textfiles/ufo/klassasu.ufo

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NEWS & COMMENT:
KLASS AT ASU
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      ParaNet Alpha 03/06 -- Philip J. Klass, billed as the world's 
foremost UFO debunker, lectured a small audience at Arizona State 
University's Neeb Hall last night.
      The event was promoted by the Phoenix Skeptics, whose members 
constituted the majority of the audience. Several members of ParaNet were 
also in attendance.
      Klass was introduced by Skeptic Ron Harvey as "The Sherlock Holmes 
of Ufology," and indeed, his investigative approach is methodical and 
detailed. He is responsible for succesfully debunking some of the more 
mysterious and baffling UFO reports over the past 22 years.
      To his credit, Klass began his lecture by debunking the myth that 
all UFO percipients are "kooks and nuts," saying that particular attention 
should be paid to reports made by credible witnesses such as pilots, 
astronomers, and other seasoned observers. He attempted to separate 
himself from those skeptics who would "dismiss all UFO reports out of 
hand."
      The first half of the lecture was devoted to two famous cases which, 
according to Klass, encapsulated many elements of standard UFO sighting 
reports, mainly nocturnal lights and daylight "disks" (something of a 
misnomer, since all daytime object sightings, regardless of shape, are 
lumped under this category). The cases were of a May, 1968 multiple 
witness report centering on Nashville, TN, and a 1969 report of fast-
moving daytime objects sighted by three sets of jet crews centered around 
St. Louis. The first case turned out to be the re-entry of a Soviet Zond 
spacecraft, and the second, according to Klass, was a bright meteor-
fireball, or bolide. Klass builds his case for the mundane nature of UFOs 
around these two sightings, because they exemplify many of his published 
"Ufological Principles," such as the fact that a majority of witnesses to 
an event CAN be mistaken in their descriptions; the fact that the human 
mind tends to fill in details that it doesn't see but expects, through 
societal archetypes, to find; and the fact that we tend to draw 
correlations between events where none may exist.
      Extrapolating from these two stereotypical cases, Klass then 
attempted to explain the famous Mansfield/Coyne Helicopter case, which won 
the National Enquirer award for the most baffling UFO case of 1973. A 
slide showing the four primary witnesses receiving their National Enquirer 
checks drew the expected chuckles from some members of the audience, who 
behaved like good little Skeptics and snickered appropriately throughout 
the presentation.
      The Mansfield case is one of the most oft-told in UFO literature, 
and details can be found in several sources, including two of Klass' four 
books, and a pamphlet available from the Fund for UFO Research, so I won't 
recount it in full here, but briefly, in October of 1973, four National 
Guardsmen flying North near Mansfield, OH in a Bell UH-1H helicopter had a 
nighttime encounter with an object which approached them from the east, 
threatened to collide with their chopper, hovered briefly, then flew off 
to the west where it disappeared. During the encounter, the pilot-in-
command, Capt. (now Col.-ret.) Lawrence Coyne pitched the helicopter into 
an 800 ft. descent; when the encounter was over, he found he had actually 
CLIMBED from 1700 ft above sea level (MSL) to 3500 ft., and was still 
climbing at 1000 feet per minute. This unintentional climb has been 
attributed by many to some sort of "tractor beam" emanating from the UFO.
      Making use of his "Ufological principles," Klass proceeded to debunk 
the case as being another bright meteor-fireball. He contended that Coyne 
subconsciously noticed that his descent was bringing him close to the 
ground, and at approx. 400 ft above ground level (AGL), brought the 
collective up and initiated an ascent.
      All four men reported that the interior of the chopper was bathed in 
a green light while the object hovered above them. Klass points out that 
the windows on the top of the Huey are tinted green, and that the bright 
light of the fireball, caused by an envelope of ionized air, merely shone 
through the top windows, causing the "green" effect. The other anomalous 
elements of the report, the hovering, the structure, the temporary loss of 
radio contact with area airport towers, Klass dismissed with aplomb.
      It would be a momentous job of demystification, if it were not for a 
few basic flaws in Klass' main argument, the most challenging being the 
possibility of a bolide of such duration going unnoticed by the rest of 
humanity.
