Friday, May 29, 2015

Richard Doble and the Roswell Slides - Update

Yes, I know that I said I was done with the Roswell Slides but then I’ve published the comments by Tony Bragalia and Don Schmitt. I’ve heard nothing from Tom Carey and don’t personally know the others involved in this. However Richard Doble has issued a statement about the ongoing mess which might be of interest here. Although his comments mirror much of what he said during his Skype interview on May 5, he has recorded (or more accurately, Jaime Maussan has recorded) a new interview about the slides in which he says much of the same thing. You can see it on Curt Collins’ Blue Blurry Lines web site here:


He briefly addresses those who had read the placard suggesting that this is a mummy by telling us that he has worked with mummies for years, seen dozens or hundreds, and provides again, the reasons it is not a mummy. He suggests, I think, that the placard was created as a diversion so that the true nature of the being wouldn’t be obvious and that the photographs were not taken in a true museum setting. I don’t know where all he has been, but to me, that looks like a museum setting and there are evidence of other displays in the background of the slide.

He also rambles off a bit on how the general population was unprepared to be saddled with the knowledge there are alien races. Because of that fear, the nature of the body was obscured… but then the question arises, “If you are worried about implications and reactions to an alien body, why put it on display at all?

For what it’s worth, this all seems to be a very weak argument, based not so much on the evidence but on the “I know more about this than you do argument,” which is a sort of appeal to authority, though he is setting himself up as the authority. The vast majority of us here do not have his training in anthropology nor do we have his experience in dealing with the sort of evidence we are looking at it. He tells us of trouble with the bones, trouble with the number of ribs, trouble with the structure of the shoulders, all of which sounds impressive. In the end, the best evidence that can be gathered from the slides is not the observations about the body but on what the placard said. The people who created the placard did so with the information supplied by those who handled the body. Doble saw a photograph, and probably not the slide itself but a scan of it, and made his observations from that. Those in the museum were in possession of the body. We know their conclusions based on the placard and the journal article that Tony Bragalia found. Which evidence is more persuasive? Bragalia’s article is here:



For those who are interested, listen to what Doble has to say about this. He certainly is quite knowledgeable but don’t let that be the only factor in making a decision about is shown in the slide. Think about everything that has happened since May 5 and make your decision from all of that.

36 comments:

  1. The fact that Tom Carey handpicked Doble and has admitted that he & Doble are long-time friends strains Doble's credibility even further,

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  2. @Tom,
    "...So, I sent him a copy of this fuzzy image that’s going around I did not send him one of the originals. I sent him the one that’s going around that someone has enhanced up..."
    .
    Why would Carey send a crappy image? Talk about credibility. Also it's not clear to me whether Doble 'analyzed' the hi-res images. Did he or did he not? Anyone? I don't care if Doble is King of Anthropologists, despite his descriptions of what he sees, which seem factual, all of his other inferences (not earthly, not human, crash victim, are total BS) Scientists don't talk like this, and when they guess, they tell you they are guessing.
    .
    What I see are the mummified remains of a humanoid creature, not a body that has undergone any kind of autopsy by qualified professionals, and no attempts at preservation. Wouldn't a space alien be preserved in a tank of formalin? Or maybe it crashed in the desert, and got mummified before the buzzards got to it.
    .
    Someone gimme a freakin' break, please.
    .
    ...

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  3. All I can say is that I am absolutely gutted at the performance of these... performers in Schmitt, Carey et al, and it has both tremendously disappointed me but also enlightened me; from Dolan's obvious intentions for being involved in the whole thing to Massau's utterly ridiculous defiance, it has showed me ever so clearly how things operate in the world of "ufology", by some of the "top guys" no less, and if I had a hunch previously its now crystal clear to me and for that, I must say I am thankful.

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    1. Please do not group UFOlogy as a whole, you can also see level headedness right here.

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  4. I don't want any one of these people working a crime scene with me... ever. I hadn't read the event schedule for the "Contact in the Desert" mega bonanza event happening thing, is there a lecture titled "How Did We F*ck UP THIS Badly."

