"The Roswell Incident" by Charles Berlitz and William Moore

 Did a flying saucer containing extraterrestrials crash-land near Roswell, New Mexico, USA in 1947?

This is the book that popularised the idea that it did. The primary author, Charles Berlitz, grandson of the man who founded the language school, had already written several books on paranormal phenomena including the highly successful The Bermuda Triangle.

The problem is that the evidence is utterly unconvincing. There is no physical evidence (a lack explained away using conspiracy theories). It is entirely based on witness testimony. Worse, the vast majority of this testimony is secondhand. The rancher (called Brazel, bizarrely the nephew of the man who shot Pat Garret, the man who shot Billy the Kid) who allegedly picked up the debris of a 'flying saucer' (or man-made balloon) is dead so we have to rely on what his children, and friends, say that he told them.  Sometimes the chain of witnesses becomes protracted, such as when the rancher's son repeats a story he was told by "a fellow who worked with me on a job in Alaska for a while" or when the rancher's neighbour's wife had a brother who was allegedly on the plane that flew the wreckage to a military depot.

If this was a court case with no forensic evidence and predominantly hearsay evidence it would be thrown out of court. So Berlitz and Moore do what any decent lawyer would do in these circumstances: they use rhetoric to blow smoke into the reader's eyes. For example, they give third-person evidence in the first person. They proclaim that their witnesses are reputable tellers of the truth. And they bring on 'expert' witnesses such as Meade Layne and Reilley Crabbe of the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation which sounds impressive until you discover (not from this book) that this Foundation researches 'scientific' topics such as human auras, telepathy, spirit communications and seances.

There is one first hand witness: Major Jesse A Marcel who was “ranking staff officer in charge of intelligence at the Roswell Army Air Base at the time of the incident.” (Ch 4) The authors make a great deal of (impressive) military credentials including his medals, being shot down, though I'm not sure that any of that attests to his honesty or his reliability as a witness; indeed, being in charge of intelligence might suggest a willingness to manipulate the truth. The authors don't speculate on why Major Marcel waited 31 years before claiming that the wreckage he saw was from a UFO. But he certainly saw the debris that was collected from the ranch and he now (after 31 years) testifies it was "definitely not a weather or tracking device, nor was it any sort of plane or missile.” A number of other witnesses claim the debris was not from a weather balloon but since the authors aren't prepared to say what weather balloon wreckage was like, the reader cannot make up their own mind.

I believe that something crashed. It was probably a high altitude surveillance balloon. Project Mogul was a top secret experimental attempt to use balloons to listen for shock waves coming from Russian nuclear tests; these were the early days of the Cold War. A balloon had been launched on June 4th 1947 and contact with it was lost close to Brazel's ranch. Crucially, the balloons used for Mogul were not weather balloons, using different materials such as polyethylene (which had only begun large scale manufacture in the US in 1944 and was therefore probably unknown to the witnesses). So the 'it was not a weather balloon' can be true and still not require the considerable leap of faith to believe that the wreckage was of extraterrestrial origin. 

What about the little grey men who were supposed to have been captured, dead or alive, and whose corpses are still believed by enthusiasts to be kept in an air force base somewhere? This book discusses them too but never points out that they aren't actually linked to Roswell. Their story also originated in Mexico but in Aztec in 1949. Two men called Newton and Gebauer were selling devices that claimed to use extraterrestrial technology to locate deposits of oil, gas and gold. The technology, they claimed, came from a flying saucer from Venus that had landed near Aztec in March 1948. 

Berlitz and Moore don't mention Newton and Gebauer. Of course not. They spend a lot of time and trouble asserting the credibility of their sources so the fact that this pair were subsequently convicted of fraud might undermine their case. Instead, Berlitz and Moore move on to asserting that there must have been a military cover-up because the military won't admit to having alien corpses in cold storage. 

It's not just the silliness of the claims they make that annoys me, it is the inadequate partiality of the way they treat the evidence. If something doesn't help their case they will scrutinise it, asking questions such as: why did he do this? or why did she not do that? But anything that supports their beliefs will be swallowed without scrutiny.

