened.

But, in the world of military secrets, it doesn't work that way. Some people are in fully, some partly, and some not at all. There would have been no reason to bring all the pilots or other officers in on the secret. As Ben Franklin said, "Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead." The more who know, the greater the chance of compromise.

On the flip side, every member of Blanchard's staff that we were able to interview, with a single exception (and he provided Kent with a letter about that) said that this was something other worldly.

Bottom line is that I need to see something that covers all the facts and evidence... and we looked at everything early on. I even have information about Navy balloon flights and Mogul developed before that became the darling of the Skeptical world. Explain the facts rationally and logically, and I'm on board.

Hello Stranger said...

Cool blog. =]



www.mandirenfroe.com

KRandle said...

Gilles -

A minor point, if you will... Anderson, Ragsdale and Kaufmann did not have flase memories. They were lying. They were attempting to bring the spotlight to them as a motivation... not to mention that some of them were paid to appear on TV programs.

A second point... How is it that every interview that doesn't lead to your conclusion is the result of false memory or manipulation by the interviewer? You reject the idea that Charles Moore said that it wasn't a Mogul balloon because the interviewer led him astray. Maybe he changed his mind about that when he realized he could get a little payback for the Roswell Army officers refusing to help track his balloons. Maybe his later testimony was influenced by that...

cda said...

Kevin:
On a totally different subject.
What time zone is this blog based on? PST? And is it now on PDST? Just to aid me in my 8-hour time gap!

Gilles Fernandez said...

Kevin,

I think each have external motivation parameters too, of course. Including "revenge", "I dont like him, so you will see", etc. Oki doki, I admit it, that's human !

For example, I heard how Bob Todd was "virulent", have bad words in privated, letters, etc. Now, out his personality, I "judge" his work, text productions independantly how the "hominem" is. Arguments only count.

I trie to make the effort to see the field of the work(s), and to not be influenced by the "form" of the investigator. As "skeptic", it is sometimes hard, when you have discovered some aspects concerning several investigators. But at least, I "know" this possible bias and do my best to fall in the whole, well finaly, it is not a "study" you are part of, but a challenge against others. Bad thing if this for some, very bad...

Concerning your second point. Excellent question I have several asked myself facing the mirror. Are you biaised too, Gilles ? etc.. Probably, it is impossible to not be "human", but my "Masters" have helped me in all my cursus to do my best to be not influenced (Dont get me wrong, I'm biased like you are ,and all, but as you probably (ast it transpire when I read you), I face myself this possibility. I think it is a precious allied ;)

So I tried an "historiographical" work and focalized on concomitant infos in time and space of the event which interest us.

For your precise point on CB Moore, I mean Mogul is not a CB Moore personal invention.

It existed, by genuine documents. (For example,and among others things),I compared his own book table and testimonies of flights versus USAF appendixes + Crary diary, to trie modestly to understand the discrepencies, because human memory, well...

I tried to have the "big" picture when crossing the sources. Same with other documents. No easy cause in not the good country to do it and not the good tong ^^

How many times I whished to access US organizations, meet people etc to have several info (including to meet "encyclopedic" David Rudiak about sources !).

But in this personal immersion, well, you have understood what is "my" big picture.

I hope to have "clearly" replied to some your questions and one more time, great honor to receive a little attention.

Very best Regards,

PS : (wanted to reply some points about Anderson and co, and why despite this there is a BIG problem only, but later cause family meeting tonight)

Gilles F.

David Rudiak said...

I think we have already discussed Johnny Mann "episode" in another thread. We "agreed" it was presented to Marcel the "cutted" picture of Berlitz & Moore Book.

So, it is highly "possible" when you present "cutted" photo, mainly without the radar targets, that Marcel didn't recognize "his" stuffes.


Gilles, Marcel was never shown any photos initially, cut or uncut. Marcel in his Linda Corley interview said he never met Berlitz or Moore since they interviewed him only on the phone.

When he WAS shown the actual photos of himself, such as by Mann or Corley, he always denied that was what he found in Roswell and brought to Fort Worth, that the photos were phony or staged for the benefit of the press. Real debris was still in the office, but covered up and not visible to the photographers.

Kevin has indicated that Marcel at some point also indicated that photos were also taken in Roswell. (I have never seen this in a book, so I don't know when it was he said it. Perhaps Kevin can clear this up.)

This would indeed be SOP for the military, especially if they were so convinced in Roswell that they had a real flying disc, so much so that a press release was issued by Col. Blanchard. Marcel Jr. has certainly verified time and again his father thought that, again so convinced that he woke up his family in the middle of the night to shown them some of the debris.

The point is, if you are going to argue witnesses have memory problems (which nobody disputes, just the sweeping nature of memory problems that the skeptics always argue, except for THEIR witnesses, who always have perfect memories), why didn't Marcel maybe confuse photos taken in Roswell with those in Fort Worth 30 years later? Or maybe miltitary photos were also taken in Fort Worth with other debris, with Ramey all duded up in his dress uniform?

I will now be attacked for making things up, even though Gilles and cda have just done the same sort of theorizing to a far greater degree in trying to get rid of highly conflicting testimony that appeared in the newspapers back in 1947.

The "sometime last week" of the press release for the wreck and discovery become a "misquote" of Brazel. Oh really? Debris of Ramey's tiny balloon/target was not really scattered over Brazel's 200 yards or Marcel's square mile. More "misquotes" or "misunderstandings" by the reporters apparently. So was Ramey's quoted foil box kite being 25 feet across if reconstructed. So was Kenneth Arnold's multitude of saucer or disc or pie-plate descriptions. Gilles assures us that Arnold never saw anything resembling a saucer or disc, just ignore all the quotes to the contrary, even though Arnold drew or wrote or spoke in a surviving recording of seeing exactly that.

But Marcel saying he was photographed with the real debris? That you can take to the bank as "proof" that he recovered a weather balloon. It was just everything else he said that was a lie or "false memory". It is simply not possible that Marcel was misunderstood or confused two very similar photo sessions 30 years later. Also ignore that when shown the actual FW photos, he always denied that to be the real debris.

