THE GLOBE AND MAIL THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1984 c

UFOs and aliens: not a scrap of proof PROMINENT UFOLOGIST- a person who makes a study of Unidentified Flying Objects -has complained to the Ontario

Press Council that the case for the exis­tence of UFOs has not been fairly report­ed. In my opinion, the exact opposite Is true. The media have devoted too much time and space to the occult and the paranormal and given them a credibility they don't deserve.

The fact that a Gallup Poll has found that 53 per cent of adult Canadians be­lieve we have been visited by UFOs, while 10 per cent claim to have actually seen one, merely proves how many peo­ple can be wrong. Despite the claims

BEHAVIOR SIDNEY KATZ

made by thousands of ufologists over the past 25 years, we have yet to produce one iota of acceptable evidence that Earth has played host to extraterrestrial visi­tors.

I don't believe that everyone who claims to have seen a UFO is a crackpot. Among the believers are clergymen, judges, scientists, policemen, business executives and members of aircraft crews. However, no matter how exalted the status of UFO witnesses, they have to

·validate their claims by approved, scien­tific methods of research. The burden of the proof rests on those who claim the existence of any strange phenomen, ·and, as U.S. sociologist Marcello Truzzo once

said: "If the claim made is extraordi­nary, then it must be validated by ex- -traordinary proof."

Careful research would establish that the . sighters of so-called flying saucers were actually viewing something else. That .. something else," according to Phillip K.Jass, a Washington, D.C., space engineer and author who has reviewed 10,000 UFO "stghtings," generally turns out to be weather balloons, stars, planes, rockets, satellites, meteors, flaming space garbage returning to Earth, hoax­es or hallucinations.

In a small number of cases, Mr. Klass concedes, it's not possible to attach a specific explanation to a sighting. But that doesn't justify making the incredible statement that the object was a UFO from zillions of miles away. He conclud­ed: "A visit to Earth by an extraterres­trial spaceship is not likely to happen even once because of the gigantic dis­tance that separates our planet from all possible sources of intelligent life."

The star Alpha Centauri, the nearest possible source, is more than 26 trillion miles away and there's no evidence whatever that it harbors intelligent life. Mr. Klass argues: "Even if it were so blessed, and its residents had spaceships that could travel at a speed of 67 million miles an hour, a single trip to Earth and back would require almost 100 years."

While it would be highly misleading to label all UFO believers as mentally abnormal, it would be equally dishonest not to acknowledge that a significant number of slghtlngs are the hallucina­tions of people who are mentally unwell.

About 15 years ago, during a peak peri­od of sightings, University of California psychologist Taylor Buckner attended dozens of meetings conducted by various flying saucer clubs. The members, he said, were mostly what he termed "seek­ers" - Individuals with a longstanding interest in magic, the occult and such topics as astral travelling, astrology,

Aft

A Zanesvllle, Ohio, barber took this photo, purportedly of a UFO, In 1967~ -

telepathy, second comings-and lost conti­nents. It was psychologist Buckner's opinion that the majority of Dying-saucer devotees displayed unmistakable signs of a psychosis, a common symptom of which were visual hallucinations.

I don't enjoy debunking UFOs, for the same reasons as Philllp Klass. .. After all," be says, .. the idea of wondrous spaceships from distant civilizations vis­iting us is a . fascinating fairy story for adults. But truth must prevail."

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