Not to pile on with a "me too" but I'd generally have to agree regarding the whole disclosure/exo thing. To my knowledge there seems to be a very good case for the idea that somewhere in the military industrial complex exists a collection of data--reports, photos, film, sensor data, etc. but beyond that it is far more speculative. I can appreciate the position that it would be great to have a responsible government sponsored reporting center or information clearing house but I just don't think it is remotely realistic in the current U.S political and intellectual climate. Even in the case of a forced hand, ie. motherships landing on the White House lawn, given the track record of the government on this issue it would seem questionable to take any disclosed info at face value. The United States government has, for the foreseeable future, lost all credibility with the people on the issue. They apparently can't be trusted to not juggle the climate and environmental impact stats so how can anyone conclude that they would even approach transparency on ufo data?
I think I can also understand why foreign officials would place such a high importance on having an official U.S. project on the issue but I wonder how much of this view is distorted by experience, both positive and negative, with their own governments. From my vantage it would seem more productive and realistic to get all the other countries to band together and start a cooperative and transparent information collection and sharing project. Creating a climate where everybody but the U.S. is involved would seem to bring far more leverage to the situation than sitting around waiting for the U.S. to start something. If these other countries are serious about this stuff it seems to me it would be trivial to start releasing official data in the same manner that Mexico recently released the FLIR footage. (even though it looks like that had a natural explanation the process of openly releasing the footage was progress) If we get seven members of the G8 openly publishing everything they have then we might make some real progress.
To reference Stan Friedman again I think the biggest first step in the right direction would be made through organized efforts to lower the laughter curtain for the scientific and technical classes and raise the level of informed public discussion. The subject needs to be made safe for scientists to think about and discuss openly among their peers and with the general public without fear of ridicule and reprisal. It seems obvious to me that one of the biggest problems with compartmentalizing all this stuff is that it inherently limits the pool of brainpower examining it and prevents cross-pollination of ideas.
There are certainly some important and serious-minded scientists out there that take the issue seriously but presently they seem to be restricted to hanging out in small cliques and publishing the odd paper here and there. I would imagine that there are more than a handful of serious scientists out there that would wet their pants if they could leave their day job and devote themselves to this subject full time.
It seems to me that scientists acting as private entities need to take control of the situation, organize, acquire their own gear, and begin to publish their findings in a completely open and transparent manner. There is far too much inertia behind the status quo to be sitting around waiting for government research grants. I think Grant Cameron makes a good point that you can't have just a "little bit" of disclosure and unless you can get a million people marching on Washington there ain't nothing gonna happen. Grants from wealthy private benefactors seem far more realistic to me.
If we want clean data and good answers it seems to me that we'll have to obtain them ourselves.
I think I can also understand why foreign officials would place such a high importance on having an official U.S. project on the issue but I wonder how much of this view is distorted by experience, both positive and negative, with their own governments. From my vantage it would seem more productive and realistic to get all the other countries to band together and start a cooperative and transparent information collection and sharing project. Creating a climate where everybody but the U.S. is involved would seem to bring far more leverage to the situation than sitting around waiting for the U.S. to start something. If these other countries are serious about this stuff it seems to me it would be trivial to start releasing official data in the same manner that Mexico recently released the FLIR footage. (even though it looks like that had a natural explanation the process of openly releasing the footage was progress) If we get seven members of the G8 openly publishing everything they have then we might make some real progress.
To reference Stan Friedman again I think the biggest first step in the right direction would be made through organized efforts to lower the laughter curtain for the scientific and technical classes and raise the level of informed public discussion. The subject needs to be made safe for scientists to think about and discuss openly among their peers and with the general public without fear of ridicule and reprisal. It seems obvious to me that one of the biggest problems with compartmentalizing all this stuff is that it inherently limits the pool of brainpower examining it and prevents cross-pollination of ideas.
There are certainly some important and serious-minded scientists out there that take the issue seriously but presently they seem to be restricted to hanging out in small cliques and publishing the odd paper here and there. I would imagine that there are more than a handful of serious scientists out there that would wet their pants if they could leave their day job and devote themselves to this subject full time.
It seems to me that scientists acting as private entities need to take control of the situation, organize, acquire their own gear, and begin to publish their findings in a completely open and transparent manner. There is far too much inertia behind the status quo to be sitting around waiting for government research grants. I think Grant Cameron makes a good point that you can't have just a "little bit" of disclosure and unless you can get a million people marching on Washington there ain't nothing gonna happen. Grants from wealthy private benefactors seem far more realistic to me.
If we want clean data and good answers it seems to me that we'll have to obtain them ourselves.
