Denver Post Alien "Reporting"

[Glen.Nogami]

So I open up my paper this morning and on the front page of section B we have an article about the "international director" of MUFON, a "global team of 400 investigators who look into reports of UFOs".

Apparently, says the Post, 10-15% of the 2400 sightings that the group takes on "turn out to be something that escapes human logic".

More: "He also finds it puzzling that no UFO or alien has slipped out from under the blanket of secrecy that the government has supposedly thrown over UFO's"

Gee, ya think? :D

There is essentially no skepticism whatsoever in this article. Roger Culver, a CSU professor of astronomy, is quoted as describing them as "reasonably objective," at least compared to other UFO groups out there.

I mean, come on. This is a major newspaper. I guess I'll have to start getting all of my news from the interweb.

[Ladewig]

Apparently, says the Post, 10-15% of the 2400 sightings that the group takes on "turn out to be something that escapes human logic".


The last I heard, "human logic" was in almost pristine condition - the result of so few people using it.

[Glen.Nogami]

The last I heard, "human logic" was in almost pristine condition - the result of so few people using it.

That was what I thought at the time :D .

[Cuddles]

It never fails to amaze me how many people confuse "my logic" with "human logic". Somehow it never seems to occur to them just because they can't think of an explanation, it doesn't mean no-one else can.

"You're right, no human would ever stack books in this way."

[Reed]

This is a major newspaper.

Denver still has a newspaper? I gotta pay better attention.

This bit is interesting: The nonprofit's world headquarters recently moved from a storefront in Littleton into Carrion's spacious home.

And this: "To [skeptics], this is like a religion, and they cling to that no matter what," he said.

No matter what? That seems a bit unfair. All we're asking for is some concrete evidence, Mr. Carrion.

[Glen.Nogami]

Denver still has a newspaper? I gotta pay better attention.

How provincial of me :o. But it's still not exactly a crappy tabloid, or a Westword-esque operation.

[Reed]

This coming Saturday afternoon, Franklin Carter, a participant in the UFO Disclosure project, will be speaking at the Metro State campus in Denver. (Free and open to the public. Starts at 3pm)

I don't know how Carter ranks in the field, but would imagine that some of the state's Ufologists will be in attendance. Perhaps even Carrion himself.

Should I email Professor Culver to see if he's interested? ;^)

[Wolverine]

This coming Saturday afternoon, Franklin Carter, a participant in the UFO Disclosure project, will be speaking at the Metro State campus in Denver.

Whee (http://studentactivities.mscd.edu/~cryptoscience/).

Disclosure project witness Franklin Carter will be speaking about his experience as a US. Navy radar technician tracking objects traveling in excess of 2,000 mph. He will also have with him a piece of the Bob White object. A mysterious piece of metal allegedly recovered from a UFO.

[Reed]

The Bob White object? I googled and see that it appears to be some kind of metallic meteorite.

One wonders how they reject that mundane explanation in favor of the sexy claim that it was recovered from a UFO, presumably an alien spacecraft.

[Reed]

The Franklin Carter talk was interesting. There were about 16 people in the audience, including Carrion and other representatives of MUFON.

Carter is an older fellow, pushing 70. He is one of the 400 interviewees of Project Disclosure, which was launched back in May 2001 to document the alien presence.

While in the military, Carter worked on the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line of radar stations. He said they tracked objects traveling over 12,000 mph when our fastest aircraft could travel no faster than 1100 mph.

Carter's alien contact experiences are recovered and documented largely through 'regression therapy' where an attempt is made to account for the subject's missing time. He didn't mention any possibility of confabulation or false memories being established. One of his therapists is Leon Sprinkle.

He did not have kind words for James Randi or the late Philip J. Klass, saying that they are too quick to dismiss pictures of UFOs as the planet Venus, no matter where Venus was in the sky at the time of the sighting. Same thing for weather balloons. I should have worn my TAM shirt.

A few times, he mistakenly described the diameter of galaxies such as ours as 100 million light years across, which is a vast overstatement. (Wikipedia says they range in size from 3,000 to 300,000 light years.) Nobody corrected him on this, which was strange.

He showed a series of the fuzzy metallic UFO pictures from the 'Wendel' collection of some 4000 UFO pictures. No concern that any of these were hoaxed.

He mentioned that there are thousands of documented reports of pilots seeing UFOs and is visibly perturbed by those who think these people are either lying or hallucinating. (Actually, I doubt that Klass would say these pilots are not being truthful. Rather, he'd quibble with the claims that they are alien spacecraft.)

I found the vernacular interesting. Those who think that aliens have/are visiting earth are 'believers'. Those who have had contact (through abduction or whatever) are 'knowers.' Carter is the latter.

He said that MUFON and other groups are building a large centralized database documenting all known UFO sightings and alien contacts.

The Bob White object is a 10-12" piece of feathered cone-shaped metal. (It doesn't look like any metallic meteorite that I've seen, but I'm no expert.) Carter said that tests so far have shown it to be an alloy of 33 elements. He believes it to be extraterrestrial. He says that their tests show the object giving off alpha particles, beta particles and neutrons. They had cleverly smuggled it into an IEEE conference to get the vendors to test it with various instruments. Carter was told by informants that the object is the ejected core of some kind of ion drive of an alien craft.

He said that the object, when placed in a battery-operated hotel safe in Laughlin, NV had drained the batteries overnight. It did so a second night as well. An audience member asked him if this test was repeated. He said that it had not, giving the impression that this wasn't important.

Bob White had initially made an attempt to sell the Object for some $10 million dollars, but failed to do so.

Carter had a small piece (several grams worth) to show around. It looked to my untrained eyes like the crossection of a piece of metallic slag. Again, I'm no metallurgist.

The most interesting take-away for me was how he addressed the conspiracy question. We skeptics often say that if Watergate couldn't be kept a secret, then the UFO coverup (involving thousands of people over a timespan of decades) couldn't have a chance of being kept a secret. Carter, however, was quite convinced the government could maintain such a large scale conspiracy, because even right now they squelch the fact that 450 people per year die of Tylenol poisoning.

I'll put that question to Steven Novell and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast.

[Reed]

While in the military, Carter worked on the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line of radar stations. He said they tracked objects traveling over 12,000 mph when our fastest aircraft could travel no faster than 1100 mph.



D'oh! A correction: that 12,000 mph should be 2,000 mph.