There's an interesting UFO conference taking place this weekend

[LongTomH]

You've probably already heard about the well-hyped (and ridiculed) 'Citizens' Hearing on Disclosure,' where former Congresspeople were paid big bucks to listen to testimony from UFO witnesses. The media had a field day ridiculing the less credible of those witnesses.

This coming weekend's symposium in Greensboro, NC, sponsored by the Center for UFO Research has, so far, received little, if any, attention from the media. That's too bad; because this symposium has attracted some very interesting and credible speakers.

One of the most famous is Leslie Kean, author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record.

Other speakers include:

• Charles Halt, USAF Ret. Halt was Deputy Base Commander at RAF Brentwaters in England when one of the most famous 'close encounters in history occurred on the base.
  
• Dr. Richard Haines, "a senior research scientist who worked at NASA-Ames Research Center from 1967 - 1988 on projects such as Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and the International Space Station, and managed the Joint FAA/NASA Head-up Display Evaluation Program. (quoted from the symposium speakers page)." Currently he is Chief Scientist for the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP),
  
• Wilfried de Brouwer, retired general of the Belgian Air Force who presided over the official investigation of the Belgian UFO 'wave' in 1989-1991.
  
• Xavier Passot, head of the GEIPAN, the official UFO investigation agency attached to the National Center for Space Studies (CNES), the French space agency. (Yes, other countries do take UFO studies that seriously!).

Leslie Kean will probably report on the symposium on her Facebook page.

[fadedrose]

1. Miles O'Brien

was mentoned in the Leslie Kean book review - he was mysteriously let go during space week on CNN when. on a Wednesday, he mentioned his own sighting. He was not there Thursday or Friday, or ever after that.

Other reporters had this quick dismissal after paying attention to UFO sightings or authors.

[LongTomH]

2. There is that taboo.

I understand that professional pilots will not, absolutely will not report a UFO sighting to their superiors or the media, because reporting that you've seen a UFO is basically a career-ender.

[Octafish]

8. Thank you for the heads-up.

Never heard that about Miles. It explains a lot.

Back in the day, I was the night cops reporter at a medium-circ daily newspaper. Michigan was undergoing a pretty good flap, including an amazing radar-visual case where there were witnesses on land, including police officers, observing these bright, stationary lights over Lake Michigan. The National Weather Service guy told the police that they, also, had a lock on three objects hovering about 20 miles offshore. Suddenly, the things zipped off the radar and were over Wisconsin in just a couple of seconds. I brought up the subject with a weatherman contact and he said his colleague from the NWS radar office was re-assigned to Alaska for having talked to the press. The contact, a guy who'd been a source for a bunch of weather stories, never talked to me again, either. And I didn't write a story about that episode, at all.

[fadedrose]

11. There were others...

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022664568#post1

[LongTomH]

3. Huffington Post has an article about the conference

This is an update from Leslie Kean's Facebook page. The article is by Lee Speigel, who frequently writes about UFOs for Huffington Post. Note that the article is in Huffpost's Weird News section. Yeah, like Rodney Dangerfield, we don't get no respect!

Kent Senter is a man racing against time.

The 59-year-old resident of Burlington, N.C., has terminal multiple myeloma, a cancer that attacks bone marrow. Despite that, this weekend, he'll be focused on the number one item at the top of his bucket list: to organize, sponsor and host an international UFO conference.

It's no easy task. Adding to the daily challenges of his illness, Senter has quickly pulled together an intriguing symposium over the past few months in a competitive climate where, between now and the end of the year, another dozen UFO-related conferences are scheduled around the U.S.

On June 29 and 30, 12 speakers -- with backgrounds in science, military, academia, sociology, investigative journalism, including government officials of Chile and France -- will come together for Senter's 2013 Symposium On Official And Scientific Investigations Of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, at the Greensboro War Memorial Auditorium in Greensboro, NC.

Most of the article is about Kent Senter; however, there are some interesting videos and a radar image from the radarscope of a Belgian F16 that was scrambled to track an unidentified object.

[frogmarch]

4. It sounds like a goody all right,

a UFO boosters conference with no dissenters.

Charles Halt is one of the main players in the famous UFO case known as the Rendlesham Forest incident.

Base commander of Woodbridge and Bentwaters airfields at the time of the Rendlesham incident, US Air Force Colonel Conrad has released several statements to Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University, debunking the testimonies of both Lt Col Charles Halt and Sgt Jim Penniston, both of whom claim that a UFO of extra-terrestrial origin landed on the base and was seen by many witnesses.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8685868/Rendlesham-Incident-US-commander-speaks-for-the-first-time-about-the-Suffolk-UFO.html

snip:

"We saw nothing that resembled Lt Col Halt's descriptions either in the sky or on the ground," Col Conrad said.

In a damning indictment of his former deputy, Col Conrad added: "We had people in position to validate Halt's narrative, but none of them could."

He said there was no "hard evidence" of anything suspicious.

The Geiger counter was initially said to have given slightly elevated readings in the clearance, but that these were later found to indicate "normal" levels of background radiation.

Col Conrad is scathing about his former deputy.

"He should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better," he said.