    A tiny bit of introspection would go a long way. Absent that, I don't see this field capable of policing itself.

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  5. > The people who created the placard did so with the information supplied by those who handled the body. Doble saw a photograph

    I have been putting this to Maussan on Twitter the last three days. He doesn't answer direct questions, just restates evasions over and over. It's all very disingenuous.

    https://twitter.com/dersupermannn/status/603438795204206592

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  6. Don Schmitt was on a KGRA show with Jimmy Church, a live “Contact in the Desert” special. (2nd hand report) The apology is effectively retracted. The body may still be an alien, and he seems to be using Maussan’s rationale… placard is wrong….the body is the wrong size.., listen to expert analysis. His rewriting of history also says he moved the show to Mexico to save the Roswell Museum any embarrassment. He did mention Carey, but not by name, just “my partner.”
    Of the apology, he now says it was a way to say, let’s step back and take a breath, and come back at it with more research.
    Apparently Don will be on a full episode of Church’s show next week.

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  7. I can appreciate that many people, including even some of the contributors to the Roswell Slides Research Group, encouraged restraint from leveling accusations of willful deception and outright hoax. That stated, I think it's becoming increasingly difficult to accept some of the players in the saga are as incompetent as they would have us believe.

    There is a point in which, for all practical purposes, refusal to accept reality becomes pretty synonymous with intentionally promoting nonsense. Even then we would still be offering the benefit of the doubt, of course, that all these people are actually too incompetent to understand the many inherent problems to in believing any of these mummies being trotted out by Maussan, LMH and company are non-human beings. This has become absolutely absurd, and it's now very difficult to envision how blatant dishonesty and intentional misrepresentation of circumstances has not been perpetrated by some of the parties involved, no matter how one frames it.

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  8. On Don Schmitt -

    "Of the apology, he now says it was a way to say, let’s step back and take a breath, and come back at it with more research."

    See...Schmitt is a huckster and a liar and has been for decades. Sad but very true. Con artists don't throw in the towel when found to be fraudulent - they just find a new way to weasel out of their dilema. And yes they are keeping their $25k each after all.

    As the old Proverb says; "And a dog returns to its vomit."

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  9. Jack Brewer -

    Spot on! Very well said. This, too, has been my contention all along. We're not children here. We see exactly what they did, or actually, what they ATTEMPTED to pull off.

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  10. Brian Bell,

    Completely agree. But $25k? That explains a lot. I had not heard that number. Just curious, where did you find that? I'm not doubting it, but this would establish motive.

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  11. When I saw the translation of the placard by the RSRG group or whatever they call themselves I applied their own style of skepticism. If it looks too good to be true than it must be a fake. Since then I've seen enough other independent translations to believe that the translation was correct. But it still looks too clean to me. If they can de-blur the placard can they use the same process to de-blur some of the blurry UFO photos we all see on the net? It would be an interesting test if they can do this on photos chosen by someone else. Is the group ready to take this challenge?

    I've always believed that a photo can only be used as supporting evidence not as a stand alone. In the slides case the supporting evidence for alien is very slim to none in my opinion.

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  12. Good grief you can SEE some words in light grey - capital letters - superimposed above the so-called "cursive" WITHOUT ANY MANIPULATION WHATSOEVER. Look at the top line and you can see "Old Boy", "Of", and even at the bottom "California" can be recognised. And this is from the photo on Adam Dew's on site saying "the real placard".

    But once again am I just some kind of super-genius or something? Because if Old Boy is readable then it certainly must be preceded by an age, so the de-blurring effort would therefore gain credence immediately.

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  13. @ TheDimov

    Once again you've proven that reading and comprehension skills are to different things entirely. I didn't say I didn't believe the translation. I said that the block lettering on the skeptic groups translation looked fake to me. I make a living with editing software, I'm well aware of the possibility of superimposing block text over the deblurred text. I believe the message I'm not quite so sure about the messenger.