It is interesting to read this book as a textbook exercise in fallacy, rhetoric and gullibility. Otherwise, it is rather silly.

September 2024; 163 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Abducted" by Susan A Clancy

Why do people believe they have been abducted by aliens?

The author is a sceptic in that she believes that “there is no objective evidence that an alien spacecraft has ever visited Earth or that anyone has ever been abducted.” (Ch 6). Aside from that, this account is remarkably balanced. She has clearly taken these stories seriously. She claims to have read every account of alien abduction published and more or less everything written about abduction narratives. She's watched almost all of the films and TV shows. And she's personally interviewed dozens of people who believe they have been abducted. I feel confident that this book is an unbiased, even sympathetic account of alien abduction experiences.

Firstly, they're not mad. Abductees are no more likely to have psychiatric disorders than you or me. They are, however, often creative, imaginative and prone to fantasy.

Secondly, most of those who believe they have been abducted do not have any memory of the abduction. Most of them have had strange experiences (such as sleep paralysis which is a state where sleep overlaps with wakefulness so that people continue to dream even while awake) which they are desperate to explain and which they have subsequently realised are similar to the experiences reported by someone else who claims to have been abducted. There is more than a hint of 'confirmation bias' about this. When asked why they can't remember, they often claim that the aliens had erased their memories.

Thirdly, those who claim to remember abduction experiences have in almost every case reconstructed their memories with the help of "imaginational therapies" such as hypnosis. Clancy is clear that such reconstructed memories are unreliable. She asserts that it is a myth that hypnosis is like a truth serum; in fact it puts patients into a suggestible state when they are liable to confuse imagination with reality. "The key to generating false memories ... is the protected imaging of an event in the presence of authority figures [such as a hypnotist or 'alien expert'] who encourage belief in and confirm the authenticity of the memories that emerge.” (Ch 3) She points out that the 'memories' recovered during hypnosis are usually incoherent and only later woven into a coherent narrative. In fact, many abductees question the reality of their early memories. “After my first regression, I wondered if I was making it all up ... I still don't remember it like a real memory, like I remember walking to class yesterday.” (Ch 3) She also points out that many of the 'memories' generate intense emotions such as terror and that the very intensity acts as a validation to their perceived truthfulness: “What happened to me was - overwhelming. It was more real than my sitting here talking with you right now.” (Ch 5)

When asked why she doubts abduction reports when they are so consistent, she replies that they aren't. The narrative arc is similar but the individual details vary quite a lot. She also points out that there were no reported cases of alien abduction until 1962, after the first films and TV shows had offered fictional narratives about abduction.

In the end, she concludes that “Aliens are ... the imaginative creations of people with ordinary emotional needs and desires. We don't want to be alone. We feel helpless and vulnerable much of the time. We want to believe there’s something bigger and better than us out there. And we want to believe that whatever it is cares about us, or at least is paying attention to us. That they want us (sexually or otherwise). That we're special.” (Ch 4) Abductees can regard their abduction experience as the most traumatic thing that ever happened to them, or the best thing. Having the abduction explanation not only explains the problems they face (such as depression or insomnia) but also absolves them of responsibility (it's not my fault ...). “Every single abductee at some point during an interview said, ‘Things make sense now.’” (Ch 5) She points out the similarity between Christianity and abduction: “Alien abductions feature all-knowing, nonhuman, advanced entities whose presence resists the explanatory power of science. The entities bring moral guidance. They tell us that time is running out, that we must change our selfish ways or our planet will be destroyed. They have come to Earth for our sake, and they are working for humanity’s redemption.” (Ch 5)

Selected quotes:

