Aside from the arm-chair UFO research- ers, of which I am one, what do we have with those formidable souls who traverse the landscape using the rubric “UFO Investigator” or “Researcher”?
I noticed, during a UFO showing on The History Channel, a fellow proclaiming he had been investigating triangular UFOs.
His methodology?
He would go to the place where the UFO was seen, seek out the person who said they saw the thing, and he would then ask them some questions: Where in the sky was it? How large was it? How fast was it moving? What did it look like? Et cetera.
That’s about it.
That is and has been the state of UFO “research” and/or “investigation” for years now.
Grabbing soil samples and other flora from supposed UFO landing locales was once de rigueur for UFO investigators, but that was just pretend research. No one ever did any real forensic lab work on samples gathered form UFO landing sites. (Sure, they put some of those samples under a commercial (inexpensive) microscope sometimes but the persons looking through those microscopes rarely had bona fide credentials.)
Today, one can find, online, “research” into classic sightings.
Take the Tremonton film by Delbert Newhouse from 1952, being rehashed at Kevin Randle’s blog.
The “research” consists of argumentation over irrelevant detritus from interviews with Mr. Newhouse and an evaluation of filming procedures and what birds look like in film.
David Rudiak provides crazy data, Lance Moody responds, only because he likes to argue. And Kevin Randle struggles to keep the matter on track; that is, what did Newhouse actually film? – a question that wasn’t answered then and can’t be answered now.
But what’s the point? Even if the discussion ends up disclosing that Newhouse actually filmed a flotilla of UFOs, what do we have?
Where does that take us?
That’s the state of UFO research, nowadays, as it has always been: pretense at forensic UFO study, and a spate of nonsense that doesn’t ever deliver.
Research and investigation are two words that mean something in the academic and scientific communities.
In the UFO world, research and investigation are words used by those pretending to be involved with a real scrutiny for the UFO phenomenon but, instead, are engaged in a kind of foolishness that indicates such persons are fraudulent, to themselves and to those who truly wish to know what UFOs are or have been.
Going to a UFO sighting, after the fact, is ridiculous on the face of it. Arguing over old UFO sightings, that have been rehashed time and time again, is futile at best and silly at least.
Armchairing old UFO cases is proper. That’s all one can do with classic or rare sightings; they are outside the opportunity of hands-on forensics.
Pretending to be doing research by arguing minutiae that is scrummed by time and erroneous accretions is almost insane, but that’s “ufology” as one skeptical wag often puts it.
RR
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