      Time is a crucial element in this case, for the duration of a bolide 
has an upper limit, as does the rate of climb of a Huey helicopter. While 
it has been demonstrated many times that percipients of sudden, 
extraordinary events have unreliable recall of the passage of time, some 
idea of the duration of the event can be gleaned from the fact that the 
Huey began descending from 2500 ft. MSL at the start of the event, reached 
1700 MSL, then rose to 3500 MSL just after the event. The lowest amount of 
time acceptable to anyone is 45 seconds; most investigators agree, 
however, that the event lasted at least a minute. But let's take the 45 
second figure.
      In order for a bolide to even theoretically last this long, it would 
have to be travelling in the very upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere, 
where there is little friction to slow down the object or affect the arc 
of its trajectory. Recall that the object was first seen in the east, then 
disappeared on the western horizon. We can therefore say that, due to its 
great altitude and the amount of Earth's atmosphere it subtended, it would 
have to have been visible, not just over a large portion of Ohio, but over 
a large portion of the North American continent. As Klass points out, the 
event occured during the height of the Orionid meteor shower, at just 
after 11PM -- a late hour, but not too late for avid skywatchers, of which 
there would surely be a great number. Yet NOT A LIVING SOUL REPORTED 
SEEING A BRIGHT METEOR-FIREBALL on that night.
      When challenged on this point, Klass retorted by asking why no 
credible independent witnesses stepped forward to report a large UFO 
either. (A group of four witnesses DID attest to seeing the helicopter/UFO 
encounter some time later, however, their testimony is flawed in some 
respects, and hence cannot be considered reliable.) Ignoring for the 
moment the perceived unlikelyhood of alien spacecraft, it is much easier 
to believe that such a craft, operating at the low altitude of the 
helicopter over an area which Klass himself characterizes as sparsely 
populated, would go unnoticed, whereas a high-altitude bolide would be a 
spectacle most likely observed by thousands. 
      Count forty-five seconds off to yourself, and imagine that, while 
you're counting, a fireball is traversing the night skies. Now imagine no 
one seeing it.
      Add to all this the fact that very few astronomers and meteor 
experts agree that a bolide event CAN last for that period of time. In 
answer, Klass characteristically trots out an event that occurred in 1972 
over the Western part of the U.S., which was captured on 26 seconds of 
film, arguing that it had to have lasted even longer in order for the 
photographer to notice it and ready her camera. The event (which occurred 
in broad daylight, over a more sparsely populated area of the country, and 
yet was reported by thousands) was characterized by Carl Sagan as 
something that happens "once in a century." Yet Klass has used the "bright 
meteor-fireball" device to explain SEVERAL cases throughout his three 
previous books. How many times can a once-in-a-century event occur since 
1947?
      In his book "UFO's: The Public Deceived" (Prometheus 1981), Klass 
states that, since he believes the chopper crew saw SOMETHING strange and 
are not making the whole thing up, the event can only be one of two 
things, a bolide or a real, honest-to-goodness alien starship. He begins 
his argument against the latter on the basis of facts and evidence, but 
when challenged, falls back on theory, relying on Science's 
characterization of alien visits as "unlikely." I must ask how one 
measures such unlikelyhood, absent any reference data on such visits. We 
DO have some idea of the unlikelyhood of 45-second bolides, however, and I 
am here to tell you that they are SO unlikely as to put Klass in the 
position of virtually endorsing, by his own words, the ET Hypothesis.
      In the middle part of the lecture, Klass showed a slide of Dr. J. 
Allen Hynek, widely recognized as the father of scientific ufology. Klass 
strongly implied that Hynek's decision to switch from skeptic to proponent 
on the UFO issue was financially motivated. He related that Hynek drew 
$150 a day as a consultant to Project Blue Book; when the Air Force shut 
down that project, Klass said, Hynek changed into a believer and drew up 
to $2000 for lectures.
      Klass' implication is nothing short of contemptible. He ignores the 
fact that Hynek's path to advocacy of UFO research began long before the 
end of Blue Book; it can be traced to the aftermath of the 1966 Swamp Gas 
Incident in Dexter, MI. In addition, much of Hynek's lecture income was 
known to have gone back into UFO research.
      Skepticism is a necessity in the badly muddled world of ufology, and 
much of Klass' work has served to define the boundaries and goal lines for 
would-be saucer seekers. But the raison d'etre of skepticism is Science, 
and Klass, who accuses Ufology of having none, seems to have forsaken 
Science in favor of his own myopic axe-grinding.

       -- Jim Speiser