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  14. @Tom -

    Someone on this blog previously did a comprehensive estimate of gross and net proceeds and it came to about $25k each for the promoters - Maussan, Schmitt, Carey and maybe Dolan.

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  15. Jack,

    You're right on the nose. At best, it can be called wilful blindness, to use a legal term. See, for example, http://www.mcmillan.ca/Contrived-Ignorance-Wilful-Blindness.

    "While a failure to inquire may be evidence of recklessness or criminal negligence, as for example, where a failure to inquire is a marked departure from the conduct expected of a reasonable person, wilful blindness is not simply a failure to inquire but "deliberate ignorance." - Supreme Court of Canada

    Count me as one of the hard-line members of the RSRG who has been saying since the get-go that this has all the characteristics of a scam, and that anyone involved was part of it in one way or another.

    PK

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  16. Kevin wrote: "In the end, the best evidence that can be gathered from the slides is not the observations about the body but on what the placard said. The people who created the placard did so with the information supplied by those who handled the body."

    We don't know the identities or the skills and knowledge base(s) of "the people who created the placard" or what information was supplied to them by "those who handled the body." Indeed, we don't know who 'handled the body' or what skills and knowledge bases they possessed in interpreting what it was.

    My impression is that these matters constitute some of the questions David Rudiak has sought to answer by obtaining access to the museum's archives. The question is will he or anyone else gain access to those archives.

    Mostly what we know so far about the Roswell slides affair is the extent of that which we don't know.


    'Tom' wrote above: "What I see are the mummified remains of a humanoid creature." A 'humanoid' being is indeed what the body in the glass box appears to be.


    Neal Foy wrote: "If they can de-blur the placard can they use the same process to de-blur some of the blurry UFO photos we all see on the net?" Excellent question. More to the point can they de-blur the image of the body in the glass box?

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  17. "Someone on this blog previously did a comprehensive estimate of gross and net proceeds and it came to about $25k each for the promoters - Maussan, Schmitt, Carey and maybe Dolan."

    Um, I may have been the "someone" you refer to, Brian, but I never said anything "about $25K each for the promoters - Maussan, Schmitt, Carey and maybe Dolan."

    I posted 3 different comments here on KR's blog recently about my rough analysis and estimate of the potential profits from both the live stream and the May 5th event itself, but who got what amount of money is still very ambiguous, and speculative.

    It's dubious there was any kind of "even split" of profit, since Maussan paid most of the May 5th event's costs up front, including $85K or so for the auditorium rental.

    I very much doubt Schmitt, Carey, or Dolan got anything like $25K for their participation, at all.

    My understanding from various rumors on the net is that in fact S/C/D "only" got their air transport, hotels, per diem for meals, and a relatively small "honorarium" of maybe a few hundred dollars for their participation in the Mexico City "revelation."

    Really, kinda "chump change," all things considered. [insert pun here]

    So, unless you know better, or have source data that clearly indicates or shows $25K per S/C/D participant (and, Maussan claims to have lost $100K on the event), I think that amount is way off.

    But, that's not the deeper issue -- it's that whatever profits there were, if any, the original promoting partners of the slides, Joseph Beason and Adam Dew, are likely to have probably made the most, and should be held accountable for same, and not just financially.

    It's the ethical and moral issues, and the violation thereof, that I find most significant and truly reprehensible. Maybe someone (Maussan?) will sue them at some point, if only to try and redeem his "reputation" as a promoter of such things. Poor Jaime... tsk, tsk. 8^}

    In that regard, here, I think Jack Brewer, above, made the most cogent and relevant comment about this whole sorry "affair," and the serious implications of possibly intentional fraud and hoax. Somebody ought to after them, legally speaking.

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  18. I did a CRUDE guestimate of maybe $200,000 net, divided evenly among about 8 principles, yielded about $25,000 per principle. This was NOT meant to be a statement of fact about what the principles received, but an illustration that various people would have been willing to ruin their reputations for not that much money. This was an argument against deliberate deception or fraud by various principles. I noted the expert medical witnesses had the most to lose. These guys probably make a very good living and it didn't make sense they would be willing to destroy their professional reputations for what is indeed "chump change".