Let us also not forget that another eyewitness, Gen. Dubose, on mulitple occasions corroborated Marcel's account of cover-up in Fort Worth (this goes clear back to the "Roswell Incident" book), that the balloon was a cover story to get rid of the press.

David Rudiak said...

I would like to address Gilles’ GROSSLY overstated “false memory” theory to try to explain away testimony he doesn’t like, such as the multitude of witnesses to Brazel being detained and coerced by the military, or the near exact match in quoted debris and other descriptions between initial primary witnesses Marcel and Brazel Jr.

According to Gilles, every single one of these are “false memories” implanted in the brains of the witnesses by evil saucer-rabid researchers. He then cites some papers in the false memory literature, such as “MAINSTREAM” scientist Elizabeth Loftus, that false memory is a proven quantity.

(Let us all now bow down to the “mainstream” scientist Loftus, and ignore sham mainstream scientists like Dr. John Mack, Dr. Allan Hynek, Dr. Peter Sturrock, Dr. James McDonald, Dr. Michio Kaku, Clyde Tombaugh, Dr. James Harder, Hermann Oberth, etc., etc. They are really fako scientists, because they all supported or support the notion that there might actually be something real and ET about UFOs, or at least something seriously worth investigating.)

Well, yes, you can show some false memories can SOMETIMES be induced in SOME people, but certainly not everybody. (As Lincoln famously said, “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”) It used to be called the “big lie” technique. Just keep repeating the same lie over and over again, and eventually some fraction of the population is going to believe it. It’s used all the time in such things as political propaganda and advertising.

Initially “false memory syndrome” was a term coined to criticize reported memories of horrific childhood sexual abuse (including alleged satanic rituals) recovered through the use of hypnosis and/or drugs by therapists (not just suggestion when wide-awake). This was causing terrific damage to families, people’s reputations were being ruined, etc.

Loftus did a classic experiment to demonstrate false memory induction, commonly called the “lost in the mall” experiment. Relatives of subjects were contacted and came up with several real experiences from the subjects’ CHILDHOODS. (Yet probably 90% of primary Roswell witnesses were adults when it happened, so we are already comparing apples and oranges to some extent.) Loftus then created a false situation, such as being “lost in the mall”, and inserted it into the list of real childhood events.

It turned out if you KEPT REPEATING the list of events, about 25% of the ADULT subjects would eventually become convinced that the false event had really happened. With even more suggestible CHILDREN, you might get the number up to 35% with REPEATED presentation of the false event. If you didn’t repeat, the percentage is much lower, only a few percent of subjects with one presentation.

Another thing found by Loftus, never mentioned by Gilles, is that when the subjects were then asked to provide DETAILS of each of the events (real and false), the details for the false event were much sparser than for the real events, not surprisingly.

So basically we have this. If you keep badgering people that something really happened, eventually about 1/4th of adults will come to accept it and about 1/3rd of children. The flip side is that 3/4th of the adults and even 2/3rds of the more-susceptible children NEVER accept it despite repeated attempts to convince them otherwise. In addition, for subjects that were eventually convinced of a phony event, the “recall” of the details of what happened were much poorer than for the real events.

David Rudiak said...

“Mainstream” scientist Loftus (and others who have done similar work) NEVER said EVERYBODY could be induced to have a false memory. Quite the contrary. She also NEVER said that ALL recovered memories were false memories or all old memories were false. (People, after all, did usually remember the real incidents.) No, she acknowledged that at least some recovered memories might be genuine (except later when it came to alien abduction research), but just wanted therapists to use extreme caution when it came to the sexual abuse accusations because of the devastating effects it could have on families.

But according to Gilles and other skeptics, literally EVERYBODY involved with Roswell who might tell a story the skeptics don’t like, like highly anomalous debris or Mack Brazel being kicked around by the military, MUST be suffering from “false memory” induction by underhanded researchers out to create a “myth”.

As Larry has tried to point out, the psychosocial crowd claim to be voicing scientific objections, but NEVER test their own hypotheses in a scientific way for validity, as can be done statistically in some cases.

If we use Loftus’ own 25% number for maximum induction of false memory in adults, and apply it as the AVERAGE value for false memory induction in the approximately dozen known witnesses to Brazel’s military detention, coercion, etc. (only one of these being a child at the time, but this barely affects the outcome), then the probability of ALL these witnesses being victims of “false memory induction” by unscrupulous or careless researchers is .25^12, or about 1 in 17 million, about the same odds as winning the lottery.

Even if we had only two witnesses, the odds of false memory explaining it are only .25*.25 or 6%. No science journal would consider this to be a valid hypothesis at such a low level of statistical significance.

To even get a dozen witnesses to be victims of the same false memory up to a 50/50 chance level, you would instead need to kick the average rate of false memory induction up to 95%, which is totally preposterous and not remotely supported by any sort of research.

This just supports our common sense notions that the more people telling the same or similar stories, the more likely they are to be true. One eyewitness to a murder might misidentify a suspect, but it is very unlikely a dozen will.

Gilles Fernandez said...

It is uncredible,

How it is possible to use 2s your time to post many false claims, (like DR did in last reply),

and how it recquires 3h to explaim how a false one, is totaly false.

It is exactly how the Roswell's books have a ""power" to readers. And how Skeptics are "trapped".

To inverse the burden of proofs, is exactly what in "on hair", in Roswell affair.

Good luck for us (skeptic camp).

Very best regards,

Gilles F.

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

BTW DR,

you made another big "epistemological" or statistical AWESOME error in your probability(-like) "example".

Always the same : Your "Roswell sample" (in order to serve dunno what), "x"aren't independant between the others. The are in interaction.

It seems you will never understand basic probalities, where the "x" must be independant, and not in interaction. A FAMOUS statistical bias.

It is tiring...

Frank Stalter said...

"Let us all now bow down to the “mainstream” scientist Loftus, and ignore sham mainstream scientists like Dr. John Mack, Dr. Allan Hynek, Dr. Peter Sturrock, Dr. James McDonald, Dr. Michio Kaku, Clyde Tombaugh, Dr. James Harder, Hermann Oberth, etc., etc. They are really fako scientists, because they all supported or support the notion that there might actually be something real and ET about UFOs, or at least something seriously worth investigating."

