Leslie Kean & Peter Skafish Sol Foundation Talk

[Giddierone]

Journalist UFO writer Leslie Kean talks with Peter Skafish ED of Sol Foundation about the role of academia in UAP studies. Here are a few moments of interest and apparent contradiction.

[Note I use "aliens" instead of "NHI" because it's more straightforward]

4:20 Sol is defined as a "hybrid academic & policy institute looking to private sector for partnerships".

5:15 PS we want to come back to a position where we are "sober about evidence".

5:57 LK Question about what you think disclosure looks like - PS "I think we [Sol] need to work towards formulating something like a policy proposal about disclosure".

6:50 Various academics should work to "verify what they know" (but what do they know? Also, doesn't specify, speaks in generalities).

It appears that "disclosure" is not so much confirmation of aliens but just transparency about what various government intelligences know, (issue: security conflicts with transparency / public right to know).

10:35 PS "we don't know why this is a secret" - by "this" he seems to be assuming aliens. But, what if it's not one paradigm shifting thing, rather a number of prosaic things?

11:40 LK Aliens might be in control of everything? PS doesn't want to comment.

12:50 PS we don't have enough "analysable facts" to answer that question (about aliens being in control).

15:00 PS anthropologists hear different (ontologies) ways of seeing the world in different cultures.

1850 LK is there communication with aliens?

22:00 PS invokes the idea of "targeted individuals" and UFO "displays".

24:00 LK Raises "Experiencers" as source of data, from "very credible people".

29:33 LK says there's physical medical evidence "actual data" from close encounters (alien abduction). PS "I've struggled to find…if there is any good medical data on that…it's not something you'll find in medical journals."

Dr. Peter Skafish with Leslie Kean, "The Relational Communicative Problem of UAP"

Source: https://youtu.be/QDIuytBvDww?si=q80gYyOCg6JIdzre

 

[jarlrmai]

So basically wild unevidenced claims have a PR problem

 

[Giddierone]

Yeah, I continue to be puzzled about their purpose. It seems such a canard that UFO stigma is limiting/hindering academic study when plenty of kooky stuff is studied academically.

 

[JMartJr]

5:15 PS we want to come back to a position where we are "sober about evidence".

Can't argue with THAT.

5:57 LK Question about what you think disclosure looks like - PS "I think we [Sol] need to work towards formulating something like a policy proposal about disclosure".

6:50 Various academics should work to "verify what they know" (but what do they know? Also, doesn't specify, speaks in generalities).

It appears that "disclosure" is not so much confirmation of aliens but just transparency about what various government intelligences know, (issue: security conflicts with transparency / public right to know).

I don't want to repeat myself every time the opportunity arises (perhaps I can limit myself to every third or fout=rth time! ^_^), but maybe it is worth getting into the discussion in multiple threads for visitors who don't read every single post here:

I'd agree strongly with that last line: disclosure is not just confirming aliens, it's being transparent about what we know. And I'll point out that this has already happened, repeatedly. We had the disclosure of the Blue Book files, disclosure of the Condon Committee report, disclosure of the CIA files -- and in every case, what was disclosed amounted to "Sorry, there's nothing here that says Aliens."

More recently, we've seen congressional hearings where UFO believers and Big UFO entrepreneurs who make money off of this, folks who said they had the goods and wanted disclosure, were invited to come in and tell what they know. They disclosed nothing proving their claims, a sort of negative example of disclosure amounting to "there is nothing here."

Then there is the AARO report which looked into cases and disclosed -- again -- that there are a lot of UAP reported and none of them were found to be Aliens.

That is not the answer that UFO believers and Big UFO want, but at some point it becomes clear that this is the answer that exists.

 

[Giddierone]

Big UFO

That's a great term. We need to take down 'Big UFO'!...

Also, I think it speaks to the matter more clearly by using UFO instead of UAP. Those woke euphemistic terms—NHI, transdimensional blahdyblahs etc—are such a massive own goal for those looking to end the stigma surrounding the topic. They should have stuck with the language that everyone knows—UFOs and Aliens—because it clearly refers the the same thing.

Budd Hopkins (UFO abduction researcher, and former partner of Leslie Kean) said it best in his 1987 book Intruders (p.84) [emphasis added]:

In the speculative paragraph above I used the word "alien" to describe
the UFO phenomenon for a very precise reason. The word "alien" defines
negatively; it says what something is not, rather than what it is. It means,
basically, "other than," foreign, diflferent. Whatever the nature and origin
of the gray-skinned UFO occupants—and there are many exotic theories
—they are not us. They are not short humans, like midgets, dwarfs, or the
members of certain African tribes. They are physically, culturally and
technologically different from us, alien. They have been called angels,
demons, robots, space-travellers from another solar system, "ultra-dimen-
sionals," "time-travellers" and so on, but there is one essential fact—they
are not us. They are alien.

