About UFO Paradigms and Evidence.
By:.
Steve Erdmann.
Copyright, C, Steve Erdmann, 2013.
This article was previously published in the December 22, 2013 issue of UFO Digest Magazine, and is printed here with permission.
ufodigest.com/article/ufo-paradigms-1221
Reviewers and journalists can use small quotes as long as they give full credits back to the original article.
A similar version of this article can be seen at https://wordpresscom507.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/ufo-perspectives/
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“UFOs, ETs, and Alien Abductions summarizes the evidence about UFOs and close encounters,” said author Don Donderi, “it explains why that evidence is reliable and why we react to it the way we do. It explains why most professional scientists ridicule or ignore the evidence. It argues that governments should reveal what they know about UFOs and close encounters.”
(UFOs, ETs, and Alien Abductions: A Scientist Looks at the Evidence, Don Donderi, PhD. Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., Charlottesville, Va. 22906. www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter, 978-465-0504, 2013, 231 pages, $22.95.)
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TRAIL OF EVIDENCE.
Donderi’s biography said that he graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA and BSC in biological psychology; he was an applied psychologist for IBM Corporation as a developer of navigation displays for the B-52 bomber, also an Associate Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at McGill University. He stated that his professional expertise has concluded “that some people have come into involuntary close contact with extraterrestrial, and I think that government statements about UFOs conceal more than they reveal.”.
Dr. Don Donderi, Scientist, Author and UFOlogist.
The author started on a series of UFO cases that he personally gave credence to, some are “classic” UFO cases, others are fairly unknown: the summer, 1973 Ottawa UFO and humanoid sighting by Mr. and Mrs. X, the July 17, 1957 Rb-47 case, the October 18, 1973 Coyne helicopter incident, “Low, Big, and Slow” V-shaped or triangular UFOs, Belgium, 1989, Yukon territory UFO of December 11, 1996 (“…diameter of this round UFO was nearly one mile, and its estimated height from top to bottom was one third of a mile.”), the Fall, 1976 Tehran UFO, and a host of other classical cases..
INQUIRY STAGES.
The author ventured through the various stages and investigators through the years, beginning more or less with Donald E. Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps officer and pilot (December 26, 1949), the various UFO groups, both civilian and government, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), The Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), the hallmark group of the Air Force Technical Adviser and astronomer, J. Allen Hynek, continuing into the Air Force Project Blue Book and further into the Condon UFO Committee (1966-1968), the Congressional Hearing of 1968, as well as the Advancement of Science Symposium (AAAS) of 1969, and others.
Donderi pretty well accepted Hynek’s seven classes of UFO reports, including abduction by occupants. He acknowledged that the contactees of the 50s-60s were “self-delusion” (Page 76). He slid into findings of UFO and abduction researchers George O’banski and Budd Hopkins. Donderi built a number of, what scientist R.V. Jones referred to as, evidence “touchstones.”.
ABDUCTION TOUCHSTONES.
Donderi considered the Barney and Betty Hill case of September 19, 1961 as the “Index Case” (though he stated that Betty’s grandiose post-1961 claims, “…sometimes verifiably, sometimes with more imagination than common sense,” worked against her). He went on to mention similar cases of abduction that would tend to substantiate these as “touchstone” cases: the Buff Ledge Camp, August 7, 1968 abductions, Burlington, Vermont, the Linda Cortile November 30, 1989 abduction, Manhattan, the Flagler, Colorado, November 7, 1989 abduction case, among others..
The Barney and Betty Hill Abduction Case .
The author toured the various “commonalities” in Touchstone cases. By the time he added all the important features (pp. 128-129) of the Touchstone cases, he also disclosed narratives that didn’t seem all that far afield from the Adamski, Bethuram, Angelucci-type contactees he so decried (pp. 17-18), “….include a tall insect-like creature acting in the role of examiner, and occupants whose facial features are a blend of a terrestrial reptile and conventional humanoid and whose skin is rough and greenish.”.
ABDUCTION RESEARCHERS.