You forgot Nobel winner Linus Pauling . . . .

http://ufopartisan.blogspot.com/2009/10/linus-pauling-two-time-nobel-winners.html

cda said...

Re the problem of "if 12 people say a certain event happened (such as Brazel being held in custody for a week) they cannot all be wrong. Therefore at least one of them is right and Brazel WAS held in custody for a week".

That is a VERY dangerous use of probability theory as Gilles says. You need to examine all the circumstances of how these people were interviewed, when they were, how many times they were and so on. Did they meet each other between interviews, were they inclined towards 'cover-up' theory beforehand? Even such questions as to whether they had read Keyhoe's UFO books would certainly be relevant. Had they seen any of Friedman's research papers? Had the interviewers unwittingly slipped them titbits of information about the case? And so on, the list is endless.

What you cannot do is multiply the assumed probabilities together and get a meaningful result.

Karl Pflock 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 interview later that day.

There is absolutely no way those 'witnesses' to the Brazel affair can be considered independent, so the probability figures quoted by DR are bogus. Gilles is right to challenge these figures.

KRandle said...

CDA -

We were getting along so well and then you had to go and spoil it by citing the bible of the skeptics, Karl's book...

Let's see if I understand this. Brazel wasn't held at the base because Bessie Brazel said so.

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. About Brazel at the base Easley said (quoting from my notes), "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."

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.

Then we reject Marian Strickland, who actually said on video tape (I made the recording) that Mack sat in her kitchen and complained about being held in 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, not to mention his being at the newspaper office sometime on July 8...

But we accept what Bessie 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). She said that her father didn't return to Roswell, even though that is documented.

So, what this means is that we reject all the evidence from several different sources and accept the material from a single source, even when that source has been refuted by documentation...

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.

And now I have to hear about how Karl 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.

These would be facts and no, they do not lead to the extraterrestrial but do suggest something out of the ordinary happened.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Yep Christopher.

I dont find the good words.

If you use a sample with not independant characters (x), you are playing with probabilities in order they says (probabilities) what this "tool" is not devoted to demonstrate, but what you want to show. A cheat, in short (consciously or not).

In a good usage, use of probabilities, you must entered as "observations" "x", having no one interaction between themselves, itselves, independant ones, or the result is totaly biased.

And the above, used by David is exactly a bad use, usage, of probabilities...

David Rudiak said...

BTW DR, you made another big "epistemological" or statistical AWESOME error in your probability(-like) "example".

Always the same : Your "Roswell sample" (in order to serve dunno what), "x"aren't independant between the others. The are in interaction.


Of course there is an interaction. That is already part of Loftus' 25% value for the maximum induction percent for false memories in adults. The same experimenters keep badgering subjects to believe an event that never happened. Eventually 25% succumb to it. But 75% DON'T, despite the deliberate "contamination" by researchers trying to force a result.

It would be no different if witnesses were also interacting and talking to one another, trying to convince each other that something happened when it didn’t. This is just like the researchers doing the same thing. Only 25% are likely to become convinced; the other 75% are not. In the REAL world, most people do know their own minds and don’t like being pressured into trying to believe something that they really don’t. Ever had Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormon missionaries show up at your doorstep?

Even if we assume that Roswell witnesses to Brazel’s coercion were pressured by researchers to try to convince them that it happened (any REAL evidence of this Gilles, other than your belief system?), Loftus’ experiments would instead suggest that on average only 25% of them would eventually become convinced of this. You, instead, have made the claim that ALL must have been so convinced.

This would suggest that of 12 witnesses telling the Brazel story, only 3 typically would be telling it if researchers really behaved in the manner you have accused them of (with no evidence) and pressured them into thinking it happened when they really had no initial memory of it. But counter to this, typically 9 would still be telling the story, not because of alleged researcher pressure, but because that’s what they remembered all along.

One could use the binomial theorem and expand (x + y)^12, where x = probability of spontaneous memory (.75) and y = researcher-induced memory (.25) (the Loftus experiment probabilies). Then we can calculate the likelihood of 7 memories are spontaneous, 5 are false, 3 are spontaneous, 9 are false, etc. Here are the results

12 FALSE = .000006%
11 FALSE = .0002%
10 FALSE = ..004%
9 FALSE = .04%
8 FALSE = .2%
7 FALSE = 1.1%
6 FALSE = 4.0%
5 FALSE = 10.3%
4 FALSE = 19.4%
3 FALSE = 25.8%
2 FALSE = 23.2%
1 FALSE = 12.7%
0 FALSE = 3.2%

Thus with the researcher high pressure and high contamination theory and Loftus percentages, there will very likely be SOME false memories induced by either researchers or other witness contamination. If you add up percentages, there is nearly a 99% probability that from 1-6 out of 12 witnesses will have a false memory created, with the most likelihood being 2-4 false memories (68% of the probability distribution lies in this range)

David Rudiak said...

(part 2 response to Gilles)

But the important point, ignored by Gilles and other skeptics, is that the rest of witnesses are NOT false memory victims! Their memories were there all along, not created by researchers or other contamination. The prediction of 7 or more up to 12 having induced false memories is only a little more than 1%. And, as I said before, the likelihood of literally ALL 12 having induced false memory is the odds of winning the lottery. The odds of 11 is only 2 in a million, the odds of 10 false memories is 4 in 100,000, etc.

These are the predictions based on those “mainstream” Loftus probabilities of false memory induction. It is clear the false memory thesis falls on its face and fails to explain all these stories of Brazel being kicked around by the military and thus coerced. At best, maybe it explains up to half of them.

If Gilles thinks these calculations are incorrect, then I would like to see his “proper” probability calculation of the likelihood that literally every single one of these witnesses has had a false memory implanted. Gilles says he is a mathematician—let’s see the calculation.

It seems you will never understand basic probalities, where the "x" must be independant, and not in interaction. A FAMOUS statistical bias.

I understand just fine. What is evident is that you don't understand the real implications of the false memory literature and are grossly exaggerating how big an effect it has on people’s memories.

It is tiring...