 

[MapperGuy]

Whenever these people start talking about Disclosure they always seem to be talking as if THEY would be in charge of it all. Not the governments, or even maybe the ALIENS who just showed up. No, this group needs to develop a policy about disclosure because the governments of the world (and the aliens) would ask this group to be in charge of everything?

Yeah, I continue to be puzzled about their purpose. It seems such a canard that UFO stigma is limiting/hindering academic study when plenty of kooky stuff is studied academically.

The skeptic in me says:
Their purpose is to keep raise funding for themselves...
While they ask these profound (?) questions...

 

[Mendel]

Yeah, I continue to be puzzled about their purpose. It seems such a canard that UFO stigma is limiting/hindering academic study when plenty of kooky stuff is studied academically.

The fact that we have no UFOs is "limiting/hindering academic study".

 

[flarkey]

I'd agree strongly with that last line: disclosure is not just confirming aliens, it's being transparent about what we know. And I'll point out that this has already happened, repeatedly. We had the disclosure of the Blue Book files, disclosure of the Condon Committee report, disclosure of the CIA files -- and in every case, what was disclosed amounted to "Sorry, there's nothing here that says Aliens."

<snip>

That is not the answer that UFO believers and Big UFO want, but at some point it becomes clear that this is the answer that exists.

The problem is that if the actual answer and true disclosure is "there's no good evidence of aliens on earth" would any of the major players even accept this? The people entrusted with the new 'disclosure' task force are already believers. They are looking for confirmation of their already held beliefs. Evidence against their belief (or no evidence) is just more evidence of the cover up.

For the sake of truth (either way) we need objective, honest people to be involved with this current round of 'disclosure'. The trouble is there have been very few people on the ufo-gravy train who have changed their tune to be more skeptical (the only ones I can think of are Steven Greenstreet & Lue Angeles). I wonder what would happen if any of the big names (Elizondo, Grusch, Mellon, Nolan) came out and said that they were now non-believers and accecpted the government's position that there is nothing to disclose? If the Flat Earth community's experience of the recent "The Final Experiment" to Antarctica is anything to go by they'd be disowned.

My own expectations of the upcoming disclosure is one of two options:

1. Statements saying that 'ET on earth' is confirmed with poor or ambiguous evidence to back it up.
2. No evidence of ET yet becasue the deep state has managed to cover it up for so long that the evidence is impossible to find, which itself is evidence of the coverup.

 

[Mendel]

). I wonder what would happen if any of the big names (Elizondo, Grusch, Mellon, Nolan) came out and said that they were now non-believers and accecpted the government's position that there is nothing to disclose?

it would strengthen the faction that accuses the first three of participating in a government psy-op (however ill-informed that is).

 

[Giddierone]

1. Statements saying that 'ET on earth' is confirmed with poor or ambiguous evidence to back it up.

I can definitely see this happening during this administration with the addition that they are in high-level negotiations to make a deal to keep both them and us safe and no further information will be made public.

The fact that we have no UFOs is "limiting/hindering academic study".

We clearly do have a "UFO phenomenon" and we also have a lot of people claiming contact with alien beings—both should be studied.

 

[jdog]

I can definitely see this happening during this administration with the addition that they are in high-level negotiations to make a deal to keep both them and us safe and no further information will be made public.

We clearly do have a "UFO phenomenon" and we also have a lot of people claiming contact with alien beings—both should be studied.

How much is there to study beyond the perception that someone saw something they couldn't identify? (And where do you draw the line between "I'm studying UFO reports" and "I'm studying paranormal reports.")

There is a ton of academic research into the phenomenon of self-reported experiences, just generally not what believers tend to enjoy.

There has been no physical or visual evidence that is not, at best, ambiguous and inconsistent (saucers? black triangles? eggs?) and you can't really research contact and experiences as bald facts without addressing the socio-cultural factors that affect how people frame and interpret their perceptions and memories.

It would be another thing if there was a single ongoing or recurring claim of an anomaly that could be studied. (The Skinwalker Ranch folks are notoriously spare on data-sharing. And one might point to New Jersey, but the drone flap fizzled out with the wider use of flight-tracking apps and the experience pretty much proved people will develop otherworldly feelings from watching passenger aircraft on approach.)

