Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [42]
As the program closed, viewers were treated to a full-screen picture of the official seal of the U.S. Air Force. This was impressive as an official stamp of approval by the U.S. government, or so it seemed, and superimposed on this was a statement declaring the apparent conclusion of the Air Force study: "The United States Air Force, after twenty-two years of investigation, concluded that none of the unidentified flying objects reported and evaluated posed a threat to our national security."
As an experiment, I ask my reader to obtain some means of measuring seconds—an ordinary watch will do—and go back to that quoted statement. Read it as fast as possible, and time yourself. It takes me a minimum of four seconds to do this. But by actual measurement, NBC had that statement before its viewers, superimposed on a distracting design, for a total of just 2.4 seconds! Why? Because it was essential to avoid criticism based on failure to state such a conclusion. Furthermore, this token concession to the truth conveyed to the viewer less than a third of the content of the conclusion reached by the U.S. Air Force!
Let us assume that some speed-reading viewer was able to read the concluding statement. The impression left is that the UFOs might have been extraterrestrial, but that none were dangerous. The believers could smugly relax, knowing that the truth is stated therein. But the actual conclusion, as presented in Project Blue Book (the source of the NBC series) is this:
To date, the firm conclusions of Project Blue Book are:
1. no unidentified flying object reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security;
2. there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as unidentified represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge.
3. there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as Unidentified are extraterrestrial vehicles.
There it is, directly from Blue Book, not edited and quite readable and easily understood. It is somewhat different from what NBC-TV told its audience.
But let's examine some of the sightings that the USAF studied. One of the most widely reported was the Mantell case, a case in which a life was lost, and which brought the entire matter to international attention. It happened on January 7, 1948, at Godman Air Base in Kentucky. At two thirty in the afternoon, Colonel Guy Hix, the commander of the base, was notified that a long cone-shaped object was in the sky. He asked a flight of four P-51 pursuit planes, already in the air, to investigate. Two of them soon turned back and the other continued on to the original destination, but the lead plane, piloted by Captain Thomas Mantell, reported that he was going to follow the object beyond fifteen thousand feet. Despite having no oxygen equipment in his plane to allow such a pursuit, Mantell tried to reach an altitude of 20,000 feet and blacked out. The plane went out of control and crashed. Mantell had shown signs of great excitement—almost hysteria—during the chase, and his death was reported by the press as having been caused by the UFO.
In John Godwin's This Baffling World, we read that "they saw a huge metallic object hovering over the field. It was shaped like a disc, its cone-like top glowing a crimson yellow." Really? Well, I don't much depend on Mr. Godwin for careful reporting. He has the date of the occurrence six months late, for one thing, and he misspells the name of the base, calling it Goodman. He also quotes Major General John