Yes it is tiring Gilles. I get very, very tired of misuse of the scientific literature to bolster rigid denial belief systems. However, I hope you are not so tired as to demonstrate mathematically your contention that literally ALL witnesses to Brazel’s coercion were victims of false memory, even assuming Loftus-type probabilities produced by unproven researcher contamination.

David Rudiak said...

cda wrote:
That is a VERY dangerous use of probability theory as Gilles says. You need to examine all the circumstances of how these people were interviewed, when they were, how many times they were and so on. Did they meet each other between interviews, were they inclined towards 'cover-up' theory beforehand? Even such questions as to whether they had read Keyhoe's UFO books would certainly be relevant. Had they seen any of Friedman's research papers? Had the interviewers unwittingly slipped them titbits of information about the case? And so on, the list is endless.

What you cannot do is multiply the assumed probabilities together and get a meaningful result.


Of course you can, because it doesn’t matter what the source of the alleged “contamination” is. These objections about such a calculation would only be valid if it can be shown that multiple sources of alleged “contamination” have a cumulative effect on witnesses and greatly increase the likelihood of “false memory” creation. There is no such evidence.

The most it seems to be in adults, according to research by Elizabeth Loftus, is about 25%, and that’s only after researchers kept badgering and manipulating subjects. (example below).

But let’s assume there is such a cumulative effect. No, these Roswell witnesses aren’t like normal adults, most of who have minds of their own. After alleged “multiple” interviews by unscrupulous researchers, alleged prior obsession with cover-up theories, and alleged brain-washing from interacting with other witnesses or from alleged reading of Keyhoe, the expectation of “false memory” gets driven up by a factor of three from Loftus’ 25% to 75%. Then we might expect the probability of “false memory” in ALL 12 witnesses subjected to such “mind control” to be: .75^12 = 3%!!!!

Wow, even after assuming all that skeptical conspiracy theory mumbo-jumbo and assuming some rather absurd false memory contamination probability of 75%, there is only a 3% OVERALL probability that we can totally explain all the accounts by false memory induction.

What I keep seeing here is a lot of skeptical whining because it has been clearly shown that the Emperor has no clothes. The Emperor in this instance is their theory that literally every witness about Brazel’s coercion by the military has had the idea planted in their head by others, that is “false memories, be it by other witnesses, “UFO-believer” books like Keyhoe, or the evil researcher Stanton Friedman browbeating them into submission or charming them like the Devil he is.

“Mainsteam” scientist Elizabeth Loftus’ research into false memory induction has been cited. But what Loftus really showed is that you have to keep after people to convince SOME MINORITY of them that a false CHILDHOOD event is real, and even after pressuring and manipulating them, the best you can do is about 25% of adults and 35% of children. The rest are immune to pressure (just like our skeptics here are immune to anything they don’t want to believe, no matter how well documented).

Loftus “lost in the mall” experiment went like this. She got Mom or Granddad or Aunt Ethyl or big brother Jack to recall real events from the subject’s childhood and inserted the false one (“lost in the mall”) into the mix. Then she would present all the events to the subjects. Generally only a few percent will say they remember the false one the first time around. So then maybe the researcher says, “But your Mom said it happened. Are you sure you don’t remember?” Well, most people don’t want to believe Mom would lie about such a thing, but still they don’t remember it. But some will become convinced (“if Mom said it, it must be true”), and maybe the percentage of “believers” goes up to 10%.

David Rudiak said...

(part 2)
Then you keep at it. “But Grandad and Jack and Aunt Ethyl also remember it happening. Don’t you remember getting lost in the mall--they say you were really scared?” Finally, by repeating this over and over and leading the subjects, you can get the adult percentages of people saying they do remember up to around 25%, but that’s about it. They never convince the rest, or 75%.

Except even the susceptible 25% obviously don’t “remember” all that well. Because when you question them about exactly what happened, they aren’t able to provide many details, unlike the real experiences, which have much richer descriptions.

I gave two examples of witnesses describing something unusual at Roswell. One was about a dozen people saying they witnessed or knew about Brazel being in military custody, mistreated, coerced, etc. The other was Marcel and Brazel Jr. using near identical descriptions of anomalous debris. The sketical “explanation” was that literally ALL had false memories created by rabid Roswell researchers, just like Loftus did with her subjects. But when you test such a hypothesis by actually using Loftus percentages (25% can be convinced, but 75% cannot), it turns out the likelihood is absurdly low. And this is assuming that all the witnesses had been subject to all the manipulation and pressures of the Loftus experiment, which elevated the false memory percentages.

The vast majority of Roswell witnesses were adults when it happened. I suspect it would be even harder to convince them of a false event that happened in their adult life. Suppose somebody tried to convince you that something happened during a period you lived through, when it did not, say a fake Space Shuttle disaster You might believe them because you trust them, but that is different than having a “false memory” of the event.

Several times my mother told me that when I was two years old I wandered off from a picnic and was lost for about half an hour. Because I believe “Mom” wouldn’t likely make up the story, I assume it probably happened. But she didn’t create a “false memory” of the event in my mind. I have no memory of it at all. MOST people are like that. Even when you hear the story from a trusted family member, you don’t conjure up a false memory of the event, even if it was true.

Now suppose a Bill Moore or Stanton Friedman tried to induce a false memory of “memory foil” or an “explosion” into the mind of Bill Brazel. Maybe they said, “But Major Marcel said there was a memory foil. Don’t you remember it? Don’t you remember that it wouldn’t crease and you couldn’t tear it? Don’t you remember your father telling you about the explosion? Major Marcel said your father told him.”

What the hell would Bill Brazel care what Marcel said? He didn’t know the man. He wasn’t Mom or Granddad or big brother Jack telling the story. Would you be convinced by such manipulation to the point where you really thought you remembered such a material or your Dad telling you about the explosion?

Like Larry said, Roswell debunkers have created their own myths about the case, one of them being that most witness testimony to something strange is due to “false memory” or “retrospective falsification”.

Of course, in perfect skeptical double standard myth-making fashion, the witnesses they want to believe are always totally immune to “false memory” or “retrospective falsification”.

Gilles Fernandez said...

David,

The risk you are making is the following. I will use "analogy" cause difficult in english. :

It is like making proba WITHIN the 25 % sample "sharing" false memory, to demonstrate, it is not false memories...