Don Donderi said that there was “no reason to doubt the competence or veracity of the abductees or the reporters, and the information presented about those six cases is credible.” (p. 130) He pointed to a number of tests administered by professional psychologists. Donderi said that the research also indicated that the “abduction reports” were made by persons who were “no more, no less” involved in fantasy-prone tendencies than “anyone else.” (In Steve Erdmann’s purview of individuals, UFOlogical or otherwise, he has seen conservative and so-called respectable people fabricate and lie quite convincingly: some of their ‘stories’ are quite creative, and their motivations are often hidden and only known to themselves.)
A large portion of Donderi’s concern was the use and authenticity of hypnotism. He stated that the reported abductions can be attributed to something that “did actually happen” or is an “unwitting fabrication” by a “collaborative effort” by UFO reporters and the researcher/handlers. Even including the similarities and consistencies of abductee stories, Steve Erdmann contended that this arena is basically hearsay without the hard physical evidence: hypnotism, may be a part of, but certainly not the crux, and was no substitute.
“Jenny Randles also gave a strong warning to the use of hypnosis in suspected cases of abductions – Hypnosis destroys evidence and creates memories. It is not a serum of veracity, she also said.”
http://www.ufo.se/ufofiles/issue_4/konf_uk.html.
“From this data several conclusions emerged. Various witnesses explained their doubts about hypnosis. They felt it made them more confused, not less so. They were unclear of the reality status of their experience. Some felt positively harmed psychologically by the trauma of hypnosis.”
http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/hypnosisats.htm..
A LARGER SAMPLING.
When the larger scenery of reported UFOs are taken into account, more than the six cases that Donderi considered “touchstone,” must be contended with. Humanoid cases described a large variety of UFOnaut appearances and actions, some that didn’t seem to directly relate to the “steps” or “angles” in Donderi’s recommended cases. UFO researcher Jacques Vallee has long contended and compared some UFO cases surrounding occupants to folklore legends about elves, haunts, ghosts, urban-tale-like stories; Vallee, a computer scientist and prolific writer on the subject, demurred, and he gave five reasons why, to quote:
“(1) Unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth; (2) The humanoid body structure of the alleged ‘aliens‘ is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel; (3) The reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race; (4) The extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and (5) The apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives.”.
Aliens About to Abduct (Movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind).
But by 1969, when he published Passport to Magonia (Regnery), Vallee’s assessment of the UFO phenomenon had undergone a major shift. Much to the bewilderment of the “scientific ufologists” who had seen him as one of their heroes, Vallee now seemed to be have shied away from the extraterrestrial hypotheses and promulgated the radical view that UFOs are paranormal in nature and a modern space age manifestation of a phenomenon which assumed mysterious guises.
“When the underlying archetypes are extracted,” Vallee wrote, “the saucer myth is seen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries…religious miracles…and the widespread belief among all peoples concerning entities whose physical and psychological descriptions place them in the same category as the present-day ufonauts.”.
Vallee, in fact, has co-authored a book on historical UFOs wherein the authors relayed accounts that are intertwined with ancient gods and angels and other mystical beings. Some cases contained far more fantastical elements than those given in the six Touchstone cases Donderi offered. (Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times by Jacques Vallee and Chris Aubeck, Publisher: Tarcher. Year: 2010.)
“They reveal that unidentified flying objects have had a major impact not only on popular culture but on our history, on our religion, and on the models of the world humanity has formed from deepest antiquity,” said researcher David Taylor. “What this book does is put transient aerial phenomena in a proper historical context. So for example, in the seventeenth century, we have reports of sky battles and in the medieval period we have encounters with fairies and the Blessed Virgin Mary who descend from luminous objects. This book is a delight to read, for both the ‘paranormal’ investigator and the historian, as it gives insight into the social beliefs of the periods when these experiences were reported.”
