Research, by a Real Researcher

Our friend, the late Lucius Farish, had a piece in the magazine pictured here: The Techniques of Historical UFO Research [Page 18 ff.]

He, with Jerome Clark, provided the quintessential study of the 1896 Airship wave, and Lucius touched on the sightings from that era in his article.

But he really was concentrating on how UFO research should be conducted, noting that newspaper and other archives are rife with information that could help ufologists to gather reliable (or rather reliable) data if they are seriously going to investigate the UFO phenomenon. He didn’t eschew past sightings that some UFO gadflies insist are irrelevant – probably because they are too lazy to do the legwork Lucius and real researchers feel is de rigueur when it comes to a phenomenon as odd as UFOs.

Lucius provides a number of incidents that, when followed up thoroughly, offer insights that are substantial if one is truly intent on getting at the nub of the UFO enigma.

He cites cavalier research in such books as Flying Saucers on the Attack by Harold T. Wilkins.

Wilkins gave readers a hint of a 1742 sighting but didn’t provide a sketch that accompanied the reported sighting, which ended up being brought forward by an Oregon researcher, Charles F. Flood in 1968: a significant historical document that serious researchers should have at their disposal. Here’s that document:

Isaac Koi is the only current ufologist I know who has the fortitude to gather UFO documents, past and present, providing them to his fellow UFO aficionados, all without recompense or remuneration.

As for the 1896/1897 Airship sightings, Lucius gives a cursory account that puts to shame some of the nonsense that skeptic Gilles Fernandez tried to pass off recently as a scientific rebuttal of Airship sightings, writing that they were misidentified Venus sightings.

Unfortunately, Lucius Farish’s procedures and writings are not generally known today by UFO newbies, and magazine articles, as the one cited here, are lost to the present UFO milieu as UFO mavens today see 1976 (the magazine’s publishing date) as ancient literature, out of date and out of reach.

There is no real UFO research going on in UFO circles nowadays, just blather and posturing with insipid skeletal UFO accounts from the internet being the fodder of UFO discourse.

And some think my ongoing, repetitive screeds about the death of ufology and UFOs as a topic of interest is sensationalizing when, in fact, my redundant discourse may be likened to John the Baptist’s voice crying in the desert.

RR