Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Kevin Randle on Skeptics vs. Debunkers

I posted this some time ago, but it's worth looking at again so that everyone can remind themselves why Kevin Randle is a good UFO researcher, who understands the need to be skeptical but open-minded, as opposed to someone like Kal Korff, who if he still has any mind left has closed it off a long time ago.



Of course Randle has made mistakes over the years - Frank Kaufmann being perhaps the biggest one. But unlike Korff, Kevin is never afraid to admit when he's been wrong - indeed, when I pointed out to him that Stan Friedman had found legitimate documents which refuted one of Kevin's long-time criticisms of MJ-12, namely that ranks such as Brigadier General would not be short-handed in an official document prepared by a military officer to "General", he graciously acknowledged that Stan had proved his case with respect to that particular point (but not, it should be noted, a host of other MJ-12 flaws which Stan tends to skip over - but I digress).

UFO research needs more Kevin Randles, and fewer Kal Korff loons (be they fundamentalist debunker type or died-in-the-wool believer types), if it is ever to be taken seriously by the mainstream.

Paul Kimball

3 comments:

Mac said...

I disagree with Randle; debunkers aren't necessarily bad. Bunk deserves to be debunked -- and someone who debunks genuinely spurious claims can rightfully be referred to as a "debunker."

True, it's a semantics issue, but one that never seems to go away.

NickJones said...

I came up with a formula to seperate the skeptics from the debunkers sevral about ten years ago (and yes, I am claiming it "copyrighted 2008 by Steve O'Rourke"):

A skeptic says, "I'll believe it when I see it." A debunker says, "I'll see it when I believe it."

Anonymous said...

More often than not, I find a debunker wearing the guise of "skeptic." They call themselves a skeptic, but they are really just a debunker- they refuse to acknowledge the evidence; they don't look at it, and won't give credit where credit is due. They also seem to be the most uninformed about the topic.