Taylor continued: ‘‘The approach of both Vallée and Aubeck leads to an intelligent analysis of the sightings and their impact on human culture and beliefs, which is enlightening. For those who believe that UFOs have no place in the realm of psychical research – this book will show you how very wrong you are. UFOs are central to a whole tradition of transformative psychic experience throughout the ages. Highly recommended.”
Professor David Hufford concurred: “Their rigorously scientific insistence allows Vallee and Aubeck to retain the most challenging and interesting aspects of these events without the distraction of premature commitment to any particular interpretation. That, I believe, is true science: to follow the data wherever they lead and to move away from established theory when it fails to deal adequately with the data.” (Professor David Hufford, Penn State College of Medicine, Author, The Terror that Comes in the Night.)
English researcher Jenny Randles took a look at the question: “Do we need the concept of aliens in the modern UFO pantheon or are these beings just a space age equivalent of the dragons and the fairies – a once culturally relevant motif, that suited a particular time and place from which we have since moved on?”
Fortean Times No. 297, March 2013, p. 29. http://ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com/2013/07/alien-end-game-jenny-randles-and-uap.html.
Likewise, taking into account the large variety and diversity of the UFO phenomena, it was suspected that scientist Paul R. Hill’s theorems on UFO sightings (Unconventional Flying Objects, 1995) are not fulfilling “the goal being to build a coherent understanding” about UFO ‘function.’ His approach was a little too pat, particularly if – in actuality – UFOs are from different ‘causes,’ not a single origin..
Are UFO Abductions Just Fairy Creatures?.
UFO FAIRY ANTICS.
The UFO phenomenon described antics of the UFO landscape that went beyond suggested conventional Touchstone depictions. There are many examples, but we will take just one: The Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter, also known as the Hopkinsville Goblins Case, and to a lesser extent the Kelly Green Men Case, was the name given to a series of connected incidents of alleged close encounters with supposed extraterrestrial beings on the evening of August 21, 1955. The following was a summation from Wikipedia:
“On the evening of August 21, 1955, Billy Ray Taylor of Pennsylvania was visiting the Sutton family of Kentucky. The Sutton family home was a rural farmhouse located near the towns of Kelly and Hopkinsville, in Christian County, Kentucky (the farmhouse still stands today although the Sutton family moved soon after the incident). There were a total of eleven people in the house that night, including the children of the two families..
The Kelly-Hopkinsville UFO Encounter.
“The Sutton farmhouse had no running water, causing Billy Ray Taylor to go outside to the water pump for a drink at about 7:00 p.m. Taylor said he observed strange lights in the sky to the west, which he believed to be an unusual craft. He described it as disc-shaped in appearance, and featured lights on its side that had ‘all of the colors of the rainbow’. He ran back to the house excitedly telling the others about his ‘flying saucer’ sighting, but no one believed him; instead thinking that he had become overly excited after seeing a vivid ‘shooting star.’
“At about 8.00 p.m., the families began hearing strange and unexplained noises outside. The Sutton family dog which was in the yard outside began barking loudly and then hid under the house, where it remained until the next day. Going outside a few minutes later with their guns, Billy Ray Taylor and Elmer ‘Lucky’ Sutton then asserted that they saw a strange creature emerge from the nearby trees.
“When the creature approached to within about 20 feet, the two men began shooting at it, one using a shotgun, the other man using a .22 rifle. There was a noise ‘sounding like bullets being rattled about in a metal drum.’ and the creature, they said, then flipped over and fled into the darkness and shadows. Sure that they had wounded the creature, Lucky and Solomon went out to look for it. Hendry writes that as the men were stepping from the porch, they saw one of the creatures perched on an awning. They again shot at the creature, and it was knocked from the roof. Again they heard the rattling noise, although the creature was apparently unharmed..
Artist Depiction of the 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville UFO Encounter.
