This week I feel like I've heard it all. In all of my adventures in UFO land, I have heard about conspiracies by Reptilians and Masons to take over the world, I have heard of plots to spray toxins over the world causing a population crash - somehow to enable world domination by - well, not sure. Figure that one out for yourself. At the same time, I learned that we have secret bases on the moon and Mars, and deep underground (operated jointly with the aliens). We also have a secret fleet of space ships run by the US Air Force. But now, this week, my favorite story reared its delightful head once again. You see, I had forgotten that we didn't actually go to the moon (I think I have heard one person tell me at one time that we have a secret base on the moon and another time that we never went there - go figure...)
I had blissfully assumed (imagined?) that the moon-hoax idea had died out, receding back to its well-deserved oblivion. Unfortunately, ideas of all stripes - both those with merit and those without - tend to maintain a life of their own. In this case, one of the members of Minnesota MUFON asked to present a set of material at a future meeting (and I agree that he has the right to do so, our meetings are open to the public). Unfortunately, his material turns out to be less than useful from the point of view of serious anomaly research. His material is on some studies he has done on the Van Allen radiation belts - a topic interesting in itself. However his 'stealth' intent was to prove that we couldn't have gone to the moon. Furthermore, from this he claims that the radiation hazard makes human crewed spaceflight above low earth orbit impossible. To his credit, my friend did provide references, which I followed up on. Unfortunately, the numbers were wrong (see links). They were originally stated by James Van Allen, but later retracted. It turns out most of the radiation theories are quite off base.
The biggest sense of annoyance with the moon-hoax idea is the same as I get when I hear arguments that the world is only 6000 years old - created at 9AM on Oct 23 4004BC. The issue to me is that these 'endeavors' waste a lot of time and effort. We get so wrapped up in things like chem-trails, moon-hoaxes and creationism that we lose track of what could be potential scientific pay dirt in what seems to me to be some bonafide scientific mysteries.
On some days, I need to recoil from all of the BS and ask if ANY of this material is really valid. If some people accept creationism, moon-hoaxes, secret space fleets, etc. - things I think are garbage - then could other ideas that I think are valid, UFOs, close encounters, parapsychology, etc., also be invalidated as well? Sometimes a sense of guilt by association takes over. What's the real difference between UFOs and the above items I am decrying?
At times like these, when the challenge to my own personal discernment gets too great, for a time I have to slam the door on all of it. At times like that, I can clearly see what motivates some of the debunkers - a backlash against the - well, whatever it is...
After a short time of skeptical backlash, I find myself reopening my eyes and with a fresh perspective, stepping back to re-examine some of the classic UFO physical evidence cases: the Delphos, Kansas and the Trans-en-Provence ground trace cases, some of the classic radar/visual cases in the literature, and other well-established cases (see the Sturrock Report or the book The UFO Enigma, by Peter Sturrock). Then I look at some significant unexplained cases in my own files - the extensive encounters of Evelyn, Carolyn, Susan, and others I describe in The Cosmic Bridge. These reassure me that there truly are significant mysteries represented in the sighting and encounter data. There really is a phenomenon present and it represents one of the biggest questions in the pantheon of human mysteries. Ultimately, we can see the UFO mystery as just that, a mystery. It is a legitimate scientific enigma worthy of serious study.
The result of this intellectual exercise is a mental housecleaning. Cleaning out the dirt and grunge and getting back to the basics. We have an unexplained phenomenon and a long-standing history of anomalous encounters. With so many unanswered questions, one sometimes has to focus on what the data shows - throwing out the conspiracy theories and endless speculations and getting back to what we can or cannot establish scientifically.
After our intellectual housecleaning, after we have cleared out the hoaxes, the channeled revelations, the world-domination conspiracies and the claims of hoaxed moon landings, perhaps we can finally get down to the business of investigating the mystery. The phenomenon of visitor encounters and sightings of weird stuff in the sky is real and at least to me, it represents one of the biggest mysteries of our day.
