Why The Old Guard Can't See

Why The Old Guard Can't See
By Ed Komarek
4/27/05
Copy and Distribute Freely
My Blog: http://exopolitics.blogspot.com/

Dr. Michael Salla has been having ongoing discussions with the old guard UFOlogists over their faith based approach to the investigation of UFO's. (-: http://www.exopolitics.org/Exo-Comment-28.htm It is my opinion the methods and methodologies used by old guard investigators are not so much flawed as they are specific to the collection and analysis of superficial data only. The old guard have faith that their superficial collection and analysis will ultimately one day solve the UFO/ET mystery. They have become so attached and emotionally invested in their outdated methods and models over time that they no longer can think clearly and rationally. This is not only a problem in our field but in all disciplines as well. As people age their emotions and thinking become fixed into static habitual patterns that are not able to adapt to incorporate new evidence as it become available. The new valuable evidence is either ignored completely as hogwash or heavily discounted

Let me give an example. I was raised in a family of early Ecologists. My father when he was a boy used to hang around and was mentored by taxonomists and collectors at the Chicago Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. During the depression he had to quit college and was lucky to find a job working for the Field Museum collecting small mammals in the Smokey Mountains. Later he came south and was mentored by Herb Stoddard who was a close friend of Aldo Leopold sometimes called the father of Ecology. Because my father was young he quickly grasped the principles of Ecology from Herb and other scientific friends. Herb himself was a collector and naturalist turned ecologist and lived on the plantation next to my family and was like a grandfather to me.

My father told me years later that try as he may, he could not convince his taxonomist mentors that Ecology was a new science. The taxonomists would say, "Show us a relationship it does not exist. If we can't touch it with our fingers, see it with our eyes or hear it with our ears it does not exist." The old guard taxonomists and collectors were important in their day because before Ecology could develop plant and animal species had to be collected and given names. Then the early ecologists could study the dynamics of how these species interact within each other to create habitats and ecosystems. Were the taxonomists methods and models wrong? No, they were not wrong but limited in scope and were not applicable to the larger field of Ecology. Because their thinking and emotions had become fixed they could not adapt their methods and models to a ever-changing perception of reality. They failed to understand that there were other tools in the tool chest that could be used to solve ecological problems. As far as I know it was only the collectors that became Ecologists.

The emerging field of Exopolitics is similar to the field of Ecology in that both emerged out of older more established fields. It is also similar in that it is the young who can better grasp the basics of the new emerging fields when mentored by a few older "mavericks", as my father used to call them. These heretics, which means free thinker in Greek, broke free of the fixed herd mentality of the old established paradigm Lucky for us today the heretics are not burned at stake but they still are ridiculed and disparaged by the old guard and their work suppressed.

Mainstream UFOlogists fail to understand that the methodologies of collection and analysis that they are using are analogous to that of taking a photograph. The photograph wether it is of a human being or that of a ocean surface mostly only records surface features. We can't understand a human being using just a camera that records only the surface of the person. We need a MRI or CAT SCAN to image the interior of the person and a psychologist to attempt to understanding the thinking and emotions of a person. In the ocean we use sonar to collect data in the interior of the ocean.

What I am getting at is that what most UFOlogists are doing is simply collecting surface features in a very broad sense all over the world. It is evident that there is a massive amount of UFO activity going on everywhere as anyone who has been investigating actively around their own neighborhood can tell you. Only a very small fraction of sightings or encounters get reported to a UFO reporting service. I have pointed out that in my own neighborhood when I had a active intelligence net operating I was getting a couple of reports a week within a fifty mile radius of my home. Its obvious something very big is going on right under the noses of all of us. That is about as far as most old guard UFOlogists are going to get. Dr. Salla is right, the old guards have a faith based approach to the UFO/ET problem and no amount of faith is going to solve the problem. What is needed now are new models and approaches to the analysis and collection of data because the old ones have failed to keep pace with the times.

