X-Zone Broadcast Network - Dr. Michael Shermer

Dr. Michael Shermer, he of Skeptic magazine, was the guest on this week’s edition of A Different Perspective. We began by talking about the nature of evidence and what it takes to convince some about the possibility of alien visitation. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/20321523

We did discuss one of the problems of UFO research as I see it, which is that with some of the people and agencies involved with so many different agendas, that the truth somethings get lost in the arguments. I mentioned that during the Levelland

Dr. Michael Shermer

UFO sightings in 1957, the Air Force and Don Keyhoe of NICAP got involved in an argument over the number of witness to the UFO and its interaction with the environment. Had either side been interested in research rather than scoring debating points, then the tone of the conversation might have shifted to something that would have been useful.

We did get into a discussion of the Mogul solution for what had fallen at Roswell. Although he suggested the conventional skeptic points, he was unaware of Dr. Albert Crary’s field notes that seemed to eliminate Flight No. 4 as the culprit. I wanted to use that as a point that some skeptics tend to ignore the written record, relying instead on the memories of Charles Moore, one of those who worked on the project. I used the documentation that had been published in the thick Air Force report on the Roswell case. To his credit, Shermer was interested in these other data.

For me, this discussion, on Mogul, was of the most interest, but his opinions on other aspects of the UFO situation were also interesting. We did touch on the Wikileaks information that seemed to have uncovered no documents relating to UFOs, suggesting that there was nothing there to find. I countered with the idea that we know there have been classified UFO investigations going on such as Moon Dust and, of course, the most recent revelations. That would suggest that the Wikileaks information didn’t cover every aspect of the secrets the government wishes to keep.

Although I didn’t get to all the questions submitted for the show, I did get to a couple and I think others were covered as the discussions developed. Sometimes the show just takes a different track than I had planned. Sometimes the discussions that develop are just too interesting to divert.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Ryan Wood of MJ-12 research and the Crash Conferences fame. He has put out an appeal for us to look at Wikipedia because all the UFO related articles seem to have a skeptical slate. Sometimes that slant is more than a little biased and is based on faulty information. As always, submit questions in the comment section and I’ll try to get to them.