Anomalist and me -- on UFO Research

Our friends at Anomalist think I don’t consider Michael Swords and Nick Redfern as UFO rsearchers.

I don’t.

Michael Swords is a UFO theorist, which I can barely emulate, having none of his erudite insights and compendia of UFO knowledge.

Porfessor Swords gathers information, lately from the internet, and muses on what he finds.

Nick Redfern, my best UFO friend and the only person whom I respect totally when it comes to UFO knowledge and lore, is not a researcher, as I and the Oxford Dictionary define research.

Nick is a journalist, one who finds leads and follows up on them, reporting out to his readers what he discovers.

A researcher has to be archeological; that is, a researcher has to drill down into the nether regions of the UFO phenomenon and present his or her findings to the UFO public.

Chris Aubeck, co-author with Jacques Vallee of Wonders in the Sky, does this, with the help of a ‘team” he’s formed who access archived material, which Mr. Aubeck presents to his followers. (Mr. Aubeck just presents the findings; he doesn’t interpret them, as Jacques Vallee has done.)

Richard Hall tended to research. Wendy Connors also, in her heyday.

Jerry Clark may be likened to Nick Redfern, without the tenacity or imaginative acumen that Mr. Redfern has to discern what may be related to UFOs and what isn’t.

Our former colleague, Leon Davidson, was a researcher of Project Blue Book and the CIA, his insights discounted by some but relevant as I’ve noted in several pieces here, at this blog.

Lucius Farish, which I’ve noted in the previous posting, used research methodology, especially when it came to the Airship wave of the 1890s, but Lucius was an archivist primarily, like Wendy Connors was and Isaac Koi is today.

Researchers, as defined academically, are hard to find in “ufology” if they exist at all.

Research requires a dedication and discipline that no one in the UFO field practices, nowadays or formerly, in a real sense.

Research has been niggardly or superficial.

UFO people like to think of themselves as researchers, even when their research consists of reading a few books or going to UFO sites and/or conferences.

Study paleontology or archaeology or the processes of the minds as neurologists do and you’ll see what research really is.

Ufology is bereft of the epithet, research.

RR