• “Nursery schools were being shut down and teachers imprisoned because, after lengthy and suggestive questioning, children were describing bizarre episodes of abuse, some involving flying clowns and broomsticks and the killing of large animals.” (Ch 1)
• “Being abducted is creepy; it's painful; it involves terrifying sexual and medical experimentation; and claiming to have been abducted is a sure way to be labeled daft. Why on earth would people subject themselves to this without strong reasons?” (Ch 1)
• “Abduction beliefs poignantly reveal that the desire to find meaning and purpose in life is more fundamental than many of us realise.” (Ch 1)
• “If anecdotal evidence or the words of attractive authorities could be relied on, we’d have to accept that Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster exist, that Elvis Presley, James Dean and Jimi Hendrix are alive, that psychoanalysis causes schizophrenia, and that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time of the 2003 invasion.” (Ch 2)
• “Our lives, after all, are only what we remember of them. It's unnerving to realize that our stories, feelings, memories of the past are reconstructed over time, and that we make up history as we go along.” (Ch 3)
• “The idea that a patient is an unbiased report of his or her experiences and the therapist is an unbiased listener, and that together they are engaged on an archaeological expedition of the past, runs counter to everything memory researchers know about the malleable, unstable nature of memory and especially about the way our memories are altered by our expectations and feelings.” (Ch 5)
• “Science demands reason, argument, rigorous standards of evidence and of honesty ... you must prove your case in the face of determined, expert criticism; diversity and debate are valued. The most we can hope for are successive improvements in our understanding, the chance to learn from our mistakes. Absolute certainty will always elude us. Nothing is ever known for sure, and there are no sacred truths.” (Ch 6)

Authoritative, exhaustive and hugely readable. Possibly the last word in the debate.

June 2024; 155 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Bermuda Triangle" by Charles Berlitz

 A classic attempt to blame the unexplained on anything but natural causes, with a predisposition towards UFOs and Atlanteans. "One theory ... presupposes the actions of intelligent beings based beneath the sea, while another, more popular theory ... deduces that extraterrestrials periodically visit the earth and kidnap or ‘spacenap’ men and equipment to ascertain the stage of our technological development.” (Ch 3) Is a perfect example of the irrational rhetoric used to convince the reader: first he only offers two alternatives (a classic salesman's technique) and second he uses words such as 'deduces' rather than more honest words such as 'speculates'.

The problems include: 

• Berlitz is scientifically illiterate (in chapter 5 he uses 'knots per hour' as a measure of speed and confuses melting with dissolving, in chapter 8 he seems unaware that lines going due north will pass through the north pole from wherever they start); 
• He illustrates natural phenomena with fictional accounts (whirlpools with Poe's short story about the Maelstrom) and then uses the fiction to discredit the scientific explanation;
• He never checks his sources:

• He refers to an Egyptian papyrus of doubtful provenance
• He repeats a story about Alexander the Great which first appeared in a magazine in the 1950s
• He repeats a story about an abandoned ship which appears to be based on an oral legend first recorded nearly 100 years after it allegedly happened; he even gets the date of this occurrence wrong;
• He repeats an urban myth about a plane experiencing a time lapse without any check on the original source;
• His story about Byrd's flight over the south pole in 1929 observing greenery, primitive people and bisonlike animals has no evidence ... he claims it has been suppressed;
• He uses 'experts' without authenticating their expertise as unquestionable authorities ("scientifically competent observers", ... “of considerable scientific and disciplinary preparation” [whatever that means]) provided they say what he wants them to say.

In short, this is the sort of nonsense that, if it had been included in an undergraduate's essay, should have failed.

Selected quotes:

• “interdimensional changeover through a passageway equivalent to a ‘hole in the sky’ (which aircraft can enter but not leave) ... entities from inner or outer space ... still functioning man-made power complexes belonging to a science considerably older and very different from ours.”
• “Theories concerning antigravity warps have been advanced, presupposing areas where the laws of gravity and normal magnetic attraction no longer function”
• "It may be that exists, in the vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle and other nodal locations of electromagnetic gravitational currents, a door or window to another dimension in time or space”

July 2022;

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"In Plain Sight" by Ross Coulthart

In the first part of this book, the author goes through a large number of reported UAP (Unexplained Aerial Phenomena, the term he prefers to UFO) sightings; these come so thick and fast that it seems he wants to convince the sceptical by the sheer frequency of the sightings. However, he hardly ever goes into any single sighting in sufficient depth to convince me (and I am profoundly sceptical) that any particular sighting offers clear evidence of an alien spacecraft, in particular since almost all of the author's 'evidence' is anecdotal. 

