From various reports, the Roswell Incident can be logically and evidently explained by the examination of the activities and test flights of weather balloons in Project Mogul. Project Mogul was a top-secret project aimed at developing constant level balloons carrying low-frequency microphones to detect Soviet (now Russia) nuclear activities. Test flights in Bethlehem, Penn. In April 1947 failed due to high winds, so the project was moved to New Mexico. In many ways was the debris found by Brazel similar to parts of the test balloons(1):
1. The smelly, smoky gray, rubber-like material found at the site is the same material as the neoprene balloons used in the project.
2. The strange shapes found on some pieces of the debris are the radar targets. The reason for the odd shapes is that a toy factory made them.
3. No weather balloons of the kind shown in the photo with General Ramey were available in Fort Worth at that time, because of the strange marking that was unique to Project Mogul. Therefore it was not possible to switch the “real debris”, if that’s what you call it, with the “fake debris”, or the weather balloon.
According to an official report issued by the Air Force in July of 1994 regarding the Roswell Incident (3), records showed no change in security or operations during the period when the accused “flying saucer” crashed near Roswell. The fact that UFO researchers themselves could not agree upon what really happened adds proof of the lack of evidence for arguments that are usually based on second-hand testimonies. In response to claims that accused the U.S. government of using death threats to prevent information from flowing into the public, the report simply stated that hundreds of people had been interviewed by the media about their “experiences” with the Roswell Incident. No one was hurt because they told the media their stories.
Pseudo-science TV shows such as “Unsolved Mysteries” love to use the Roswell Incident as a story. Many shows recreate what they thought happened in July, 1947, and makes it so that it is presented almost as a documentary on what really happened. The mass often takes in information on TV without really thinking or analyzing them. Popular shows such as “The X-files” and “Roswell” have also made the story of Roswell believable to the public with a mix of facts and fiction.
On a recent TV program, the Discovery Channel surprisingly showed some will to teach the public the difference between real science and pseudo-science. In an online article regarding the Roswell Incident, a brief conversation between a reporter and a military official was cited as an example of modern pseudo-science in work. The following excerpt was taken from that article (2):
At a recent press conference on Roswell, a reporter asked about Area 51. "Could you tell us anything about this myth of Area 51? What is Area 51, is there such a place?"
"Let me ask you a question," the Colonel replied. "If you are talking about Broom Lake, Nevada, ... is that what you're talking about?"
"I'm talking about the scene everybody remembers from the movie Independence Day," said the reporter. Colonel Haynes said, "There is a facility in Broom Lake, Nevada, ... I understand that there are classified things that go on there. And that's all I have to say about it."
The comment that the author of the article gave was that “not afraid to blend Hollywood fantasy with reality, believers point to answers like that as evidence of a government cover-up.” To explain for the claims of alien sightings in Roswell, the final report on Roswell release by the Pentagon cited high-altitude test dummies and injured crews from military plane crashes that were mistaken for aliens by locals. The conclusion of the article was that believers are so full of themselves that “an alleged photograph of the Roswell saucer crash, complete with alien bodies lying around, is still presented as serious proof even though the man who faked it cheerfully admitted it was a joke.”
Here’s a good example of one UFO researcher bashing another UFO researcher, in what seemed to be logic and scientific reasoning, but ultimately another claim with no concrete evidence. Stanton T. Friedman (5) describes fellow UFO researcher Kent Jeffrey’s approach as “…Don't bother me with the facts, my mind's made up; be enthusiastic and ready to put ones money where ones mouth is, but don't have the facts in hand first; don't bother finding out how security works; believe what one wants to believe. Do one's research by proclamation rather than investigation. Select from the data available to back up your conclusions, and ignore the facts that don't.” This at first seems like a perfectly good description of how science SHOULD NOT operate, but then Friedman contradicts himself by giving a series of unsupported claims and incorrect reasoning. Without direct physical evidence to back up his claim, Friedman says that government has the right to prevent public knowledge of some information, especially when they are confronted “with a vehicle having exotic flight capability” and they needed to know the answer to the question “What weapons did the aliens have?” Throughout his article, Friedman stresses the inconsistencies of testimonies by various witnesses and why they prove the existence of a crashed flying saucer in Roswell. The inconsistencies can also be used to “prove” that there simply does not exist enough sufficient and consistent evidence to validate the claim of an UFO crash in 1947.
There are plenty more examples of unsupported claims about what happened at Roswell. There are also unsupported claims about why there wasn’t a flying saucer involved. No matter which side one decides to be on, scientific approach is needed to create a plausible hypothesis.