You’d think everyone would be over the UFO nonsense by now

Like Bigfoot sightings, UFO sightings have been in decline…coincidentally, just as video cameras in our phones become ubiquitous. Unfortunately, that just means that the people who still believe have become even more obstinate and resistant to evidence, and the bizarre conspiracy theories and unlikely excuses get even weirder. All that means, though, is that the market has become even more hardcore, and has been distilled down to the most gullible. And that means money. The History Channel is there to rake in the loot.

Jason Colavito reviews the History Channel’s latest descent into ahistorical garbage, Project Bluebook. It stars Aiden Gillen as J. Allen Hynek — Gillen is better known as Littlefinger on Game of Thrones, which ought to be your first warning that no one is to be trusted in this ‘documentary’. You’ll also wonder where Arya Stark is when you need her.

I watched part of the first episode, The Fuller Dogfight. This is better known in UFO lore as the Gorman ‘dogfight’, after the pilot who took part in it, and I have no idea why they changed the name, unless it’s just to make it difficult to look up the facts.

Here’s a reasonably objective account of the event.

One of the early “classics” of UFO history involved Lieutenant George F. Gorman of the North Dakota Air National Guard, who said he had a twenty-seven minute “dogfight” with a UFO in the skies over Fargo.

He was on a routine cross-country flight in 1948, when he spotted an odd light in the sky at night.

Gorman informed the tower that he was going to investigate the other aircraft and pulled his F-51 up and out toward the moving light. He closed to within about l,000 yards and took a good look at the object.

“It was about six to eight inches in diameter, clear white, and completely round without fuzz at the edges [i.e., sharp and clear],” he said. “It was blinking on and off. As I approached, however, the light suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank. I thought it was making a pass at the tower.

“I dived after it and brought my manifold pressure up to sixty inches but I couldn’t catch up with the thing. It started gaining altitude and again made a left bank,” Gorman said. “I put my F-51 into a sharp turn and tried to cut the light off in its turn. By then we were at about 7,000 feet. Suddenly it made a sharp right turn and we headed straight at each other. Just when we were about to collide, I guess I got scared. I went into a dive and the light passed over my canopy at about 500 feet. Then, it made a left circle about l,000 feet above, and I gave chase again.”

Gorman said he cut sharply toward the light, which was once more coming at him. When collision again seemed imminent, the object shot straight up into the air in a steep climb-out, disappearing overhead. Gorman again attempted to pursue it but his plane went into a power stall at about 14,000 feet, and the object was not seen again. It was then 9:27 P.M.

Gorman was so shaken by the encounter that he had difficulty handing his plane, although he was a veteran pilot and a flying instructor during World War II. He had noticed no sound, odor, or exhaust trail from the object during the “dogfight,” and no deviation on his instruments. At times during the chase, he had pushed the F-51 to full power, sometimes reaching 400 mph. He described the object as round and somewhat flattened.

So…a small light in the distance, he couldn’t close with it despite chasing it, and then it disappeared. That sounds like an optical illusion to me, where he was somewhat disoriented and a poor judge of distances and size. The Air Force says it was a weather balloon, which would be significantly larger than 6-8 inches in diameter (which is also a bit on the small side for an alien spacecraft).

If you watch the History Channel BS, though, it’s remarkably dramatized. It’s a largish ball of light zooming around, and…Gorman opens fire on it. And the UFO fires back. That’s when I gave up. Nothing in any of the prior accounts claims that they exchanged gun fire — it’s a bit of excitement that the History Channel added. It doesn’t even make sense that an Air National Guard plane on a simple cross-country training flight would be carrying ammunition in peace time, firing guns over a city like Fargo would get him disciplined severely, and and getting shot at and hit by a UFO would leave physical evidence that no one has described before.

It’s not much of a story in the first place, but the History Channel just had to polish that turd.

In case you’re still wondering how absurd nonsense like this persists, it’s because there are cheap exploitive television networks that still promote it to credulous viewers. Colavito points out that it is bad television, wooden and boring, but even that doesn’t seem to matter. The gullible will steal eat it up.

