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Antioxidants | Teachers Unions | Intelligent Design | London UFO | The Age of Denialism

Published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Paranormal Misinterpretations of Vision Phenomena

Fabricating History, Part 2: False Messages in Stone

Exeter UFO Incident Solved

9/11 from a Decade Later

Vol. 35 No. 6 | November/December 2011 The Magazine for Science & Reason

SI Nov Dec 2011_SI JF 10 V1 9/27/11 4:57 PM Page 2

AT THE CEN TER FOR IN QUIRY –TRANSNATIONAL

Joe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow

Massimo Polidoro, Research Fellow

Benjamin Radford, Research Fellow

Richard Wiseman, Research Fellow

Paul Kurtz, Founder

Richard Schroeder, Chairman

Ronald A. Lindsay, President and CEO

Bar ry Karr, Ex ec u tive Di rect or

* Mem ber, CSI Ex ec u tive Coun cil (Af fil i a tions giv en for iden ti fi ca tion on ly.)

www.csicop.org

James E. Al cock*, psy chol o gist, York Univ., Tor on toMar cia An gell,MD, former ed i tor-in-chief,

New Eng land Jour nal of Med i cineKimball Atwood IV, MD, physician; author;

Newton, MASteph en Bar rett,MD, psy chi a trist; au thor; con sum er

ad vo cate, Al len town, PAWillem Betz,MD, professor of medicine, Univ. of Brussels Ir ving Bie der man, psy chol o gist, Univ. of

South ern CASandra Blakeslee, science writer; author; New York

Times science correspondentSus an Black more, vis it ing lec tur er, Univ. of the West

of Eng land, Bris tolMark Boslough, physicist, Sandia National Laborato-

ries, Albuquerque, NMHen ri Broch, phys i cist, Univ. of Nice, FranceJan Har old Brun vand, folk lor ist; pro fes sor emer i tus

of Eng lish, Univ. of UtahMar io Bunge, phi los o pher, McGill Univ., MontrealRobert T. Carroll, emeritus professor of philosophy,

Sacramento City College; writerSean B. Carroll,molecular geneticist; vice president

for science education, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Madison, WI

Thomas R. Casten, energy expert; founder andchairman, Recycled Energy Development, Westmont, IL

John R. Cole, an thro pol o gist; ed i tor, Na tion al Cen ter for Sci ence Ed u ca tion

K.C. Cole, science writer; author; professor, Univ. of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism

Fred er ick Crews, lit er ary and cul tur al crit ic; pro fes soremer i tus of Eng lish, Univ. of CA, Berke ley

Rich ard Dawk ins, zo ol o gist, Ox ford Univ.Ge of frey Dean, tech ni cal ed i tor, Perth, Aus tral iaCor nel is de Ja ger, pro fes sor of as tro phys ics,

Univ. of Utrecht, the Neth er landsDan i el C. Den nett, Aus tin B. Fletch er Pro fes sor

of Phi los o phy and di rect or of Cen ter for Cog ni tiveStud ies, Tufts Uni v.

Ann Druyan,writer and producer; CEO, Cosmos Studios, Ithaca, NY

Sanal Edamaruku,president, Indian Rationalist Association and Rationalist International

Edzard Ernst,professor, Complementary Medicine,Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter andPlymouth, Exeter, UK

Ken neth Fed er, pro fes sor of an thro pol o gy,Cen tral Con nec ti cut State Univ.

Barbara Forrest, professor of philosophy, SE Louisiana Univ.

An drew Fra knoi,as tron o mer, Foot hill Col lege, Los Al tos Hills, CA

Kend rick Fra zi er*, sci ence writer; ed i tor, SKEP TI CAL IN QUIR ER

Christopher C. French, professor, Department of Psychology, and head of the AnomalisticPsychology Research Unit, Goldsmiths College, Univ. of London

Yv es Gal i fret, executive secretary, l’Union Rationaliste

Luigi Garlaschelli, chemist, Università di Pavia(Italy); research fellow of CICAP, the Italian skeptics group

Maryanne Garry, professor, School of Psychology,Victoria Univ. of Wellington, New Zealand

Mur ray Gell-Mann, pro fes sor of phys ics, San ta Fe In sti tute; No bel lau re ate

Thom as Gi lov ich, psy chol o gist, Cor nell Univ.Wendy M. Grossman,writer; founder and first editor,

The Skepticmagazine (UK)Sus an Haack,Coop er Sen ior Schol ar in Arts and

Sci en ces, professor of phi los o phy and professor of Law, Univ. of Mi ami

Harriet Hall, MD, family physician; investigator,Puyallup, WA

C.E.M. Han sel, psy chol o gist, Univ. of WalesDavid J. Helfand, professor of astronomy,

Columbia Univ.Doug las R. Hof stad ter,pro fes sor of hu man

un der stand ing and cog ni tive sci ence, In di ana Univ.Ger ald Hol ton,Mal linc krodt Pro fes sor of Phys ics and

pro fes sor of his to ry of sci ence, Har vard Univ.Ray Hy man*, psy chol o gist, Univ. of Or e gonLe on Jar off, sci en ces ed i tor emer i tus, TimeStuart D. Jordan, NASA astrophysicist emeritus;

science advisor to Center for Inquiry Office ofPublic Policy, Washington, DC

Ser gei Ka pit za, former ed i tor, Rus sian edi tion,Sci en tif ic Amer i can

Barry Karr, executive director, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Amherst, New York

Law rence M. Krauss, foundation professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics Dept.;director, Origins Initiative, Arizona State Univ.

Harry Kroto, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Florida State Univ.; Nobel laureate

Ed win C. Krupp, as tron o mer; di rect or, Grif fith Ob ser va to ry, Los Angeles, CA

Paul Kurtz, professor emeritus of philosophy, SUNY at Buffalo

Law rence Kusche, sci ence writerLe on Le der man, emer i tus di rect or, Fer mi lab;

No bel lau re ate in phys icsScott O. Lil i en feld*, psy chol o gist, Emory Univ.,

Atlanta, GALin Zix in, former ed i tor, Sci ence and

Tech nol o gy Dai ly (Chi na)Je re Lipps,Mu se um of Pa le on tol o gy, Univ. of CA,

Berke leyEliz a beth Loft us*, pro fes sor of psy chol o gy,

Univ. of CA, Ir vineDa vid Marks, psy chol o gist, City Univ., Lon donMar io Men dez-Acos ta, jour nal ist and sci ence writer,

Mex i co CityKenneth R. Miller, professor of biology,

Brown Univ.Marv in Min sky, pro fes sor of me dia arts and sci en ces,

M.I.T.Da vid Mor ri son, space sci en tist, NA SA Ames Re search

Cen terRich ard A. Mul ler, pro fes sor of phys ics, Univ. of CA,

Berke leyJoe Nick ell, sen ior re search fel low, CSI Jan Willem Nienhuys, mathematician, Waalre,

the NetherlandsLee Nis bet, phi los o pher, Med aille Col legeSteven Novella, MD, assistant professor

of neurology, Yale Univ. School of MedicineBill Nye, sci ence ed u ca tor and tel e vi sion host,

Nye LabsJames E. Oberg, sci ence writerIrm gard Oe pen, pro fes sor of med i cine (re tired),

Mar burg, Ger ma nyLor en Pan kratz, psy chol o gist, Or e gon Health

Sci en ces Univ.Robert L. Park,professor of physics, Univ. of Maryland

Jay M. Pasachoff, Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy and director of the Hopkins Observatory, Williams College

John Pau los,math e ma ti cian, Tem ple Univ.Massimo Pigliucci, professor of philosophy,

City Univ. of New York–Lehman CollegeStev en Pink er, cog ni tive sci en tist, Harvard Univ.Philip Plait, astronomer; lecturer; writerMas si mo Pol id oro, sci ence writer; au thor; ex ec u tive

di rect or of CI CAP, It a lyAnthony R. Pratkanis, professor of psychology, Univ. of

California, Santa CruzBenjamin Radford, investigator; research fellow,

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry James “The Amazing” Randi, magician; CSICOP

founding member; founder, James Randi Educational Foundation

Mil ton Ro sen berg, psy chol o gist, Univ. of Chic a goWal la ce Sam pson, MD, clin i cal pro fes sor of med i cine,

Stan ford Univ.; ed i tor, Sci en tif ic Re view of Al ter na tive Med i cine

Am ar deo Sar ma*, chairman, GWUP, Ger ma nyRichard Saunders, vice president, Australian

Skeptics; educator; investigator; podcaster; Sydney, Australia

Eu ge nie C. Scott*, phys i cal an thro pol o gist; ex ec u tive di rect or, Na tion al Cen ter for Sci ence Ed u ca tion

Rob ert Sheaf fer, sci ence writerEl ie A. Shne our, bi o chem ist; au thor; president and

research director, Bi os ys tems Re search In sti tute,La Jol la, CA

Seth Shostak, senior astronomer, SETI Institute,Mountain View, CA

Simon Singh, science writer; broadcaster; UKDick Smith, film pro duc er; pub lish er; Ter rey Hills,

N.S.W., Aus tral iaKeith E. Stanovich, cognitive psychologist;

professor of human development and appliedpsychology, Uni v. of Toronto

Rob ert Stein er,ma gi cian; au thor; El Cer ri to, CAVic tor J. Sten ger, emer i tus pro fes sor of phys ics

and as tron o my, Univ. of Ha waii; ad junct pro fes sor of phi los o phy, Univ. of CO

Karen Stollznow*, linguist; skeptical investigator; writer; podcaster

Jill Cor nell Tar ter,as tron o mer, SE TI In sti tute, Moun tain View, CA

Car ol Tav ris,psy chol o gist and au thor, Los Ange les, CADa vid E. Thom as*, phys i cist and math e ma ti cian,

Per al ta, NMNeil de Gras se Ty son, as tro phys i cist and di rect or,

Hay den Plan e tar i um, New York CityMa ri lyn vos Sa vant, Pa rade mag a zine

con trib ut ing ed i torStev en Wein berg, pro fes sor of phys ics and as tron o my,

Univ. of Tex as at Aus tin; No bel lau re ateE.O. Wil son, Univ. pro fes sor emer i tus, organismic and

evolutionary biology, Har vard Univ.Rich ard Wis e man, psy chol o gist, Univ.

of Hert ford shire, EnglandBenjamin Wolozin*,professor, Department of

Pharmacology, Boston Univ. School of MedicineMarv in Zel en, stat is ti cian, Har vard Univ.

SI Nov. Dec 11_SI new design masters 9/27/11 12:42 PM Page 2

38Did Shakespeare Write ‘Shakespeare’?Much Ado about NothingJOE NICKELL

44Paranormal Misinterpretations of Vision PhenomenaMICHAEL MAUSER

48Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabricating HistoryPart Two: False Messages in StoneBRADLEY T. LEPPER, KENNETH L. FEDER,TERRY A. BARNHART, andDEBORAH A. BOLNICK

FROM THE EDITORFrom Shakespeare to American Archaeology ........................................4

NEWS AND COM MENTThe Age of Denialism: When BeliefsTrump Scientific Facts/Pseudoscience,Mythbusting, Evolution Gain Attention of World’s Top Science Journalists/Science Recognizes Morrison’s Fightagainst Doom Hysteria/Psychics FailTests on ABC Special ‘Beyond Belief’/New Jersey Supreme Court Overhauls Eye-witness ID Rules/For tean Author HilaryEvans (1929–2011)/SensaSlim LawsuitSeeks to Silence Skeptics/AAAS Con-demns Personal Attacks on Climate Sci-entists/Budd Hopkins (1931–2011):UFO Abductionist/Skeptic’s Dictionaryfor Kids...........................................................5

IN VES TI GA TIVE FILESPsychic Connections: Investigating in HungaryJOE NICK ELL.....................................................23

NOTES ON A STRANGE WORLDThe Lost Girl:Investigating a Case of “Psychic Detection”MAS SI MO POLIDORO .......................................26

THINK ING ABOUT SCI ENCEThe Hopeless War against Intelligent Design Creationism MAS SI MO PI GLI UC CI ........................................28

PSYCHIC VIBRATIONSUFO Mothership and Fleet over London ROBERT SHEAFFER...........................................29

THE SCIENCE OF MEDICINEHave You Had Your Antioxidants Today? STEVEN NOVELLA .............................................32

SCIENCE WATCHThe Effect of Teachers Unions onStudent Performance KENNETH KRAUSE............................................34

SKEPTICAL INQUIREEKinoki Drains Wallet, Not ToxinsBENJAMIN RADFORD........................................37

NEW AND NOTABLE.....................................61

LET TERS TO THE ED I TOR..........................62

THE LAST LAUGH.........................................66

Skep ti cal In quir er November/December 2011 | Vol. 35, No. 6

C O M M E N T A R Y

149/11: Perspectives from a Decade LaterCLARK R. CHAPMAN

AND ALAN W. HARRIS

R E V I E W

C O L U M N S

Slaying the Beast of the GévaudanBLAKE SMITH...............................................60

Monsters of the Gévaudan: e Making of a Beastby Jay M. Smith

S P E C I A L R E P O R T

16‘Exeter Incident’ Solved!A Classic UFO Case,Forty-Five Years ‘Cold’JAMES MCGAHA AND JOE NICKELL

I N T E R V I E W

20‘Getting People to ThinkMore Deeply’ An Interview with Miracle DetectiveScientist Indre Viskontas

SHARON HILL

F O L L O W - U P

55Disputing ‘Seven Deadly Medical Hypotheses’DAVID H. GORSKI | MARK CRISLIP

AVRUM Z. BLUMING and CAROL TAVRIS

HARRIET HALL | REYNOLD SPECTOR


“...promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.”

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

From Shakespeare to American Archaeology

0ur indefatigable Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell takes on a claim inour cover story that goes back centuries but is new to the pages of SI: thebizarre notion that William Shakespeare didn’t actually write the playsand poems attributed to him. If it seems to readers that Nickell has expertise inalmost everything, they may be right. In this case his PhD in English literatureand his experience with claims about literary fraud serve him well. But this isno stuffy academic paper. It’s a fresh, readable, and fun look at how anti-Strat-fordian pseudoscholars examine data “through the looking glass,” twisting allreason, logic, and evidence to see what they want to see. Sound familiar? Theprocesses have much in common with the other kinds of pseudoknowledge weexamine regularly in these pages.Nickell then joins with astronomer and retired military pilot James McGaha

to solve—I don’t think that is too strong a word—a classic UFO case going backforty-five years, the “Exeter” incident in New Hampshire.Michael Mauser gives us an informed and fascinating look at vision phenom-

ena—mostly processes right inside our eyes—that people sometimes misinter-pret as paranormal. We also continue the three-part series “Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabri-

cating History” that began in our previous issue. Archaeologists Ken neth L.Feder (a longtime CSI fellow and author of two fine books on archaeologicalfrauds) and Bradley T. Lepper (lead author of this issue’s segment, “False Mes-sages in Stone”), historian Terry A. Barnhart, and anthropologist Deborah A.Bolnick are providing an extraordinary examination of notorious claims thatEgyptians, Hebrews, and Celts, among others, left their mark in pre-ColumbianNorth America. In doing so our authors correct numerous distortions, includingsome outright fraudulent claims, presented in the DVD The Lost Civilizationsof North America. And they give us a nicely nuanced look at how real archaeol-ogists evaluate evidence about the real people who populated North Americabefore Columbus.

* * *Robert Sheaffer has compiled a book of the firsttwo decades of his “Psychic Vibrations” columnsfrom the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER. I am pleased toreport they are graced by more than a hundred ofthe delightful drawings our longtime illustratorRob Pudim has drawn for SI over the years. It isfun and informative to see both together. You canorder the book, Psychic Vibrations: Skeptical Gigglesfrom the Skeptical Inquirer, via Sheaffer’s blog,BadUFOs.com.

* * *I hope to see many of you at our CSIcon confer-ence in New Orleans October 27–30. It marks a resumption of Committee forSkeptical Inquiry/SKEPTICAL INQUIRER conferences. Our last was the “Hoaxes,Myths, and Manias” conference in Albuquerque in 2003.

—KENDRICK FRAZIER

[ FROM THE EDITOR

Skep ti cal In quir er™T H E M A G A Z I N E FO R S C I E N C E A N D R E A S O N

ED I TOR Kend rick Fra zi er

ED I TO RI AL BOARD James E. Al cock, Thom as Cas ten, Ray Hy man, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Joe Nick ell, Am ar deo Sar ma, Eugenie C. Scott, David E. Thomas, Leonard Tramiel, Benjamin Wolozin

CON SULT ING ED I TORS Sus an J. Black more, Ken neth L. Fed er, Barry Karr, E. C. Krupp, Da vid F. Marks, Jay M. Pasachoff, Rich ard Wis e man

CON TRIB UT ING ED I TORS Austin Dacey, D.J. Grothe,Harriet Hall, Kenneth W. Krause, Chris Moon ey,James E. Oberg, Rob ert Sheaf fer, Karen Stollznow

DEPUTY ED I TOR Ben ja min Rad ford

MAN A GING ED I TOR Julia Lavarnway

ART DI RECT OR Chri sto pher Fix

PRO DUC TION Paul E. Loynes

ASSISTANT EDITOR Julia Burke

WEB DEVELOPER Jon Childress

WEBMASTER Matthew Licata

PUB LISH ER’S REP RE SENT A TIVE Bar ry Karr

COR PO RATE COUN SEL Steven Fox

BUSI NESS MAN A GER Pa tri cia Beau champ

FIS CAL OF FI CER Paul Pau lin

DATA OF FI CER Jacalyn Mohr

STAFF Melissa Braun, Cheryl Catania, Roe Giambrone, Leah Gordon, An tho ny San ta Lu cia, John Sul li van, Vance Vi grass

COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Michelle Blackley

IN QUIRY ME DIA PRO DUC TIONS Thom as Flynn

DI RECT OR OF LI BRAR IES Tim o thy S. Binga

The SKEP TI CAL IN QUIR ER is the of fi cial jour nal of the Com mit tee for Skeptical Inquiry, an in ter na tion al or gan i za tion.

The SKEP TI CAL IN QUIR ER(ISSN 0194-6730) is pub lished bi month -ly by the Com mit tee for Skeptical Inquiry, 3965 Rensch Road,Am herst, NY 14228. Print ed in U.S.A. Pe ri od i cals post age paidat Buf fa lo, NY, and at ad di tion al mail ing of fi ces. Sub scrip tionpri ces: one year (six is sues), $35; two years, $60; threeyears, $84; sin gle is sue, $4.95. Ca na di an and for eign or ders:Pay ment in U.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank must ac com pa -ny or ders; please add US$10 per year for ship ping. Ca na di anand for eign cus tom ers are en cour aged to use Vi sa or Mas ter -Card. Canada Publications Mail Agreement No. 41153509.Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: IMEX, P.O. Box4332, Station Rd., Toronto , ON M5W 3J4.

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SI Nov. Dec 11_SI new design masters 9/28/11 11:16 AM Page 4

The Age of Denialism: When Beliefs Trump Scientific FactsKendrick Frazier

Skeptical Inquirer | November / December 2011 5

We’ve all seen the face of denialism indiscourse involving politically and so-cially charged scientific issues. Climatechange, evolution, vaccines, AIDS, the9/11 attacks, the Holo caust—they’ve allattracted powerful denialist movementsthat, from the viewpoint of most science-oriented people, seem especially resistantto scientific evidence. Why has denialism become such a

big obstacle to scientific understanding?What is responsible for its rise and stay-ing power? What, if anything, can bedone about it? And what is the role ofthe science journalist in confronting it? Like skeptics and scientists, science

journalists find themselves continuallyfacing denialist arguments from theiraudiences and the public. The problemsdenialism raises are increasingly trouble-some, and if research cited at a re centpanel discussion on the topic is anyguide, the situation may be virtually in-tractable. Nevertheless, some positivesuggestions did emerge, among them totell better stories—compelling true sto-ries dramatizing the scientific facts.These were among the conclusions

of a provocative consideration of “Jour-nalism in the Age of Denial” at theWorld Conference of Science Journal-ists in Doha, Qatar, June 27–29, 2011.The panel was organized and moder-ated by Cristine Russell, president ofthe Council for the Advancement ofScience Writing, former WashingtonPost science reporter, and senior fellowat Harvard’s Belfer Center for Scienceand International Affairs. Like scientists and educators (and

skeptics), science journalists operateunder the basic assumption that moreand better information is always prefer-able. They provide accurate scientific in-formation to the public and hope it willinform scientific understanding aboutimportant public issues. With denialism,it doesn’t work that way.As I somewhat plaintively titled my

editorial in our September/October 2011issue (written before this conference),“Who Really Wants Reliable Sci en tificInformation?”“Telling people with strong partisan

beliefs that something is not true rarelyconvinces them,” science journalist Shan -kar Vedantam, author of The Hid denBrain, told the audience. “In fact, refuta-tion causes the belief to go up.” And there you have it. Providing peo-

ple who hold strong beliefs reliable infor-mation that might undermine those be-liefs causes them to cling to those beliefseven more strongly. Vedantam, who recently moved from

the Washington Post to National PublicRadio (see his SI piece, “Difficulty inDebunking Myths Rooted in the WayMind Works,” January/February 2008),gave an informed tutorial on denialismvia Skype from his home in the UnitedStates (at 4 AM his time) when a familyillness kept him from traveling to Qatar. He described research showing that

rather than being formed by evidence,our beliefs are tied to our loyalties toideas and causes. Emotional ties predictwhat one is willing to believe. “We de-velop friendships and loyalties that shapeour beliefs. This process largely happens

at an unconscious level. Most of us don’tstray far from the beliefs of our friends.”When facts contradict beliefs, cognitivedissonance then leads us to deny thefacts. “We will selectively filter out thefacts that counter our views.”Debora MacKenzie, a writer in the

Brussels office of New Scientist and au-thor of a 2010 cover article “Living inDenial,” reinforced that point. “Mostdenialists simply think the way mostpeople think—in terms of feelings, fa-

miliar stories, and their own groupidentity,” she emphasized. When theyhear a conflicting claim, cognitive dis-sonance takes over. “It is far easier todeny the science than to accept thatyour whole worldview is wrong.” Yves Sciama, a freelancer from France,

wondered whether the honeymoon be-

[ NEWS AND COMMENT

Providing people who hold strong beliefs reliable

information that might undermine those

beliefs causes them to cling to those

beliefs even more strongly.


6 Volume 35 Issue 6 | Skeptical Inquirer

tween science and society earlier in thetwentieth century is now coming to anend. “Scientist-bashing is becoming morecommon,” Sciama noted, whereas it wasalmost unheard of decades earlier. The main concern of Philip Hilts,

head of the Knight Science JournalismFellowships at MIT, is the “deliberatemisuse of nonsense.” He said tactics usedby the tobacco companies from 1953 to1994 to try to counter the evidence thatsmoking causes cancer are now beingused by oil companies to try to counterthe evidence of climate change. The to-bacco companies tried to assert that therewas always doubt. If necessary, theywould “buy a scientist to say so.” Now, with climate change, Hilts said,

the vested interests are again “deliberatelymanipulating for gain.” He said the roleof science journalists is to “chase downthe folks” who are misusing and misrep-resenting the scientific evidence.Vedantam likewise reserved his harsh-

est judgments for those who “actively andactually disbelieve” what they know to betrue, the tobacco industry again being theleading example. Yet Vedantam noted that denialism is

not monolithic. He called for a slightlymore nuanced, “granular” analysis. In facthe said using the term denialism can bename-calling. (But what else to call it? Iask.) Denialism comes in different de-grees, and the levels shouldn’t always beconflated. Stage one is disbelieving theevidence by trusting only what our senses

reveal to us (his example: the Sun seemsto go round Earth; my example: green-house gases being added to the atmos-phere are invisible and so are easily ig-nored). A second stage relates to thecomplexity of scientific evidence, espe-cially about predicting the future. He sug-gests that much of the doubt about climate change is a different kind of“skepticism” (about prediction) thanthat exhibited, for instance, by Holo -caust deniers.(“Skepticism” is itself another mis-

leading term in this context. Science-oriented, evidence-based skeptics preferto call those who don’t accept good sci-entific evidence doubters or deniers.) He and the others seemed to agree

that denialism is worsening. “It is hardto believe that denialism is not expand-ing,” Vedantam said. He noted that inregard to global climate change, disbe-lief in the United States is going up.(Will this summer’s prolonged recordhigh heat across much of the UnitedStates change that perception? Notlikely, if Texas Governor Rick Perry’sstrange anti-global warming—and anti-evolution—comments just days afterannouncing he was a candidate for pres-ident are any guide.)Sciama raised the interesting issue of

differing national attitudes toward cli-mate change. Surveys show that in Brazil,92 percent of the people say global warm-ing is taking place, and only 5 percentthink mankind is not contributing toglobal warming. “In the developing countries trust in science is comparable to that in the U.S. in the 1950s,” Sciamasaid. Still, why denial of global warmingdominates “in Anglo-Saxon countries—U.S./U.K./Australia—re mains to be ex -plored.” If reliable scientific facts don’t have any

positive effect in changing the views ofdeniers—and in fact cause them to clingto their beliefs even more strongly—where does that leave us? It’s a ratherbleak picture. It is discouraging not onlyfor science journalists but also for every-one concerned that we lack well-in-formed citizens in modern de moc racieswhere scientific and technical questionsaffect virtually every national issue.

The panelists did offer a few sugges-tions. Science journalists’ job is to com-municate the science effectively, Mac -Kenzie noted. That being the case, andif facts don’t sway denialists and otherswho hold strong views, she suggests we“speak the language of anecdotes, feel-ings, and group identity.” She was seri-ous. Stories have a much stronger im-pact on people than facts and evidence,and therefore effective science commu-nication should employ these same toolsto get across the science. She called forusing “familiar narratives”; for instance,the fact that families have actually lostchildren to diseases that could have beenprevented by vaccinations. That’s a nar-rative that is not only powerful but true.Science-oriented, “just the facts,

please” people may feel that tactic is be-neath them, but MacKenzie said it isnot. “It may be uncomfortable, but ifstories help communicate the science,then do it.” Still another constructive suggestion

came from an audience member andrisk-communications expert, David Ro -peik of Harvard. (He spoke at anotherpanel session on risk reporting.) Ropeik,in his comments to the panel and in abrief conversation afterward with theSKEPTICAL INQUIRER, said denialism isa very real thing, but it can and shouldbe quantified, and then managed, likeany risk-versus-perception gap. Dealingwith it in this straightforward way is aneffective and rational approach. Heelaborates in his 2010 book How RiskyIs It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Al-ways Match the Facts. Science journalists will no doubt keep

writing their good science stories. Per -haps the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER’s experi-ence in dealing with the paranormal andpseudoscience has something to offerhere. We have no illusions that our eval-uations will persuade hardcore paranor-malist believers. But opinion leaders inscience, education, and media—and avast segment of the public who do wantgood, reliable information—tell us theyfind them useful. Some even expressdeep appreciation. Denialism won’t dis-appear, but good information still has athirsty audience.

Shankar Vedantam, author of The Hid den Brain



[ NEWS AND COMMENT

Pseudoscience, Mythbusting, Evolution Gain Attention of World’s Top Science Journalists

KENDRICK FRAZIER

The World Conference of Science Journ -alists in Doha, Qatar, June 27–29, couldat times have been mistaken for a classicskeptics conference.This is not altogether surprising,

considering that science journalists, asthe intermediaries between scientistsand the public, encounter the samekinds of public misunderstanding andmisperceptions (plus outright distor-tions) about science and the naturalworld that skeptics combat.More than seven hundred science

journalists from ninety countries—halfof them from Africa, Asia, and theMiddle East—met in a sprawling newuniversity/academic research complexof the Qatar Foundation on the out-skirts of Doha to consider issues theyencounter in their professional lives. Itwas the first such conference outside theWestern world. I participated in a session on “Investi -

gating Pseudoscience” with other skepticsand science journalists from Russia,Hungary, and Argentina. Moderator Ta-tiana Puchigina, who works in Moscowfor the online news site Science andTechnology in Russia, told an interviewerafterward that she arranged the sessionafter seeing how severe of a problempseudoscience is in Russia. (Nine yearsago SI devoted most of an entire issueto “Science and Pseudoscience in Rus-sia,” July/August 2002, and it is clearthat the situation hasn’t improved muchsince then.)Alexander Sergeev, science editor of

the popular Russian magazine VokrugSveta and science observer for RussianRadio Liberty, agreed with her bleak as-sessment. He reported that after threewell-known Russian physicists, all mem-bers of the Russian Academy of Sciencesand its commission on pseudoscienceand science fraud, publicly exposed theactivities of a pseudoscientist close to theleaders of Russia, they were hit with a

$50 million lawsuit. Among the three isEduard Krug lyakov, who wrote one ofthose 2002 SI articles.Sergeev emphasized that in Russia

much pseudoscience is not just annoy-ing misconceptions and misunderstand-ings but “also a new kind of criminal ac-tivity dangerous for science and society.”It is carried out for profit, and it involvescorruption of public officials and othercriminal acts. It is a highly troublingissue. In Russia, he lamented, “pseudo-science is developing dynamically, andthe old counter-actions against it arenow ineffective.”

Another speaker, István Vágó, formerhead of the Hungarian skeptics groupand a prominent Hungarian televisionhost, sees some of the same problems inHungary. After scientific socialism wasbanned, faith in science declined andthe population’s new freedoms resultedin a rise of pseudoscience and scandals.Vágó blamed television for part of theproblem: television provides easy an-swers to hard questions. He also la -mented that un healthy people waste somuch money on worthless and boguspseudo-medical treatments. Alejandro Agostinelli, a freelance sci-

ence journalist in Argentina, de scribedhis experiences in active skepticism.From 1990 to 1994 he was a member ofCAIRP (the Argentinian Center for In-vestigation and Refuta tion of Pseudo-science), the first Latin Amer ican organ-ization with the same goals as theAmerican CSICOP, now our Commit-tee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). Thegroup worked closely with the localmedia in examining alternative medicine,folk healing, astrology, mental control,mystic healing powers, and UFOs.Among its successful activities: in 1995CAIRP used experts and props to dem -onstrate that the filmed autopsy of theRoswell “ET” was a fraud.

‘Investigating Pseudoscience’ panelists (from left): Frazier, Vágó, Agostinelli, Federico Kukso of Argentina (translating), and Sergeev.

Sergeev emphasizedthat in Russia much

pseudoscience is not just annoying

misconceptions andmisunderstandings

but “also a new kindof criminal activity

dangerous for scienceand society.”


For my part, I offered an overview ofscience and pseudoscience in modernAmerica. I treated anti-science as a spe-cial case that is especially virulent inpublic policy today, in which propo-nents are actively hostile to scientificideas—or at least to those perceived toyield answers incompatible with theirideology and beliefs. I urged sciencejournalists to consider investigative ar-ticles about pseudoscience as an oppor-tunity not only to expose bogus claimsbut also to inform people in an enter-taining way about real science and howit differs from pseudoscience. That session was followed by a re lated

one with the intriguing title “WarriorsAgainst Claptrap: Are Myth-Busters theNew Generation of Civic Scientist?”New myth-busting groups and effortsare spring ing up all over. This panel ad-dressed the impact of some widely pub-licized myth-busting campaigns thathave captured the public imagination.The popular U.S. television show Myth-

Busters was just one of the forums de-scribed. Julia Wilson and Leonor Sierraof Sense About Science, a U.K. groupthat promotes public myth-busting byyoung people, headed that discussionalong with science journalists YlannSchemm of Elsevier in the Nether lands,Alaa Ibrahim of American University inCairo, and Pallab Ghosh of the BBC inthe United Kingdom. Wilson de scribedan effort in which a group of young peo-ple in the United Kingdom decided tochallenge companies’ claims about“detoxing.” They asked what evidencesupported the detox claims; when thecompanies admitted they had none, thegroup publicized that fact (with tran-scripts of the responses) and gained wideattention.Veteran BBC science broadcaster Ghosh

concluded with some philosophical wis-dom about the nature of the profession.Science journalists’ prime responsibility isto act in the interests of their audience.Sometimes they need to be brave and

take on important stories, and they havea role and responsibility to bust myths.He called it “kick-ass journalism.”That session was followed by a ple-

nary on “Evolution and the EvolvingWorld of Science Journalism.” Scien tificAmerican Editor Mariette DeChristina,past president of the National Associa -tion of Science Writers, moderated apanel whose members came from SouthAfrica, Argentina, and the United States.But the lead talk was by our Committeefor Skeptical Inquiry colleague EugenieC. Scott of the National Center for Sci-ence Education. She noted how the jour-nalistic principle of “balance” can be aproblem in reporting on evolution. As shesays, fairness and balance apply to opinion.“It is not an opinion that the Earth goesaround the Sun. . . . It is not a matter ofopinion that living things have ancientancestors.” (The “balance” problem is well un-

derstood by science journalists, but it re-mains a serious issue in general journal-ism, where non-expert reportersfrequently feel they must give cre-ationist views equal weight to the long-accepted scientific facts ofevolution.)Scott forthrightly condemned a

2009 incident in which a noted sciencemagazine, the British weekly New Sci-entist, published a cover announcing inlarge print, “DARWIN WASWRONG.” (The article itself wasabout horizontal gene transfer and, saysScott, wasn’t the real problem.)“The New Scientist cover is simply

wrong,” Scott bluntly told the assem-bled journalists. “This cover was ex -tremely irresponsible.” She noted thatjust two days later opponents of evo-lution on the Texas Board of Educa-tion cited the cover as evidence thatevolution is wrong. New Scientist Ed-itor Roger Highfield lamely re-sponded at the time that he knew cre-ationists would probably “take it outof context.” This was hardly any sur-prise to Scott, who wondered why hethen did it. “Cover the science,” shesaid, “but don’t make it easy for cre-ationists to take it out of context.”

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry fellowand frequent SKEPTICAL INQUIRER con-tributor David Morrison is the subjectof the newsmaker interview article in theAugust 19 Science “as the scientific com-munity’s unofficial defender of reasonagain the onslaught of . . . ‘cosmopho-bia’”—irrational fears of end-of-worlddoom from harmless comets (such asElenin) and nonexistent rogue planets(such as Nibiru). The article chroniclesMorrison’s tireless efforts to correctfalsehoods and misinformation aboutsupposed astronomically caused im -pending doomsdays. It can be read on -line at www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/928.summary?sid=0b572d2f-f680-4303-8e6d71b6d09820ac.This article follows on an earlier

one, in the same series in Science ( June10, 2011), on frequent SI contributorJohn Mashey’s efforts to combat false-hoods and misinformation about cli-mate change.

Science Recognizes Morrison’s Fight against Doom Hysteria




[ NEWS AND COMMENT

The ABC television network aired aone-hour Primetime Nightline specialon August 17, “Beyond Belief,” inwhich psychics failed test after test. Tothe skeptic, the psychics’ demonstra-tions were weak, including the usualcold reading techniques, guessing, div-ination, suggestion, and telling peoplewhat they want to hear. Much of theunsuspecting public, however, mightfind this deception believable. Of par-ticular acclaim was the superb perform-ance of Banachek—a magician and theadministrator of the James Randi Ed-ucational Foundation’s Million DollarParanormal Challenge.

The network used an unusual three-host format.

The host of the first segment wasGood Morning America anchor Josh El-liot. He received a reading from “medi -um” James Van Praagh. Van Praaghstarted with the usual cold reading tech-niques, such as telling Elliot about hischildhood, “There’s a sense of beingwanted.” Van Praagh proceeded to sup-ply one accurate insight after another—and far more specifically than when coldreading. But Elliot skeptically reportedthat all information connected to VanPraagh’s apparent “hits” was available onthe Internet. Chalk this one up to re-search and homework.

In the next segment, presented byJuju Chang, several contenders tried tosnare James Randi’s million dollarprize, including a medium who failedto divine the only dead person’s photo(Elvis) in a series of envelopes, and atarot card reader who failed to matchlive subjects with their biographies.Even though the failed mediumsagreed to the protocol, ABC disap-pointingly elected to include their com-plaints regarding testing conditions. Asusual, Randi did a good job explainingflim-flam with his no-nonsense ap-proach with the media.

David Wright hosted the next seg-

ment, which began with “house healers”in Oakland, California, performing anexorcism of sorts at the request of a realestate agent. The house in question ap-parently wouldn’t sell because of “badenergy” from the previous owners. Theproperty still did not sell—even aftermediums (trained at the Berkeley Psy-chic Institute) “cleansed” the house.This segment was basically devoid of askeptical perspective.

The next segment was presentedagain by Juju Chang. Twenty psychic de-tectives had claimed to be able to find amissing child. Sixteen months later, thechild was still missing. Credit Chang forasking very skeptical questions to someof the psychics. Banachek returned forthis segment and did an excellent job ofexplaining how psychics waste authori-ties’ time and resources with their “wildgoose chases.”

ABC had a retired FBI agent ex plainthat in his thirty-year career he neversaw a psychic help find a single missingperson. Then the program described thecruelty of Sylvia Browne’s most horrificfailed prediction of her career, when she

told the parents of missing child ShawnHornbeck in 2004 that their son wasdead—only to have him found alive andwell in 2007. Banachek called Browne’sactions “horrible” and “disgusting.” Inthis segment, Banachek did a brilliantjob of demonstrating to Chang how toduplicate the effects of alleged psychicability. Asked about people who claimto communicate with the dead, Ba-nachek replied, “I think those people arescum. I really, really think they’re scum.”

David Wright did the final segmenton “psychic moms” such as Allison Du -Bois (from The Real Housewives of Bev-erly Hills), who inspired the televisionshow Medium, and Rebecca Rosen.These mediums emphasize the subject’smother in their readings. This was clearlythe program’s weakest segment becauseit made no attempt to provide a skepticalperspective of the medium’s reading ofWright. In fact, Wright claimed theirreadings were accurate and revealed “de-tails that don’t pop up on Google.” Butafter the show’s conclusion, the pertinentdetails from the reading were discoveredin an earlier New York Times wedding an-nouncement, which was posted on Twit-ter by a user.

Overall, ABC did a decent job of fair presentation, and there was adequateskeptical representation. Bana chek’smagic, coupled with his critical thinkingapproach, made for the perfect educa-tional tool. He was brilliant. Removingthe segments by Wright, who was tooquick to believe, would have made for aneven more skeptical program.

The day after the program aired, theJames Randi Educational Foundationchallenged the show’s psychics to betested for the million dollar prize underrandomized, controlled conditions with -out the use of cold reading. Said Chal-lenge director Banachek, “We’re issuinga challenge to these fakers. . . .”

We’ll all anxiously await their re-sponses, but don’t hold your breath.

Bryan Farha is professor of behavioral studiesin education at Oklahoma City University. He isa CSI consultant and editor of ParanormalClaims: A Critical Analysis. His email address [email protected].

Psychics Fail Tests on ABC Special ‘Beyond Belief’

BRYAN FARHA

Elliot skeptically reportedthat all information

connected to Van Praagh’s apparent

“hits” was available on the Internet.

Chalk this one up to research and homework.


“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.” – Thomas Paine

You are invited to join the Center for Inquiry

to Act, Combat, and Promote…

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demonstrating how the fruits

of objective inquiry can be

used to understand reality,

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CSI Fellow and SkEPTICAl INquIrEr Editorial Board Member

James Alcock leads a class at a Skeptics’ Toolbox event. The Toolbox

has been held every year, except once, since1992.

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[ NEWS AND COMMENT

In August the New Jersey SupremeCourt issued new rules to prevent in-nocent people from being wrongly con-victed of a crime based upon eyewitnesstestimony. According to an article inthe New York Times,The New Jersey Supreme Court, ac-knowledging a “troubling lack of re-liability in eyewitness identifications,”issued sweeping new rules . . . makingit easier for defendants to challengesuch evidence in criminal cases. Thecourt said that whenever a defendantpresents evidence that a witness’sidentification of a suspect was influ-enced, by the police, for instance, ajudge must hold a hearing to considera broad range of issues. These couldinclude police behavior, but also fac-tors like lighting, the time that hadelapsed since the crime or whetherthe victim felt stress at the time of theidentification.

The chief justice, Stuart J. Rabner,wrote in a unanimous decision that thelegal system had to catch up with scien-tific evidence in order to ensure justice:

Study after study revealed a troublinglack of reliability in eyewitness iden-tifications. . . . From social science re-search to the review of actual policelineups, from laboratory ex perimentsto DNA exonerations, the recordproves that the possibility of mis-taken identification is real. In deed, itis now widely known that eyewitnessmisidentification is the leading causeof wrongful convictions across thecountry.

The idea that people often incorrectlysee, remember, and report what they ex-perience is not merely theory but aproven fact; there are over two thousandpublished scientific studies demonstrat-

ing it. By some estimates, as many asone-third of eyewitness identifications incriminal cases are wrong, and nearly twohundred people who were convicted ofcrimes based on positive eyewitnessidentifications were later exoneratedthrough DNA evidence.The problem of eyewitness unreliabil-

ity (and memory unreliability) has beenknown in academia for years; psycholo-gists such as Elizabeth Loftus have longdocumented how sincere, honest peoplemake important mistakes when report-ing what they have seen. But it’s only re-cently that the legal system has recog-nized—and taken steps to mitigate—theproblem of eyewitness mis identification.The research also has implications for

other types of eyewitness reports. Thebulk of evidence for “unexplained” re-ports is eyewitness accounts. Many peo-ple who believe in the existence of Big-foot or extraterrestrials, for example, doso based on the disproven premise thatsincere, honest eyewitnesses can’t be mis-taken.

New Jersey Supreme Court Overhauls Eyewitness ID RulesBENJAMIN RADFORD

Hilary Evans, a leading British For teanauthor and researcher of “marginal hu -man experiences,” died on July 27, 2011.He was the author of many books, in-cluding Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors(1984) and Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guar -dians (1987). Evans was a founder ofwhat is called the “psychosocial hypoth-esis.” It attributes the perception ofanomalous phenomena such as UFOs,apparitions, and so forth to a sort of psychodrama occurring inside the per-cipient’s head that is shaped by society’sexpectations and beliefs. It is very in -fluential today among British Forteans,many of whom are quite skeptical of theliteral truth of paranormal claims.Evans and his late wife, Mary, oper-

ated the Mary Evans Picture Library inLondon, a major repository of over onemillion images. The Evans’ private col-lection of esoteric books and Vic torianawas legendary, and Hilary’s knowledge

of “anomalistic” subjects was extraordi-nary. He met frequently with colleaguesand was responsible for much sharing ofinformation. I met Evans at the Encoun-ters at Indian Head conference in NewHampshire in 2000, which was organ-ized to scrutinize the Betty and Barney

Hill UFO abduction story. He comparedthe Hills’ (at the time novel) narrative toearlier accounts of otherworldly beingsand religious visions, finding many com-mon themes and formulations in bothand suggesting that a “life crisis” of thepercipient was likely the cause. When-ever the trite phrase “a gentleman and ascholar” is used, there can be no better il-lustration of that ideal than HillaryEvans.

Fortean Author Hilary Evans (1929–2011)ROBERT SHEAFFER


Skeptical activists have reason for con-cern when organizations invested inquestionable treatments take action in-tended to silence their critics. The recentcase of Simon Singh and the BritishChiropractic Association (BCA) wasone such noteworthy case that receiveda good deal of popular support andhelped to highlight the need for libel re-form in the United Kingdom.

Singh’s victory over the BCA’s accu-sations of libel also highlights the im-portance of standing behind the peoplewho challenge these organizations sothat they may persevere against them.It is in this spirit that the AustralianSkeptics are calling for support from theskeptical community for Ken Harvey,who put in a complaint to Australia’sTherapeutic Goods Ad min istration(TGA) regarding a product called Sen-saSlim and was subsequently hit with an$800,000 (AUD) defamation suit.

SensaSlim is advertised as a mirac-ulous weight-reducing oral spray. Itsmanufacturer claims it is the result oftwenty years of research and that its ef-ficacy has been proven in a large-scaleclinical trial involving over eleventhousand people from over one hun-dred countries. This trial has not beenpublished in any peer-reviewed med-ical journals, however, and critics whohave looked into the matter are unableto locate the Swiss research institute

that supposedly performed the study.They allege that the institute’s website,in a page claiming to list its staff, insteadfeatures images of doctors grabbed fromthe website of a lung clinic in the UnitedStates.

Allegations have come to light fromthe Australian Competition and Con -sumer Commission (ACCC) of a rela-tionship between SensaSlim and a con-victed felon and con artist named PeterFoster. Foster is known to have perpe-trated illegal schemes in the past, in-cluding the creation of several fraudu-lent slimming products such as the ChoLo and Bai Lin slimming teas andTrimmit diet pills, among others.

The Australian Skeptics are en -couraging like-minded individuals tosupport the fight against organizationsthat resort to these kinds of tactics. KenHarvey is currently engaged in a legalbattle with SensaSlim because he daredto complain to the TGA. Those whowish to support Harvey are encouragedto contact the Australian Skeptics byemail at [email protected] Mendham, executive officer of theAustralian Skeptics, may also be con-tacted by phone at 02 8094 1894 for in -formation on how to donate. In addi-tion, checks made out to Austral ianSkeptics may be sent to PO Box 20,Beecroft 2119, Australia.

SensaSlim Lawsuit Seeks to Silence SkepticsGURMUKH MONGIA


Those who seek to undermine anddiscredit the findings of modern cli-mate science have increasingly beenresorting to legal action, threats, ha-rassment, and other decidedly nonsci-entific at tacks directed against climatescientists themselves. The situationhas been of growing concern to theworld scientific community.

Now the board of directors of theAmerican Association for the Ad -vance ment of Science—publisher ofthe leading journal Science and dedi-cated to advancing science around theworld—has issued a formal statementcalling for an end to such personal at-tacks on climate scientists.

“We are deeply concerned by theextent and nature of personal attackson climate scientists,” the statement,issued June 28, reads. “Reports of ha-rassment, death threats, and legal chal-lenges have created a hostile environ-ment that inhibits the free ex change ofscientific findings and ideas and makesit difficult for factual information andscientific analyses to reach policymak-ers and the public. This both impedesthe progress of science and interfereswith the application of science to thesolution of global problems.”

The statement says science is aself-correcting system that has well-established methods to resolve dis-agreements over interpretation ofdata; “scientists should not be sub-jected to fraud investigations or ha-rassment simply for providing scien-tific results that are controversial.”Policymakers should not be able tosubvert the peer-review processes ofscience, it says.

“AAAS vigorously opposes attackson researchers that question their per-sonal and professional integrity orthreaten their safety based on dis-pleasure with their scientific conclu-sions,” the statement continues.

The full statement is on the orga-nization’s website (www.aaas.org).

AAAS CondemnsPersonal Attacks onClimate Scientists

Ken Harvey is in a legal battle with the makers of thedubious product SensaSlim.



[ NEWS AND COMMENT

Budd Hopkins (1931–2011): Pioneering UFO AbductionistROBERT SHEAFFER

The famous UFO abductionist BuddHopkins succumbed to cancer in NewYork City on August 21 at the age ofeighty (www.intrudersfoundation.org/inside.html). The “UFO abduction”scenario changed significantly after thepublication of Hopkins’s book MissingTime in 1981. Prior to that, UFO ab -ductions were said to occur only whenpeople ventured out to lonely, de sertedplaces late at night and en counteredaliens (see, for example, the cases ofBetty and Barney Hill and Travis Wal-ton). Hopkins’s contribution en tirelysevered the connection between UFOsightings and UFO abductions. Hop-kins wrote of a new “abduction sce-nario that is, if anything, even moredisturbing to contemplate. Many peo-ple have simply been taken from theirhomes while they were either asleep, orengaged in some quotidian activity, likewatching television or reading” (Miss-ing Time, p. 79). Often the aliens, andtheir helpless prey, simply float throughclosed windows or even walls. In suchcases, the law of gravity and all ofNewton’s Laws of Motion seem to besuspended. To ex plain why nobodyever sees or photographs someone elsebeing abducted, Hopkins suggestedthat the aliens have the ability to makethemselves and their abductees invisi-ble during this process.

Hopkins was a member of the fa-mous troika of UFO abductionists,along with John Mack, MD, and DavidJacobs (who is now the sole survivor),during abductology’s heyday in theearly 1990s. Hopkins was the founderand executive director of the IntrudersFoundation, taking its name from his1987 best-selling book Intruders, whichin 1992 was made into a primetimeminiseries on CBS-TV. Hopkins wasone of the organizers of the 1992Abduc tion Study Confer ence at MITsponsored by physicist David Pritchard,which I attended.

Each of the several times I metHop kins I attempted to engage him in

a substantive discussion. He would havenone of it, and his attitude toward me(and likely toward all skeptics) was al-ways hostile. Hopkins was not one withwhom to have a discussion or de bate.He was right, you were wrong, and youwere probably stupid as well; it was thatsimple. Hopkins concealed flaws incases he was proclaiming to the worldwere ironclad proof of abductions. Hisex-wife Carol Rainey be came disillu-sioned with his careless research andduplicity and became one of his mostsevere critics. For more aboutRainey contra Hopkins, especially theBrooklyn Bridge Abduction (“Lev i tatedLinda”), see my “Abduct ology Im-plodes” (“Psychic Vibrations,” SI,May/June 2011). I also discussed “Levi -tated Linda” in my “Psychic Vibra tions”column in the Spring 1993 SI, whichhas been reprinted in the new book Psy-chic Vibrations: Skeptical Giggles from theSkeptical Inquirer (2011).

Hopkins was not one with whom to have a

discussion or de bate. He was right, you were

wrong, and you were probably stupid as well.

Skeptic’s Dictionary for KidsGURMUKH MONGIA

The growth of the skeptics commu-nity has resulted in an increase in on-line resources, but most of them havebeen created with a specific audiencein mind: most often a well-educated,older one. But the exciting fact is thatyounger and younger minds are be-coming interested in skeptical topics.This is an encouraging development;however, it seems that resources gearedtoward this demographic have beenslow to develop. Robert Carroll of theSkeptic’s Dictionary noticed this dis-crepancy and took action. By enlist-ing the help of pre-teen consultants,Carroll has developed a new branchof the Skeptic’s Dictionary: the Skep-tic’s Dictionary for Kids!

This new resource offers skepticalin sights written in kid-friendly lan-guage and includes plenty of illustra-tions and links to sound files to helpwith the pronunciation of difficultwords. There are, at present, forty-fiveentries in the Skeptic’s Dictionary forKids, all written for the benefit of chil-dren ages nine and up. This is a rich re-source for children in general, especiallyfor children who love topics like aliens,ghosts, and cryptids. The website,which is free of advertisements, isavailable at sd4kids.skepdic.com. n

Gurmukh Mongia is a computer scientistworking in the field of web development. Hecurrently operates a blog and podcast re-lated to critical thinking, The DumbassesGuide To Knowledge (www.dumbassguide.info).



roughly three thousand people died onAmer icanhighways during September2001, but these deaths had no long-lasting consequences to the nation.) Itwas bin Laden’s hope that our fearfulresponses to the attacks might result inmore costly repercussions, which in -deed have occurred and continue eventoday; he hoped they would under mineour economy and society. We arguedthat rational skepticism could mitigate(not eliminate) our irrational, self-dam-aging behavior. We claimed that ournation was not facing an existential cri-sis; rather, our leaders were enabling theterrorists to win by playing into theirhopes that we would respond to the at-tacks with exaggerated fear.To our surprise, many SI readers dis-

agreed. Letter writers (SI Reader’s Fo -rum, January/February 2003, pp. 61–65)argued that the barbarians were indeedat our gates, that the future of our coun-try was actually imperiled. More thanone suggested that the attacks were thefirst salvo in a sure-to-escalate war, likeHitler’s first invasions or Pearl Harbor.Some believed there would be an in-creasing frequency and magnitude ofterrorist attacks. National polls in 2002(New York Times/CBS Poll 2002) show -

ed that 25 percent of Americans be-lieved that “another terrorist attack inthe United States” was “very likely”within the next few months; another 45percent felt it was “somewhat likely.”Widespread but plainly irrational wor-ries that “you or your family will be a vic-tim of a terrorist attack” have abated littleduring subsequent years (over one-thirdof Amer icans responded as recently as2009–2011 [AP-Gfk Poll 2011] thatthey were either “somewhat” or “very”worried about personally becoming vic-tims of terrorism).In short, common perceptions about

the terrorist threat were nearly as dis-torted from reality as beliefs in astrol-ogy, the foreign birth of PresidentObama, haunted houses, and other top-ics treated in these pages, includingconspiracy theories about 9/11 itself(covered extensively in the July/August2011 issue of SI). Meanwhile, we havefaced very real perils during the pastdecade as a society (e.g., the economiccrisis), as regions (e.g., hurricanes inNew Orleans and the Gulf Coast), andas individuals (e.g., heart disease). Ofcourse, a major terrorist attack remainsa slight possibility, as does the impactof a huge asteroid or a nuclear power-

plant meltdown. As the Japanese haverecently experienced, a low-probabilitytsunami and nuclear disaster can hap-pen. But as individuals and as a society,we literally cannot afford the massiveexpenditures that would be required totry to eliminate all low-probabilitythreats. We must respond rationally tothe likelihood and objective seriousnessof each threat.The last decade has demonstrated

that our fears of terrorism were indeedexaggerated, despite occasional terroristincidents (at levels similar to terrorism inthe decades preceding 9/11). Considerthe resulting economic impacts. Thestock market immediately fell about 15percent, involving a loss of market capi-talization of several trillion dollars, athousand times the loss of the buildings.Other impacts during the year followingthe attacks included severe downturnsfor the airline and hospitality industriesand the expensive establishment of secu-rity operations at public buildings aroundthe country. Concerns about terrorism, inthe context of 9/11, were the stated rea-sons for initiating the wars inAfghanistan and Iraq, although otherconsiderations were also at work. A re-cent estimate (Belasko 2011) of the U.S.government appropriations, so far, for the“War on Terrorism” (narrowly defined asthe Afghanistan and Iraq wars) is $1.3trillion. Since the expensive wars werenot “paid for,” or rather they were paid forby increasing the national debt, someargue that our national response to ter-rorism is at least one significant cause—though there are of course others—of theeconomic crisis of the past few years. Inthis sense, the al-Qaeda goal of enticingthe United States to enter wars of attri-tion was partly achieved.

9/11: Perspectives from a Decade Later

CLARK R. CHAPMAN and ALAN W. HARRIS

[COMMENTARY

A year after the terrorist attacks of 2001, we wrote in aSKEPTICAL INQUIRER cover story (Chapman andHarris 2002) that the resulting damage to our societywas largely self-inflicted. Not that we, the victims, were re-sponsible for the attacks: al-Qaeda and the late Osama binLaden were accountable, of course, for killing three thou -sand people and destroying billions of dollars worth ofproperty, notably the World Trade Center. Yet the damageto our society has been vastly greater. (For comparison



Other, more subjective repercussionsfrom 9/11, which polls show many peo-ple see as costs to society, include the in-conveniences of Transportation SecurityAdministra tion (TSA) procedures atairports, compromises of personal free-doms, invasion of privacy (for example,governmental eavesdropping on phonecalls of citizens), discrimination againstMuslims, torture of potential inform-ants, and so forth. Of course, these areintertwined with political and religiousattitudes, so we cannot know the degreeto which other causes of such culturaland societal shifts were also at work. Butthe cliché that we are now “living in apost-9/11 world” documents the mag-nitude of our irrational, fear-inducedaugmentations to the objective damageof the 9/11 attacks. We are disappointed and puzzled

that, a decade after the attacks, there hasbeen minimal return to the status quoante. The Homeland Security in fra -structure continues to grow. While peo-ple travel by air again, ex pensive X-rayand microwave machines proliferate atairports. The war expenditures anddeaths (of U.S. soldiers, mercenaries, andforeign civilians alike) diminish at an ag-onizingly slow rate, though less than onehundred al-Qaeda fighters are estimatedto remain in Af ghani stan (Politifact.com2011). The Congress, the ExecutiveBranch, and the Supreme Court con-tinue to chip away at our once reveredrights to privacy and freedom from un-warranted searches. Polls show fears ofterrorism barely retreating, even afteryears of zero civilian deaths by jihadis onU.S. soil (according to a RAND report[ Jenkins 2010]). Over-reaching provi-sions of the post-9/11 Patriot Act havebeen recently extended. It seems that weas a society, and many of us as individuals,are incapable of returning to our pre-9/11 existence. Day after day, year afteryear, the government, driven by perceivedpublic pressure, persists in advancing theterrorists’ goals.Our disproportionate individual and

societal responses to 9/11 exemplify the“perception gap,” which Harvard risk an-

alyst David Ropeik discusses in his bookHow Risky Is It, Really? (Ropeik 2010).Human beings meld the objective “facts”about relative risks with their own affec-tive feelings and subconscious fight/fleeresponses to hazards. Ropeik argues thatthe perception gap is a dangerous hazardin and of itself. Ropeik quotes estimatesthat during the few fearful months fol-lowing 9/11, about one thousand addi-tional deaths oc curred on U.S. highwaysbecause people chose to drive rather thanfly. Even more profound damage wasdone to American values and economichealth by our societal, rather than just in-dividual, perception gap.Ropeik is not optimistic that we can

largely avoid such responses, due to innate human traits that underlie the affective aspects of our risk response.However, he argues that better risk com -munication by our leaders and com -mentators could adjust the balance be-tween rational and affective re sponses.We suggest that many negative repercus-sions from 9/11 could have been miti-gated—however imperfectly—had weindividually and collectively behaved dif-ferently in the aftermath of 9/11, tryingto take rational, conscious responsibilityfor our behavior. Journalists, educators,bloggers, politicians, and other opinionleaders have a responsibility to avoidfeeding terrorist fears and to promoterational evaluation of our national pri-orities. In particular, the community ofskeptics is especially knowledgeableabout the battle between objectivity andirrationality and has special expertiseand opportunities to try to close theperception gap concerning terrorism. About once in a generation, a major

“game changing” event occurs: the eco-nomic crash of 1929, Pearl Harbor, thelaunch of Sputnik, and now 9/11. Eachof these events has spawned dramaticchanges in how we live—some good,some bad, some equivocal. The GreatDepression led to “New Deal” social pro-grams, including Social Security; PearlHarbor and World War II and the ColdWar that followed led to the massivegrowth of the “military-industrial com-

plex” of which Eisen hower famouslywarned us; and Sputnik launched thespace program, along with major reformsof the U.S. education system and in-creased appreciation of science and tech-nology, arguably leading to the revolutionin electronics and computers. What isthe legacy of 9/11? Sadly, it is a wastelandof fear and hate, expensive professionalarmies fighting endless wars, and a brandnew bureaucracy of Homeland Security(in cluding the TSA), which promotes itsown continued existence and is unlikelyto go away. n

ReferencesAP-Gfk Poll. 2011. May 5–9. Available online atwww.pollingreport.com/terror.htm.

Belasko, Amy. 2011. The cost of Iraq, Af -ghanistan, and other global War on Terroroperations since 9/11. Congressional Re -search Service, Report RL33110. Availableonline at http://opencrs.com/document/RL33110/.

Chapman, Clark R., and Alan W. Harris. 2002.A skeptical look at September 11th: How wecan defeat terrorism by reacting to it more ra-tionally. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER 26(5): 29–34.

Jenkins, B.M. 2010. Would-be warriors: Inci dentsof jihadist terrorist radicalization in theUnited States since September 11, 2001.RAND Corp. Occasional Paper.

New York Times/CBS News Poll. 2002. Sep -tember 8. Available online at www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20020908_poll/020908poll-results.html.

Politifact.com. 2011. Available online at www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2011/may/15/david-cicilline/cicilline-says-there-are-only-25-30-al-qaeda-fight/.

Ropeik, David. 2010. How Risky Is It, Really?New York: McGraw-Hill.

Clark R. Chapman is a re-search scientist at theSouthwest Research Insti-tute in Boulder, Colorado.

Alan W. Harris is a researchscientist, most recently atthe Space Science Institute(also in Boulder, Colorado).They developed their per-spectives on hazards fromresearching what is per-haps the lowest probabilitybut highest consequence

hazard of all: the potential end of human civilization due to the impact of an asteroid or comet.



Exeter Incident

The story begins at 12:30 AM on Sep -tember 3, 1965, at Exeter, New Hamp -shire. A policeman cruising on Route101 came upon a woman parked besidethe road. She told him excitedly that aflying object with red flashing lights hadchased her for some distance. Shepointed to a bright light on the horizon.The policeman, Eugene Bertrand, watch -ed it for a short time and, unimpressed,left after reassuring the woman there wasnothing to worry about.Then at 2:24 AM, eighteen-year-old

Norman Muscarello burst into the Ex-eter police station, “white, and shaking.”He had been hitchhiking along Route150 toward his home in Exeter whenhe saw what he called “the Thing,” asbig as or bigger than a house (Fuller1966, 11). As Muscarello (1965) laterdescribed it in a signed statement:A group of five bright lights ap pearedover a house about a hundred feetfrom where I was standing. The lightswere in a line at about a sixty-degree

angle. They were so bright, theylighted up the area. The lights thenmoved out over a large field and actedat times like a floating leaf. Theywould go down behind the trees, be-hind a house and then reappear.

Muscarello then described what wouldprove to be a powerful clue to the UFO’sidentity:[The lights] always moved in thesame sixty-degree angle. Only onelight would be on at a time. Theywere pulsating: one, two, three, four,five, four, three, two, one. They wereso bright I could not distinguish aform to the object. I watched theselights for about fifteen minutes andthey finally disappeared behind sometrees and seemed to go into a field.At one time while I was watchingthem, they seemed to come so closeI jumped into a ditch to keep frombeing hit.

Bertrand drove with Muscarello tothe site just before 3 AM. The twowalked into the field, and Bertrandhimself witnessed the lights Muscarellohad described. He stated, “At one time

they came so close I fell to the groundand started to draw my gun.” The offi-cer stated that there were “five brightred lights”; indeed they were “extremelybright and flashed on one at a time.” Headded that “The lights were so bright, Iwas unable to make out any form” (Ber -trand 1965). The pair ran to the policecar. Bertrand radioed Patrol man DavidHunt, who arrived and also witnessed thelights, which finally moved away, east-ward, toward the ocean (Fuller 1966, 14).Over the next several weeks, some

sixty reports of UFOs followed in thearea around Exeter. The case resulted inan article in Look magazine (Febru ary8, 1966), the book by Fuller (expan-sively subtitled The Story of UnidentifiedObjects over America Today), and a hostof articles, entries in UFO encyclope-dias (e.g., Clark 1998, 364– 67), and dis-cussions in books (e.g., Hynek 1977,154–66), as well as lectures, radioshows, and television documentaries.J. Allen Hynek—the astronomer who

began as an admitted “outright ‘de-bunker’” but became, by the late 1960s,a true believer in the reality of “the UFOphenomenon”—considered the case “afine example of a Close Encounter ofthe First Kind” (1977, 1, 154), terminol-ogy he created. Hynek observed that thePentagon was unable to explain the Sep-tember 3, 1965, Exeter phenomenonand that “the scientific establishment” (aphrase dear to true believers) “in failingto deal with the evidence” was, like thePenta gon, “actually admitting that it hasno explanation” (Hynek 1977, 165–66).

[SPECIAL REPORT

‘Exeter Incident’ Solved!A Classic UFO Case, Forty-Five Years ‘Cold’

One of the great unsolved UFO cases—which provoked endless controversy between True Believers and Doubting Thomases—has at long last succumbed to investigation.The 1965 Exeter mystery is now explained.

JAMES MCGAHA and JOE NICKELL

It has been considered “one of the best-documentedUFO accounts on record” (APRO Bulletin 1965) and“one of the most spectacular and best-corroboratedUFO close encounters of all time” (Davenport andGeremia 2001). What journalist John G. Fuller would sub-sequently relate in his book Incident at Exeter (1966) beganin the early hours of a September morning in 1965 near asmall town in southeastern New Hampshire. It has neverbeen satisfactorily explained—until now.



In short, the object was still an uniden-tif ied flying object, implying that themystery indicated something momen-tous. Skep tics were, of course, skeptical.

‘Solutions’

Not surprisingly, the Exeter incidentprovoked many speculations as to whatthe UFO might have been. Here aresome of the proposals:

Astronomical bodies. As shown by afolder in the files of Project Blue Book(the U.S. Air Force’s UFO evaluationoperation, 1952–1969), the Pentagonconsidered—and rejected—the possibil-ity of “astro-stars/planets.” Sup posedly,the witnesses had merely seen “stars andplanets twinkling” due to a temperatureinversion (a meteorological phenome-non in which a layer of warm air istrapped above cold night air and thus iscapable of causing visual distortions)(Clark 1998, 365). The totality of evi-dence was incompatible with that hy-pothesis, leading Hynek (1977, 154) todeclare, “The astronomical evaluation iscompletely untenable.”

Glare of airport landing lights. Oneair force officer hypothesized that theExeter sighting merely resulted fromthe glare of landing lights at nearbyPease Air Force Base, a Strategic AirCommand (SAC)/North American AirDefense Command (NORAD) bomb er

base. This possibility was tested by hav-ing both the runway marker lights andthe approach strobes turned off and onduring a fifteen-minute period, but ob-servers saw no effect from the Exetersite (UFO Phenomenon 1987, 103–104).

An Air Force Operation. Blue Booksuggested the incident might have beencaused by planes from a SAC/NORAD training exercise dubbed “BigBlast,” which occurred on Sep tember 2–3, 1965. Blue Book noted that “the townof Exeter is within the traffic patternutilized by Air Traffic Control in the re-covery of these aircraft at Pease AFB[Air Force Base], N.H.” The exercisewas active—according to Blue Book’schief (Quin tanilla 1965)—betweenmidnight and 2 AM.However, Ber trandnoted that he and young Muscarellohad witnessed the flashing UFO “nearlyan hour after two a.m. which wouldeliminate the Air Force Operation BigBlast” as an explanation (qtd. in Clark1998, 366). Hynek (1977, 154) con-curred.

Advertising plane.Newspapers in theExeter area ascribed the lights to “a fly-ing billboard”—an ad plane—owned by the Sky-Lite Aerial Adver tisingAgency of Boston. The Ames bury(Massachusetts)News thus claimed theUFO “has finally been identified!” Butalas, that plane was on the ground be-

tween August 21 and September 10,and furthermore it bore no red flashinglights, instead having “a rectangular signcarrying white flashing lights” (Fuller1966, 51).

Corona discharge from power lines.Thelate UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass agreedthat the eyewitnesses had indeed seensomething unusual, but he speculatedthat “the Exeter UFOs” (including theone seen by Muscarello and the two po-lice officers) might have been “power-line coronas,” that is, clear-weather plas-mas (luminous clouds of ionized air)that were generated by electrical chargesemanating from high-tension powerlines (Klass 1968, 12–25). This clearlydid not explain the original Exeter inci-dent, and Klass later backed away fromhis “plasma UFOs” theory (see Clark1998, 366).

Prank with lighted kite. SkepticalUFO buff Martin Kottmeyer (1996)weighed in with the notion that aprankster flew a kite, most likely “alarge box kite” with “five strobe flasherslinked to a sequencer” that “hung alongthe kite-line rather than a tail” (thus ac-counting for the observed sixty-degreeangle). However, not only is the kite hy-pothesis cut from whole cloth, but theimagined prankster seems to have goneto considerable effort for such a de-serted place and time.

Figure 1. A U.S. Air Force KC-97 refueling tanker like this one became an unintentional UFO, sparking the “Exeter Incident” of Sep tember 3, 1965.



Other objects. Still other possiblecandidates were proposed—helicopter,balloon, civilian plane—but nothingseemed likely.As Jerome Clark summed up in his

The UFO Encyclopedia (1998, 366) afternoting the case had received much notoriety, “The attention en sured thatthis particular close en counter of thefirst kind would be remembered in away few have been. Still, by any stan-dard the sighting remains puzzling andimpressive.”

Perceptions

People misperceive—especially whenthey suddenly encounter somethingthat is unknown, is seen under adverseconditions, and frightens them. Recallthat at Exeter the un identified lightswere so bright that witnesses could not

make out the shape of theUFO. Not knowing thecraft’s size, its altitude, or itsdistance from the viewer—that is, with multiple un-knowns—a witness has nobasis for estimating any ofthese factors. And Exeterwitnesses were indeed afraid:a woman who felt she wasbeing chased by a UFO hadpulled off the road; a teenagewitness arriving at the policestation was white and shak-ing; and one officer admittedhe almost shot at the brightlights.Consider that even some-

thing as distant as a meteorhundreds of miles away, pass-ing out of sight behind trees,can seem to have landed in anearby woodland—a com-mon illusion. The brightnessof the Exeter UFO’s lights(greater than that of a mereairplane and ultimately pro-viding a clue to its identity)probably made the craftseem much closer than it re-ally was.Consider, too, that some-

thing that is frighteningtends to loom large in one’s

consciousness. Chad Marsolek of theUniversity of Minnesota, an expert inmemory distortion, describes a “weapon-focus effect.” This may cause an eyewit-ness who is focusing on somethingfrightening (such as the barrel of a gun)to lose focus on other elements. As ithappens, when people view a disturbingimage they tend to be confident of theiraccuracy—even when their memory iswrong (Mar solek 2010).All of these issues apply to the Ex-

eter incident. However, much of whatthe eyewitnesses described was still ac-curate, as we shall see presently.

Solved!

For forty-five years the incident at Ex-eter remained unsolved. Then, while wewere working together on some ongo-ing UFO research, one of us ( Joe Nick-

ell), an investigator and science writer,recalled the cold case to the other ( JamesMcGaha), an astronomer and formermilitary pilot. We brainstormed the case,shared sources, and discussed details—soon agreeing that one particular elementheld the key to the solution. We mightcall it (with homage to Hardy Boys’ mys-teries) “The Clue of the SequencingLights.”As it happens, the military pilot of our

team has actually docked with a craft likethe UFO at Exeter, and he recognizedthe sequencing lights for what they surelywere: those on a U.S. Air Force KC-97refueling plane. To check his memoryand obtain photos (figures 1–3), he vis-ited an aerospace museum. Like seeingan old friend, he gazed on a mothballedKC-97 tanker (figure 1) whose fuselageis arrayed with a row of five red sequenc-ing lights (figure 2). These would reflectonto the refueling boom (figure 3), which(according to the flight manual) whenlowered is inclined at sixty-four degrees. Just this type of craft operated out of

Strategic Air Command bomber baseslike that of Pease AFB and, in deed,would surely have been involved in aSAC/NORAD training exercise likethat dubbed “Big Blast” of Sep tem ber2–3, 1965. But what about the “fact”that this exercise—which was ongoingin the skies over Exeter at the time ofthe first sightings—had supposedlyended about an hour before Muscarelloand officer Bertrand had their “close en-counter”?1 It seems quite apparent that,although the particular exercise was re-portedly over, there were still planes inthe sky. Bertrand and Hunt, in fact, wit-nessed a B-47 jet at about the time theUFO disappeared (Fuller 1966, 67).Perhaps it had just refueled.The airborne refueling process of

the KC-97 is both interesting and rel-evant. Briefly, it involved the KC-97making long circuits of the rendezvousarea. As the jet to be refueled began toapproach, the boom was lowered andthe receiver (sequencing) lights wereturned on. However, when the jet wasin very close proximity, the receiverlights were turned low; otherwise theirextreme brightness would temporarily

Figure 2. On the underbelly of the KC-97 are (closest to the camera)a set of three high-intensity lights and (farther from the viewer) thefive red panels of sequencing lights. (These were described by eye-witnesses as “five bright red lights” that “flashed on one at a time,”specifically “pulsating: one, two, three, four, five, four, three, two,one.”)



blind the approaching pilot. (The se-quencing stopped as the aircraft hookedup.) There would be some jockeying asthe two planes connected, and all of thiscould look exceedingly strange to anobserver on the ground.Thus, on one of its long passes the

slow-moving KC-97 could have seemedto be “chasing” the first eyewitness onRoute 101. It was subsequently seen byyoung Muscarello and, later still, Ber -trand, with its boom down at its charac-teristic angle. This boom, which bore itsown small wings (again, see figure 3),would actually flutter in the air currents(except when specifically being con-trolled by the boom operator), which nodoubt explains eyewitness Muscarello’sstatement that the UFO “acted at timeslike a floating leaf.” Most notable werethe tanker’s five red lights, which wereflashing—in the sequence accuratelydescribed by the two witnesses—one,two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one.The extreme brightness of the lights,rendering other features of the object in-distinguishable from the ground, is fur-ther corroborative evidence of the UFO’sidentification as a KC-97 refueling plane.Why did the Pentagon not solve the

case at the time? Perhaps in the welterof paperwork the clue we found so sig-nificant went unseen by anyone whocould fully grasp its import and whohad time to devote to the case. Natu-rally, everything is much clearer inhindsight.We believe this solves the so-called

incident at Exeter. As to the weeks ofsubsequent UFO reports in the vicinity,they were beyond the scope of our in-vestigation. (See Fuller 1966; Sheaf fer1986, 111–19.) As our work shows,“cold cases” may be solvable with per-severance and some luck, keeping inmind that luck is most likely to cometo those who go looking for it.n

AcknowledgmentsThe authors wish to thank James Stemm,curator of the Pima Air and Space Museum,and Tim Binga, director of the Center forInquiry Libraries, for their help with this in-vestigative project.

Note1. Hynek (1977, 154) misstated the situation

when he wrote that “Operation Big Blast termi-nated more than an hour before the incident atExeter began.” He should have said that the op-eration was in progress during the earlier sightingsbut had reportedly ended about an hour beforeBertrand (1965) witnessed the UFO.

ReferencesAPRO Bulletin. 1965. Reprinted as “Exeter (NewHampshire) sightings” in Story 1980, 113–14.

Bertrand, Eugene. 1965. Statement, full text inHynek 1977, 158–59.

Clark, Jerome. 1998. The UFO Encyclopedia, 2nded. (in two vols.). Detroit, Michigan: Omni -graphics.

Davenport, Peter B., and Peter Geremia. 2001.Exeter (New Hampshire) sightings. In Story2001, 170–72.

Fuller, John G. 1966. Incident at Exeter. NewYork: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Hynek, J. Allen. 1977. The Hynek UFO Report.New York: Dell.

Klass, Philip J. 1968. UFOs—Identif ied. NewYork: Random House.

Kottmeyer, Martin S. 1996. The Exeter file. TheREALL News, Part I, 4(9) (September): 1, 5–6; Part II, 4(10) (Octo ber): 1, 6.

Marsolek, Chad. 2010. Episode of Monster Quest(on “Mothman”). History Channel, airedFebruary 10.

Muscarello, Norman J. 1965. Statement, full textin Hynek 1977, 158.

Quintanilla, Hector, Jr. 1965. Letter, reprinted inHynek 1977, 161–62.

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