Thursday, May 26, 2022

UFO World from the Cheap Seats

    A lot of what happens in UFO World is cyclical and repetitive. Sometimes it overlaps with the rest of society, and the circumstances are inevitably indicative of a variety of agendas among the most prominent players. Lots of layers of motives. It's not as if politicians effectively hide that's the case, but people still want to argue that if some Senator or Congressperson says something, that makes it more valid. It doesn't necessarily, and there is no substitute for observing universally recognized standards of evidence. It takes continuous conscious decisions to be committed to objectivity through recognizing the importance of standards of evidence, and UFO World, if nothing else, offers an abundance of opportunities to strengthen that practice.

The late Sen. Reid
From the best I can tell, we have a situation where Sen. Reid saw to it that Robert Bigelow received funding. The purposes of the work conducted under the grant award seemed to be misrepresented to the DIA. That gets a little murky, as these things do, but then the funding was clearly discontinued. The circumstances were eventually egregiously and willfully mischaracterized by Kean and others in their reporting.

Any way one slices it, a public relations campaign was successfully executed by Mellon, Elizondo, and TTSA. It appears at that point they had favor with select politicians who saw it beneficial to champion their story, and these politicians had abilities to make hearings happen. This has all happened before, but that's not really my point, deserving of mention as it may be.

Now here we are, post-hearings, with little to nothing more than we started with because much of it was built on unverified stories and exaggerations in the first place. As I see it, there really is no way to have Robert Bigelow in a story or chain of events without the story being suspect. One just has to ignore too many circumstances to frame it otherwise, and I think writers and researchers do a disservice to their readers who ignore the history of his ethical failings. Same for the gross miscalculations, conflicting statements, and general buffoonery out of his camp for some 30 years.

Meanwhile, we continue to await circumstances of scientific merit to be presented by these people who claim to have been conducting scientific investigation. Where is the substance, the reports demonstrating systematic and careful investigation? You know, the science? 

A number of people and outlets enabled the lapse in prioritizing standards of evidence, many of which are actually taken advantage of by those who perpetually fail to produce all this big evidence that never seems to make it to the light of day. Unfortunately, in UFO World it is not just a lapse. It's a feature, not a bug.

4 comments:

  1. Very well said Jack. This has been the perpetual pickle of the UFO crowd since forever - they believe themselves utterly exempt from standards of evidence. The data that promotes their beliefs floats to the top and the data that contradicts their beliefs sinks to the bottom. Meanwhile they slosh around in their cesspool of misinformation, disinformation, personal agendas and absurd claims knowing that there will always be a large population of fellow believers that will cheer them on - truth be damned.

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    1. Well said Jack B indeed, and James PC too. Some of us have been saying (or trying to) much the same for years, to no avail. One comes up against what amounts to a religious belief—rooted I suspect in some prior existential privation—which is justified by that "cesspit of misinformation" (&c), which in turn is proclaimed as the truth. All of which requires a fundamental failure of logic to uphold. The New Crew—Kean, Elizondo & Co—strike me as cynically aware of this, and seem to be quite happy to trade in their economies with truth and honesty for profit, whether determined by obesity of the wallet or the ego. And we've seen it all before.

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  2. “..Unfortunately, in UFO World it is not just a lapse. It's a feature, not a bug…”

    Bingo..great analogy..

    “…willfully mischaracterized by Kean and others in their reporting…”

    Kean is like an articulate LMHowe..same same.
    The problem is compounded especially on Youtube.
    Big name “science” channels keep putting the same talking heads on making the same BS claims..with nothing to show and no one calls them out on it.
    Elizondo springs to mind…
    And if you write a response pointing out the flaws and tricks..it vanishes in the YT algorithm due to the huge volume of dopey, gushing, incredulous and sycophantic responses in the comments thread.
    Other “science” channels can see the high audience views and comment numbers..and then also hire the same BS artists..its a feedback loop of lunatics..

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  3. Southern observerJune 3, 2022 at 8:50 AM

    It is more than discouraging to be this far along in years of life and time since my carefully journaled and conveyed (to some) experiences in the 1970s and realize the nature of the phenomena is bound in the nature of our reality, especially time, and the mysteries of our existence and is unlikely to be fully explained in my lifetime. Yes, the approach to investigation has been lacking, and everything is muddled, but some progress has been made.

    As for myself, I've always seen the interdimensional aspect of it and so I find the ideas and experiments of physicists the most useful in trying to find a path to explanation.

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