    I've been trying to get a hold of the archival evidence for 3 weeks from the NPS and have been getting the runaround. I have been told this mummy still exists and is about to be repatriated and reburied. The contact person absolutely refuses examination of the body and new photos, this supposedly being disrespectful. There is supposed to be another NPS announcement this Monday (June 1) with more information, because of the many inquiries.

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  19. Dave,

    Its "principals" not "principles'

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  20. > Its "principals" not "principles'

    Now, now. You know what he meant.

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  21. A lot of people are speculating about money who know nothing about the entertainment industry. When it comes to money, it's not just about the up front revenue. Here are two terms you should keep in mind: "evergreen" and "long tail." Look them up if you have to, but it's important to keep in mind that they both apply to the UFO industry, especially where Roswell is concerned.

    Of course, if the people involved would submit to the full audits that the government here required for every one of my films, I'm sure we could answer all of these questions about money.

    Don't hold you breath...

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  22. @Rudiak -

    "I've been trying to get a hold of the archival evidence for 3 weeks from the NPS and have been getting the runaround."

    You may get it or may not. In general, none of the federal agencies are obligated to respond to inquires from the public at large. Given that the mummy has now been elevated in the public domain as an "alien" gives all the more reason why they would choose NOT to respond to inquires.

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  23. Jeanne Ruppert: "More to the point can they de-blur the image of the body in the glass box?" Yes, done that. I (we) could answer some of the allegations made by Maussan's experts that the being has only 3 fingers (clearly wrong), is 4-feet tall (wrong again) and some of the less speculative arguments that they are throwing around as if they had X-rays and a body to examine. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble because there will always be some perceived anomalies that they can point, and we have no way to prove to them that they are wrong. Maybe the leg is missing a knee cap. Maybe the left hip is broken. Maybe the textile fragment is hiding the clavicle. Some (two) experts on mummies from Spain did state their opinion and that's good enough for me. If anyone wants to believe in space aliens hidden in plain view, in museums, they are welcome.

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  24. Brian Bell wrote:
    You may get it or may not. In general, none of the federal agencies are obligated to respond to inquires from the public at large. Given that the mummy has now been elevated in the public domain as an "alien" gives all the more reason why they would choose NOT to respond to inquires.

    Wrong. Nearly all Federal agencies are required BY LAW under FOIA regulations to respond to such inquiries, although I have yet to file a formal FOIA request.

    There are 9 exceptions to the FOIA law, such as national security, employee privacy. witness protection, or pending legal cases. None of these exceptions apply here. The National Park Service has no legal right to withhold requested archival information from the public.

    Under FOIA, there is no need to demonstrate a "need to know". Barring noted exemptions from the law, the standard is the public's "right to know". It doesn't matter if the agency considers the inquiry annoying, frivolous, or stupid. By law, they MUST respond and they MUST provide the requested materials should they exist. (In theory anyways; agencies often don't follow the rule of the law when it comes to FOIA inquiries or just pretend to go through the motions.)

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  27. As Nab mentioned, some of the silly crap peddled by the slide hucksters and the their "experts" is disproven simply by looking at the unblurred slide.

    For instance, the 4 fingers are clearly seen.

    The sheer stupidity of UFO-bumpkins ascribing any of their slack-jawed attention to the ravings of a man who looks at a blurry photo and can tell that the figure depicted evolved like a Gecko should be self-apparent to a person who is not insane.

    Now we see that Schmitt seems to be withdrawing his apology and heading further into UFO idiocy (although he has already been pretty far up in that particular hole for many years).

    Those who now pretend that we need more information in order to put this to bed underline the willful stupidity and moronic beliefs that pervade UFO nonsense.


    Lance

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  28. @David Rudiak

    David Paulides has written several books dealing with missing persons in National Parks. From what he says you should expect a reply from an FOIA request to NPS in the form of a request for a large payment for research.

    BTW I made a post on the Bonilla's Comet blog for you. Any response, positive or negative is appreciated.

