Good to know... I am going to try and delve deeper and do more research, but I've found the internet to not be a very good source of reliable information (outside of these forums of course, where we actually have a chance to interact with one another), so, I would guess that good old fashioned research, i.e, going to a library to actually READ would probably be a better idea. The more recent Stephensville, TX incident comes to mind, in which case a reporter lost her job after writing that a witness was being harassed by a military officer working at the nearby base. I wont bother posting any more wiki links since I cant ascertain their reliability one way or another, but I did find it useful when I looked up "the disclosure project," which was hyperlinked on another article, that it does include a few prominent scientists, as does the info under the article for the "extraterrestrial hypothesis" or "ETH," but, according to the various polls, its a very small minority in the scientific community that believe in the UFO phenomenon; I think its something like 3-4%, even though that constituency contains some prominent members.


Reading through the different cases of UFO phenomenon (what limited reading I have done), makes it obvious to me that at least 95% of it is the result of confusion, misidentification or outright hoax. But bothers me is the other 5% which I cant find an explanation for... but of course, there's always the possibility that some natural phenomenon is at work that we havent identified. Another thing that bothers me is how much of this is classified information, the reluctance of the government to release it, and when they do release it under the freedom of information act, large parts of the documentation seemed to be blacked out. I've also heard (via TV news, some internet news) that the french government has publicly released its ufo files as the brazilian and argentinian government have done, and although I havent personally read what its in those files (Im sure they can be located online), others who have say that those governments are inclined to believe in the existence of ufo phenomenon as ETH. I wonder why the US Government and the British Ministry of Defense (MoD) have not been completely forthright and still hold back much classified information and what they do release, as stated above, has large quantities of blacked out data. It could be that there are sensitive military projects at stake here, but until we have more forthrightedness from our own government, at least to the level the French and Argentinians have done... we are always going to have a level of uncertainty.


BTW, the same polls I have quoted above state that about 85% of the American public believe that their government is lying to them about what UFOs are. Thats not saying they believe the ETH explanation, just that their own government is hiding something. And with how the US Govt has flipflopped so many times about Roswell, the Zamora incident, and had denied the very existence of Area 51 for decades... not to mention more "mundane" projects, like Echelon, DARPA and even the wiretapping scandal of the Bush Administration-- can anyone blame them for having mistrust in their own government? I'd like to think of myself as a logical, intelligent and (hopefully) unbiased person, but I do believe that no matter how good intentions are-- power corrupts. And I think, over the last 60 years (maybe longer) we've seen that, in the name of national security or military advantage, or whatever they want to say are, to some extent at least, just excuses to let power remain unchecked at certain levels of our government that we dont directly elect (and some that we do that chose to hide their improper behavior.) Whether the ETH phenomenon is real or not, the fact is that our government has lied to us in the past and continues to lie to us on a whole range of issues... whether its for national security or its just an excuse for improper behavior, how are we to know? I remember how a group of librarians in NH were harassed by the FBI a couple of years ago and wouldnt given in when their agents were demanding personal information on their patrons, what kind of books they read, etc. I just have the unsettling feeling that in the desire to make democracy more secure, we are actually destroying that which we cherish most... and we are letting them do it. It may not seem like this has anything to do with the veracity of the ETH phenomenon, but it does, because the government's lack of honesty is what's central to this whole issue.