The Intelligent Professor

Morristown UFO Hoax

On January 5, 2009, we set out into the woods on the border of Morris Plains and Hanover, NJ, carrying one helium tank, five balloons, five flares, fishing line, duct tape, and a video camera. After filling up one 3-foot balloon with helium, we tied about five feet of fishing line to the balloon, secured the line with tape, then tied and taped the flare to the other end of the line. Once all five balloons were ready for takeoff (with our fingers on the verge of frost bite), we struck the 15-minute flares and released them into the sky in increments of fifteen seconds apart from each other. We filmed the ?UFOs? as they floated away, and then walked the half-mile stretch out of the woods to our car. The hoax was underway.

The media coverage the incident received over the next few days was extensive. Both local and national news stations were covering the UFO over New Jersey. The local paper had a field day with it, quoting a doctor who said the mysterious lights traveled against the wind, and quoting another man who said the object ?didn?t appear to be manmade.? The most sought after witnesses were the Hurley family. Paul Hurley, a pilot, along with his family, made appearances on just about every major news station, describing the strange lights that they saw in the sky. The ?Morristown UFO? became the talk of the town.

We followed up our light show with four more performances, gaining media attention every time. Every conspiracy website and radio show was mentioning it. To add fuel to the fire, we made appearances ourselves on News 12 New Jersey, on the Jeff Rense Program (a radio show that promotes conspiracy theories), and at an Illinois UFO symposium hosted by MUFON. We even provided our own footage.

The icing on the cake came when the popular History Channel show UFO Hunters featured the Morristown UFO as their main story one week. Bill Birnes, the lead investigator of the show and the publisher of UFO Magazine, declared definitively that the Morristown UFO could not have been flares or Chinese lanterns. Surely Birnes, who has written and edited over 25 books and encyclopedias in the fields of human behavior, true crime, current affairs, history, psychology, business, computing, and the paranormal, and the co-author of The Day After Roswell (a New York Times bestseller in 1997 and subsequently a documentary on The History Channel), could not have let himself be fooled by a couple of twenty- somethings with no formal education in psychology. He could.

This begs an important question: are UFO investigators simply charlatans looking to make a quick buck off human gullibility, or are they alarmists using bad science to back up their biased opinions that extraterrestrial life is routinely visiting our planet? Either way, are these people deserving of their own shows on major cable networks? If a respected UFO investigator can be easily manipulated and dead wrong on one UFO case, is it possible he?s wrong on most (or all) of them? Do the networks buy into this nonsense, or are they in it for the ratings? How can a television network that has pretensions of providing honest and factual programming be taken seriously when the topic of one of their top rated shows deals with chasing flares and fishing line? In fact, we delivered what every perfect UFO case has: great video and pictures, ?credible? eyewitnesses (doctors and pilots), and professional investigators convinced that something amazing was witnessed. Does this bring into question the validity of every other UFO case? We believe it does.
 
Pop Corn with a cell phone!

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Mickiana

Well-known member
A good skeptic questions everything, but good skepticism is tempered with investigation. From UFOs to gods to what you believe in yourself, everything should be challenged. This is a huge task, perhaps the largest we could undertake in our lives. Science can disprove, so it serves healthy skepticism well, but cannot really prove, from what I gather. When you disprove something I think what happens is that you don't end up proving something, but moreso, you move onto the next thing to disprove and keep going. Every question seems only to lead to another question, a type of regression/progression until you get to the end or the beginning ie you don't believe or unbelieve in anything.
 

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
Mickiana said:
A good skeptic questions everything, but good skepticism is tempered with investigation. From UFOs to gods to what you believe in yourself, everything should be challenged. This is a huge task, perhaps the largest we could undertake in our lives. Science can disprove, so it serves healthy skepticism well, but cannot really prove, from what I gather. When you disprove something I think what happens is that you don't end up proving something, but moreso, you move onto the next thing to disprove and keep going. Every question seems only to lead to another question, a type of regression/progression until you get to the end or the beginning ie you don't believe or unbelieve in anything.

Science hasn't "proved anything"?! Really?

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that every single fact accumulated by human knowledge about the nature of existence has been proven by science.

Science, by definition, is the process by which things are proven.
 

