In his 1919 work, The Book of the Damned, Charles Fort coined the term damned data related to data about anomalous phenomena for which science had no logical explanation but rejected as impossible or simply ignored.
The most significant damned data of our era are UFO reports. Since the year 2000 there has been in excess of 68,000 UFO sightings reported in North America. That doesn’t begin to take into account the sightings that go unreported because people are afraid of being ridiculed.
A 2012 poll by the National Geographic found the following:
- 36 percent of Americans – about 80 million people – believe that UFOs exist.
- 77 percent believe there are signs that aliens have visited our planet.
- 80 percent or 270 million of Americans believe the government is hiding information about UFOs.
- One in 10 Americans says that they’ve seen a UFO.
This demographic information suggests that people of every ethnicity and socio-economic class believe in UFOs and extraterrestrials.
When newspapers and television news editors are questioned why they won’t cover the topic, the answer is mixed. Some news organizations fear for their professional credibility. Some editors think it’s just plain silly and not a serious topic. One editor said, “If it was a serious topic the Universities would be studying it.”
With an average of over 8000 worldwide UFO sighting reports per year, it begs the question: Why hasn’t there been large scale, serious inquiry by academic disciplines in the arts and sciences, as well as the collegiate journalism community?
Looking back just after World War II, there was serious inquiry by major governments, including the United States, regarding the topic. Throughout the war air crews and other military units reported strange aerial activity. After the detonation of the first nuclear weapons the incidence of UFOs increased drastically.
NASA’s, Robertson Panel in 1952-1953 was charged to determine if UFOs represented a threat to national security. The panel unanimously concluded that there was no direct evidence of a national security threat by the UFOs. The panel did, however, emphasize that a major threat to the orderly functioning of government was the huge volumes of UFO reports that were “clogging up the communications channels.” They recommended a program of public education and debunking of UFO reports.
Funded by the Air Force, the University of Colorado was tasked to study unidentified flying objects under the direction of physicist Edward Condon. The final report released in 1968 was titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. It’s commonly called the Condon Report, and it said that the study of UFOs was unlikely to yield major scientific discoveries. This conclusion is frequently cited as the decisive factor in the low level of interest in UFO research activity within the academic community since 1968.
Fundamentally, the Condon Report poisoned the well for UFO research in the academic and public government sectors. With that report’s pronouncements the Press and Media establishment labeled the topic fringe or pseudoscience. Effectively making the subject of UFOs, damned data.
It’s been suggested that one of the reasons for the Condon report was to build upon the Robertson Panel recommendations in order to calm down the general public and Congress. In addition, the report was also intended to publicly discourage academic and government institutions who might fund scientific investigation on the topic, by cutting off all government funding for such research. In essence the United States government said, “UFOs–There’s no such thing.”
At the heart of the problem it’s been suggested that UFOs generated fears in the centers of power and control. The notion of contact with an alien culture would be a huge impact on many belief and business institutions as well as other aspects of our culture in general. The question of UFOs has gone from simply lights in the sky, to a big government lies on the ground.
So for nearly seventy years there has been a truth embargo by our government or by a shadow government entity. So only a tiny group of people know the truth and don’t feel that the rest of us can handle the truth, as evidenced by the recommendations of NASA’s 1952-1953 Robertson Panel.
The findings of panels and committees from forty or sixty years ago do not apply now. Our human culture has grown tremendously in that time.
Aliens in the 1940’s and 1950’s were portrayed as scary bug eyed monsters, but these days aliens in movie lore like Star Trek and Star Wars are revered characters. Cartoon renderings of Grey aliens decorate common greeting cards.
UFO accounts have become family heirlooms and are now intergenerational stories handed down within families. Our society has been oriented to the notion of extraterrestrial life; it’s time to end the Truth Embargo and you can help.
There is a major effort to underway to hold Congressional Hearings on Disclosure. One step in this process is to get presidential support via a We the People Petition on the White House web site. We need 100,000 names over the next 30 days. Exercise your right to petition the government, stand up and be counted and sign the petition. It’s fast and simple to do.
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: support congressional hearings for government/agency/political witnesses to extraterrestrial related events and evidence
The direct link to the petition is: http://wh.gov/igRrq
New York Skies will return to its usual format next week. The 24th International UFO Congress 2015 will be held near Phoenix, AZ from 18-22 Feb. Cheryl Costa will be posting daily blogs and video reports from the conference, right here on SyracuseNewtimes.com – bookmark us!