Richard Haines has some credibility in UFO (he prefers the term UAP – unidentified aerial phenomena) research, and he likes to call himself a skeptic, but he is clearly a True Believer. He presents himself as a former NASA scientist, but Haines’s Ph. D. is in psychology. A few years ago I read something he’d written about his take on ETs and I thought, holy shit, this guy’s a wacko. It was kind of like when I was a teenager and had a date with a guy I’d admired from afar and had always thought was awesome. We were at the movies, and he suddenly excused himself to call his mom to ask her to check to make sure none of the shoes in his bedroom closet were touching each other.

The Belgian UFO Wave has been thoroughly debunked time and time again, yet True Believers refuse to accept the reality: http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=162

GEIPAN UFO research has been repeatedly criticized by French scientists.

Leslie Kean presents herself as a serious UFO researcher who seeks the truth about UFOs, but she is in fact a gung-ho True Believer.

So, it should be a fascinating conference. Yes indeedy.

[LongTomH]

5. Let me reply to the previous post.....

First my apologies for the delay.

First the comment about: "a UFO boosters conference with no dissenters." There were about 200 attendees at the conference; it would be unlikely that none of them were skeptics or 'dissenters.' Perhaps it is a failing that no skeptics were invited to speak, or perhaps the skeptics just weren't interested.

Next, let us acknowledge that the Rendlesham RAF Bentwaters incident remains controversial. Col. Conrad is sticking to his story; Col. Charles Halt and Sgt. Penniston are sticking to theirs.

Yes, Dr. Richard F. Haines degree is in psychology: PhD. in Experimental Psychology from Michigan State University, 1964. Yes, NASA does hire psychologists to work in various aspects of human factors.

"The Belgian Wave has been thoroughly debunked...." Rather a sweeping statement, since there were approximately 2,000 cases. According to Gen. Wilfried de Brouwer, 600 of those were investigated by the Belgian Air Force and approximately 500 remain in the unexplained category. The Skeptic Report addressed itself to a private organization: SOBEPS and a relatively few individual cases.

Yes, GEIPAN has its critics, and its supporters.

As for Ms. Kean herself, she has had a successful career as an independent investigative journalist. Her book garnered positive reviews by people as varied as:

• Michio Kaku, Ph.D,
  
• Rudy Schild, Ph.D., Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
  
• Neal Lane, Ph.D., Rice University; former Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,
  
• John Podesta, White House Chief of Staff under the Clinton Administration, and
  
• Derek Pitts, Chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute.

Labeling Dr. Haines and Ms. Kean 'true believers' is ad hominem and does nothing to provide a substantial argument.

Please note I've done my best to minimize the use of any personal pronouns, except for a few referring to myself. I'm trying my best to maintain a civil dialogue, without resorting to the argument ad hominem in any of its forms.

Edited to add: I've considered myself a hard-core skeptic most of my adult life; in recent years, however, I've evolved into more of an open-minded skeptic, using the definition given by Dr. Bernard Haisch:

Skeptic - One who practices the method of suspended judgment, engages in rational and dispassionate reasoning as exemplified by the scientific method, shows willingness to consider alternative explanations without prejudice based on prior beliefs, and who seeks out evidence and carefully scrutinizes its validity.

[frogmarch]

7. Outstanding post,

but I stand by mine.

(Calling someone a true believer is ad hominem? Now I feel awful.)

[LongTomH]

6. Another media article about the conference.

From the Winston-Salem Journal: UFOs discussed at Greensboro gathering. Some excerpts:

On Saturday, speakers largely steered clear of talking about aliens and abductions, instead encouraging a healthy dose of skepticism, and seeking answers to unexplained phenomena.

“About 99 percent of UFO reports can be explained,” journalist and symposium speaker Leslie Kean said. “But there’s that small number for which we can eliminate most explanations.”

.............//snip

Several speakers on Saturday talked about the need to set up government agencies to study unidentified aerial phenomena. But they also urged caution in calling for such agencies.

“Saying they’re covering up ETs, whether that’s true or not, they’re not going to respond to that,” Kean said. “That’s not going to work with government officials. ... Treat this as an aviation problem.”

[Octafish]

9. UFOs are a fascinating subject.

While I don't pretend to know what they are, I do know that many people have experienced what J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallee call "The Edge of Reality." While Hynek, in my estimation, held back publicly in order to continue investigating and working with the original materials at Blue Book, Vallee has not held anything back in his thinking to put together the best hypothesis: The phenomenon acts like a control system of some sort, perhaps the work of a trans-dimensional entity or entities, applying incredible energies to evidently traverse space and time to manipulate humanity for unknown ends.

Here's a decent interview with Dr. Vallee: Heretic Among Heretics

Thank you for the heads-up on the conference, LongTomH. I look forward to learning more in the coming days.

[LongTomH]

10. Ms. Kean says DVDs of the presentations will be available later.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

12. What I find interesting is that there were massive sightings of triangle-shaped UFOs...

And sightings occurred for several years before the triangle-shaped Stealth aircraft gained world-wide media attention. Then, triangle-shaped UFOs all flew back to Mars or whatever planet they call home. I guess the publicity of Project Blue Book spooked them. Those aliens like to keep a low-profile. Immigration and Naturalization Services might have caught a few of them and deported them to Mexico, instead of their home planet.