Matt deMille

New member
Mickiana said:
A good skeptic questions everything, but good skepticism is tempered with investigation. From UFOs to gods to what you believe in yourself, everything should be challenged. This is a huge task, perhaps the largest we could undertake in our lives. Science can disprove, so it serves healthy skepticism well, but cannot really prove, from what I gather. When you disprove something I think what happens is that you don't end up proving something, but moreso, you move onto the next thing to disprove and keep going. Every question seems only to lead to another question, a type of regression/progression until you get to the end or the beginning ie you don't believe or unbelieve in anything.

That is well said, Mickiana.

Indeed, some things can't be "proven", at least not yet, because of our society's accepted parameters of evidence, which are, in some ways, rather narrow. For example, we only accept as "proof" things that fit into a material reality. If something exists outside a material reality, or defies our self-defined laws of physics, we smugly say it isn't real at all. But ask yourself this: Just because electricity was not able to be contained, controlled or measured by medieval people, did that mean it didn't exist? Electricity flows through our bodies. It's in the atmosphere. It's everywhere. We could see it with lightning. But, just because we couldn't handle it, did that mean it wasn't real? We're at the same point with ufology. We can see them, we can feel their effects, and sometimes they do leave physical traces. Just because we don't have one on public display doesn't mean they aren't there.

Since Carl Sagan seems to be favored around here, I'd actually like to borrow a line from his very own "Contact": Do you love your wife? Yes? Prove it.

You see, sometimes things are very real, but do not conveniently or obediently fit into our accepted boxes of "proof". Science is, after all supposed to investigate. That is, to embrace possibilities and seek for their proof, to confirm when something is real. If it can't be proven, science should continue to investigate or, at most, simply leave it with a question mark, leave it on the shelf so-to-speak, but by the very nature of possibility, to never close the book on anything. If all science does is "disprove", it is no longer science, but an institution, and not a good one.

As for RA/RS: It's a simple typo.
 
Potato-Washing Cult

hundredth monkey phenomenon

I live and work alone and travel light, relying largely on my memory and making a point of letting intuition guide my way. --Lyall Watson

The hundredth monkey phenomenon refers to a sudden spontaneous and mysterious leap of consciousness achieved when an allegedly "critical mass" point is reached. The idea of the hundredth monkey phenomenon comes from Dr. Lyall Watson (1938-2008) in his book Lifetide (1979). Watson, who had a Ph.D. in ethology for work done at the London Zoo with Desmond ("The Naked Ape") Morris, was writing about several studies done in the 1960's by several Japanese primatologists of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata). Watson alleged that the scientists were "reluctant to publish [the whole story] for fear of ridicule." He wrote that he had "to gather the rest of the story from personal anecdotes and bits of folklore among primate researchers, because most of them are still not quite sure what happened." So, wrote Watson:

I am forced to improvise the details, but as near as I can tell, this is what seems to have happened. In the autumn of that year an unspecified number of monkeys on Koshima were washing sweet potatoes in the sea. . . . Let us say, for argument's sake, that the number was ninety-nine and that at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday morning, one further convert was added to the fold in the usual way. But the addition of the hundredth monkey apparently carried the number across some sort of threshold, pushing it through a kind of critical mass, because by that evening almost everyone was doing it. Not only that, but the habit seems to have jumped natural barriers and to have appeared spontaneously, like glycerine crystals in sealed laboratory jars, in colonies on other islands and on the mainland in a troop at Takasakiyama.​

Yes, according to Watson, one monkey taught another to wash sweet potatoes who taught another who taught another and soon all the monkeys on the island were washing potatoes where no monkey had ever washed potatoes before. When the "hundredth" monkey learned to wash potatoes, suddenly and spontaneously and mysteriously monkeys on other islands, with no physical contact with the potato-washing cult, started washing potatoes! Was this monkey telepathy at work or just monkey business on Watson's part?
 

Goodeknight

New member
Lance Quazar said:
Science hasn't "proved anything"?! Really?

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that every single fact accumulated by human knowledge about the nature of existence has been proven by science.

Science, by definition, is the process by which things are proven.
That's a semi-valid response to Mickiana, but what people don't recognize is that scientific "facts" change every day. Science is often as much about faith as religion!

Until recently, it was a scientific fact that there were nine planets in the solar system. Now it's a scientific fact that there are eight. Of course, some are arguing it's a scientific fact that there are 10.