Next mystery: was Aiden Gillen’s career also murdered when Arya Stark slit his character’s throat? Why is he stooping to such low quality trash as History Channel fakeumentaries now?

How hard is it to get your garbage paper published?

Not very. The problem is that while the majority of science journals are legit and at least try to be honest, there are some that simply rubber-stamp submissions…and then charge a fee, of course.

Experts debate how many journals falsely claim to engage in peer review. Cabells, an analytics firm in Texas, has compiled a blacklist of those which it believes are guilty. According to Kathleen Berryman, who is in charge of this list, the firm employs 65 criteria to determine whether a journal should go on it—though she is reluctant to go into details. Cabells’ list now totals around 8,700 journals, up from a bit over 4,000 a year ago. Another list, which grew to around 12,000 journals, was compiled until recently by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado. Using Mr Beall’s list, Bo-Christer Björk, an information scientist at the Hanken School of Economics, in Helsinki, estimates that the number of articles published in questionable journals has ballooned from about 53,000 a year in 2010 to more than 400,000 today. He estimates that 6% of academic papers by researchers in America appear in such journals.

If 6% of papers in shoddy journals is 400,000 papers, that implies that almost 7 million papers are published each year. No wonder I can’t keep up. But still, 6% is a fairly low percentage, and as the article says, there are tools to evaluate journals. Cabell’s blacklist seems to require payment to access — and a rather hefty payment at that — so it’s only going to be accessible if you have an institutional subscription. Anyone can browse Beall’s list of predatory journals. All of these lists have pitfalls, some of them discussed in this review of Cabell’s.

Both sides profit from these unscrupulous journals — the publishers get money, and the academics get to pad their CVs, and you’re punished if you point that out.

But one academic has been prepared to stick his neck out and investigate his own institution. Last year Derek Pyne, an economist at Thompson Rivers University’s business school, in British Columbia, published a paper in the Journal of Scholarly Publishing, itself published by the University of Toronto Press. In it, he reported that many of the business school’s administrators, and most of its economics and business faculty with research responsibilities, had published in journals on Mr Beall’s blacklist. Dr Pyne also claimed that these papers seemed to further their authors’ careers. Of the professors who had published in the blacklisted journals, 56% had subsequently won at least one research award from the school. All ten instructors promoted to full professor during the study period had published in a journal on Mr Beall’s list.

By the way, Beall of Beall’s blacklist faced all kinds of pressure to stop, and the list is now maintained by someone who demands anonymity; Pyne also got in trouble.

Subsequently, Dr Pyne told school officials that an administrator up for promotion had published widely in blacklisted journals. This earned Dr Pyne an e-mail from the university’s human-resources department on June 15th, threatening him with disciplinary action for “defamatory language and accusations”. When asked, the university declined to comment.

So, apparently, if you’ve got a goofy pile of crap you want published as peer-reviewed science, there’s somebody somewhere who will oblige you. That makes an ‘experiment’ in which someone wants to discredit an entire academic field by getting garbage papers published somewhere rather pointless and inconclusive, don’t you think? You have to wonder what kind of twit would consider such an exercise meaningful.

Help Vyckie Garrison

Vyckie Garrison is an awesome person who managed to extract herself from the Quiverfull movement — that ghastly Christian cult that insisted that women must be continuously pregnant in order to spawn hordes of children. She got out of that, remarried, and then discovered that her new husband was an abusive, controlling, and gaslighting slimeball. If you’ve ever wondered why she wasn’t writing for the blog she founded, No Longer Quivering, it’s because her husband made her give it up, and give up her writing career in general, to increase her dependency on him. There are other ugly details that I won’t share here. She has once again fled an untenable situation, hastily packing up a few belongings and her family while he was off at work, and driving off to an undisclosed location. Her family was broken up while she is in hiding, as well.

Now she’s desperate and alone. If you can, make a donation to help her out.

The Aryan Race is unhappy that James Watson has been exposed

Oh, look. The “race realist/scientific racist/just plain racist” gang is very upset that James Watson’s reputation has been besmirched. Errm, further besmirched. Um, OK, blackened to scorched ashes.

Let’s take this apart for the fun of it, shall we?

