tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8104600450225406597.post5950484803725291982..comments2024-03-22T02:17:52.141-07:00Comments on Bad UFOs: Skepticism, UFOs, and The Universe: The Pseudo-Science of Anti-Anti-UfologyRobert Sheafferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15324537021429419111noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8104600450225406597.post-80456895750725326482021-04-24T18:29:13.466-07:002021-04-24T18:29:13.466-07:00It's all true...I'm from the future...from...It's all true...I'm from the future...from 2021...you will see the truthAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15820649793064759079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8104600450225406597.post-24766786634425419622018-11-07T06:27:00.093-08:002018-11-07T06:27:00.093-08:00Back in 1969 Friedman was working at TRW and start...Back in 1969 Friedman was working at TRW and starting out as a gig economy UFO lecturer in his spare time. The LA Times ran a feature story about his crusade. That summer, I'm commuting through Hollywood on an RTD bus, and there's a guy gets on around Hollywood and Vine, heading east, with a big satchel type briefcase with a sticker on the outside saying "Flying Saucers are Real." It was him, and wasn't I lucky, he plants his butt right in the seat next to mine. So, I asks him the obvious question, "Why do you say 'Flying Saucers are Real'?" Without missing a beat, he says because he's seen them. I'm quite surprised, as flying saucers were in decline then, since the swamp gas thing, but I had read about them in True magazine and Real magazine, but not much elsewhere, and I figured that stories only went into True if the were not real, and vice versa. I believe it was Real that said that a flying saucer had crashed at the entrance to Central Park in NYC at rush hour in 1952, and the government had covered it up, so I pumps Friedman for some details on his observations so I can see if this journeyman raconteur of the incredible is ready for the big leagues. He responds by telling me that he had seen over 180 flying saucers in the preceding six months. I'm not sure if he was telling the truth, joking, or test marketing, but he is certainly a man of extraordinary nerve.<br /><br />I didn't know that he claims an MS in physics until I read his wikipedia page recently. That page also recites all his nuclear physics employment up until 1970, but the footnotes on the wikipedia page seem to rely on books that he wrote to support the truthiness of that physics work, his testimony before the US Congress and his presentations at the UN, and it is noted that the work is described as secret, so maybe there isn't going to be much independent info about that physics experience. What corroboration, is there, for the statements of his physics qualifications in his books? Maybe his car was broken down the evening I met him, but in Hollywood in 1969, you wouldn't expect a nuclear physicist with all that experience to be riding the bus.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8104600450225406597.post-24254696655914019472014-04-23T00:59:54.300-07:002014-04-23T00:59:54.300-07:00You know what bothers me about this article? The p...You know what bothers me about this article? The photo you guys chose for Friedman. The article itself is sound. But I've seen Friedman numerous times on TV and no matter what you make of the validity of his arguments, he is not a ranting "crazy man", he is well spoken and far from stupid. Disagreeing with his ideas is one thing (which mostly I do. I am far from convinced we have ever been visited by anything alien) choosing a photograph of him which makes him look nuts is another. Not only is It is juvenile, mean spirited and pedestrian, it makes it look as though you are insecure of your own argument, which is obviously the stronger position of the two. Make your case with words and facts, not cheap shots.Dagnyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11371148887241912098noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8104600450225406597.post-83486721951683269392012-11-20T11:57:13.161-08:002012-11-20T11:57:13.161-08:00Friedman is an old, old man. He knows his days are...Friedman is an old, old man. He knows his days are getting shorter. He probably has a sense he'll go to his grave before the Super Big UFO Thing is ever finally disclosed and he can enjoy his retirement years as the guy who was right all along. Told ya so. Nyah. Nyah.