“Lucky and Solomon returned to the house in a disturbed state. Within minutes, Lucky’s brother J. C. Sutton said that he saw the same creature (or at least a similar creature) peer into a window in the home; J. C. and Solomon shot at it, breaking the window, whereupon it too flipped over and fled. The creatures could be heard loudly scurrying about on the roof, and scratching as though trying to break through. For the next few hours, the witnesses asserted that the creatures repeatedly approached the home, either popping up at the doorway or at windows in an almost playful manner, only to be shot at each time they did. The witnesses were unsure as to how many of the creatures there were; except for one sighting of two at the same time, all other sightings were of only one, although the first story claimed twelve to fifteen. At one point the witnesses shot one of the beings nearly point blank, and again would insist that the sound resembled bullets striking a metal bucket. The floating creatures’ legs seemed to be atrophied and nearly useless, and they appeared to propel themselves with a curious hip-swaying motion, steering with their arms. Clark writes that ‘if the creatures were in a tree or on the roof when hit [by gunfire], they would float, not fall, to the ground.’”
http://www.countryliving.com/life/a44064/eclipseville-hopkinsville-ky-history/.
NO REASON TO LIE.
Michele Carlton covered the story for the Kentucky New Era News, describing the impish and circus-type behavior:
“‘Lucky’ Sutton and other family members said they had a gun battle with the creatures that lasted for hours. Most of the Sutton family members who said they fought the aliens off with shotguns are deceased. However, Hawkins and her younger brother, Elmer Sutton Jr., of Trigg County, said their father shared his Kelly experience with them. Hawkins, 41, and Sutton, 35, are the children of “Lucky” Sutton and Glorine Powell, of Trigg County. Their father died on Dec. 5, 1995.
“He talked to me about it because I was one of the last ones to leave home,” the younger Sutton said. “I prodded him about it a lot. A lot of times he wouldn’t talk about it. If I’d catch him in the right mood, he’d sit down and talk for hours about it. When he did, I’d listen. To be honest with you, he knew some day he’d die. I guess he wanted one of us to know the truth.”
http://www.ufoevidence.org/Cases/CaseSubarticle.asp?ID=533.
HOW ADVANCED?.
Mankind has made tremendous advances since the days of Ben Franklin: just look at the adventures since Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1904 in aviation alone. Ray Kurzweil extended that progress to its natural progression and he called it “The Law of Accelerating Returns” (March 7, 2001.): “An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns.
F-14 Tomcat – Sample of our Modern Technology .
If superior UFO Races are also bound by The Law of Accelerating Returns and they have been far advanced beyond terrestrial technology hundreds of years prior (UFOs by which radar has tracked at over 9,000 miles per hour and accelerations in the range of 1000Gs [p. 153], possibly approaching the speed of light), wouldn’t their technology have well advanced beyond “campy” and “cartoonish” depictions? Compare the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci to our present-day SR-71 Stealth craft: multiply that 2000 times..
Isaac Asimov.
A similar theme was voiced in Isaac Asimov’s science-fiction story “The Last Question,” a tale of trillions of years of evolution and how mankind will evolve from trapping the energy of stars with 100% efficiency, Hyper-stellar travel, emigration to other Galaxies, Body-Mind separation and fusing the mind with an all-knowing, omniscient computer, a Self-correcting and Self -Adjusting machine capable of learning and building its own predecessor, had become so powerful as to recreate light after all the stars entropy in the end and the universe begins again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question
http://www.arunchinnachamy.com/isaac-asimov-the-last-question-analysis/.
THE LAST QUESTION.
“The story is interesting and enters the black hole of Physics and Religion simultaneously.” It is about “How mankind will evolve, pioneer in space travel and set foot in all the distant Galaxies with the help of Analog Computers (AC).” “The stars and Galaxies died and snuffed out, and space grew black after ten trillion years of running down…One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.”
http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm.
And So, The Scientists Posed “The Last Question” to the Computer.
With that type of Laws of Accelerating Returns: Where would that presently leave the UFO occupants?
