Truth and Lies

As those of us in the Roswell Slides Research Group worked toward finding out the truth about the so-called "Roswell Slides," some of us were subjected to smear campaigns by the most vociferous Slides promoter, Anthony Bragalia.

Here's an example about me, alluded to in a post at Kevin Randle's blog yesterday when Randle wrote, "Paul Kimball, who has been recently and unjustly vilified for his anti-slides stance." It comes from an e-mail that Bragalia sent to my RSRG colleague Tim Printy (and my understanding is that this claim was made to others):

You have allowed your team member Kimball to call Dr. Edgar Mitchell at home out of the blue to disturb him.. You have no moral compass, no filter- you have become desperate.  Kimball urged Mitchell not to attend the event and your reputation  -such as it is- will suffer immensely. You will personally be called out as a harasser and antagonizer who works with a mentally unstable alcoholic to derail other people's hard work.  How could you do this? What is wrong with you? When the world finds out how you operate, that you have no scruples and will stress-out and attack elderly people to get your way- no one  will ever want anything to do with you. My god, Tim, this is over-the-top and you have finally revealed yourself as a repellent nut. Btw, your foul attempt did not work..

To be clear, the claim that I contacted Mitchell was a lie. To be clear, I am not an alcoholic. That claim was also a lie. Either one of them would be grounds for legal action were I to pursue it further. Fortunately for Mr. Bragalia, I am not so inclined. I've got better things to do, and Mr. Bragalia, like his fellow Slides promoters, is now irrelevant.

But I want to let you know that this is what we were up against, folks. These are the people we were dealing with. Secretive, abusive, deceitful, and very, very angry when you challenged their claims, right up to Adam Dew accusing us yesterday of photo-shopping the placard research - another lie. 

For our part, while we skeptics can wield sharp elbows from time to time, and also have been known to pull a good-natured prank or two at the expense of self-important con men and true believers, our research itself was above board, peer-reviewed, factual... and open-sourced for everyone to look at. 

Finally, we had no financial stake in the story. Our only interest was in getting to the truth of the matter.

And that's the fundamental difference between the Slides Promoters and the rest of us.

Paul Kimball

UFOs - Skepticism vs. Belief

In 2001 I interviewed skeptic Vaughn Rees from the Center for Inquiry - West for the documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real. In this clip that didn't make the film, Rees discusses what differentiates skepticism and skeptics from belief and believers, and why some people believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial visitors.

Paul Kimball

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