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  29. I think Lance is going a bit overboard here, but I do agree that we are way past fleshing out any significant details about this matter. If the promoters are subject to legal consequences for their fakery, so be it, though I'd rather they simply offer people their money back and go away.

    Getting more information about the mummy might serve anthropologists but not people chasing after UFOs. That people like Schmitt still won't let it go only makes them look more foolish, and the UFO field worse for the experience.

    As I said in our Paracast Newsletter this week, "You Can't Keep a Good Hoax Down," but I still want to try.

    Peace,
    Gene

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  30. Did the perpetrators really suppose they were going to convince the scientific world, and the paying public, that the depicted 'being' was an ET, based SOLELY on a photograph?

    Conceivably they did. But it must have surely crossed their minds that we would need the actual goods, i.e. the actual ET bodies (wherever they may be, in a museum or elsewhere) before any true scientist could venture an opinion on whether it was a genuine ET. Even an unknown animal species would never get acceptance unless and until the actual animal (dead or alive) is presented for examination.

    If you want to prove the Yeti or Bigfoot exists, show us the real thing, not a photo thereof.

    Instead, a few unidentified conmen evidently expected to fool the world on the strength of two slides! At least that is what appears to have happened.

    Naturally the gullible types who 'bought' the slides story have only themselves to blame if it all turns sour (as it did). No money should be refunded. It is as if anyone who buys a book about a UFO contactee or abduction tale should get his money refunded if it is later exposed as a fake!

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  31. So those gullible people deserve paying for the right to be snookered? I suppose, if legal consequences were an issue, the promoters could just say it was all just entertainment. Were there terms and conditions to the presentation or the pay-per-view?

    Peace,
    Gene

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  32. @Rudiak -

    You wrote "Wrong. Nearly all Federal agencies are required BY LAW under FOIA regulations to respond to such inquiries, although I have yet to file a formal FOIA request."

    Ah....yes...but under FOIA. You never filed one dip...so my comments stands correct.

    I HAVE worked for the Feds and can tell you a random inquiry from a UFO researcher demanding by email, phone, or letter does not need to be responded to if they choose not to do so. I never said anything about FOIA and YOU never filed one - so you are WRONG for assuming they will or MUST respond to you. Once again bending facts Rudiak...it's your MO.

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  33. David Rudiak, in the circumstances of an impending reburial of the mummy in the slides (if that identification is in fact certain*) it might be advisable to request a hearing by a state administrative procedures court, which could rule on the whether the federal law and any state laws corresponding to it actually prohibit the Park Service officials from granting researchers access to the archives at the Mesa Verde museum. Potentially such a hearing could also lead to a decision to delay the reburial until after a forensic examination of the body could be conducted.

    *from earlier reading about this case I had the impression that the mummy in the slide was identifed as one that had been stolen from its burial ground early in the 20th century and returned three decades later to the Mesa Verde museum by the son of the man who had stolen it; that that return was made in ~1938; and that the mummy had been reburied in its former location several years later. Lots of information circulating around. How much of it is accurate?

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  34. @DR:

    "I've been trying to get a hold of the archival evidence for 3 weeks from the NPS and have been getting the runaround. I have been told this mummy still exists and is about to be repatriated and reburied. The contact person absolutely refuses examination of the body and new photos, this supposedly being disrespectful. There is supposed to be another NPS announcement this Monday (June 1) with more information, because of the many inquiries."

    Well, it's now June 1st, and I was wondering if any NPS announcement has now been released or not as yet. Jeanne Ruppert's suggestion, above, sounds valid, as might be an FOIA request, if whatever the NPS says is incomplete or not responsive to the question of what, if any, records may exist concerning "the mummy" under discussion.

    So, any news about that, David?

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  35. Estudio comparativo entre especímenes de la fotografía de S. l. Palmer (1896) y la diapositiva de Hilda Blair Ray (1947) del Museo Arqueológico de Chapin Mesa Verde en Colorado, EE. UU.

    http://humanoidemacrocefalo69.tumblr.com

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