PERCEPTIONS

摘要

I had been approached about doing a debate about UFOs for the Campus Freethought Alliance at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN, many months ago. Of course I agreed to take on any sceptic-debunker . Dr. Joseph Nickell, a full time employee of the self-anointed Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, was originally mentioned as a good possibility. I was looking forward to confronting him because of both a previous run-in with him on a radio program and his strange expla- nation of the Flatwoods Monster case. He said that the monster was a 6′ tall owl, and that the UFO which was observed to land on a flat area at a nearby hill was just a meteor. Considering that a number of people saw the object slowly circle around the town before landing-and there was no shock wave, no crater, and no meteorites found-that seemed unlikely to say the least.