I am posting here Martin Kottmeyer's answer to my "Death of the ET-UFO meme". This is mature, rational polemic.
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entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,
"Occam's Razor"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/criticalufology
http://ufoculture.blogspot.com/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Martin Kottmeyer <mkottmeyer@frontier.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 1:26 AM
Subject: dying memes
To: "tscolarici@gmail.com" <tscolarici@gmail.com>
From: Martin Kottmeyer <mkottmeyer@frontier.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 1:26 AM
Subject: dying memes
To: "tscolarici@gmail.com" <tscolarici@gmail.com>
Just read The death of the ET-UFO meme.
I feel obliged to advise that ufo people who predict a more steady-state model of ufo belief tend to be proven more often correct in the long term. Rich Reynolds has been predicting the death of ufos since the start of the UFO Iconoclast(s) blog. Two examples: “Ufology, a pseudo-science surely, will be a dead donkey in 2016…” [April 21, 2006 – “Ten Years Hence….” http://ufocon.blogspot.com/2006_04_16_archive.html ] “…UFOs are themselves dying even as this is being typed. [February 20, 2009 – “UFOs and the Death of God” http://ufocon.blogspot.com/2009_02_15_archive.html ] While Reynolds can spin this post hoc as true in certain senses, a critical individual could show the number of ufo books being put out are basically status quo. And in certain domains like abduction belief, the number of new claims have clearly not declined since - see “Chart of abduction claims” and “Abduction Mythos Timeline” attached. A fair percentage of new abduction claims have ‘good ETs’ populating them and channeled ETs can be shown minimally to be not be going away despite 2012 failures. (I have no chart for them.) Nordic humanoids are also still around in Rosales humanoid catalogue with Orthon, Adamski’s friend, recently seen in Japan! [Rosales humanoid catalog 2010; case #12]
Maybe it is hazardous to point this out, but such rhetoric metaphorically mirrors the ‘aliens from a dying world’ meme which has been around for decades and also shows no signs of disappearing, perhaps for psychological reasons. I accept the general thesis that science is continually voiding ETH arguments – chapter 11 in Chalker’s Hair of the Alien gives a good critical survey and Dr. Tyler Kokjohn’s dissection of abductioneers like Kathleen Marden [http://centerforbadideas.com/ ], but herds survive occasional predation.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,
"Occam's Razor"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/criticalufology
http://ufoculture.blogspot.com/