Bad UFOs: Critical Thinking About UFO Claims

by Robert Sheaffer

What explains the human fascination with UFOs? The first reported sighting of what was then called "flying saucers" was by private pilot Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. Within a few weeks, an entire "wave" of saucer sightings swept across the U.S., and soon across the world. And within a few years this had expanded to give us UFO crashes, the Men In Black, UFO bases, military and intelligence agency conspiracies, NASA conspiracies, alien abductions, crop circles, alien autopsies, alien-human hybrids, cattle mutilations, and the list just continues to grow.

Do the "saucers" (later renamed "UFOs") represent visitors from some other planet, or possibly even something more bizarre? How have they evaded unambiguous detection for about seventy years? Is this because the methods of science cannot capture them? Or do reports of UFOs have much in common with reports of ghosts, witches, Bigfoot, and other creatures that are widely discussed and widely believed, but exist only in the imaginations of those who pursue them?

Bad UFOs discusses some of the most famous and controversial UFO cases of all time, from a rational and scientific perspective:

·the Betty and Barney Hill ‘UFO abduction’ account

·the Phoenix Lights

·the Roswell ‘UFO crash,’ and the recent ‘Roswell Slides’

·the supposed ‘UFO landing’ in Rendlesham Forest

·Travis Walton’s ‘UFO abduction’ claim

·UFOs seen using Night Vision equipment

·Steven Greer’s Disclosure Project, and ET Contact Protocols

Genres: Nonfiction

293 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 14, 2016

Reviews

[Eric Wojciechowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t highly enough recommend that this be the last UFO book you read. And I mean that you should read all the others first, especially the ones that glamorize and sensationalize the best cases. BAD UFOS documents all the important cases, personalities and topics regarding this field and gives Occam's Razor explanations. This is not a debunker book out to give an explanation, any explanation, to solve cases. It’s a book that says sometimes we don’t know and that’s as far as we can go but often times, we can solve them without resorting to the extraordinary. This is a book summarizing everything that matters in this subject and demonstrating there’s more to faulty human psychology than alien intrusion.

As Joe Nickell once wrote, I believe in his “Science of Ghosts”, the first thing you have to do is verify the story is true. When I hear of a report coming from 1936 in northern Canada that someone saw a saucer lift out of a lake, hover and then take off into the sky, I don’t know what to make of that. That’s amazing. But is it true? What’s the origin of the story? Tracking down the original is of utmost importance and usually turns out to be more mundane (or never happened at all) than it was told to you.

The best two examples I can think of where the evolution of the story is blatant for all to see are the 1980 Rendlesham Forest case and 1947 Roswell case which are documented in this book. As told today, the stories are incredible and nearly undeniable contact with an alien intelligence but the first accounts were a bunch of nothing and it’s clear the evolution of these tales are modern myth making; or better yet, urban legend-like. Robert Sheaffer reports on numerous cases like these showing that what the champions of the “phenomenon” talk about is usually the legend and not the real story.

The first chapter opens up a summary of all the great cases over the past seventy years (book published in 2016). It examines out the gate the “New Age” proponents and “Science Fiction” proponents. The New Agers liken UFOs to revelation like experiences, nearly religious in nature and incorporates nonsense like ESP, telepathy and so forth. Where as the Science Fictioners are more the nuts and bolts group, thinking more like we’re dealing with an intelligence greater than ours but still fits into the known world of physics or can teach us more about what we don’t know.

Both groups are wrong. As Sheaffer goes to work examining cases, we find mistaken identities, hoaxes, exaggerations, all kinds of things but not one bit of evidence any of the cases are contacts with another intelligence. In this book you’ll get the answer to the 1997 Phoenix Lights case, the 1986 Captain Terauchi case (one of my personal favorites), the 2006 O’Hare airport case, and more. There was a lot I didn’t know. Some cases I had settled on the I Don’t Know conclusion before reading this book turned out to have a conclusion. Thus the value of continuing to get to the bottom of such things. The case of the RB-47 Radar case of 1957 comes to mind. Shaeffer didn’t do the leg work on solving it but he points to the lengthy essay on how the pieces were put together and it’s amazing how some dedicated study and homework can pay off.

The book examines photos and videos and how the classics like the 1950 McMinnville and 1989 Belgium triangle and so many other once great photos turn out to be hoaxes. In fact, the field of UFO cases is so plagued with falsehoods and misidentifications by the time you’re done with this book, there’s literally nothing left to be fascinated about regarding this subject – except for the great imaginative mind of a human being.

The book examines personalities well known to anyone who’s spent even a couple of months on the subject like Stan Romanek, Stanton Friedman, Whitley Strieber, Steven Greer, Jacques Vallee, Betty and Barney Hill, Travis Walton, Budd Hopkins and many more.

There’s chapters hitting all the great UFO crash cases like Aztec and Roswell. There’s a chapter examining UFO abductions, particularly that the topic today is losing steam and not taken seriously anymore. This is an indication of a myth mutating, adding and subtracting elements that no longer work or have meaning.

There’s a chapter on UFO conspiracies hitting all the relevant ones like long abandoned alien bases on Mars, Steven Greer’s nonsense Disclosure Project, the Montauk Project and Exopolitics. Like I said, everything you need to know is in this book.

Which makes me want to end this review in the following manner:

Robert Schaffer begins the book with some advice by the late Philip J. Klass who said, “People who are skeptical about UFOs don’t need to read your book, they already know that UFOs are nonsense. And the people who believe that UFOs are interplanetary spaceships also don’t need to read your book, because they already know you’re wrong.”

It would be too bad if neither group read this, especially the group who think there’s really a phenomenon out there to define. Let me recommend a reading order: BAD UFOS shouldn’t be your first book on the subject. Familiarity with the cases discussed is beneficial, especially if you’re heard the legend first. BAD UFOs should be read after reading several pro-intelligence explanations of the “phenomenon”. Look at it this way: Reading pro-UFO books first and then finishing with BAD UFOS is like enjoying the magic of Penn and Teller and then being let in on how it was done. So it’s up to you. If you stop before reading this, you remain a member of the audience going home in awe. Just know in the end, all we have are tricks of light and shadow.

[John Melvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crisp skepticism

Schaeffer smartly punctures some of ufology's most famous cases and sweeps up its untidy fringes. A solid and informative read.

[Rinstinkt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some valid criticisms, some invalid criticisms.