When I was in grade school, I wrote some paper about the solar system and the teacher accused me of making up my facts. I was way, way off with the diameter of the sun. To prove my research, I brought in the antique encyclopedia where I found that "fact." He said simply that he believed me, but the old encyclopedia was out of date.

And that's over basic stuff like the size of the sun and the number of planets in the solar system. Take on something a little more complex like human evolution or the nature of the entire universe and science can't come close to fully explaining everything around us.

Even Louis Leakey admitted there were huge gaps in his theories of how humans evolved. Thereby the Missing Link. Now paleontologists find a bit of tooth or jaw bone, draw a humpbacked quasihuman around it and get an article and a foldout poster in National Geographic.

As for saying "every single fact accumulated by human knowledge about the nature of existence has been proven by science" that's completely wrong. If you ask scientists to explain the Big Bang (when the universe came into existence out of nothingness even though science states clearly 'you can't create something from nothing') or the creation of life, they often say, "Well, the laws were different then. After the Big Bang you get the natural laws we see today. Before that, they didn't apply."

Huh?

Furthermore, one key part of the scientific process is that an event must be replicable. "Atoms can be split." "Show me." "Okay." Easy enough. Now tell a scientist, "Create life where there was no life." "I can't." "So how did it first happen?" "I don't know, but I came up with a BS theory that I can't prove..."

So if you want to talk about the "nature of existence" a scientist is the last person you want. Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. Better yet, ask a pastor. :)
 
alright, maybe a different tact...

goodeknight said:
After the Big Bang you get the natural laws we see today. Before that, they didn't apply."
To whom?

So if a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, it DOESN'T make a sound!

I guess the cosmos revolve around man...
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
goodeknight said:
Science is often as much about faith as religion!
"Faith" as I understand it is insurmountable belief into something, a thingthat isn't easily toppled.

If you debated five years ago with a man who believed in God is likely to still believe in God, unless of course he's had some kind of personal experience that had him falling out of faith. But the rule of thumb is that you can't end his faith in God by simply coming up with your best arguments against a higher entity's existence. Many have tried, and technically all have failed.

Now, if you run into a man who five years ago said that there are nine planets in our solar system, can well now be saying that there are "eight plus one planetoid". In case he doesn't, show him a textbook with enough references and there is a good chance he'll agree with the sentiment then.

Scientific facts can, have been and will be toppled by enough evidence to the contrary. That's not a feature associated with faith. Or if it is, I must say I have not been aware of it.

goodeknight said:
So if you want to talk about the "nature of existence" a scientist is the last person you want. Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. Better yet, ask a pastor.
So, when you don't know an answer to a question, it is preferable to make up one (this, incidentally, is the source of all religion) instead of just being honest and saying "I don't know"? Our mileages may vary here, but I certainly don't see what's wrong with the latter.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Rocket Surgeon said:
To whom?

So if a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, it DOESN'T make a sound!

I guess the cosmos revolve around man...

That was one of the sillier philosophical questions. There's often a mouse or a little bird around to hear it crash to the ground on our behalf! :p

Finn said:
"Faith" as I understand it is insurmountable belief into something, a thing that isn't easily toppled.

Faith is a terrifying and irrational concept by definition.

Finn said:
Scientific facts can, have been and will be toppled by enough evidence to the contrary. That's not a feature associated with faith. Or if it is, I must say I have not been aware of it.

Scientific facts that can't be toppled are those which can be tested and proved - like cause and effect with chemicals. Those are the ones that become 'Laws'. The more questionable areas of science remain hypotheses or theories, based on research and expectation. And I'm sure scientists have 'discussions' more heated than anything we've ever witnessed here.

Finn said:
So, when you don't know an answer to a question, it is preferable to make up one (this, incidentally, is the source of all religion) instead of just being honest and saying "I don't know"? Our mileages may vary here, but I certainly don't see what's wrong with the latter.

I'm pretty sure I'm achieving the same mileage as obtained by the Finnmobile. Going to a pastor for answers is just going to give you another possibility. Which is why I see faith as a terrifying concept. For the things a human will do when they have no doubt of their rectitude, we only have to look at history, or watch the daily news.

Yesterday Britain was called a "third world country" because there were opponents to the pope's visit.

Today the pope described atheists as fascists. And that comes from a man responsible for covering up the systematic abuse of children for the good of his own company.