Here is a interesting story. This was told to be by Jack a marine biologist and a good friend of mine. A biologist friend of his was doing research on octopuses. He had one in a tank and like any good scientist was meticulously going about doing experiments using little stakes in the tank to test the intelligence of the octopus. He became increasing frustrated when the octopus began to pull up and move his stakes around about the tank. The octopus was ruining his experiment. One time while he was becoming increasingly upset and frustrated with the behavior of the octopus he suddenly realized what was happening. To his amazement, the little critter was moving the stakes around to see what he would do! The octopus was testing his intelligence! His old methodologies had suddenly become obsolete with his changing perception of his relationship to the octopus.

Addendum: After having written the above I headed down to the coast to visit with my friend Jack. I hijacked his computer while he was busy around the marine lab. I found a email from an establishment UFO investigator in my email box. We proceed to get into a discussion, "grin" that further clarified my thoughts on the above matter. I would like to give him credit for his contribution to this paper but we both agreed to keep our personal correspondence confidential.

Later I had a long walk with Jack through the Saint Marks Wildlife Refuge in a area not far from where UFO's been chasing around the flounder fishermen late at night. Jack and I discussed the animosity between academics and or taxonomists in particular and the collectors that feed the taxonomists. It seems that the animosity originates from misunderstandings in the use of very different methodologies in their respective areas of expertise and the value assigned to the data being collected. I would suspect this to be a far reaching problem and effect other disciplines as well. This would include animosities in the intelligence community between the agent in the field and the analyst behind his computer at CIA headquarters. Sometimes the only way for the boss to make sense of the data is to get out in the field to see for himself what is going on. "Grin"

The taxonomists in the days of my father, used to work in the musty smelly basement of the Field Museum sorting and identifying preserved dead plants and animals and rarely got out in the field. Today I assume taxonomists work in offices behind their computer screens as do the academics and intelligence analysts. Today just as yesterday these in house people tend on average to maintain a air of snobbery and quiet disdain for the collector or agent on the ground who is out mucking around getting his or her hands dirty and in direct contact with the data. This direct contact with the data it is believed by the analyst or taxonomist to somehow taint the collector or agents objectivity. On the other hand the collector or agent believes that analyst or taxonomist is living in a ivory tower out of touch with the real world and is incapable of properly filtering the data that comes to his or her desk. This is a very dysfunctional situation. In the intelligence world this can lead to disaster and in the field of exopolitics it has stymied progress amongst mainstream investigators.

In the field of Exopolitics the mainstream investigator and data collector sitting behind his or her computer excludes in my opinion the most significant data from his or her data base that will lead to the resolution of the UFO enigma. These errors in judgment keep the old guard investigator stopped in their tracks and unable to proceed further, while the new guard moves ahead. While the old guard hold to their faith that their failing methodologies will eventually solve the UFO enigma the new guard penetrates the problem with new and various multiple methodologies adapted to the task and hand.

The old guard works to get better and better superficial pictures of the exterior of the enigma. They become increasing frustrated and disparage the new guard's more error prone flying by their seat of their pants methodologies. I don't see any problem with making errors except that people admit to errors and try to correct them. (See allegations make by Dr. Edgar Mitchell on Dr. Steven Greer's overreaching and apparent failure to make amends. Maybe the disagreement centers around just who is disclosure witness but Dr. Mitchell's feelings should be considered. I hope this dispute has been settled. http://www.rense.com/general10/mitch.htm ) Meanwhile the new guard gets on board the spacecraft and begin to negociate with the occupants. The old guard will think the new guard are nuts until the evidence becomes indisputable that some UFO are as Stanton Friedman is fond of saying, "are somebody else's spacecraft." It seems obvious that once a investigator realizes that some UFO"s are somebody else"s spacecraft the next step is to get invited on board for tea, as Jack says, providing the occupants are cordial and friendly and respect basic human rights.

I suspect all new fields that emerge out of older established fields or disciplines run into these very same problems that originate in the mind and the emotions of the participants. The experienced old guard become fixed and inflexible in their beliefs holding on to outdated methodologies that have worked in the past. The young with more open minds draw on the experience of the older generation but with more open minds move the field forward even though they are at times reckless.

As we ended our walk through the forest, Jack commented to me that all methodologies and disciplines are faith based. The problem seems to be that most people as they age become heavily invested, mentally and emotionally, in their beliefs and are unable to detach from methodologies that are not keeping up with our ever changing perceptions of reality.