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:
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
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.
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| Dr. Michael Shermer |
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.
The conversation regarding facts, and awaiting further evidence before attempting to arrive at a conclusion was powerful, along with your guest demonstrating this in the last twenty minutes of your show by asking you the question;
ReplyDelete[Paraphrased] “Even if everything you stated is fact, it in and of itself does not prove extraterrestrials visited on these occasions (I.e. Roswell). It means, something interesting happened that stimulated our senses, and what happened is governed by facts and evidence.
It made me reflect on more recent events, I.e the tic tac ufo, and focus on obtaining more facts, and or clarifying the ones you do have.