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(More customer reviews)Philip Klass is fighting a battle he can never win. For all the claims to the contrary, UFOlogy is less an exercise in science or journalism than it is purely one of entertainment. After all, even the staunchest promoter of the "extraterrestrial hypothesis" must in the end admit that not a shred of real physical evidence exists to support it. UFOlogy is perhaps unique among disciplines in being based entirely on nothing more than personal testimony.
In this book, Klass delves into some of the more notable UFO cases of the 1970's--the Delphos sighting, which supposedly involved "unexplainable" traces from a UFO on the ground; the Coyne/Mansfield Army helicopter incident; the Travis Walton abduction claim; the New Zealand sighting that resulted in several minutes of filmed UFO footage. Klass painstakingly outlines the details of each case, notes the inevitable inconsistencies and discrepancies that undermine the interpretation of each as something otherworldly, and proposes and defends more reasonable mundane explanations. Almost without exception, his UFOlogist counterparts are clearly revealed for the (at minimum) highly credulous and (all too often) blatantly deceptive mythmongers they are. Klass also reviews the declassified CIA documents that some UFOlogists had used to claim that the government was hiding its own knowledge of UFOs, and makes it quite obvious that such a claim could only result from a hyperactive imagination or from willful deception.
Klass is not without foibles of his own. Some of his arguments are ad hoc, and one can occasionally find flaws in his logic. Still, it is difficult to come away from a reading of "UFOs: The Public Deceived" and not appreciate how outlandish the UFOlogist claims are by comparison--unless, of course, one has a fundamentalist's faith in the opposite view. The writing is straightforward and the book easy to read. Overall, a fine effort. Still, since UFOlogy has none of the attributes one might assign to a rational enterprise, what Klass is doing is essentially like arguing that "Titanic" was a terrible film. Which of the millions of believers are going to listen?
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This book appraises the widely held belief that the US government is engaged in a massive cover up of UFOs and an expose of media sensationalism and public gullibility.
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