I'd rather rather listen to the competing theories of the scientists.
 
Montana Smith said:
That was one of the sillier philosophical questions. There's often a mouse or a little bird around to hear it crash to the ground on our behalf! :p
Talking to the animals Dr?

Montana Smith said:
Yesterday Britain was called a "third world country" because there were opponents to the pope's visit.

Today the pope described atheists as fascists. And that comes from a man responsible for covering up the systematic abuse of children for the good of his own company.
Oh you had to go there!;)

What that reads like to me?

Spaceman Stu is being primed to take over for that clown Ronald McDonald who is responsible for the systematic increase in obesity in children and the covering up the global child abuse comitted by clowns.

Blaming the Pope for "covering up systematic abuse" is like blaming Ronald McDonald when you get a bad cheeseburger, and bad political science to boot.
 

Matt deMille

New member
Finn said:
So, when you don't know an answer to a question, it is preferable to make up one (this, incidentally, is the source of all religion) instead of just being honest and saying "I don't know"? Our mileages may vary here, but I certainly don't see what's wrong with the latter.

I think this a problem that comes from both sides of the overall scientific debate (in very broad terms, here). Indeed, it would be easier (and more responsible) to say "I don't know". I think non-scientists get angry because many a scientist does indeed claim to know, and I think that's where the "faith" comes in. Science is often near an answer, or has a good idea, but humans, just by being human, sometimes don't have the patience to wait for all the facts to come in. Many scientists just assume the path they're on will eventually prove to be the right one, and thus claim being right before it's (scientifically) justified. Or, worse, when new ideas counter what they've come to trust, they become defensive. Again, they're human.

An example: In the video posted earlier in this thread, the speaker laughingly dismisses 2012. Well, that's a bias, isn't it? I mean, 2012 hasn't come yet, so how can he possibly know with such certainty as to laugh at it what's going (or not going) to happen? The point I'm making is that science has just as many faith-based, biased or thick-headed individuals as any religion or fringe group does.

But I digress. I believe it's unfair to give a blanket statement to any group. Certainly there are many, many scientists who are indeed exactly what they should be: Open-minded, objective, and curious. But there are also those who steamroll ahead or bury their heads in the sand, and I think those are the ones to whom the "faith" concept is applied. On the flipside, religious people and paranormal investigators are the same way. There are those who are open-minded, objective and curious, but there are also those who defend dying positions, making the more serious bearers of their name look bad.

It would be nice if both scientists as well as religious folk and paranormal researchers -- all when making their claims as to what is -- could simply be humble enough to say "I think" or "Maybe" or just "I don't know". Too much human emotion leads to assertion and a need to win (indeed, to "be right"), and leads us into the dark alleyways of dogma.
 
Wow. More baseless claims insulting the scientific community.


I can play this game too.


Alien fetishists are a group of people who rush to conclusions based on seeing what they'd like to see because they're too uneducated to understand that analyzing ancient things from a modern perspective is an innately flawed endeavor. They make things up and rely on faith and construct their own elaborate mythology that is no different than religious idealism, only rather than be based around ancient stories, it's based around stories from Weird Stories and other pulp publications.



Gee! This is fun!
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Rocket Surgeon said:
Talking to the animals Dr?

Oh you had to go there!;)

What that reads like to me?

Spaceman Stu is being primed to take over for that clown Ronald McDonald who is responsible for the systematic increase in obesity in children and the covering up the global child abuse comitted by clowns.

Blaming the Pope for "covering up systematic abuse" is like blaming Ronald McDonald when you get a bad cheeseburger, and bad political science to boot.

Well before he was elected pope, he was the Vatican's top enforcer (he was given the nickname "God's Rottweiler"). There have been some dirty cover-ups, and some terrible revelations. Priests get moved around so they avoid coming to justice. It's not an attack on anyone's faith in God, but rather an attack on the intermediaries who set themselve between the faithful and their God. To top it all he came out and called the atheists of Britain fascists. I won't bring his membership of the Hitler Jugend into the argument as I don't know whether he volunteered or was forced, but the Catholic church had a little bit of history with fascist dictators.