<br /><br />Best he can hope for is someone will write "Well, turns out he was right" on his tombstone. That's gotta burn a guy like him up big time.<br />Puffin Watchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04083200918437216263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8104600450225406597.post-85179327057066740762012-11-05T08:13:40.084-08:002012-11-05T08:13:40.084-08:00I've never met SF nor cared to, knowing of his...I've never met SF nor cared to, knowing of his "cosmic conspiracy" buffoonery, so instead of calling the former itinerant unclear physicist turned "flying saucer scientist" an antiscientist--since the irrational false beliefs he promotes are not simply wrong and wrong-headed but insidious, intended to undermine the very enterprise he pretends to support and practice--let me just address his claims.<br /><br />Appealing to what would certainly seem to be miraculous power of hypothetical advanced starfaring civilizations visiting our Earth in their magic "flying saucer" spacecraft to explain why people manufacture flying-saucer fairy tales--when all the evidence for that "least likely" scenario is really crummy--is the weakest sort of inductive argument possible. Simply because they might exist doesn't mean they're visiting Earth; and this extremely tenuous hypothesis is hardly necessary to explain innumerable, insubstantial and wholly inconsequential "UFO" reports.<br /><br />True believers in this half-baked mumbo jumbo pretend they're knowledgeable in the astronomical probabilities, but that pretense is only a typical pseudoscientific window dressing, a meta-rationale for preexisting belief without facts and reason. SF's simple, silly "space brothers in flying-saucers" mentality pretending to be a scientifically informed deep-thinking even paradigm-bursting "Star Trek" view of the Galaxy is a laughable projection much like the face-on-Mars delusion: typical human wishfulness, conceits, modes and objectives projected onto "random cosmic violence." SF doesn't know any more about such thoroughly radically contingent astronomical and biological uncertainties than any other person educated in the subject. As early as the 1970s, astronomer WK Hartmann calculated that there might be one other civilization something like ourselves in our Local Group. Work by astrophysicist Tom Gold expanded by paleontologist SJ Gould on the extreme galactic rarity of self-conscious creatures supports WKH. So SF's amazing story isn't nearly as likely or as smart as he pretends.<br /><br />Even if not so rare, starfaring civilizations must be relatively rare or we would certainly have detected them by now. So Where Are They? Astronomers know the distances between stars is so immense that the world consensus is that the probability of any of them visiting Earth is virtually zero. That fact and a dozen other reasons--exceptions to the Fermi paradox--explain why we most probably will never meet ETI.<br /><br />Not to be deterred by these obvious realities, SF and others have recreated the Hollow Earth of Shaver's amazing cosmic conspiramyth, complete with crashed saucers and little alien bodies stored in underground bases by military coverups and MIB. That such a cosmic conspiracy would be impossible isn't a problem for SF apparently, he knows secrets can be kept he insists, and SF's faith in his own authority is unquestioned, which is the core problem with all of his false beliefs: As the world's leading "flying saucer scientist," SF is immune from the facts and reason of the real world, which places his delusion above the scientific method.zoamchomskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16519698426338891542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8104600450225406597.post-7261179025486798812012-10-31T20:33:11.829-07:002012-10-31T20:33:11.829-07:00Tim, you wrote a very nice, detailed critique of F...Tim, you wrote a very nice, detailed critique of Friedman-logic: how it operates, and what is wrong with it. "Project Blue Book SR-14 is the final answer for everything involving UFO statistics....No matter what anyone else says, certain MJ-12 documents are authentic...nobody has conclusively proven that the (NSA)documents do not involve a cover-up involving alien spaceships, therefore, there is a cover-up."