Very interesting our exchange with Sam Maranto, director
of MUFON Illinois. He wrote in Facebook:
“ No Tomas, a good number of the cases I've
worked on are not the result of imagination or boredom they appear to be
genuine and unknown. What I do not ascribe too is knowing with certainty the
point of origin or intent of "what was being observed".The human
origin explanation is possible for only those of recent decades but surely not
for all genuine accounts and clearly not throughout I time.Lastly, I prefer to
speak for myself and to be quoted in complete relevant context, sadly that
newspaper article in particular did neither, thank you. To assume there is
nothing genuine to any of these accounts would be counter intuitive and not
scientific. One could only ascribe to a such notion if they were
deprived/devoid of ever objectively investigating even so much as a small
sampling of qualitative data. There is always the possibility they may simply
be inept or hell bent on perusing a less than forthright agenda one more in
line with a predetermined deduction/outcome.”
I believe in what he says. I believe that instead of
writing science fiction and selling it as fact, he does is into research. However
we, (not me, all of us) need something more, some evidence about those “true
UFOs that remain unidentified.”
I do not assume that there is nothing genuine in those
sightings, Sam.
Personally in more than 40 years of research I never found
a shred of evidence proving that those sightings were NOT natural or man made
phenomena or artifacts. You saw my
books, and understand that I am not an outsider. I know perfectly well what we
are talking about. I was writing nonsense about Extraterrestrials in the 70’s!!!
I WAS WRONG. I
was wasting my time. There is NOTHING there. The whole UFO phenomenon is a
creation of science fiction, human imagination, ignorance, pathology, hoaxes,
commercialism and fantasies. (Perhaps also disinformation.)
However, Ufology exists,
and the investigation of the UFO subculture as a powerful human legend that
survives in the minds of the some professionals and relatively few individuals
who desperately those who want to believe.
After all those interviews, you recognize that some of
those sightings “appear to be genuine and unknown. What I do not ascribe too is knowing
with certainty the point of origin or intent of "what was being
observed". These are your words Sam, and I agree with them.