And how many "x" are absent of your sample (Karl T. Pflock witnesses, for example, claiming Brazel wasn't under army custody) ?

As already pointed, if I choose a sample of people sharing the same "opinion" to demonstrate this opinion is not due to the hazard, I success.

In other words, you take a sample of people (not aleotory or independant) claiming Brazel under Military Custody to say us they claimed he was under military custody... So, the hazard is absent of the equation. Ohh yeah, thank you very much.

You make (it is an analogy) as if 100 people have been experimented, but the risk you take is that you are manipulating only 25 of them with proba,in order to proove they are 100%. But 75% of people are lacking.

And how many of your 12 are second hand witnesses and closed, not independant, interacting with themselves, books, investigators?

I mean that they share the "same" event, it is not like to ask different people about the "“lost in the mall”, aka people having independant personal stories, different own "mum" and "dad", etc.

"Your" sample to make "proba" is not aleatory or independant : it is a mutualy dependant sample.

cda said...

Kevin:
I was dealing chiefly with probabilities in my posting on Brazel's incarceration. I then cited Pflock's analysis where he came to negative conclusions about it. There is no way we can get to the core of the matter - it is far far too late, and it was very late even in 1979. We can only weigh up the likelihood of it, and disagree in our figures. There is no absolute final answer.
I repeat: I cannot understand why the military should EVER imprison an innocent civilain for a week. As I said, it would take an hour or two to get him to sign a secrecy oath (if such were necessary) and that would be the end of it.

Does not this occur to you? And if it does occur to you, why did you not raise this with those witnesses you spoke to? Brazel being "in jail" (quote from his son) is laughable. Was sherriff Wilcox guarding him in the town's jail? And one other thing: the witnesses you met, did they by any chance see "The Roswell Incident" book of a decade earlier? It is pretty certain some did, so by the time you got to them they were partly contaminated by the Berlitz-Moore book (plus any interviews Moore/Friedman did with them). You were not on 'fresh ground' when you & Schmitt interviewed them.

An innocent civilian incarcerated for a week by the USAF? Come off it Kevin, this has got to be a joke, memory distortion or embellishment. As a former AF man. Why don't you admit this?

If someone illegally entered AREA 51 now, do you really think they would be held prisoner there for a week? Remember Brazel was entirely innocent, he did NOT trespass on military land.

cda said...

DR:
I do not think any professional statistician would accept your methods of ascertaining the likelihood of all 12 witnesses being false. Your argument seems to be: the facts show that it is highly likely two, three or four of the 12 witnesses are telling the truth and that therefore Brazel did get incarcerated by the USAF. Strictly speaking, we don't need 2, 3 or 4. By strict probability theory, we need only one. If that one is correct, then Brazel was indeed kept in custody.

But these witnesses were interviewed decades afterwards. They could have been influenced by Keyhoe, Scully (more than Keyhoe), films, books, tittle-tattle in the town during the intervening years, gossip picked up, and so on. You claim this is all allowed for in the calculations. How do we know? And I told Kevin, by the time he got to his set of witnesses the Brazel imprisonment story was already publicised (via the Berlitz-Moore book, among other ways). It is very relevant that this contamination should be allowed for, irrespective of the 'false memory' syndrome. The non-independence of these witnesses knocks any calculations, whether binomial distribution, normal distribution or whatever, out the window.

One other point: why should any interviewer ask a 'witness' a question about Brazel's imprisonment at all? Why even mention the subject, and plant such an idea into his or her head? Suppose, for argument's sake, that Brazel jr told Moore & Friedman the story in 1979 without any prompting. Why should a later researcher then approach someone else and pop the question "by the way what became of Brazel during the few days after the incident?"
This is suggestibility that something odd took place, that Brazel somehow did not lead his ordinary life for a week or so, and adds to the build-up of the Roswell legend.
(Those who claim Brazel only told the press what the AF instructed him to say likewise help to build up the same legend.)

We can all agree that the military spoke to
Brazel and even warned him to avoid too much publicity, for his own well being. Yet if he really was sworn to secrecy he would not have been permitted to give any interview to the RDR. That is plain common sense.

But incarceration for a week (or even one whole day). Fantasy, pure and simple. Another example of conspiracy theory gone over the top.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Yes.

In other words David proposed a sample (12 people !) where, “lost in the mall” have been presented before,

during their life, by several approaches, by investigators, by probably reading books, interacting between them, etc., the “lost in the mall” possibility presented by authority argument (ie a nuclear physician), explaining what the others said previously, etc. etc etc

Then the sample is absolutly note an independant one, but interracting in a network with common and mutualy dependant parameters driving consciously or not to produce “lost in the mall” answer.

It is not as if you are experimenting with "fresh" people delivering in "brut" something, or manipulated in few hours, days or short period as in the scientific litterature.

But with people exposed before to “lost in the mall” highly suggested.

No, your sample have interacted and have many clues, suggestibility/suggestions that “lost in the mall” is "real", probable, shared by the investigators which are very "serious", etc.

In essence, your "sample" is a biased one and it is "epistemologicaly" not correct to make your strange calculations to proove "dunno what".

Very best Regards

Paul Kimball said...

An innocent civilian incarcerated for a week by the USAF? Come off it Kevin, this has got to be a joke, memory distortion or embellishment. As a former AF man. Why don't you admit this?

CDA:

Whilst I often agree with you, on this point you're off base. The government - both in the US and in other Western democracies - has always exercised broad, discretionary authority over civilians, innocent or otherwise, when it wants to. This was particularly the case before the advent of instantanteous mass media, which makes it a bit harder for them to get away with it. You also have to remember the time period that we're talking about - immediately after WWII, just as the Cold War was beginning. Lots of things were done without anyone ever asking any questions.

There is plenty to pick apart when it comes to Roswell, but on this one point I have to agree with Kevin, inasmuch as I think it would have been entirely plausible for a civilian to be detained in that time, in that area, for any one of a number of reasons - especially if he had really discovered something anomalous.

Paul

cda said...