<br /><br />The URL for this is http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite4_3.pdf . See p. 38. Robert Sheafferhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15324537021429419111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8104600450225406597.post-28840620932409631632012-10-31T18:22:09.505-07:002012-10-31T18:22:09.505-07:00Friedman's ad hominem attacks are part of a br...Friedman's ad hominem attacks are part of a broader tactic of framing UFO dissent as strictly ideological. We have the angels of the UFO community versus the diabolical deniers (Friedman misuses the terms "skeptic" and "debunker" as if both meant "denier"). That is how Mr. Friedman presents the situation to the public and UFO fandom, even though he knows respected ufologists and believers frequently criticise his work. What amuses me is how often Friedman is singled out by believer-skeptics as someone whose beliefs trump facts, as someone unable to entertain doubt about his conclusions.<br /><br />"I think it would be fair to say that most of even the staunch advocates for the Hills (a noteworthy exception is Stanton Friedman) have contended the evidence for their story is merely compelling rather than convincing."<br />Marcello Truzzi, <i>Encounters at Indian Head,</i> p. 84.<br /><br />"Other ufologists besides myself, more cautious than Friedman, acknowledge we are unable to make a case for the reality of the Hills' experience that rises to the beyond-reasonable-doubt standard of criminal law."<br />Karl Pflock, <i>Encounters at Indian Head,</i> p. 211.<br /><br />In a book chapter titled “The Failure of Ufologists,” Jenny Randles outlines how these failings, many of them already listed in the present blog post, lead investigators astray, especially the presumption that UFOs must be aliens. She does so in a civil manner without naming names – except one: “Stanton Friedman, a nuclear scientist with an interest in UFOs, is an undeniably sincere and hard-working investigator, yet his beliefs demonstrate the dangers.”<br />Jenny Randles, Peter Warrington, <i>Science and the UFOs,</i> p. 71.<br /><br />“Gerald Anderson spun all sorts of tales, forged documents, and lied about nearly everything he said, but Friedman still believes that Anderson, as a five-year-old boy, was on the crash scene and remembers, in detail, much of it.”<br />Kevin Randle, <i>Reflections of a UFO Investigator,</i> p. 206.<br /><br />Are all these people diabolical debunkers who don't want their paradigms scrambled?<br /><br />> attributing to them the very worst of motives, while completely ignoring their strongest arguments<br /><br />Yes, Friedman frequently breaks his own "rules for debunkers" by smearing critics and hiding information from his audience.<br /><br />For instance, in <i>Captured!,</i> Friedman doesn't inform his readers of Donald Menzel's praise of Marjorie Fish and his serious and respectful statistical analysis of her work in his book <i>UFO Enigma.</i> Rather, Friedman ties to smear Menzel by saying he had done work “for the CIA, NSA...and was probably a member of the Majestic 12 Group controlling classified UFO research,” never suggesting what most ufologists believe, that MJ-12 is a hoax. As James Moseley wrote about MJ-12: “Including Menzel was a clever ploy and a subtle joke. And the joke's on Stan Friedman”(<i>Shockingly Close to the Truth!</i> p. 265).<br /><br />Friedman could have engaged Menzel's statistical analysis, but scientists performing science doesn't fit into Friedman's demonology. Friedman doesn't mention Menzel's analysis, just as he hasn't publicly mentioned Holman's analysis -- even though he has been asked multiple times -- which I think establishes a pattern of Friedman telling stories and avoiding real facts.<br /><br />> I doubt that STF will ever admit he was wrong on anything.<br /><br />Paul Kimball's bio-pic should have been titled <i>Stanton Friedman is Right!</i>Terry the Censorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13361088223337740598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8104600450225406597.post-5769077688268292412012-10-31T15:58:55.248-07:002012-10-31T15:58:55.248-07:00Of course, there are also his recent comments rega...Of course, there are also his recent comments regarding me. According to STF, I am "uninformed" and "ignorant". You know you hit a nerve when STF makes an effort to paint you in a negative light. I addressed his failed arguments and mistakes in SUNlite 4-3 (Flying saucer fizics II). <br /><br />I doubt that STF will ever admit he was wrong on anything. If he admits that the Fish map is inaccurate and his analysis was flawed, he suddenly opens himself to the possibility that he has made other errors. His ego will not allow it. Tim Printyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06115389684481839803noreply@blogger.com