I can't speak directly of the specific topic that the original writer of this posting was addressing, that is the issue of "imminent impact." But the real issue and of far greater importance than "imminent impact" or whether any or all of the callers to the Coast to Coast radio show are cranks (a term of judgment used to dismiss, without anything more, one person disagreeing with another) is for the 21rst century mind to immediately dismiss other persons experienes so quickly that the first thing they can do is call them "cranks".
The entire history of the human species, attempting to distance ourselves from the swamps that may or may not have spawned us, is that someone else has called someone else a crank. I can just imagine what it was like when the first person invented the wheel. There was somebody else saying something like: "why?" We're got lot's of folks to drag things around. Besides, there's no place to go, anyhow!" And so it goes throughout recorded history. How did we get to the Reformation, much less the Industrial Revolution given all the baggage we seem to carry?
Lister had an uphill battle to convince others there were such things as germs, because they couldn't see them. "Wash my hands before surgery...preposterous!" How many persons died of infections due to unclean surgical procedures, while medicine (at the time) laughed in the face of Lister's compelling arguments? How many persons died because they kept saying the earth was not the center of the Universe? Again, others couldn't see the truth. Centuries ago, others invented, for example, the electrical storage batteries, but in fact there were no practical applications for electricity, such as phones, washing machines, TVs or computers.
The one constant, however, is the capacity of the some of us human beings; when confronted with something new or different or something that doesn't "fit the mold" of our understanding of "reality" (a shared conversation, which falls apart with lack of agreement, thus reality is subject to change, witness the end of slavery) to discredit the person(s) seeking to introduce the new idea as well as the idea itself. There is a pull in each direction...forward and back to the swamp. And just because we've put a man on the moon, looked back to the dawn of time through the hubble scope, mapped the DNA of the human being or replaced articificial flavoring in all the strawberry icecream on the planet, we humans often think and react like our less scientific ancestors.
And it has nothing to do with science and its own inherent regidity at all. It it is more a matter of humans, just being humans. I believe you will see some historic evidence, before the advent of the "scientific method" of regidity of the human thought process. However, science -- likened to our new gods, has offered a religion of its own -- dare challenge its foundation, methodology, belief that science IS the ONLY way to find the truth -- and you will find your self confronting a modern inquisition. Yes, persons with PHD's from the world's best centers of learning, when threatened with some piece of evidence, some fact that just doesn't fit "the" present, accepted understanding of "truth" is likely to strike back just as severly as the best the Inquistion had to offer.
They often strike back without even examining the new premiss or evidence, because it is easier to attack. You know, the primitive "flight or flight" response. I did say that we really haven't evolved as much as we think. That doesn't mean that just because an idea or thought is "new", it is worthy of being adapted or embraced. I'm just addressing the phenomenon of "knee Jerk" reactions to "the new" without even looking at the evidence. To quote the former mayor of Chicago, during the '60's, Richard J. Daley, who responed to each reporter's questions about alleged scandals in his administration with the famous: "It's easy to criticize." Look, you really don't want to be identified with that type of thinking to more complicated problems, do you?
Let us look at the issue of "alien abductions" or the "Roswell" incident of 1947. I am a retired Prosecuting Attorney -- a lawyer, trained to examine things thoroughly and leave no stone unturned. And for me, something does not pass my own personal standards until it is proved "beyond a reasonable doubt." Having said that, there is something in the law of evidence, which is provided to every jury and to every judge making a decision in a criminal case, about "circumstantial evidence". Essentially, that is one established fact, from which another conclusion is permissible and from which a decision or verdict can safely be reached.
Science has similiar laws, too. Nobody really can "see" stars moving away from us, but through the Doppler Shift, knowing what we do about the speed of light, etc., we can say with a degree of certainty -- beyond a reasonable doubt -- how far a certain star is and how many light years away it is, whether it is like our sun or a red giant and when it exploded...simply leaving a trace of its existence...because we can't see it anymore. It's gone, long gone..but we can see "it's fingerprint" so to say.
There are criminals sitting in our prisons today, for every crime in the book...murder, where the body has not been found...the most extreme type of circumstantial evidence case one can imagine...where proof of one's guilt has in a number of cases, been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. And the witnesses to many of these crimes are as middle and upper middle class and educated and intelligent and competent as one could possibly hope for. And as I said, others are sitting in prison based on their sworn testimony...that which they directly observed/experienced with any of their five senses...and the reasonable conclusions drawn from those facts.
Yet, here are competent pilots, police officers, civilians from all walks of life, who have claimed to have either witnessed UFO's flying next to their jets, seeing them hover just ahead of them on the road or being taken aboard alien crafts. Yet others mock their claims without seeking to look into the evidence. The same thing is true with the Roswell crash incident. If there isn't enough circumstantial evidence to have someone else begin to at least "suspect" a government coverup (as if those "never, ever happen in the history of human governments - even for the most benign of reasons) much less a real crash with real aliens...then we ought to abolish the laws of circumstantial evidence.
Circumstantial evidence is a valid concept in law, flowing naturally from what we know about human perception, human reasoning and human experience. One established fact can prove another, just like the distance of a long, dead star from the observor. For example, science tells us there are more stars out there than grains of sand on the beach. That's a lot of stars. but the only planet with life, is the Earth! Forget the math or the odds if only 0.001 percent of all the stars had a planetary system with a sun and earth situated...well, you know the rest of the premiss.
Of course, we're the center of the Universe and the only planet with life is ours and if there is life, the distances are so enormous, they couldn't possibly get here. If they are "out there" why don't they reveal themselves to us? Say, doesn a good researcher let the deer know they're being watched? Furthermore, wasn't the earth flat at one time and didn't others ask: "how would we even get there and why would we even want to go?"
Now we've gone beyond paddling to nuclear submarines. We've gone beyond walking to proposed manned flights to Mars. And some quantum physicists are trying to tell us about a precusor to time travel, that is "a particle arrived before it was sent?" Can you believe that? Naw, I can't, except for one thing. If you accept certain concepts of mathamatics, it seems that time travel is "mathamatically possible." A guest, a scientist, on Coast to Coast the other night has done significant research on time travel. All one needs to do is review that research and seek to replicate his work and his experiments. Isn't that what the scientific method is all about, rather than "knee-jerk" reactions based upon fear of the unknown or have someone else call him a crank?
The frustrating point of hearing all the criticism about shows like Coast to Coast is that, there just may be a lot of documented, well-researched "truth" out there. It is being presented by any number of the guests. Other information is presented based upon less research, but upon personal experiences. I submit that they are discussing the greater depth of the human experience, but all to often, the greater expanse of our greater potential is being lost to the cat calls of those who either haven't experienced the same things as some of the callers or who refuse, in the face of documented research...refuse to objectively review that research. And we call ourselves modern man? How did we ever land on the moon?
How did we ever build the Hubble and get it into orbit or send a sub to the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean? How did we ever eradicate small pox and end the summer time polio epidemics that crippled so many children? We got there, we did it and we have have done more, much more. The answer to the question: "how did we overcome the human tendency to want to hide in our caves?" is exactly because we are human! Against the impulse to stay cozy in the swamp-like, warm waters in the worm of our birth, we've taken risks and reached for the stars.