Skeptic misses point behind UFO book

August 7, 2010 – By Leslie Kean (Special to msnbc.com)

Leslie Kean (ufosontherecord.com)

When I wrote my book about officially documented UFO reports, I fully expected the skeptics to react. That’s why I was careful to focus only on the very best evidence from the most credible sources in “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record.” Since 95 percent of all sightings are eventually identified, the book is concerned only with the remaining 5 percent — those UFO events that have been thoroughly investigated, involve multiple witnesses and ample data, but still cannot be explained.

That didn’t stop James Oberg, a space analyst for NBC News, from complaining that the book was based on a “questionable foundation.”

In the biographical note appended to his commentary, he notes that he spent 22 years at NASA’s Mission Control and has written books about space policy and exploration. But he neglects to inform readers of something UFO researchers already know all too well: that he is a founding fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI, formerly CSICOP), a group whose aim is to debunk UFOs and any other unexplained phenomena that challenge our familiar ways of thinking.

For many years, Oberg, while retaining his stance as an objective student of the UFO phenomenon, has been a consistently vocal skeptic. His long list of articles dealing with UFOs date from the 1970s and are posted on his website under the heading “space folklore,” which accurately sums up his attitude towards the subject. He may be qualified to serve as an unbiased, expert consultant on Russian or Chinese missile systems, but not on UFOs.