Paul:
When you consider what Brazel is alleged to have discovered, on his own land, do you not think it highly odd that the military should detain him under virtual arrest at the base for a week?

I concede that had he stumbled upon a top secret military vehicle, the AF would probably subject him to a strict secrecy oath and give him a lecture on keeping it secret for the good of his country. They might escort him in a jeep to and from the base.

But detain him overnight, or for a whole week? I still seriously doubt it. Brazel never raised this detention with his congressman or senator.

This sounds way over the top to me. All right I do not know USAF procedures in '47 (or in 2010). I know Japanese citizens were detained during WW2 plus anyone thought to be a threat to the nation's security.

But Brazel? What exactly had he done?

What would the AF have done had he come across a large meteorite on his ranch? Or even a new Russian vehicle?

Even if the USAF suspected Brazel had put the strange debris there himself, do you think they would need to detain him for 7 days?

starman said...

cda:

"I concede that had he stumbled upon a top secret military vehicle, the AF would probably subject him to a strict secrecy oath..."

If anything would've warranted such treatment, it was discovery of an ALIEN vehicle. We're not talking about some classified project that will become declassified in ten years and obsolete in 20, but something many centuries if not millennia in advance of us--possibly a key to unheard of power, provided it is known only to our government.

cda said...

Starman:
An interesting point. If the US government knew, in 1947, that ETs were here and was determined to suppress this news, then the natural reaction would be to suppress people like Adamski and The Hills, who appeared to have stumbled upon this truth. They could never be allowed to publish their books.

Ditto for each & every abduction book ever written. These abductees ought all to have had their books/writings confiscated (or even be imprisoned for a week) by the military for daring to reveal all to the public.

Another thought occurred to me. Brazel was not obliged to inform ANYONE of his find. What if he had simply left it out there and ignored it forever?

Paul Kimball said...

Even if the USAF suspected Brazel had put the strange debris there himself, do you think they would need to detain him for 7 days?

I don't offer any answers for why. All that I'm saying is that if he had found something truly anomalous, whether from this planet or another, such a detention does not strike me in the least as implausible.

As for your question as to why Brazel didn't report it, you're being naive. Again, time and place is important.

None of this means that I think Brazel's detention actually happened; only that I'm quite certain that it could have happened if the events Kevin et al subscribe to did themselves happen.

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote:
In other words David proposed a sample (12 people !) where, “lost in the mall” have been presented before, during their life, by several approaches, by investigators, by probably reading books, interacting between them, etc., the “lost in the mall” possibility presented by authority argument (ie a nuclear physician), explaining what the others said previously, etc. etc etc

Then the sample is absolutly note an independant one, but interracting in a network with common and mutualy dependant parameters driving consciously or not to produce “lost in the mall” answer.


Gilles, often my wife will say something like, "Do you remember when we were there and did this? And if I don't remember, I tell her I don't remember. Maybe she'll provide some details and it will jog my memory, but often not. And this is presumably a real event, not a false one.

Even though I trust my wife isn't making it up to play games with my mind, if I don't remember then I don't remember? Aren't you like that? Aren't most people you know like that?

And how many people do you know that just make up things to mess with your mind and try to make you believe something imaginary happened to you too, so much so that you actually think you remember it happening?

I don't think this has ever happened to me, yet you are postulating exactly such a world in Roswell. Everybody in this debunker RoswellWorld is unusually susceptible to suggestion. Also, people go around there proselytizing others about what happened during the Roswell Incident. This RoswellWorld doesn't exist Gilles. It's another myth created by the skeptics to try to dismiss a mass of testimony they don't like.

You speak of the network of interactions that didn't occur in Loftus' "lost in the mall" experiment. That's true, but do you have any evidence that such a network actually boosts the maximum ~25% "false memory" rate that Loftus obtained, and then only by constantly repeating the false memory scenario and manipulating the subjects by telling them trusted authority figures (close relatives) said it happened.

The important point here is that this was the best Loftus could do with adults. The other 75% were immune to such manipulation. Doesn’t that roughly correspond with your own experience? There’s a gullible, suggestible minority, but most people aren’t nearly so gullible or open to suggestion as to actually hallucinate a non-existent event into existence.

The 25% figure already takes into account "contamination", in this case a psychological researcher already using appeals to authority (close relatives) and deliberately leading the subjects. It doesn't really matter, however, what the source of the "contamination" is, whether researcher or neighbors or relatives. You probably aren't going to go much above that 25% false memory figure. Most people DO know their own minds, even in your imaginary RoswellWorld.

But as a thought experiment, I gave a 75% false memory induction rate (instead of 25%) to take into account your hypothetical network of witness cross-contamination, media contamination, etc. However, when applied to 12 witnesses, this still only produced a ~3% probability that literally ALL 12 witnesses were reciting Brazel coercion stories because of false memory induction.

Or assume a 90% false memory rate in skeptical RoswellWorld. Across 12 people, that is still only a 28% probability that ALL are victims of false memory. Assume a 95% rate, and still it has only a 50/50 chance of being true.

David Rudiak said...

(part 2)
This is YOUR hypothesis Gilles, not mine. It is YOUR responsibility to make it, you know, plausible with actual studies and probability arguments. But when the obvious weakness in it is pointed out (absurdly low probabilities of it being true), the best you can do is hypothesize more sources of contamination and apparently assume far higher rates of false memory than any study or any daily life experience would suggest is true. You have presented ZERO evidence to support any of this. Your arguments have been strictly of the desperate hand-waving variety—hardly scientific at all.

The super-gullible, fantasist residents of RoswellWorld exist only in the mythology of stubborn skeptics who can’t concede they have badly lost this particular argument.

Gilles Fernandez said...

"You have presented ZERO evidence to support any of this."

Because there exist ONE evidence in "yourworld" and in Roswell litterature ?

It is awesome how you are in the "make me wrong, or I'm right !" and how others must proove you have not seen a pink elephant in your garden.

That's typical of pseudo-sciences.

I'm waiting for. Present here or there please ONE evidence.

Hoo, that's in army super supra secret hangar, I forgot.

In other words (yourworld), the absence of ONE evidence is the proof of the presence of THE evidence, inyourwold, as my wife understand too

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote:
And how many of your 12 are second hand witnesses and closed, not independant, interacting with themselves, books, investigators?

