Message #1 of 1: Date Posted: 22 Apr 2006 13:17:13 by Andy Roberts
From today's Guardian, and totally spot on, with the best thing about it being how ufologists make themselves look fools by what they say!
Happy Trails
Andy
The Guardian, Saturday, 22 April 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story ... 39,00.html
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO....UFOs
by Ian Hollinshead
Mankind has been spotting strange objects in the sky since biblical
times, but it wasn't until the 1940s that terms such as "flying saucer"
regularly appeared in the headlines. Footage of an alien autopsy near
Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 reached an estimated global audience of one
billion before being exposed as a fake. The film of this story - Alien
Autopsy, starring Ant and Dec - opened earlier this month.
However, it would appear that public interest in UFOs has waned
significantly since the 1970s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind
suggested we are not alone. A forlorn statement on the website of the
British UFO Research Association (Bufora) declares that they are scaling
down their activities. "The halcyon days of ufology are over," explains
chairman Robert Rosamond, bemoaning the effects of "dwindling subject
material". A number of regional affiliates have closed down altogether,
some of them blaming the end of The X-Files series for waning interest.
It is a far cry from 1951, when the ministry of defence set up the flying
saucer working party. Although the committee dismissed reports of alien
sightings as "optical illusions and psychological delusions", its
findings were not made public until 50 years later, fuelling suspicions
of a cover-up. Public paranoia was not helped by the fact that most UFO
sightings have occurred near RAF bases, with the result that the MoD has
been reluctant to release too many details.
Today, however, rational explanations appear to exist for most UFO
sightings. Last October, drivers on the M25 pulled over to stare at what
turned out to be Thai lanterns. In December 2004, Southern Electric was
moved to persuade its customers that a huge flash of light was due to a
power surge and not any extraterrestrial interference. Even the infamous
Rendlesham Forest incident in December 1980 was later blamed on a
prank-loving American airman. Kites, soap bubbles, feathers, weather
balloons, parachutes and tumbleweeds have all been mistaken for alien
visitors.
UFO enthusiasts have also suffered by association with their fringe,
loony element. The Flying Saucer Review - which bizarrely claims to have
Prince Philip among its subscribers - has an online article suggesting
HIV was brought to earth by aliens. A documentary in 2004 reported that
flying saucers were actually created by Nazi scientists and sold to the
American military.
Understandably, this kind of press is a deterrent to potential hobbyists.
"People don't come forward because they fear ridicule," says Roy Lake,
the chairman of London UFO Studies.
A more obvious explanation for fading interest in UFOs is that the craze
has simply run its course. "The internet killed it off," says Mr Lake.
"And it's been overshadowed by other events." The internet has also given
support to myriad conspiracy theories. Why worry about extraterrestrial
life when down here on earth you can concern yourself with whether MI5
murdered Princess Diana, Nasa staged the moon landings and Jesus had a
bloodline that can be traced to Leonardo da Vinci?
Yet Bufora's Rosamond remains phlegmatically optimistic about the future
of ufology. "For every 100 cases there are 99 rational explanations," he
says. "But there is always one which confounds the scientists. The
problem is that we have reams of circumstantial evidence, but not one
piece of conclusive proof. No one will believe anything until they have
seen it for themselves."
At least one editor of a UFO magazine is taking no chances. "No home
visits, please," reads the request next to his home address.
