Going Crazy Over Roswell #3: Its Unprovability

Roswell Post Three.
In 1978 I had an urgent crush on a woman named Liz Shaw, and I got her to go with me on a date to the Hansen Planetarium in Salt Lake City.  I think she dumped me after that date, and I would have probably married her.  While we sat in the Planetarium waiting for the star show to start, the subject of UFOs came up.  "Do you believe in them?" I asked her, knowing that she was very intellectual (later she went to law school).  "Yes."  "I do, too."    Liz and I didn't have a shred of evidence to back up our belief.   Why did we feel that way?

I don't know about her, but I was scientifically minded.  By then I'd taken a good enough range of science courses that I could later teach about six kinds of science courses in college--algebra, physics, chemistry, human anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, and respiratory and cardiovascular disease.  Based on the number of galaxies, I took it for granted we were not alone in the universe, and it just seemed common sense to think that some of the countless sightings were genuine.  I really didn't think Every One who saw something was either a bullshitter or seeing things that others wouldn't have seen had they been present.  Now you know my bias.

Sixty-nine years after July, 1947, no one has been able to publicly prove that the Roswell crash was an alien craft. (6 years later: see note 1 at the end of this post)  That's the short version of this story.  Beyond Roswell, no UFO has ever landed on the White House or Kremlin lawn in plain daylight for all to see, and disgorged sentient beings who walked in to talk to our leaders.(see note two at the end)  If we're visited regularly by advanced races from the Pleiades or Canus Major and they may possess knowledge that might help poor beleaguered humanity, it's hard to see why not.  Why fly your ships where lots of sharp-eyed Earthlings can see that you don't seem to behave like our airborne creations, and then dodge away and refuse to come out and shake hands?

It is more likely that some people in southern New Mexico were deluded than it is that extraterrestrials came to visit us.  It is also likely that UFO believers have the tendency to get all excited over scraps of information that, when properly evaluated, do not tell a story of anything out of the ordinary.  Let's present the rational skeptic's understanding of the case.  Here's the voice of the sensible observer.

1.  Project Mogul was a program kept secret because it sought to put sensors up in the atmosphere where they might be able to detect rumblings from Soviet nuclear tests/explosions.
2.  It was active in New Mexico in 1947.  Apparently Project Mogul used more elaborate versions of air balloons than some atmospheric studies did, but it still relied on balloons to put its sensing equipment in the air.  One of these crashed on the ranch Mack Brazel ran in either late June or early July of that year.
3.  Brazel came to the sheriff in Roswell with boxes of debris, possibly seeking help cleaning it up.  He went to the radio station at the same time.
4.  The sheriff decided the local Army Air base ought to hear about this and called them.  Even thought this was the 4th of July weekend, he sent a couple of deputies out to look at things. 
5.  When the Army got to the scene, they realized it was classified material and cordoned it off.  They released a report that a flying disc had been found.  This back then didn't have the extraterrestrial meaning that flying saucer later acquired. 
6.  A few hours later they amended the first release by clarifying that it was only a weather balloon found out on the ranch near Corona.  In retrospect, there is a preponderance of evidence that this was not true.  It was a cover story motivated by national security or related concerns.
7.  The material was gathered up and shipped off to another military site for holding.
8.  There had been a flare of interest at the possibility of the recovery of a flying disk, but now public interest waned.  Virtually no one talked about Roswell for 30 years.
9.  In the 1970s Jesse Marcel jumped ship.  He had been the inteliigence officer who first looked at the crash.  Now he said he and others had seen things that could not have been from Earth.  UFOlogists did research and several books came out about what was now, for the first time, called the Roswell Incident.  None of these efforts had access to protected government information sources. 
10.  In response to this and a renewed flurry of UFO sightings in the 1970s and 1980s, the US government reinvestigated the matter and put out a report about 1995.  The report admitted it could not prove what fell from the sky at Roswell, but drew the most probable conclusion that it was actually a Project Mogul weather balloon found in that field.
11.  Over the years many have claimed to see something unearthly all those years ago in Roswell.  Since their accounts conflict with official reports, they can probably be accounted for by aging memories, overactive imaginations or direct fabrication.
12.  For example, probably dozens of people claim to have handled a material coming from the crash site that was too light and pliable and impervious to damage to have been from an Earthly source.  Yet not a single piece of this supposed material ever surfaced to the light of day where it could be evaluated by objective methods.  You can't find this stuff in the Smithsonian.
13.  One writer called Roswell the most famous and the best debunked UFO story ever.  There's really nothing there.  Another writer used the title, Roswell: Case Closed.

The sensible thing is to stop imagining little green men, stop arguing over Roswell and things like colonic irrigation and go back to see if we can improve our daily lives.

That's the rational summary.  I consider myself a pretty rational, scientific guy.  I believe the rational explanation of evolution as accounting for life on Earth.  I don't see that it disproves God, but it happened--and is happening.  I believe in geology and biochemistry and biotechnology and thoughtful study of history and literature and philosophy.  I believe the rational, evidence-based explanation that there is virtually no widespread voter fraud in US elections.  If there is, bring out the evidence, not the suppositions or the worries.  Same goes for Roswell.  I believe the rational evidence-based approach to medicine, since I trained in it, as a respiratory therapist, and then practiced it for many years, and taught it to others.

I also believe that the cosmos contains mysteries humans haven't solved and events we haven't explained.  I believe human knowledge gets turned upside down and inside out every so often.  I believe in intuition and life after death.  Next post we'll delve into the irrational side of Roswell, since it's a lot sexier, though more wobbly.

 

End Notes Later

1  "No one has been able to publicly prove Roswell."  The exception would be Mack Brazel, the original discoverer of crash debris.  He took debris that couldn't be cut and couldn't be burned to the next-door Proctor ranch.  He also told the radio station he had found alien bodies, but the Army made him change his story.  The feds also threatened the station with losing its license if I ran the interview Brazel had already given them.  Sounds like destruction of evidence to me.  Brazel insisted he found something that the government has only explained as one type or another of weather balloon.  Brazel said and the newspaper did print, I know what I found was no weather observation balloon.

2  Instead of coming in to talk, they could also just kill everyone within a five-miles radius.