Actually Gilles, very few of them are second-hand. I’ve made a list below. There are at least 11 or 12 primary witnesses who said they witnessed something directly or spoke to Brazel himself, and 1 or 2 secondary witnesses, also another 1 or 2 other stories where the witness was not named (or not known to me) and the source is vague. Only one of the witnesses was a child at the time; the rest were adults. So approximately 12 witnesses in all, maybe a few more.

Gilles, I find it disturbing that you obviously know very little about such testimony, yet you are making sweeping statements about it, that it must be 2nd-hand, unreliable, contaminated, etc. Not only do I consider this unprofessional, it is again another indicator that you are not data-driven but bias-driven.

List of people who testified knowing of or seeing Brazel in military custody, being held at the base, complaining bitterly afterward about his treatment, about being forced to change his story, about swearing an oath not to talk about it, etc.

Saw Brazel being led to Daily Record interview by military escort: Reporters Jason Kellahin and RDR editor Paul McEvoy (2 first-hand witnesses)

Saw Brazel being led away from RDR by military escort and put in car: Neighbors Floyd Proctor and Lyman Strickland (2 first-hand witnesses)

Saw Brazel elsewhere in Roswell under military escort: Neighbors Leonard Porter and Bill Jenkins (2 first-hand witnesses)

Said they knew directly of Brazel being held at the base for at least several days: Son Bill Brazel and provost marshal Edwin Easley (2 first-hand witnesses)

Said they heard Brazel complain bitterly about being held at the base and the treatment he received, including threats: Bill Brazel, neighbors Loretta Proctor and Marian Strickland (3 first-hand)

Said Brazel admitted to signing a security oath, also that military told them he had signed an oath, or Brazel admitted to being asked not to talk about it by military: Bill Brazel, Marian Strickland (2 first-hand)

Said Brazel admitted that he had been coerced by military and forced to change his story, also that he was really scared: reporter Frank Joyce (1 first-hand witness)

Lesser stories (second-hand or poorly verified):

Said Brazel was turned over to the military after Walt Whitmore had recorded interview: Walt Whitmore Jr. (1 first- or second-hand)

Said she overheard neighbors talking about how badly Brazel had been treated and how he never would talk about what he actually found: Sally Strickland Tadolini (1 second-hand, also a child at time)

Said Brazel was in a really bad mental state after getting back: friend Juanita Sultemeir (1 first-hand witness)—This is not written down anywhere, but was a phone conversation that Don Schmitt had with Sultemeir, witnessed by me when I was visiting the Roswell museum in 2001. Sultemeir was called to try to get more information on a lead as to what Brazel was doing afterward.

There’s also an Internet story around 1994, attributed to the Randle/Schmitt team, of some unidentified witness who ran into Brazel near the end of his life, and Brazel allegedly said he “treasured his life” too much to ever say anything, that he believed the military would kill him. I don’t know the full details of this story, the witness name, or whether there was anything to it. Maybe Kevin can help out here.

There’s another story that circulated of some witness who ran into Brazel in a restaurant and tried to get him to talk about what happened, but Brazel got angry, and rather than talking left the restaurant.

cda said...

To DR and Gilles:

The question of multiplying the probabilities is still cause for concern. DR insists that even with a high 95% probability of a witness being wrong, or having false memories, the likelihood of all 12 witnesses being wrong is only 54%. This is true. Obviously if the assumed figure of 95% is lower so the likelihood of all 12 being wrong is greatly reduced.

There is an interesting example similar to this in Project Blue Book Special Report 14, written by the Battelle Memorial Institute. Battelle or the USAF, or both, produced a list of 12 'good unknowns'. These were the best cases, according to both organisations, that withstood all attempts to solve them. They represented the 'cream of the crop'. We may assume all 12 were thoroughly investigated and were left unexplained after all conceivable attempts at resolution. Despite this I shall still assign a probability of only 50% that each represents a true unknown. (Reasonable assumption or not?)
This means the prob of each being explainable is 0.5. Therefore the prob of all 12 being explainable is 0.5 to the 12th power, which is about 1 in 4000, similar to DR's own figures.
So can we deduce from this that there is a chance of 3999 in 4000 that at least one of these 12 cases is a true unknown? Is it a very strong case for the existence of true unknowns? (And this is only from those 12 good cases).

Most people, including I expect DR, would say: "yes certainly it is a very powerful case for the existence of 'good unknowns' ".

But wait a minute. If you look at the Blue Book list of 'unidentifieds' as given when Blue Book closed down in late 1969, six of these 12 cases are missing! For some reason the classification was changed and half the 'good unknowns' were downgraded to 'knowns'. This raises alarm bells at once. You cannot just use the other 6 either, and say these can prove anything. A further revision, by another group of researchers, may eliminate some or all of the remaining six.
There was a definite change in the analysis here. Why? We cannot say. But the whole probabilistic method is now wrecked and we are left with a meaningless and useless end figure.

The true final figure could be almost anything. In fact it is a 'true unknown'!

This shows how dangerous it is to play with assumed probabilities. The term for this is GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.

I suspect this applies in the case of the witnesses to Brazel's imprisonment. We simply cannot assume any realistic probabilities and get a useful result.

Gilles Fernandez said...

"Special Report 14."

I did a such "reader note" similar your one in our french forum, about Special Report 14 use of χ² interpretation.

Out the matter, but we have many common denominators ^^

Doc Conjure said...

I don't think I've ever before come across a blog post with this many comments. LOL

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

David,

"Saw Brazel being led to Daily Record interview by military escort: Reporters Jason Kellahin and RDR editor Paul McEvoy (2 first-hand witnesses)"

Even if Kellahin testimony is a "good" allied for Skeptic in a sens in what he testimoned to have seen (balloon), there exists several points showing his testimony isn't reliable (mainly the fact he gones to the ranch, pictures were taken by Robin Adair and sen by telex, etc).

Kevin have writed if I well remember a very nice thread in this blog about it.

I think he was "confabulating" or suffering of false memories cause reading newpapers, or dunno what before interview or video.

