Klass

Okay, I’ve been cheating. Instead of starting Fabric of the Cosmos I’ve been slumming. But slumming in an entertaining way. On a whim last week, pacing around the library while my daughter was engaged in tower-building in the children’s playroom, I discovered a book on alien abductions written by Philip J. Klass. From my readings I know that Klass is a world-class debunker, so I’ve always avoided him as a wet blanket to my kreepy kooky delvings into the world of flying saucers. But this whole abduction business never sat well with me. Swallowing my pride (I’m always a tad bit embarrassed borrowing books on UFOs from the library – what’ll the press do to me when I’m running from President in 2024 and they get a hold of my library records!), I checked it out, and blazed through it in two days.

Then, last Monday, I borrowed a second Klass book, and was equally impressed. He fits my temperament. Let me explain.

I like reading about flying saucers for a coupla reasons. It’s nostalgic; I devoured these books as a kid as well as all those 1950s SF movies. It’s a little bit scary; sometimes I get even a little nervous about peering out the windows after reading such a book late at night. They give me ideas for short stories and bits and pieces of a hefty novel that’s been jelling like a bowl of forgotten molasses inside my hoppin’ skull. I’m also fond for some strange reason of America in the 50s, the craziness and the innocence all sealed up in some bizarre oil-water mixture, and I almost wished I lived back then. So these books bring me all these benefits which you’ll either nod in understanding or shake your head and mutter in your best Hank Hill voice, “Tha’ boy ain’t right.”

However … the far fringe of this UFO subculture really turns me off. I studied physics for two years in college with an aim to actually become a physicist; ever since a young boy I’ve been reading science books and encyclopedias and always did well in my -ology classes. Despite all my nutty mini-interests I do have a logical, rational basis to my personality (one reason I’ve stayed with my Catholicism and am fascinated with Aquinas, by the way). Some of the books I started to read in the field of Ufology I never finish because the authors come off as super kooks. And not in a fun way, but a dumb way.

This is why I think I’m currently hooked on Klass. He’s logical; he’s rational. He can destroy a famous UFO case in a couple of pages. The man applies – consider this! – the scientific method to the study of a flying saucer sighting. Even better, he’s a detective and wastes no time getting down to the bottom of things. And what makes his writing and his books even more enjoyable is that he cares little what the ufological establishment thinks of him and goes after its sacred cows – such as Stanton Friedman and Budd Hopkins – gleefully on the printed page as well as in person. With hard, concrete facts behind him, I feel he wins a lot more times than he loses. And he never really loses, because saucermen have not yet landed their crazy flying disks on the White House lawn.

The two books I’ve read in the past eight days are UFO Abductions – A Dangerous Game (1989) and UFOs Explained (1974). The first and chronologically later book thoroughly trashes the whole “abduction phenomenon” by destroying its cornerstone: hypnotic regression. I mean, helloooo! Hypnosis is not allowable in court. Inadmissible, simply because it has been proven to be unreliable. And abduction researchers such as Budd Hopkins, Dr. John Harder, and Dr. John Mack base all their research and all their conclusions on hypnotic regression of alleged abduction victims. Klass’ hypothesis, very much simplified here, is that the hypnotist leads the “victim” on, whether consciously or unconsciously.

UFOs Explained is a much longer, much more thorough book. Klass details through example how a potential UFO sighting should be investigated. He dissects more than two dozen cases, some famous and some not, and takes ’em apart piece by piece. Sightings, landings, radar contacts, alien encounters, multiple witness sightings, photographs, films, you name it, he can deconstruct it. And by “deconstruct it” I mean simply arrive at a logical, rational explanation for the UFO encounter that does not involved visitations from little green – or in UFO mythology, Grey – aliens.

Philip Klass spent his life as an engineer and journalist who wrote primarily for aeronautics magazines over the span of his career. In the mid-1960s he got drawn into the UFO game, and quickly developed into the ideal debunker – a researcher who focused on facts as opposed to wishful and lazy thinking. (More on his technique tomorrow.) He was a founding member of CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. I used to relieve long boring overnight shifts as a computer support analyst reading the organization’s quite entertaining website archives. I just found out that he died at the age of 85 back in August 2005, and felt a bit sad, because I would have liked to have known of him back then to properly acknowledge his passing.