Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

Scientists and UFOs

A friend sent me a link to a Newsweek story on the recent Texas UFO flap, which apparently discussed what scientists think of UFOs. “How exciting,” I thought, wondering which scientists they had talked to…Jacques Vallee, perhaps Bernard Haisch? Umm, no.

Instead we get CSICOP Fellow Bob Park, Skeptic magazine editor Michael Shermer, and Theodore Schick (author of How to Think About Weird Things: Critical thinking for a New Age). Park does a wonderful job of not even understanding what the UFO acronym stands for, which ends up making each of his statements rather ridiculous if you read them correctly. Michael Shermer lets us in on what it really might have been (a Stealth bomber flanked by fighter jets). But wait, the “scientists” are really on the side of “UFO believers”:

Scientists defend UFO believers against charges that they’re psychologically deranged. People who report UFO sightings and abductions, a 1993 study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology concluded, are just as intelligent, psychologically healthy, and free of fantasies as people without such experiences. People with UFO experiences differed on only one known measure: sleep deprivation.

But really, it’s worth wading through the article to get to Bob Park’s own UFO encounter, which had a prosaic explanation. Because what did it do for Bob?

With that, Park learned the ultimate lesson for a scientist: humility.

OMG, the irony…my eyes are burning.

Editor
  1. Ah, humility
    Heheh, I pointed out the “humility” comment over at the Graham Hancock Message Board the other day. I would never have guessed Bob Park is a comedian. He also has no idea how closely related he is to Dr Stephen Greer of the Disclosure Project. Both men had epiphanies while on long-distance bike rides. 😉

    The irony is they must have stayed up all night to think of the “sleep deprivation” explanation.

  2. I think they do this on purpose
    Ug, I was not going to read it because I knew it was going to be tripe. But I went ahead and read it because all perspectives theoretically should be observed, and found this beauty:

    “The mirror image of the belief in UFOs is disbelief in historic events, like the moon landing.”

    Just kill me. Why do people write about things that they know nothing about? Why do they make conjecture like this based on zero knowledge or evidence other than decisions they have made in their minds? I do realize this happens on all sides of the discussion, but in a magazine of this status?

    I suppose they don’t know what they don’t know, but it amazes me that people without a clue are given “positions of wisdom”. Obviously this person believes what he was told to believe and he feels damn good about it because now he’s teaching us the same.

    Well after reading that article, I felt one thing: disgust.

  3. Sleep deprivation????
    I stay up every night until 2-3 a.m. playing Call of Duty 4 and watching Futurama.

    Where the hell is MY U.F.O.??

    I demand a refund!

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

      1. My friend…
        You do not. Want. To know 🙂

        —–
        It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
        It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

        Red Pill Junkie

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal