Debunker Phil Klass' relentless ad hominem attacks on UFO eyewitnesses begs the question: What was he so afraid of?/CREDIT: gpposner.com
Debunker Phil Klass' relentless ad hominem attacks on UFO eyewitnesses begs the question: What was he so afraid of?/CREDIT: gpposner.com
Klass was a crude, crass, boor. I was at the MUFON Symposium in Albuquerque,NM in 1992 when he was thrown out for trying to record the proceedings. MUFON was taping the whole proceedings for sale. It was announced and posted there were to be no private recordings. Klass was using a mini-cassette recorder to tape the audio. Despite being warned he persisted in making unauthorized recordings. When he was finally thrown out applause rang out throughout the room. I’m no conspiracy theorist but if there are paid government debunkers then noKlass was certainly one.
Therein lies the problem. When you're a professional debunker, you can't admit to EVEN one event being true, else you lose your credentials.
I saw this happen to James Randi, who has exposed many hoaxes. He doesn't claim to be a skeptic, rather an investigator. The one event that soured me was one in Australia, I believe, where he said he'd expose dowsing as a fraud. Dowsers who claimed they could detect water and another group who said they could dowse precious metals were tested in a field that was planted with both - water on one side and metals on the other.
The test began, and the water dowsers had something like a 70% hit ratio while the metal guys bombed at around 10%. Instead of saying that 70% was pretty good and there MAY be something to water dowsing, Randi combined the two results and said that both failed the test, "averaging only 40% hits."
I knew Klass when I was stationed in DC in the 1960s. I would go to the monthly luncheons of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics. There was always some big name speaker from the government or industry. Klass always sat at a table just under the head table, and unlimbered his tape recorder during the speech. He insisted on complete silence at the table, so as not to get extraneous noise on his recording. I recall being shushed by him once.
The link mentioned McDonald, who was a professor of meteorology at some university in Arizona. He had taken a sabbatical, and investigated UFOs. He had become convinced we were getting visitors from other planets. He gave a briefing on his conclusions at the Pentagon. I wangled myself an invitation. As a Major I was sitting in the back row. The 4-stars were all in front. After McDonald gave his briefing, one of the 4-stars asked him, if we're being visited by vehicles from outside, how come they never crash? How come there's never any wreckage? McDonald stood there with the blandest smile I've ever seen on a human face, and said, "Maybe their Zero Defects Program really works." That brought the briefing to an end.
As an aside, the AIAA luncheons would always be attended by at least one person from the Soviet Embassy. I had interesting conversations with several of them. I'm sure they thought I was spying on them, since I was in uniform. It would be interesting to see what reports they submitted on me.
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