As for Ronald McDonald, it's easy to confuse him with Stephen King's child molesting It. All clowns are creepy! (n)
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Montana Smith said:
Faith is a terrifying and irrational concept by definition.
People who prefer their religious beliefs over scientific concepts often argue that science isn't infallible. And they're right, it isn't. But what they fail to grasp is the fact that every known scientific law, fact or commonly accepted theory is already far better explanation for the existence of different phenomena than anything religion has ever come up with.

When science errs, it's not really a point for religion. All we have is what is already a good explanation being replaced by even better one.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Finn said:
People who prefer their religious beliefs over scientific concepts often argue that science isn't infallible. And they're right, it isn't. But what they fail to grasp is the fact that every known scientific law, fact or commonly accepted theory is already far better explanation for the existence of different phenomena than anything religion has ever come up with.

When science errs, it's not really a point for religion. All we have is what is already a good explanation being replaced by even better one.

Certainly.

I often think it would be a comfort to have faith, but to fall into its arms would be turning my back on reality, however bleak it might look at times. I'm fully aware that scientists aren't immune from mis-representing themselves for personal gain, but at least they deal with information that can be put to the test, as opposed to priests and pastors who can interpret religious books as they see fit. I was brought up a Christian, because my parents had been. But I didn't like what I saw, or how the faithful acted. Through personal circumstances my parents drifted away from it. I had already begun to question and disbelieve, and now my parents no longer believe.

There are so many man-made obstacles between us and a supposed God (all the paraphenalia of organized religions, which in times past included Latin so that the average peasant would be reliant on the priest). And so many interpretations of God and what God stands for. And so much ill done in the name of God. When you question and unravel the mysteries, faith dissipates as the human machinations reveal themselves. Much of my lack of faith is derived from the study of history, sociology, and psychology, which Marx summed up neatly as religion being the opium of the people. Without firm evidence, and knowing that human motivations often revolve around power and greed, it would feel like a lie to give myself over to an abstract ideal which would blind me to all other possibilities.
 

Stoo

Well-known member
Matt deMille said:
What defines BS for me, at last in regards to false claims of alien contact, are a lot of subtleties. Now, before going further, I would like to say that, in making this point, I have to venture into my own experiences...

About my experiences: What I'd been through was traumatic. Devastating. Without going into all that, suffice it to say that to judge the BS-level of others is about judging their reaction to things, their sincerity,...
Since this thread primarily deals with the exposition of hoaxes, here are a couple of questions:

Why would someone be unable to speak about a supposed trip to Giza because of a bad experience they had there, yet provide more talk about multiple close encounters with living aliens? What could possibly be MORE TRAUMATIC than looking directly into the eye of an extra-terrestrial?:confused:

Of course, these questions have been raised only to discuss the "possibilities". It's up to the individual to do the research and draw their own conclusions...
 

Matt deMille

New member
Finn said:
People who prefer their religious beliefs over scientific concepts often argue that science isn't infallible. And they're right, it isn't. But what they fail to grasp is the fact that every known scientific law, fact or commonly accepted theory is already far better explanation for the existence of different phenomena than anything religion has ever come up with.

When science errs, it's not really a point for religion. All we have is what is already a good explanation being replaced by even better one.

Well said.

Maybe I've had bad luck when it comes to talking with scientists. If I'd met more who can present such a reasonable stance as this, I'd probably be a lot less bullheaded when it comes to criticizing the scientific establishment or talking about paranormal phenomena.

Stoo said:
Since this thread primarily deals with the exposition of hoaxes, here are a couple of questions:

Why would someone be unable to speak about a supposed trip to Giza because of a bad experience they had there, yet provide more talk about multiple close encounters with living aliens? What could possibly be MORE TRAUMATIC than looking directly into the eye of an extra-terrestrial?:confused:

Of course, these questions have been raised only to discuss the "possibilities". It's up to the individual to do the research and draw their own conclusions...

It's called human emotion. Something you and certain others around here seem to have in abundance, given your endless appetite for cheap-shots and insults. Your anger and frustration speaks volumes. Yes, insults: "supposed" trip indeed. Once again, you're operating with no evidence, and clearly trying to make it sound as though I'm lying.

Back to human emotion. In other words, it's personal. I've had 35 years to deal with the alien encounters. I've had only a few to deal with Egypt. Like a war veteran: He might get over the trauma of combat 20 years prior, but still get irrationally emotional over some guy on the street insulting him.

Emotions don't follow scientific law nor do they adhere, as Belloq said, to time schedules.
 
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