Concerning Flyoid Proctor as first hand witness, you are in fact imho refering to Loretta affidavit. So, it is not first hand inmyworld testimony when Y (Loretta) speack about what X (her husband) said her he seen.

They are several indicators how Loretta have "embelished" the "tale" too from Moore first interview to her last ones. After her husband passed out, there are many drastic changes about her testimonies.

It can give space and time to see for your other first hand.

But one thing sounds clear, with those 2 little for example : how dangerous it is to make your strange calculations with proba.

Dunno how to write in order you saw it as not an "ad hominem attack", but your calculations are a non sens, one more time.

BTW : I'm not suprised Brazel with militars at all : he worked with them and they gone on his ranch. And then not a surprise some remember him with them. They escorted him in Roswell. And ? Oil was expensive, for example.

Dunno how to see him with Militars have as correlat he was "under pressure", under threat, etc.

Best Regards,

Gilles F.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Concerning F. Joyce :

He have been, if I'm correct, first interviewed by Moore in 1982.

Then, it was Kevin and Don Schmitt in 1989. Another time in 1990. I counted after he was interviewed 5 more times by Kevin and Schmitt between 03/1991 and 09/1992.

Karl Pilock made an interview of Joyce in 1992. Then, he was interviewed for Albuquerque Journal for the 50th anniversary of the Roswell Incident.

In this period, he embelished step by step from "I won't talk about it" to "the stories about alien bodies are consistent with what I heard at the time," (when bodies were introduced in the affair...).

Then came Carey & Schmitt team in 05/1998.

I'm "sorry", but I have difficulties to not taking into account that consciously or not people (like Joyce) elaborate, embelish tales more and more they are confronted to the tale,
by "taking a look of what is writted already", by reading books, meeting investigators, etc.

And how this "ambiant culture" cant have an influence on what is claiming, where a psychosociological phenomenom makes that you elaborate and embelish the story.

In this personal "big picture", making probabilities on claims or quote, is imho totaly biased.

Because you are not facing a sample of "fresh" people, "neutral" ones, or dunno what. But with people included in a complex cinematic where sociological and psychological variables, called "contamination" are manifest, or at least to an open and crucial question imho.

Now, David, you asked for a demonstration. I think a such "modelization" how people elaborate, embelish in Roswell affair is impossible. But there are several evidences pointing how it was for "master pieces" of the affair, step by step, time after time.

Adding to this, other big and crucial counter-arguments presented in this nice blog by the vilain sceptics.

Then, what next ?

Well, question of common sens imho and "personal choice". Only a time machine imho could solve it ^^

Because, in a hypothesis zero, there was nothing extraordinary, a non event, nothing have been recorded and no Harware delivery can be expected (like a picture of the Debris at Ranch including MArcel + Brazel ie with prosaic balloons debris around.
In other words, sceptics are "trapped", cause it is very difficult (or impossible) to demonstrate something is false or never existed in a particular epistemological point of view.

So asking us, to "demonstrate" there was nothing extraordinary in this tale, is a very hard job for skeptics. The best we can, imho, is to point several things as we did and call the common sens when the "objective" people are not in the believing, and have a free curors between h0 and H1

If hypothesis one, there is something extraordinary, the only "reconciliation" will be the hardware delivery (bodies, aircraft, documents). For 32 years, the "Graal Quest" is a faillure.

But well, maybe patience is needed (even if personaly, I dont confound "patience" and "chimery pursuit").

Have a nice week end all, must open the window cause Roswell uses so much my time currently.

++

Gilles F.

David Rudiak said...

Gilles wrote:
Because you are not facing a sample of "fresh" people, "neutral" ones, or dunno what. But with people included in a complex cinematic where sociological and psychological variables, called "contamination" are manifest, or at least to an open and crucial question imho.

So tell us Gilles, why doesn't such "contamination" ever affect YOUR witnesses and render their testimony questionable?

Clearly the HANDFUL of "post-1978" witnesses cited by the balloon believers, like Sheridan Cavitt, Charles Moore, Irving Newton, Bessie Brazel, and Walt Whitmore Jr, either told increasingly elaborate stories, changed stories, told inconsistent stories, told stories at odds with well-established facts, told conflicting stories with other witnesses, were never direct witnesses, or obviously lied, yet you seem to have no problems accepting their "balloon" testimony as 100% valid.

AP reporter Jason Kellahin has even been used as a balloon witness by debunkers like Pflock, because part of his story was of seeing some sort of a balloon crash on his way to Roswell from Albuquerque, with Brazel and the military there.

Yet Pflock (and you) reject his statements about Brazel under military escort when taken to his Daily Record interview. We know for a documented fact that Kellahin WAS at the RDR, since we have his photo there and the AP story he filed of the interview. And his story of Brazel under military escort was backed by the RDR editor Paul McEvoy, and two rancher friends who saw him being led away. That alone would certainly convince most juries that it really happened.

But we have no such documentation or corroboration of the balloon part of the story, in fact it conflicts with that of his partner, Robin Adair. The only way it could be true is if there were such a balloon site, but it couldn't have been at the Foster Ranch because of time and distance constraints.

You have the same highly selective and arbitrary criteria when it comes to conflicting data in 1947 newspaper stories. You choose only what you want to believe.

If you want to talk about witness contamination and conflicting stories, you only have to go so far as Sheriff Wilcox in 1947 refusing to answer more questions because he was "working with those fellows at the base." Is that witness contamination or not?

Wilcox couldn't seem to tell a consistent story to save his life. Depending on who he spoke to, Brazel found the object in either mid-June or early July, came to Roswell on either Sunday July 6 or Monday July 7, and came in allegedly reporting a "weather meter", contradicting Brazel's "flying disc" and not a weather instrument of any kind.

The stories even back then were all over the place. But this doesn't seem to bother you at all. You just keep cherry-picking the witnesses and stories you want to believe and then use pseudoscientific psychosocial rationalizations to 100% dismiss the rest.

Your witnesses are ALWAYS golden, but anybody telling of something highly strange at Roswell is ALWAYS "contaminated" and relating "false memories", guilty of "retrospective falsification", buying into the "myth", etc.

You have a real serious evidential double standard going here.

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