From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 12:27:49 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:37:43 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 00:10:05 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 10:14:52 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>You obviously haven't been reading the last few UpDates. I
>thought I had made it clear that I am unimpressed by the SETI
>project and its anthropomorphic outlook. Quite a few ufologists
>look really sophisticated in comparison. As for Frank Drake with
>his idea of sending messages into the skies in the hope that the
>God like aliens will give us the secret of peace on earth, with
>immortality thrown in for good measure, the religious symbolism
>is obvious

At last, we have something on which to agree. As non-ufologist
SETI critics have observed from time to time, at least the
ufologists base their hypotheses on a body of perceived
evidence. If you want evidence-free speculation about ETI, I
refer interested Listfolk to just about any book or other
monograph by a SETI enthusiast.

>Magonia devoted one issue to an article by Lawson years back,
>and I doubt if we ever referred to it since.

I think you could call this historical revisionism. The
Magonians were enchanted for a time with Lawson's silly ideas,
and they are discussed prominently - with straight face and
without giggling, treated in other words as entirely serious -
in a 1984 book written by Magonia's longtime editor John
Rimmer, The Evidence for Alien Abductions. If it were worth my
time (it isn't), I have no doubt that I'd find that birth trauma
figured in more than one long-ago article in Magonia. I'm sure
Peter is simply citing the longest and most focused of them. If
Rogerson and Rimmer want to tell us that they no longer feel as
they did 20 years ago, that's fine - neither do I on a number of
issues, ufological and otherwise - and even healthy. But the
fact that they once took serious heed of birth traumas as
abduction generators is a matter of record.

>I see that Jerry is
>still going on about Hispanics. That was a throw away piece
>about Dark Side ufology and the idea of aliens doing nasty
>things in hangers in the desert.

One of Magonia's many "throw away pieces," I'm afraid, and goofy
fantasies, drawing on nothing of empirical consequence, about
what Americans are supposed to think.

>The piece never even mentioned
>the word abduction. But if you want to go down that road just
>look at what David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins are now saying about
>the hybrids. Racial fears or what?

And on what do you make that leap? Evidence? Of course not.
Assertion and mind-reading? Of course.  The hybrid stuff is
curious, and while I resist a literalist interpretation, for
which the evidence is nowhere sufficient, I see no easy
explanation in sight. Unlike Magonians, I have no trouble with
those three little words "I don't know." My suspicion is that we
are dealing with anomalies of consciousness about which we know
too little to speak of too airily.

But of one thing I'm confident: the unsupported guesswork of a
non- American about the deepest secrets of the American psyche
is worth no serious person's time.

>Presumably the fact that IUR published article after article on
>the Roswell nonsense means Jerry was promoting it. Or was he
>just publishing articles as they came along.

Whatever it may or may not be, Roswell is not "nonsense" -
though that unflattering characterization certainly describes
much that has been written about it, of course - but Roswell
itself remains an interesting historical event and a continuing
mystery. Though I am inclined these days to doubt it was an
ETI-related event (I have my own ideas, but since I can't
produce evidence to support them, I don't publish them;
therefore, I guess, I am not a Magonian), there seems no doubt
that many interesting, unanswered questions remain. Further
research may lead us to new discoveries, perhaps some unexpected
ones which may cut through the stale current debates.

I look forward to continuing developments with interest, as I
would with any historical controversy. And yes, I think IUR has
done a good job of covering the unfolding story. Certainly, our
articles were based overwhelmingly on direct - and considerable
- investigation, as opposed to Peter's remarks above.

>Its up to those who propose that there are dramatically
>anomalous phenomena out there to prove the point, its not up to
>sceptics to demonstrate otherwise. Of course if anyone like
Andy >Roberts or Dave Clark get out of their armchairs and
investigate >these cases and come up with answers Jerry doesn't
like he damns >them too.

This is the same lazy, intellectually witless argument we too
often hear from thoughtless "sceptics." In fact, the only
persons who have no obligation to prove anything are those who
say nothing and who live their lives oblivious to, ignorant of,
or indifferent to the controversy in question. If they choose to
enter the debate, they have an obligation to employ logical
argument and to offer actual evidence in support of their
position. I take this, however, to be Peter's back-handed
admission that since in his estimation UFOs don't exist as
extraordinary anomalies, he can't be bothered with logical
argument or actual evidence - at this stage, alas, an
acknowledgement of the obvious.

Here is the late sociologist of science Marcello Truzzi, the man
who coined the phrase (which in his last years he rejected as
effectively without meaning) "extraordinary claims demand
extraordinary evidence." (No, Carl Sagan, usually credited, did
not invent the maxim. Basically, Truzzi concluded that the
twice-used "extraordinary" is largely a question-begging,
subjective judgment and that, moreover, the maxim has serious
flaws as a description of how science actually judges truth
claims. I know this from my many personal conversations with
Marcello, a close friend, who died, sad to say, before he could
write a paper or book elucidating his revised thinking.) Anyway:

"If a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that
he has a negative hypothesis... he is making a claim and
therefore also has to bear a burden of proof. Sometimes, such
negative claims by critics are also quite extraordinary... in
which case the negative claimant also may have to bear a heavier
burden of proof than might normally be expected.

"Critics who assert negative claims but who mistakenly call
themselves 'skeptics' often act as though they... have no burden
of proof placed on them at all... [But] if a critic asserts
that the result was due to artifact X, that critic then has the
burden of proof to demonstrate the artifact X can and probably
did produce such results under such circumstances.... Alas, most
critics seem happy to sit in their armchairs producing post hoc
counterexplanations."

>>>Jerry has made this point on a number occasions about
>>>paranormal explanations but seems to have a slight difficulty
>>>realising that invoking a technology so advanced as to be like
>>>magic is only verbally different from a paranormal explanation.

>>I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, except that
>>pronouncements like these seem to give the likes of Peter great
>>satisfaction as he goes about conjuring up ever more and more
>>elastic, magical pelicans. Since it was Arthur Clarke who made
>>the comparison of ETH technology to magic, I urge you to take
>>your quarrel to him. Oh, wait a minute; he's an authority
>>figure, isn't he? Sorry. Never mind.

>It means that a _magical_ technology = magic. Can I make it
>plainer than tha[t]?

Huh? Are you suggesting, then, that advanced technology would be
based on magic? Or is it your view that technological
development has reached its end, and that any testimony
concerning an ostensible technology beyond present understanding
can be discarded as delusional because, being hard to
comprehend, that technology would seem magical, and since magic
doesn't exist, therefore superior technology can't exist,
either?

Keep in mind, too, gentle and patient Listfolk, that Peter and
his fellow Magonians like to poke fun at technically trained
ufologists (e.g., Stan Friedman) who have gone to some length to
demonstrate how extensions of current technological principles
may explain how interstellar travelers could develop propulsion
and other systems which may enable them to get here.

Talk about unfalsifiable: Anybody who thinks a far superior
technology might look like magic to the naive, early 21st-
century observer is a fool. Meantime, those who argue that UFO-
extraterrestrial technology may not be so advanced, after all,
and that from current physical knowledge we can draw reasonable
inferences about otherworldly spacecraft propulsion... well,
those guys are fools, too.

As usual, with the Magonian/pelicanist school of rhetoric, it's
always a heads-you-lose, tails-we-win proposition.


Jerry Clark