Brilliant DNA pioneer

True. It’s a good idea to use a bit of reality as a jumping off point for your swan dive into fantasy. But yes, Watson is an incredibly smart guy who accomplished a significant piece of work in the 1950s. That is not, however, incompatible with the fact that he’s also a delusional egomaniac bristling with lots of other bad ideas.

to be wiped from history books

False. We don’t throw away significant data or past scientific contributions. Watson and Crick will still be mentioned. Their famous Nature paper will still be cited. You know, one of the most famous developmental biologists of the last century was Hans Spemann, who was a literal Nazi supporter, and we still discuss his science. Watson will remain in the history books, it’s just that after “co-discoverer of DNA structure”, we’ll also add “and notorious racist”. See? More words, not fewer!

bcuz he said IQ differences exist between races

True. He said that. But he went further to make the unfounded claim that the causes were genetic. It’s that overreach (and also his unapologetic misogyny and racist contempt for non-white people) that led to the loss of honors conferred on him.

& he was very sad about that fact.

No, not particularly. He was pretty gleeful about the superiority of his race when I talked to him. He said stuff about how he was regretful that other races were inferior, but that’s about as sincere and persuasive as me saying that I am so sad that Lana Lokteff has her head stuck up her ass. We all know I’m not sad at all.

Cultural Marxist quacks hijacked his work,

When I see someone talking about “Cultural Marxist”, they have just confirmed that they do, indeed, have their head stuck up their ass. “Cultural Marxism” is a fiction.

But no, that’s false, no one has “hijacked” his work. The worthwhile stuff was all published and made freely available to the world. Everyone gets to use the information about DNA. And further, there has been so much work done to further illuminate the structure and function of DNA by others that it’s not really about him anymore.

stab him in the back.

We’ve known about Watson’s distorted and self-serving view of his history since the 1960s, when he laid bare his selfish little soul in The Double Helix. Everyone just said, “That’s Jim”, and let him babble on. Honor after honor was piled on, in spite of the fact that virtually everyone who worked with him knew he was a petty little shit on the subject of race and gender. He got old, rich, and famous. He only finally got slapped down when he made a lecture tour where he rambled about how melanin made black men into horny rape-monsters, which he illustrated with slides of women in bikinis, and declared that Africa was hopeless because everyone there had an IQ below 80. Finally Cold Spring Harbor stepped in because he was embarrassing the institution. The latest motion to strip of him of even his honorary titles was made because he reneged on his promises to stop dragging CSH’s name through the mud (they have a lot to make up for as a center of the eugenics movement in the first half of the last century, so they’re sensitive on this subject).

Rather than being stabbed in the back, I see a recalcitrant old man who was treated with kid gloves for over half a century, by an institution that only reluctantly rescinded his welcome when his petulant, nasty act became too much to bear.

It’s only correct ‘science’ if it is anti-White

Modern science sans Watson is not anti-White, except in the sense that “White” is not a valid scientific construct to be taken seriously. The study of human genetics is not well served by pandering to the hateful notion that some humans aren’t human at all.

I hope I live to be 90 before all of my sins catch up to me

James Watson, 90, has had all of his honors from Cold Spring Harbor revoked. It turns out that documentary on PBS had quite an impact.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) unequivocally rejects the unsubstantiated and reckless personal opinions Dr. James D. Watson expressed on the subject of ethnicity and genetics during the PBS documentary “American Masters: Decoding Watson” that aired January 2, 2019. Dr. Watson’s statements are reprehensible, unsupported by science, and in no way represent the views of CSHL, its trustees, faculty, staff, or students. The Laboratory condemns the misuse of science to justify prejudice.

When Dr. Watson expressed offensive views in 2007, CSHL’s Board of Trustees took immediate action to relieve him of all administrative duties at the Laboratory and terminated his status as Chancellor. Dr. Watson has not been involved in the leadership or management of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for more than a decade and he has no further roles or responsibilities at CSHL. In response to his most recent statements, which effectively reverse the written apology and retraction Dr. Watson made in 2007, the Laboratory has taken additional steps, including revoking his honorary titles of Chancellor Emeritus, Oliver R. Grace Professor Emeritus, and Honorary Trustee.

