Are UFO experts worth listening to?

I’ve been thinking about UFO reports and conspiracy theories in general for a little while now and I have a question. Why, when government officials, the police and military announce something that supports conspiracy theories or more particularly UFO’s are they given tremendous credence and authority, yet when those same officials say something that contradicts “accepted” conspiracy dogma do they become tools of the New World Order? I keep seeing reports being taken as “genuine” evidence because the sighting was by a police officer or an airforce observer or a retired “senior military advisor” when these people are no less likely to make stuff up, or to be generous, misinterpret things than anyone else. If anything, given the vehemence with which officials are typically treated within truther communities one could argue that this fawning is even more strange.

Let us look at a couple of examples. We have the Rendlesham Forest incident, one of the most famous of the UK UFO sightings. This sighting took place on an American airbase in Southern England and the reports were all from military personnel including the deputy base commander. Consequently this is considered by many UFO researchers to be absolute proof of the existence of UFO’s but the evidence is not at all clear. There are no photographs, and when challenged about this witnesses report that the phots taken either didn’t come out or were removed by security agents. There is no physical evidence either from the supposed landing site or from the surrounding area, again when challenged the witnesses are unclear as to why this is. In essence what seems to have happened is that a group of fairly naïve young airforce personnel saw something that they thought was unusual and through the investigation and later through recounting the story to each other and their peers embellished and modified the story as people tend to do.

It is interesting to note at this point that there are considerable motions being made towards reducing the amount of credence given to eye witnesses in criminal cases for the very reason that there is often a discrepancy between what is reported and what actually happened. Much research has been carried out into the fallibility of witnesses, and particularly into witnesses who recall information under hypnosis. A parallel can be drawn between UFO reports and the reports of Satanic child abuse in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. In the latter case it is now clear that children who acted as witnesses were coached and guided to give evidence that fitted the expectation of social workers and psychologists who had an agenda that was not obvious at the time. The upshot? As with the vast majority of UFO reports we get a distorted version of some kind of truth which can bera little if any resemblance to what actually happened.

Let us consider another case, the Phoenix Lights UFO reports from Phoenix, Arizona in the USA. Many hundreds of people including police officers saw lights in the sky in formation over the hills just outside Phoenix. The sheer quantity of reports and the reports of “credible” police witnesses has again led many UFO researchers to claim this incident as conclusive proof of Extra Terrestrial activity in Earth airspace. Anyone who argues against this position is accused of being part of the conspiracy and having a closed mind, yet the video evidence and the subsequent detailed reports from the local air force base leave no doubt that the lights were in fact illumination flares dropped during a night exercise from C130 transport planes supported by A10 Warthog anti-tank planes and F16 fighters. Now when you say this to believers they will tell you that the lights are the wrong intensity and the wrong characteristics for flares, that they didn’t move like flares and so on, but you have to ask how many of the witnesses are familiar with the 20 or so types or airborn flare carried by military planes? Certainly the footage of planes dropping flares used in the documentaries on the sighting for comparison are not even remotely similar being in fact anti-heat-seeker chaff rather than flares, but I guess the programme makers may not have known that…..

Whatever, it concerns me that there are a great many examples of reports of various types that are accepted when they are no more valid, or credible or trustworthy than reports from Joe Bloggs skywatching from his back garden. Just a thought….