Bad Ufos: Critical Thinking About Ufo Claims

What explains the human fascination with UFOs? The first reported sighting of what was then called "flying saucers" was by private pilot Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. Within a few weeks, an entire "wave" of saucer sightings swept across the U.S., and soon across the world. And within a few years this had expanded to give us UFO crashes, the Men In Black, UFO bases, military and intelligence agency conspiracies, NASA conspiracies, alien abductions, crop circles, alien autopsies, alien-human hybrids, cattle mutilations, and the list just continues to grow.

Do the "saucers" (later renamed "UFOs") represent visitors from some other planet, or possibly even something more bizarre? How have they evaded unambiguous detection for about seventy years? Is this because the methods of science cannot capture them? Or do reports of UFOs have much in common with reports of ghosts, witches, Bigfoot, and other creatures that are widely discussed and widely believed, but exist only in the imaginations of those who pursue them?

Bad UFOs discusses some of the most famous and controversial UFO cases of all time, from a rational and scientific perspective:

-the Betty and Barney Hill 'UFO abduction' account
-the Phoenix Lights
-the Roswell 'UFO crash, ' and the recent 'Roswell Slides'
-the supposed 'UFO landing' in Rendlesham Forest
-Travis Walton's 'UFO abduction' claim
-UFOs seen using Night Vision equipment
-Steven Greer's Disclosure Project, and ET Contact Protocols

Robert Sheaffer is a writer with a lifelong interest in astronomy and the question of life on other worlds. He is one of the leading skeptical investigators of UFOs, a founding member of the UFO Subcommittee of the well-known Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI, formerly CSICOP). He is also a founding director and past Chairman of the Bay Area Skeptics, a local skeptics’ group in the San Francisco Bay area .

Mr. Sheaffer has written the ＂Psychic Vibrations＂ column in The Skeptical Inquirer for over 35 years, and his book ＂Psychic Vibrations＂ reprints some of those columns. He is also the author of ＂UFO Sightings＂ (Prometheus Books, 1998), and has appeared on many radio and TV programs. His writings and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as OMNI, Scientific American, Spaceflight, Astronomy, The Humanist, Free Inquiry, Reason, and others. Mr. Sheaffer lives near San Diego, California. He has worked as a data communications engineer in the Silicon Valley, and has sung in professional opera productions.