He also relies a lot on hearsay: "It was reported" is a much-repeated phrase. When official sources doubt the reliability of the witness, the author assumes this provides evidence of an official cover-up. In Chapter 5, ironically entitled "Hard Evidence" he reports on the testimony of "United States researcher Budd Hopkins" who himself is reporting the testimony of an "air force sergeant" about a film supposedly of a UFO and some 'men in black'.

Almost every one of the sightings reported in this book happened near a US military base or US military exercises which might be due to the author's sampling techniques, though I suspect he would prefer to think that aliens have chosen to monitor the US military (though why, I can't imagine).

In the second part of the book, the author plunges into the world of claim and counter-claim, building up his case that the US military has conspired to hide the truth about UFOs from the world for years, and that they have recovered crashed alien spacecraft powered by Physics beyond our present-day understanding and reverse-engineered technologies of eg "anti-gravitics". He gets very excited when someone (for example a punk-rock star but more frequently someone who calls themselves by a scientific-sounding title like Doctor or Professor) makes sweeping and bizarre claims with minimal supporting evidence, suggesting repeatedly that even if a small part of the person's claims are true, this has huge implications. He doesn't seem to feel that if one part of a person's testimony is shown to be inaccurate (perhaps because the person is deluded or misguided or mendacious) that undermines everything else he says. He would rather give the benefit of the doubt ... until someone denies what the author so devoutly wishes to be true, in which case he nit-picks over their denial, often concluding, in a perfect example of heads I win, tails you lose, that the existence of the denial suggests that there must be some truth to the thing being denied. Another tactic is to take the absence of a response as tacit confirmation.

Another HIWTYL tactic is to claim that UFOs used mimicry so that they sometimes appear to be meteors, stars, or aircraft. Presumably the author believes that if it looks like a helicopter and moves like a helicopter it's a UFO masquerading as a helicopter.

Even so, the author sometimes appears to realise that some of his so-called sources are a little untrustworthy:

• “Greer bizarrely claims that the gatekeepers of what some call ‘The Big Secret’ then tried to kill him with a secret remote death ray. ... There is no evidence for such a claim.” (Greer survived the cancer he alleges was caused by the death ray because his golden retriever "took some of the “hit” from the EM weapon")
• One member of the team investigating cattle mutilations ate the Skinwalker Ranch is a Colonel in the oxymoronic 'military intellignece' who worked on the idea that psychics could use 'remote viewing' to learn Kremlin secrets. The team investigating this was led by another of the author's 'experts', Dr Hal Puthoff, whose credentials are later used to authenticate other wild claims about UAPs.
• A punk rocker called DeLonge who claims that one his tracks was "about aliens that come to Earth and ‘fly up your butt. And it’s true’” gets several chapters. "The idea that a punk-pop rock star could achieve what decades of UAP conspiracy whistleblowers have tried to do and failed – forcing the whole purported US government UAP conspiracy out into the open – is surely ridiculous." It may be, but the author is still enthralled by it. “DeLonge also claimed the US already knew the secrets of free energy, so-called zero-point energy. ‘One inch of air could power the US for hundreds of years,’” (Ch 16)

There are some inaccuracies. At one stage it is stated that "A 15-metre circumference is an 11-metre diameter." Actually 15m circumference is less than 5 m diameter. He also offers an "estimated" speed of 104,895 mph for a UAP, believing, as many non-scientists do, that you can convince by the accuracy of your numbers, without realising that this undermines the whole concept of an "estimate".

At one stage he name checks Chuck Zukowski who investigates cattle mutilations in The 37th Parallel by Ben Mezrich.

But the last word has to be left to the author: "If there is a kernel of reality in all this stuff, it is truly the most amazing story on the planet. And for me, at least, it’s passed the sniff test.” It is heartening to know that such a load of nonsense passes such a robust criterion.