Lucky Jim’s luck has run out at last.

Goofus and Gallant

I remember these little cartoons from when I was a kid, which tells you how old they are, but my kids also read them. They were staples of the magazines in pediatrician’s offices (they might still be, I don’t know). It was a simple concept, a series of panels in which two kids were faced with a situation, and Gallant would respond in a good way, while Goofus would screw it up even worse. It plays out in real life, too!

Earyn McGee is a grad student at the University of Arizona. One of the fun things she does on Twitter is post photos under the hashtag #FindThatLizard, and then post the answer later, under the hashtag #FoundThatLizard. That’s the game. She has some simple rules, like this:

Well, a well-known science blogger found that photo, and appropriated it, and put up a post saying “Spot the Lizards!”. Without linking to the original. Or naming the author. Saying he’d name her later, after everyone had played the game on his blog. But…but…that’s just the game on her twitter feed. No one needed his blog to enjoy the idea, and he added absolutely nothing to the game.

So let’s play Goofus and Gallant.

Gallant:

Here’s McGee’s response. It’s a gracious acknowledgment of appreciation, and a polite request that he not undermine her efforts.

Wow. I’m never that nice. But that’s a classic Gallant reaction.

Now watch how a Goofus can take a bad situation and make it even worse.

Goofus:

This is how a Goofus reacts, by blaming everyone else.

Umm. . . I SAID I’d give the tweet in the reveal post at noon, which I did and which shows who posted the picture. You should know better than to chastise me before you know all the facts. Shame on you. I will accept an apology.

UPDATE: Apparently a Twitter mob was sic’ed on me by people who didn’t even read my post, which said this: “Can you spot both? I’m not giving the original tweet, as it contains the answer, but I will in the reveal at noon Chicago time.”

Credit was of course given; I withheld the source for a few hours so people could guess without looking at the answer in the subsequent tweet.

The Twitter outrage mob didn’t read the original post (this seems to be common), and piled on without doing so. I’d say they all owe me an apology, but of course I expect none. That’s the way outrage culture works. Even if you err, you never apologize.

Wow (that’s a bad wow, if you can’t guess). That he announced that he was subverting McGee’s game ahead of time and would eventually reveal the creator does not change the fact that he was basically stealing attention from a grad student. Then to demand an apology? Hoo boy.

But then he updates to chastise people, calling them a “twitter mob”, for not reading his blog post, as if that were the star around which everyone is supposed to orbit, and demands that everyone apologize to him.

Jebus. That’s too extreme a difference for even a Goofus and Gallant cartoon. No one would believe that Goofus could be that petty in Highlights for Children. But then, the creator apparently didn’t know Jerry Coyne.

By the way, Gallants who use Twitter might do well to follow Earyn McGee.

I know how to fix the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “problem”!

You may have seen the tedious Politico article which fished up criticisms of AOC from her fellow democrats for making waves — most of these democrats haven’t made so much as a ripple, so their envy and resentment were understandable. I think this rebuttal was spot on, though.

But how do we end the whiny nobody problem? The Democratic party is full of status quo whimperers.

There is only one solution: we need to elect a few hundred of the kinds of prospective politicians who are inspired by and model their efforts after Ocasio-Cortez. I don’t necessarily want to elect her to the presidency, but a Democratic party that had discarded its apathetic weasels and was populated by an army of AOC types would finally give us a choice. Make her the rule rather than the exception.

If ever you doubted the existence of media bias…

Say “motherfucker” once, and the media melts down; but when a representative announces his allegiance to racist white supremacy, it’s business as usual.

I tried to rationalize this. Maybe “motherfucker” is more sound-bitey? But it’s also kind of generic, and lots of people have said far worse about various politicians. And you would think that a politician openly embracing a racist ideology would be far more newsworthy and would inspire a lot more discussion than a profanity, about which you really can’t say a whole lot.

I think it means the media, and our country, takes racism for granted. Add to that fact that Rashida Tlaib’s exclamation was an opportunity to exercise that racism by bashing a brown woman, and I think we’ve got the root cause of the discrepancy thoroughly covered.