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Bits at a time.

With regard to Linda Moulton Howe, when someone is shown to be a liar in one situation-- or, let's say, has misinterpreted things through their own prism or bent the truth for the purpose of a good yarn-- the "boy who cried wolf" situation crops up. The credibility of their later statements drops. In her specific instance, the constant reminder that she is an "Emmy-winning" reporter never mentions that it was a far-from-prestigous local "Emmy," and essentially for a little indie TV channel where she did local news spots. This ain't 60 MINUTES territory.

To take another instance from my favorite wacky saga, the Billy Meier case, Meier propoents (begining with Wendell Stevens and up through current day) keep claiming that the old Swiss bandit's clearly phony photos & 8mm movies were "authenticated" by FX guy Wally Gentleman (absolutely untrue, a complete reversal of what he actually expressed to writer Gary Kinder) and that a scientist "authenticated" a blonde hair from the head of a space babe (absolutely untrue; he told me just the opposite). That Stevens was popped for child molestation, denied all charges, but was convicted hands down and sent to the slam is yet another chink in his credibility.

One of the links above is written by a guy who starts his website off by saying, "I have been a UFO abductee from the age of four in 1953..."[I'm paraphrasing.]. Then he goes on to whatever. Hey, out of the gate, discount what he's saying. No abductee brings back an ashtray or a cocktail napkin. Until they do, it's delusional-land as far as I'm concerned. And so whatever his "investigations" as an adult "proved," they're already hobbled by the fact that the guy is nuts-- or, to put it more kindly, approaching the topic with a predetermined agenda and theory, into which he will fit the facts like round pegs into oblique holes.

If a reporter or witness is provably not credible in one instance-- that is, if you establish that they have not told the truth-- then one MUST, absolutely MUST raise the bar of proof much higher at any further outrageous claims.

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the UFO phenomenon predates Photoshop and as any casual glance at many of the fine programs the History Channel has been running (almost daily) lately will show you, there are tons of unsolved cases and evidence which apparently you also choose to dismiss again.

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Well, the History Channel stuff is entertainment, not news. They sometimes show things that actually have facts in them. Their UFO shows are fun to watch. If only there was some really fun footage on there that I haven't seen before.

And, yes, the phenomena predate CGI, but hoaxers use whatever medium they can. In the 19th century and into the 20th, it was newspaper stories of the great airships; same with the Shaver mysteries in the era of pulps. In the fifties you had arch-screwball Adamski and his still photos of a living room lamp.), and better still, his 8mm movies of a "dancing" flying saucer (a still image taped to a car window, through which he shot the outside. The result was that the tiny dark "saucer" appeared to move against the distant background as he moved the camera.)

Doesn't mean ALL of it is explicable, but most of it is explainable at the least, or proven to be mundane at best. There's the great daylight shot of the "UFO" over a mountain in Catalina-- sadly, it turned out to be a plane, but it was cool. Meier's stuff-- heavy sigh. That jiggly-piggelly bouncing light business shot from a plane near Japan-- the idea that anybody would think this was a flying saucer aways baffled me. Everybody who uses this footage does these stupid freeze-frames on each frame, showing the "craft" as shape-changing, ziggedity-zaggedy, atomically transforming its shape-- when the dull fact is, if you're hand-holding a 16mm camera aboard a small prop plane in flight, at night, with a zoom lens on full telephoto extension, the image bounces. The neato-keen "streaks" and shape-changes or simply the bouncing of the plane, the cameraman, and the exaggerated problems of keeping a semi-stationary object (like a star, a plane's light, or whatever) centered in the viewfinder.

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Military witnesses...radar cases...USOs(submerged anomalous craft seen leaving the oceans and flying off)

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Well... there's some good ones, and some fanciful ones. And just because someone's in the miliatry doesn't instantly make them reliable. I knew a guy in Heidelberg when I was staioned there who was extremely fanciful-- he saw a cigar-shaped craft, it had green fire coming out it's end, and it was just floating along through the night sky... he was delusional and/or pulling everyone's legs (there is lots of that in the service) to make himself the star of the hour. There's a lot of that everywhere, come to think of it. And you could take his same "report" and write it up in a way that sounds far more dramatic... which is the job of UFO book authors.

The radar weirdenesses are always neat, though the process is far from perfect, and anomalies show up a lot-- reflections, invesrions, clumps of birds in flight. Better still are the few incidents when there are odd blips and visual sightings.

The UFOs breeching the surface like whales or supercraft from THUNDERBIRDS, I've always been very suspect of. I know what I envision in reading these descriptions, but until someone actually offers some photographic proof, I'm holding off credulity.

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radiation

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I'd be dubious about this one. There are cases wherein the investigators SAY they found trace radiation. In certain things, like the Zamorra case, this might be accountable by explaining that the "craft" was in fact experimental.

In the UFO "investigative" field, there's still this magic-wand waving of "radiation" like in 50s sci-fi movies, as if something ultra-scientific would have the same problems as technology on Earth. Why in Heaven's name would anyone assume some intersteallar, interdimensional or otherwise-funky craft would have any sort of potentially dangerous propulsion system like that? It's as if someone discovered evidence of steam and soot in the middle of a forest in 1890 and instantly leaped to the conclusion that an Apache steam engine has been through there. Wha--? That's silly to me.

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people burned...

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Several of these "cases" look suspiciously like self-inflicted burns received (or worse, intentionally obtained) by pushing the skin against a heater, a stove, or a part of a car. Very odd what people will do. I'm not saying ALL, mind you... there's a very telling photo in Tim Good's ABOVE TOP SECRET that creeps me out, not because it looks like an alien burn, but because I'm aghast at what people will do to themselves.

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I think you're wrong Ted that the entire history can be explained away. There were at least 700 cases that Blue Book couldn't explain.

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I would never say they are all explained, Chas. They're unexplained because the facts weren't there. It was not that these cases were proof of anything one way or the other; they were inconclusive, and therefore "unexplained."

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It's not the conclusion I've reached after 40 some years of reading and researching the topic, both pro and skeptic.

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I spent the first half of the same amount of time rationalizing why it's all true. In my mellow years, I see the Arrow of my Wayze.

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(FYI, Ted..I never embraced the Meier story as true.)

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I didn't figure you did. I accepted the story at face value until actually looking (and laughing) at the pictures then reading Stevens' and Kinder's books. Heck, I also accepted the superficial reality of the spooky Streiber first book-- and then as I re-read and under stood them, saw an interesting alternate truth & explanation, that "reality" in this case was quite mutable. That's the impression Streiber himself gives in the first book... which of course did not endear him to the UFO community, since he was suggesting that there is not necessarily any objective reality to extraterrestrial saucer craft or anal-probing aliens, but that they could be archtypical and (basically) imaginary shared illusions.

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Do you think I'm a fawning idiot that accepts every UFO report as God's truth?

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Nope