Steve Erdmann had not debated UFOs as an intelligent and superior phenomena, he just debated how the evidence should be handled and what it encompassed. Why should such a civilization need “cartoonish” artifacts? Why would it need “domed” aircraft with “spinning rim lights,” and one–piece outfits with “back packs” (Wllie Begay and Guy Tossie, Ririe, Idaho, November 2, 1967)? Would they be far advanced beyond “oval doorways,” medical “probes,” “books,” (pp. 96-97) “tables,” and “benches” (pp. 113, 114, 116); for that matter, would they need ramps, panoramic portholes, flashing lights, as if a “display” as seen in various assorted descriptions, much like scenes out of a 1950’s science–fiction movie? UFO vehicle designs seemed to far out-number the innovations seen in the terrestrial automobile market..
Some UFOs seem to be Replicas of Our Own Conventionality.
SCIENTIFIC FEAR.
Donderi seemed more cogent when he spoke of the “paradigms” of science, and how “fear” of the UFO phenomena caused our place in the universe as being threatened. “The existing paradigm constraints normal science, regardless of the evidence.” (p. 164) He said: “Those institutions administered by a meritocracy of capable people: the cultural elites.” (p. 190)
The question arose, however: just how much “fear” and “ignorance” are involved with humans if governments have crashed UFOs in their possession? (pp. 176-184) Donderi went into detail concerning the 1947 Roswell UFO crash.
“The small group of senior scientists who helped the government in the immediate postwar period was the people most likely to be asked for advice about the security threat posed by technologically superior UFOs,” said Donderi, “but who the UFO overseers were then, and who they are now, is not known. It is one of the better-kept secrets of the U.S government.”
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Decipher Attempts of the Famous Ramey Memo from 1947 Roswell
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Steve Erdmann – Independent Investigative Journalist
Steve Erdmann can be reached through the editor or at dissenterdisinter@yahoo.com or independenterdmann@gmail.com.
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Alternate Perception Magazine: http://www.apmagazine.info/,
https://www.facebook.com/TheUniversalDigest/?__tn__=%2Cd%2CP-R&eid=ARB3i9eJwirzOvkPMA5RwMhIUX-3xSP69ME1YHZhQjeSqnxoiNgzhKt1WVX8EUlupUgLBVzd_mX-VXAN.
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Steve Erdmann – Independent Investigative Journalist
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Aliens About to Abduct (Movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
https://theportalist.com/alien-abduction-movies-ranked-from-most-to-least-horrifying
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Dr. Don Donderi, Scientist, Author and UFOlogist
http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/qa-with-don-donderi-on-aliens-roswell-and-his-ufo-course-at-mcgill
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https://www.amazon.com/
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The Barney and Betty Hill Abduction Case
He described the ships leader as looking like a “German Nazi” wearing a shiny black jacket, scarf and cap. (Actual quote: “…another figure has an EVIL face… he looks like a German Nazi… His eyes! His eyes. I’ve never seen eyes like that before.”)
http://greyfalcon.us/The%20Hill%20Abduction.htm
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Picture and Quote of Jacques Vallee
http://www.azquotes.com/author/33226-Jacques_Vallee
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Are UFO Abductions Just Fairy Creatures?
http://greyfalcon.us/AN%20ALIEN%20VICE.htm
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The Kelly-Hopkinsville UFO Encounter
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Artist Depiction of the 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville UFO Encounter
https://cogitz.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/kelly-hopkinsville-encounter/
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And So, The Scientists Posed “The Last Question” to the Computer
https://devosdiscovery.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/520/
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Isaac Asimov
https://bibliotecaucs.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/infografico-trabalhos-incomuns-de-autores-famosos/
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F-14 Tomcat – Sample of our Modern Technology
https://theaviationist.com/2014/05/13/two-new-stories-baranek/
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Decipher Attempts of the Famous Ramey Memo from 1947 Roswell
Where are the Overseers of the 1947 Roswell Technology Today?
http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/809242/Roswell-UFO-decipher-Ramey-memo-General-Roger-Ramey-aliens
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Some UFOs seem to be Replicas of Our Own Conventionality
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/10/19/ufo-sightings-pose-danger-to-aviation
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A similar version of this article can be seen at https://wordpresscom507.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/ufo-perspectives/