On the subject of false memory syndrome etc., right, Gene? Not on the show itself. I wanted to make several comments about it. I hope this is the right place. If not, please move my comments to the right place.
First, I enjoyed the show and felt there was something in what Clark was saying about his perceptions of sincerity and good will among the ufools. I felt he was making a sly criticism of some forms of hyper-criticality which have emerged even here, on ye goode olde Paracast, but that wasn't picked up on so much by Chris or Gene, or else they deflected it with comments about junior-high clique mentality at work "in the field." I tend to agree with Clark that people are misguided rather than intentionally lying most of the time within the UFO community(-ies). Why does this lead to such vitriol, and why has it always, even if the "new generation" always discovers and is surprised by this vitriol anew (Don Ecker is still talking about unexpected sh_tstorms he experienced over 20 years ago)? That leads me to my main comment and my main point of contention with what Clark said, although I liked him as a person to the extent that I listened, and I like Gene, Chris, Don and lots of other people just fine as well.
I took exception with Clark's characterization of modern Science and the worth of input by what he called "amateurs." I think what he said about specialization and the need for professional scientists and amateurs was probably the public's general perception 20 years, 40 years and 100 years ago, but I don't think it's true, not even now. science small s is a framework for discovering and testing reality, and has been for a long time, long before the Nat Sci Foundation was handing out grants, and it will be long after the NSF no longer exists (rue the day). It is a very simple practice to "do science": look, think about what's going, devise a test to see if your thoughts are correct, look some more, think some more.
To get to the point quickly, there isn't much science or Science can do with UFOs. Even if you throw lots and lots of money at it, there's a basic lack of observational data. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about sightings, there are lots of those. But there's no way to TEST any ideas about UFOs, because they are encountered so rarely (except if you're Commander Greer or run a UFO sighting camp near Portland, OR). If yu can pull a Gorightly and get a UFO to appear by dropping acid and wishing hard, more power to you, but I don't think even Adam can repeat that sequence and precipitate a flying saucer at will.
Even if you have crash debris, what can you really do with it? So what if the isotopic ratios aren't run-of-the-mill daily averages we see here on Terra? What does that prove? What can you do with the slag to check any theory? Nothing.
In a word, we have a dearth of input, a lack of the phenomenon itself, so we fall back upon the "think about what's really going on" leg of scientific method and this leg is hypertrophied, out of all proportion to the observable data. This is natural. This is all that "professional" federally-funded Scientists could do as well. It's the nature of the phenomenon itself to conceal itself, and while this is true of other fields of inquiry to a certain extent--DNA folds up on itself, subatomic particles are hard to find, etc.--, we don't have the instruments to make UFO spotting easy (although the National Security apparatus might, I really don't know about that and can only speculate).
Spotting is merely observation, it doesn't mean you can reach out and poke a UFO to see if it's slimy, metallic, vegetable, mineral or transgender. "Repeatability" doesn't enter into the observation phase, that's a demand of the testing stage: when you check your hypothesis through an experiment you devise, you should get consistent results if your theory is correct.
I'm sorry to have to point out the obvious here, but evidently some radio hosts who shall not be named thinked "peer review" is part of the Scientific Method, and Jerome Clark thinks "climate change" and its denial actually mean something (climate has always changed, that's what it does). Of course both of them are doing much better than a certain George Ignorey who praises "high technology" developments and actually means twitter, skype and cell phones that not only represent a real regression in what was global hifi telephony via landlines, but which are actually WORSE than the primitive voice-compression technology the Apollo missions used from the Moon (leading to speculation whether he really said "One small step for Man" or whether the "a" in "one small step for a man" was dropped; oh! that it were only that nowadays, even on "professional" radio). Ignorey probably doesn't have a clear distinction in his mind between science and technology, and probably wouldn't know high technology if it saved his life, but that's a different program and a different set of problems.
Why the NSF and NASA and NOAA and all the rest have decided to set up a new branch of pseudo-science called "climatology" with al funding directed at global warming, not cooling, I have no idea, but that's what's happened. My best Joan Rivers voice here: "Can we get some grants for global cooling over here now please?!"
The junior-high mentality that is consensus reality popped up in the show regarding supposed new Roswell photos as well. Chris and Jerome poo-pooed the idea based on the origin in an attic in a New Age enclave in Arizona. It's sort of like rejecting Velikovsky because he sounds so wacky and none of the cool scientists like him, or, "nothing good comes from Nazareth." Given the lack of anything and everything Roswell, let's give the photos a chance at least, or at least let's not reject the idea out of hand that some photos might exist and might be discovered in this fashion.
Do we really need to apply wikipedia-style consensus reality to the "field" of ufoology? Do we really need speakers at the Fake Citizens' Hearings with "gravitas"? What if they're talking about antigravity? Shouldnt they then have "antigravitas?" I say, let all the voices be heard, because they, the big They out there, think you and me just as kooky as Linda Moulton Howe, if not more so.
I sort of felt Jerome Clark's point about the ufoology field internalizing the worst arguments of the pseudo-debunkers was lost on Gene and Chris. Yes, the idea that ufoologists making money is bad goes back to the idea that we're all charlatans anyway, so any profit becomes evidence of our motive to deceive the public and drag this supposed age of rationality and enlightenment kicking and screaming back into the Dark Ages with our horoscopes, Ouija boards, Caterbury Tales of Flying Chaucers, biorhythms, Psy-card games, pyramid power and Bigfoot sightings. Now tell me, though, what scientific progress has taken place since 1969? I don't mean crappy cell phones and home microcomputers, those are tools. Or let me put it another way: what has Man done since reaching the Moon in 1969 that is comparable in any way? It seems to me we reached civilizational zenith then, and have been going downhill ever since into a real Dark Age, scientific, cultural and political, returning to practices mankind rejected centuries ago, to torture, slavery, cannibalism.
Thank you for letting me state my opinion. I like Clark, O'Brien/Barnes and Steinberg, even if I don't always agree with them. I don't expect Science can do anything more with UFOs than we peasants have been doing for decades now, purely speculating, for lack of evidence. Surely there is over-specialization in the scientific disciplines, but surely this is because the funding has gone to make this so, and no one really wants generalists who grasp the larger picture, there is no money in that. Just as an aside, in favor of a multidisciplinary approach, am I the only one who watched Whitley Strieber's movie about his adventures in his cabin, and flashed back upon those Washington Irving stories set in roughly the same location, upstate New York, with roughly the same sort of gnome/elf creatures and missing time? I bet Chris O'Brien caught onto that right away. I wonder if Whitely ever has.