Quote:
Originally Posted by trainedobserver
My "intent" is for Ufology to crawl up out of the gutter of irrationality and purge itself of the role-playing fakes that clutter the field.
|
One of the best works in the field that I have seen is Richard Dolan's series of books on "UFOs and the National Security State". Besides documented sightings, he discusses the various mechanisms put in place to manage the cover up. Among these mechanisms is infiltration and control of civilian UFO organizations. Dolan provides references and names names. All civilian UFO organizations are infiltrated and controlled to some degree. Greer has stated that this is his reason for staying separate from the rest of the field. I met a fellow who was a Mufon field investigator many years back. He related an incident where one of his superiors in Mufon fabricated a balloon, launched it, and then used that as an excuse for labelling a very good case report as a hoax. I know of a lady who recently reported a sighting to Mufon and made the mistake of saying that it was the result of using Greer's protocols. The case report was promptly deleted. Evidently CE5s are not part of the approved Mufon message.
I fail to see how denying entire classes of phenomena is "rational". A truly curious person would investigate, even if such phenomena challenged his or her notions of what is real and possible. At one time, talking about landings was not considered "respectable" and mainstream ufologists avoided it. Talk about crashes and beings was likewise avoided. Over time, these things became accepted and now we have astronauts talking about such things on the record.
I'm not sure what aspect of Greer's protocols for establishing contact you would consider "irrational". Being a hard core atheist until just a few years ago, I have some ideas. I can certainly understand how any material for general publication would be in danger of being disregarded as nonsensical for talking about telepathic contact and such things. However, I personally am no longer able to deny that such things are possible. I'm an empericist - this is due to observation and experience, not belief.
If you dig enough, you will find that even the sciences are controlled to prevent the discovery of certain things. The real nature of gravity is one of those things. How do you UFOs move silently, going from hovering to thousands of miles per hour at great accelerations? Field propulsion is not feasible with our current understanding of physics. Should that be used as a reason for denying observations of UFO performance?
I think you've nailed it, though. This is all very much about what we consider real and "rational".