Selected quotes

• “The biggest problem about the UAP phenomenon is that these strange sightings are not repeatable; they are not a replicable experiment,” (Ch 1)
• "Around the world, sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena escalated in the years immediately after the Second World War. Perhaps this was in part because aliens and flying saucers were increasingly popular fodder for movies, comic strips and science-fiction stories." (Ch 2)
• “Random personal observations, fuzzy photographers, and crop circles will never “prove” the existence of anything, especially since UFO appearances to humans are transitory and somewhat related to the observer’s state of mind. What needs to be collected and publicly disseminated is hard scientific data collected from instruments that are known to be accurate and reliable,” (Ch 8)

June 2022

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"How UFOs Conquered the World" by David Clarke

 If the title suggests a pulp scifi story, the subtitle "The History of a Modern Myth" gives the game away. This is a comprehensive debunking of the UFO phenomena by a one-time believer who is now a sceptical investigative journalist with a PhD in folklore. He shows that 95% of UFO stories can be explained as observations of birds, Venus, and car headlights, some are outright hoaxes, and the most outlandish such as alien abductions may be explained by waking dreams and sleep paralysis. Most of the details are derived from folklore, myth or science fiction stories. The 5% that are not yet explained are not distinguishable from the 95% that already have been. UFO stories are believed by those who want to believe them and are not susceptible to scientific analysis for the simple reason that UFOlogists don't accept scientific methods such as the application of Ockham's razor. 

This is a well-written and very comprehensive book. It delves into: 

• folklore ("‘sky sailors’ were captured by angry French peasants in the ninth century, they were questioned by the Carolingian Bishop Agobard. Presumably fluent in French, they told him they came from a ‘a certain region called Magonia, out of which ships come and sail upon the clouds’"; Introduction) and fairytales (“Kidnapping and interbreeding with Homo Sapiens to produce hybrids was a common motif of the abduction syndrome but it had precedents in folklore. The fairy myths of Wales, Ireland and other countries of the Celtic fringe were replete with similar stories. In these the little folk were elusive creatures, much like the aliens, and were similarly interested in procreation. They travelled in hosts through the sky and occasionally kidnapped humans and took them to fairyland.”; Ch 8), 
• the post-war days of flying saucers with the classic 'sightings', and the Roswell incident,
• the links between ufology and new age religion and the founding of the Aetherius society
• the links between the descriptions of 'saucers' and aliens and science fiction
• the belief that governments have evidence which they are hushing up and the 'Men in Black'
• alien abduction and sleep paralysis

But in the end it concludes that believers believe because they want to believe. In ufology “the scientific method is nearly always sacrificed to wish-fulfilment.” (254) and that ufology is not qualitatively different from any other religion: “If we laugh at people who believe in cosmic masters or sinister greys ... than where should that laughter stop? Is it only antiquity and strength in numbers that insulate the major faiths of the modern world from the same joke?” (Ch 7)

Selected quotes:

• “You  can measure a circle by beginning anywhere.” (Introduction)
• “Why would aliens redesign the appearance of their craft to conform to a mistake made by a journalist?” (Ch 1)
• “The ‘weight of numbers’ argument could not be used to support the existence of UFOs when the IFOs outnumbered them by a ratio of nine to one.” (Ch 2)
• “certain special places attracted UFOs in a similar fashion to the way stately homes attracted ghosts. The idea of a small community under siege from alien forces was already a science fiction staple.” (Ch 3)
• “The more they repeated their stories the more they tended to exaggerate.” (Ch 3)
• "They talked about scientists being closed-minded. But for them, being open-minded meant being prepared to accept anything as evidence. Even if it was inconsistent, self-contradictory or demonstrably wrong.” (Ch 3)
• “Every type of UFO evidence, from complex photographs to alien abductions, secret government documents and stories told by high-ranking military officials about extreterrstrial cadavers hidden in air force hangars, has at some point been unveiled as being invented.” (Ch 4)
• “Being open-minded actually means being sceptical. ... One of the definitions of a sceptic is an inquirer who has not yet arrived at definitive conclusions.” (Ch 4)
• “Even if in a court of law eyewitness testimony is a high form of evidence, in the court of science it is the lowest form of evidence you could possibly put forth.” (Ch 5)
• “I had learnt long ago that sincerity was not a reliable guide to honesty.” (Ch 8)
• “A fundamental theme of the stories told by experiencers [of alien abductions] ... human beings in conflict with creatures that possess virtually supernatural powers ...aliens are essentially indistinguishable from the gods of old.” (Ch 9)
• “Aliens might exist therefore UFOs must be extraterrestrial craft. This is faulty logic.” (Ch 10)
• “The test of a good scientific theory: it includes specific, testable predictions ... For it to be testable it must be falsifiable ... any theory that involves supernatural forces cannot be disproved.” (Ch 10)
• “People say seeing is believing ... All the evidence suggests the opposite is the truth. In plain fact, we see what we believe.” (279)

A sympathetic debunking of the UFO myth. February 2022; 279 pages

Also on UFOs and reviewed in this blog:

• The 37th Parallel by Ben Mezrich

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God #

"The 37th Parallel" by Ben Mezrich

Most of this book tells the purportedly true story of Chuck Zukowski, a self-taught UFO investigator, as he gathers evidence, both anecdotal and physical, about UFO sightings and strange animal mutilations, which he considers to be a corollary. The human interest comes from the fact that his growing obsession with UFOs has to be tolerated by his (sceptical) wife, who ends up working two jobs so that he can work half a job and still afford the travel costs and to purchase the increasingly expensive equipment (and lab costs etc) that his researches demand. The book culminates by showing that most of the phenomena that Chuck talks about are located within 1 degree of latitude from latitude 37oN, a sort of UFO highway (or perhaps runway) that stretches more or less across the entire US.

It is written in a lively tone, following Chuck, full of lots of details about his family life, his possessions, etc, to give the whole thing massive verisimilitude. This is of huge importance; given that I was, like many other readers, hugely sceptical about the UFO side of things, it is important to establish solid grounded fact for the mundane part of the book; it makes the rest seem more real. There are some great throwaway lines:

• “for all he knew she had a cemetery full of dead people on speed dial.” (Ch 1, 2)
• “Some of the best portable equipment that overextended credit cards could buy.” (Ch 3, 15)
• “The tracker had claimed that on that night he and his girlfriend - a woman with the Hollywood ready name Trudy Truelove - ‘ were lying in the back of my pickup truck, buck naked, drinking beer and having a good ol’ time when all hell broke loose’.” (Ch 17, 123)
• “lately, even her silent stares had the feel of liquid nitrogen.” (Ch 25, 191)

The final page of the book, in which Chuck may find key evidence, is heavily redacted, with big black boxes censoring key words. It’s a brilliant way to end!

Selected quotes:

• “Supposedly, Sedona had numerous hotspots where vortices appeared, resembling electrically charged tornadoes that spiraled up and down with a [page break] spiritual energy. The Native Americans would use these specific locations to communicate with spiritual beings, and to communicate with their ancestors in the stars.” (Ch 4, 49 - 50)
• “The Apache referred to their ancestors as ‘star people’, pale, white, skinny humanoids with blue eyes who travelled in craft described as ‘birds with many colors’ that’ glowed with the sun’.” (Ch 10, 69)
• “The way the aliens had moved was always described in the exact same way: hunched forward, shuffle step, feet always touching the ground.” (Ch 14, 98)
• “Bigelow ... firmly believed that future generations would look at the current belief system as ignorant and egocentric.” (Ch 19, 147)
• “Chuck knew that the human mind was built to seek out patterns and that much smarter men than he had driven themselves crazy chasing symmetries that seemed to make sense in the dead of night, but were nothing more than shapes and shadows in the bright light of day.” (Ch 28, 233)

Lively and thought-provoking

February 2022; 247 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God