#8: A Tiff About Roswell: The Argument Somehow Avoids Fisticuffs

Skep:  I'm the sensible skeptical one here.  What's more likely, based on all we know, that Life born and raised Elsewhere in the Universe has flown here and remains undiscovered, unproven, or that it hasn't done that?
Glow:  Answer your own damn question.
Skep:  That's 'cause you don't like the answer.
Glow:   Make your own points. My first point is that I, with Carl Sagan, believe it overwhelmingly likely that life exists elsewhere besides Earth, because otherwise he wouldn't have gone to Senator Proxmire to beg him for money for SETI to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Skep:  That's heartwarming, just like your name, Glow.  Beliefs are important in human life, but not so important in fact-based evidence gathering.  Okay, it is vastly more likely that sentient aliens have Not Landed On Earth, or flown above it.  I'd place the odds at 10,000 to 1, and maybe I should have said 1/2 in 10,000 or less.  Wanna know why?
Glow:  I'm sure you'll tell us.  My second point is: Howard Blum's history of UFO investigation showed that a group of Air Force investigators agreed with me, not you. In 1948 an Air Force Technical Intel Estimate concluded that UFOs came from somewhere besides Earth. 

Skep:  We basically know aliens haven't landed here because there have been 20,000 or 100,000 sightings, and no proof.  There have been maybe 1000 people claiming to have been abducted or visited in person by extraterrestrials, and no proof.  There are 10,000 psychics claiming contact with either dead people or extraterrestrial protectors named Ashtar, and zero proof.  Starting to notice a pattern here?  
Glow:   I admit you have a good point there.  Yet in that vast number of sightings are at least 1000 reported by highly reliable military and civilian witnesses--clear-headed non-UFO-believers who saw things not explainable using the regular information we have about Earth civilization and technology.  Howard Blum lays this out in grand detail.  Ronald Reagan would rank somewhere in the middle of this reliable witnesses group, not at the top.  Among these are two Roswell firefighters, including a crew chief, who say they saw extraterrestrial craft and beings and were threatened with their lives if they ever spoke of it.  These are not flaky guys.  You skeptics just tell the Roswell firefighters they're full of shit.  You tell the fire department crew chief he's about ready for the psych ward.  Know what?  You're wrong.

Skep: A high percentage of humans are gullible, unreliable sources of information.  There's a sucker born every minute, and you want to believe them.  No thanks.  It's more likely they were wrong about what they saw, or are lying, than it is that aliens crashed at Roswell and were found on the Brazel ranch.
Glow:  We know beyond doubt that there was an ugly, illegal military coverup at Roswell.  It was psychologically brutal and in at least two cases (Brazel and a broadcaster) involved the physical brutally of taking an innocent civilian into custody and keeping him for an illegal period of time.  On No Charges!  It's more likely that the government panicked and covered up than that a sizeable number of people in the vicinity of Roswell, with little or no knowledge of each other and their stories, hallucinated about nonEarth materials and beings.  Why would a healthy seven-year-old girl lie about being shaken down by a soldier?  Why would she lie about handling a material the like of which no Earthling had ever seen?  Why would another girl lie that her dad told her, where they were all alone, that he saw alien wreckage and was threatened because of it?  "Your father was threatened by the government."

Skep:  We've uncovered countless government coverups.  Why is this one different?  Why hasn't its cover been blown?
Glow:  The short answer is that too many people want to keep the lid on.  Longer answer is that many coverups--it would probably be accurate to say too many to count--are successful.  There are myriads of things the public never learns.  Take Snowden for example.  Had he not been willing to give up his career--and really his way of life--for his conscience, we still wouldn't know much of what he revealed.  You can't contest that.  The Roswell cover was in fact blown in 1978 when Jesse Marcel, a lead officer handling the debris cleanup at Roswell, said what he gathered was not made on Earth, and he did it, 30 years after the fact, in defiance of orders.  Also, the lid on the story stays in place partly because the basic story is soooo far from our experience, and because the government doubles down on denying.

Skep:  That it took 30 years after something happened for it to come out into public debate is one more strike against its credibility.  In court cases, the sooner after the problem arises that you file your case, the more weight it's presumed to have.
Glow:  Most court cases don't have sheriffs and soldiers threatening to kill everybody involved.  Explain this one:  Mack Brazel later said he wished he had gone to the press first and blown the government off.  Why would he wish that, unless he was shaken down?  Here's a guy who found either a basic weather balloon, the original story, or a bigger, fancier balloon carrying nucleaar monitoring equipment.  If that's what he found, he doesn't go running for help.  Yet he did.   My gov has expected me to believe for 50 years that he really found one of two types of balloon.  You're a bloke rancher and you find either basic or elaborate balloon stuff crashed in your field. What good could it do to bring the press in first?  Why would he suppose it would have turned out better?  Your side has no rational answer for these sorts of questions.

Skep:  True.  Humans have many motives, not all clear or sensible.  The bottom line is that an ordinary crash is what the law calls a rebuttable presumption.  In other words, the burden of proof lies in the UFO believers' court, and you just don't have the proof.  You've got hints and wishes and suggestions and wide-eyed deathbed interviews. 
Glow:  You have no explanation for 100 facts learned by researchers.  Why was Brazel taken into custody for a week if it was a Project Mogul balloon, and never accused of a crime?  Why was he treated like he might be a threat to national security?  Why was the radio station threatened with loss of its license by a US Senator if it was some fairly minor thing?
Last word.l   It's good to hear your case made.  I just wish I felt like it was a good case.  It is absurd to call Roswell the best-debunked UFO case.  I feel good about the points I made, too.  Final thought: the gov has never offered evidence to back up the Project Mogul theory, just announced it as a conclusion.
Skep:  I would say there must 1000 UFO cases far more completely debunked.  It's just unproven.  It's all guesses and wishes and theories, and this year it will be 60 years of guesses and wishes and theories..