| Disappointing but not surprising - the Peter Jennings UFO special | |
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25 Feb 2005 @ 03:30, by Craig Lang
It was with very low expectations, but a slight bit of hope that I watched the special this evening (7PM CST) on the ABC network, "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFO's, Seeing is Believing." Unforunately, the one thing I came away with was that my expectations were met. My overall sense was one of disappointment. I got the overall impression of business as usual - largely a repetition of the official line. Yet though the lid still seems to be tightly clamped down, there is, perhaps, a tiny crack in the artifice - and through this shines a faint glimmer of light.
The first quarter of the Peter Jennings UFO special on ABC this evening did a good job of presenting what I would describe as UFO-History 101. It provided some pretty favorable coverage to the historical sightings of the US Air Force's dilema with the UFO sightings that wouldn't go away. It refered to a large number of photographs that documented the early sightings and talked about the gun camera footage taken during the late 40's and early 50's. It further described the favorable treatment given to the E.T. hypothesis by project sign - followed by the subsequent debunking efforts from the days of the Robertson Panel onward.
Unfortunately, I think that this was the high point of the special. From that point, I got the sense that it was Jennings' job to keep the lid on, while offering a glimmer of hope to the "true believers". More on that glimmer later.
My biggest gripe about the special was the very large amount of airplay that they gave to the SETI institute. I have the highest respect for the SETI community in their study of potential ET life "out there". However I find that they are pretty much clueless when it comes to the discussion of UFO cases. And as such, I wonder if any consideration of them as experts regarding the "ET visiting Earth" paradigm is greatly misplaced.
The biggest claim of the SETI community, and thus the Jennings special, was that there is no physical evidence. And this was the biggest disappointment of the show. There was no mention of the many cases in which evidence exists. There was no mention of several reports, including the Sturrock Report, the COMETA Report, Richard Hall's book, "The UFO Evidence", and the recent paper in the British Interplanetary Society. There was only the claim that no such evidence exists.
Unfortunately also - at least in my opinion - far too much time was devoted to Roswell. I tend to be a bit of a skeptic (though open minded) about Roswell. I am not a Roswell expert and make no claim to be. However, my understanding is that there have been both some very positive, and some not so positive, points recently developed about Roswell. But to me, the biggest issue is that there has yet to appear any material from the crash. And this was one point made in the show.
Unfortunately, the biggest negative in their discussion of the Roswell case was the Mogul balloon hypothesis - which Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt quite some time ago pointed out, doesn't work. But it was this, along with the unfortunately-too-positive airplay given to the "Case Closed" report published by the USAF, that presented a very negatively slanted view of the mystery. Something interesting did happen at Roswell and we, the public, don't know what it was. ABC made no effort to make an objective discovery of what it was - which, witih all of their resources, might have made for a fascinating expose of - well, of whatever happened at Roswell.
They subsequently turned their attention to the topic of "so called" alien abduction. And here is what I found to be the biggest disappointment. I noted that the majority of the airtime was given to a team of psychologists whose primary claim is that all alien abduction is fantasy. In a study summary, "Alien Abduction Tales Offer Clues on Memory" they conclude that traumatic memory is often not verifiable. Thus, "the physiological markers of emotion that accompany recollection of a memory cannot be taken as evidence of the memory's authenticity"
Their rationale for this conclusion is that memories of alien abduction can elicit the same emotional responses as verifiable memories. Thus, they state that (since abduction is assumed to be fantasy) reality and fantasy can not be distinguished in emotional memory. Their core assumption is that alien abduction is not real, and thus they have actually begun their study by assuming their conclusion. To me this is a fatal flaw in their work.
Alas, this was the core of the section on abduction. They spent an additional amount of time talking about Awareness during Sleep Paralysis (ASP) and related things that mimic (and are the null hypothesis for) the close encounter capture scenario. And while they did devote some airplay to the abduction scenario, unfortunately they again missed some very good material. The biggest example of what they missed was the work of Dr. John Mack - but the list goes on. Thus, I think that they missed some of the best of the best in this wholly new field at the leading edge of human knowledge.
The focus always returned to the "show me the evidence". In all fairness, they were right in that one of the hallmarks of the close encounter phenomenon is it's ambiguity. UFO encounters are not reproducable in a laboratory. They do not lend themselves to reductionistic experimental study. And so, to Seth Shostak, Jill Tartar and Frank Drake - all of the SETI institute, they are not science. But have any of those in the SETI world ever seen a tornado? If so, then could they reproduce their experience in the laboratory? So, if they claim to have been in one, how could they prove it to me?
Again and again, the overwhelming focus of the Peter Jennings special was on the (claimed) lack of physical evidence. And yet during this focus, they missed some excellent cases which offered just such evidence. These are well documented in the literature. The Sturrock Report clearly establishes the evidence of a significant unexplained component to the plethora of UFO reports that reach the ears of MUFON and other organizations. And these alone could be considered the smoking gun - the indicator that there is a significant unexplained phenomenon present in our skies. It does not make any claims as to their origin, but merely that they are unexplained.
Still, they did end with the ray of light - with the lid being left slightly ajar. This was the interview at the conclusion of the show, with Dr. Michio Kaku. In it, he strongly suggested that when dealing with topics like UFOs it is necessary to think out of the box. The study of potential ET visits to Earth requires thinking beyond conventional physics. And it was this with which Peter Jennings concluded his show: "No proof yet, but maybe, just maybe...."
While I can't say I was impressed, perhaps it was about the best we can hope for from the mainstream news media. Yet, even in the darkness, perhaps we saw the beginning - a slow, painful lifting of the lid. Maybe after darkness comes the dawn.
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