Though I suppose one could pick somewhere interesting and set up sensors to comprehensively catalog everything that flew through a region of atmosphere.

 

[Giddierone]

The first part was a bit tongue in cheek. We're only a few weeks into this administration and it's clear that their shepherd tone trajectory of radical pronouncements & declarations might need to include ontological shock too—keep people paying them attention, if nothing else.

The second part was more to say there are UFOs, there are UFO reports, and there are anomalous experience reports—all of which amounts to a UFO phenomenon—and a good deal of scholarship already exists looking at these things from the perspective of different disciplines, to try and determine what exactly that's it's all about, and long may that continue (just without the silly terminology please!).

The reason why I flagged this Sol video (and the James Beacham one—which is a glorious pin-prick to the inflated exotic physics talk we're hearing so much of recently—think Grusch's interdimensional beings parroted by Luna or Elizondo's SF trope pencil-through-a-sheet-of-paper wormhole demonstration), is because there are clearly true-believers (Kean) whose expectations keep getting (unintentionally?) checked even by the their own executive director (Skafish). Take that last exchange about medical evidence for alien abductions. In any other fora Kean would talk for hours about "rock solid evidence" of alien implants, but here it gets dismissed within a few words because there's not a single good study that says these things are anomalous or even that interesting.

So, I remain a bit confused about their project. Is it actually pursuing real academic study and destigmatization, in which case they should be happy to weed out the hoaxes and frauds, or cases of misidentification (and invite Mick to their next gathering), or is it just an elaborate marketing/lobbying outfit looking to produce endless "coming soon", "promising developments are on the horizon" content for a growing audience? Or is it something else?

 

[JMartJr]

How much is there to study beyond the perception that someone saw something they couldn't identify? (And where do you draw the line between "I'm studying UFO reports" and "I'm studying paranormal reports.")

Studying the psychological pathology (that may not be the correct term, or even A correct term, but I don't know an official one and this one expresses what I am trying to say -- I'm willing to learn the right terminology if offered a chance!) that leads people into a dive into conspiratorial rabbit holes, what might be done to prevent this, what might be done to rescue people who have already gone down that path would have a great deal of value right now.

"UFOs" as a presumed new-to-science phenomenon of the alien-visitors, time-travelers or what-have-you would be a study with no subject. A study of what is happening to people when they succumb to this would find a depressingly large pool of subject matter.

 

[MapperGuy]

I can definitely see this happening during this administration with the addition that they are in high-level negotiations to make a deal to keep both them and us safe and no further information will be made public.

We clearly do have a "UFO phenomenon" and we also have a lot of people claiming contact with alien beings—both should be studied.

There is one fundamental reason why studying those making claims of contact with alien beings is never going to amount to much.

Some of the people making these claims honestly believe what they say, some are making up tall tales deliberately, and some are crazy (as in suffering from a mental disease or defect is the polite way to say it). How do you study the entire group to identify which are which? You really can't. If you declare someone "crazy" they will sue you for slander/libel/whatever unless you are a qualified doctor, they are your patient, and they have given you permission in advance to say to the world they are crazy. Which they will never do, and even then would probably find some justification to sue you.

In the end, the inability to filter claims being made by some standard of truth (and discard the statements of the crazy and the deliberate liars) makes it a waste of time. You might THINK that someone is a liar or crazy but you better not say it out loud!

 

[Mendel]

We clearly do have a "UFO phenomenon" and we also have a lot of people claiming contact with alien beings—both should be studied.

Yes. But that's 'people studies', not 'UFO studies'.

There is a ton of academic research into the phenomenon of self-reported experiences, just generally not what believers tend to enjoy.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ufo&as_sdt=0,5 brings up plenty of examples.

Though I suppose one could pick somewhere interesting and set up sensors to comprehensively catalog everything that flew through a region of atmosphere.

Avi Loeb/Galileo Project and AARO are both doing that.

 

[FatPhil]

"we want to come back to a position where we are "sober about evidence". "
Can't argue with THAT.

Stop setting the bar so low!

This "back to" thing - when were they *ever* sober about evidence?

 

[Mauro]

We clearly do have a "UFO phenomenon" and we also have a lot of people claiming contact with alien beings—both should be studied.

Sure, and psychologists, sociologists and historians are the prime candidates for the job. No openings for physics, astronomy and other hard science researchers unfortunately.