A Fork in the Road, and the Return of "?"

I've been under the weather the past two weeks or so, which is a nice little euphemism for "I've been sick as a dog". Accordingly, I haven't been blogging... or doing much of anything else, really.

Stupid flu.

However, I have been keeping tabs on the various Internet sites that I, well, keep tabs on, and a short opinion piece by Robert Goerman at the Fate Magazine blog, tilted "A Fork in the Road", caught my eye. It's worth a quick read.

A couple of excerpts:

"The time has come to mount an effort to ethically investigate and seriously research unknown and unexplained phenomena. The war between two extreme positions, between the blind skeptical denial of debunkers and the blind certainty of the 'true believers' continues to distort, bias and censor the data."

"The Bermuda Triangle, MJ-12, the so-called 'Philadelphia Experiment,' and Roswell are prime examples of 'mysteries' where time and resources could have been better spent."

"Let’s quit trying to prove that UFOs are either extra-terrestrial spacecraft or nonsense and try to discover what is really happening. Let’s admit how little we know and can prove. Let’s require the same level of ethical self-criticism and oversight as other sciences."

Well said, Mr. Goerman.

In other ufological news, it looks like a "new" group of UFO opinionators are making waves over at the UFO Iconoclast(s) blog. I place "new" in quotation marks because, if you read what the Iconoclast(s) have written, it should strike a familiar chord with you, and you should be able to surmise who they really are. Here's a hint: They don't seem to have much use for the "old-timers" of ufology, and they tend to use words like "maven" and "hoi polloi" a lot.

Here's a quote from a recent post:

"Ufologists are, by and large, hobbyists. Some have made a slight living by glomming on to the UFO phenomenon (Jerome Clark, Stanton Friedman, and a few others) but most UFO aficionados are mavens, nothing more. After almost 60 years of flying saucer sightings and stories, the hoi polloi will eschew UFO devotees; even those in the public sector who’ve seen a UFO will often berate those who want to know what the things are."

Remind you of anyone you might know?

Paul Kimball