Hi Eric & the HabZone

The Skeptical Inquirer has a very interesting piece on secret surveillance missions that are the back-bone of UFO reports throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s - even to present day I'd venture. The simple fact is that once such things are taken into account virtually all the best cases of UFOs-as-vehicles vanish. What's left are either regular phenomena that look odd to the viewer [Venus, the Moon, fireballs etc], or irregular phenomena unknown to the viewer [sprites etc].

Aside from such non-evidence for visiting ETIs, the UFO believers present us with abduction phenomena - in many ways indistinguishable from Fairie lore and related "supernatural" phenomena. A plausible, skeptical explanation for such is that it represents a little understood neural/mental event that some are susceptible to. No corroborating physical evidence has ever emerged and withstood skeptical scrutiny. To argue that abductions occur in the "etheric" realm - as some advocates have done - is to effectively admit that it's all intra-psychic events and not publically observable.

SO why bother airing such mental dross in a Space Sciences board?

Adam