Editing UFOs An International Scientific Problem (section)

== Other Misconstrued Labcratory Experiments. ==
Although it is the Brookhaven experiments that Klass misuses most extensively in his book, three
other experiments are discussed in a manner purporting to provide support
for his basic plasma-UFO hypothesis. Because in each instance Klass fails
to recognize quantitative factors that render the laboratory results irrele-
vant to the case he is trying to make, brief comments on all three seem in
order.

First, he cites some demonstration experiments devised by A. F. Jenzano,
director of Morehead Planetarium in North Carolina, and displays photos in
support of the contention that erratically moving cigar- and disc-shaped UFOs
may result from open-air counterparts of the planetarium experiments (18, o
p. 68 and plate 3b; also 17, p. 57 and 61). But when one reads the nature of q
the experiments in question, they prove to be low-pressure glow discharges O
carried out under pressure conditions and with externally varying capacitance §
quite unrelated to anything involved in UFO sightings. To make his point,
Klass would have to show that something resembling the electric field
strengths and near-vacuum gas pressures used in these demonstrations occurs 2
at times of UFO sightings in the atmosphere; but such confrontation with
relevant quantitative considerations is absent here, as elsewhere in Klass' m
treatment. Jenzano is quoted as saying he uses the device to simulate
Northern Lights; this is rather more reasonable. But UFOs and the aurora
are certainly two quite different matters.

Secondly, Klass cites (18, p. 132) laboratory work of W. H. Bostick on
small moving plasmoids. Klass quotes Bostick as saying "...the plasma
travels... not as an amorphous blob, but as a structure (called a plasmoid) E
whose form is determined by the magnetic field it carries along with itself." S
He also quotes a passage that may seem to some readers to still further
support the Klass plasma hypothesis for UFOs: "...the two plasmoids seemed
to seek each other out unerringly... and attach themselves to each, other."
The implication is that Bostick's work has some bearing on the UFO problem.
However, on consulting the original papers (e.g., 33), one finds that to get
the observed phenomena Bostick worked at gas pressures of 10-5 mm HG (about
a hundred-millionth of an atmosphere), except when the pressure was raised
to that of "a poor vacuum (10-3 mm Hg) in order to slow the plasmoid down".
And about equally remote from any conditions prevailing in situations where
UFOs have been reported, Bostick used externally applied de magnetic fields
ranging from 500 to 2000 Gauss. The geomagnetic field has a strength of a
few tenths of a Gauss. Despite Klass' intimations, the Bostick laboratory
experiments bear no relation to the problem of explaining UFOs, their some-
times startlingly fast movements, and their sometimes high luminosity.

Thirdly, Klass recounts (18, p. 284) some laboratory experiments which
the press featured as possibly explaining UFOs. Workers at Melpar, Inc.
reportedly (34, p. 16) obtained luminous emissions from a mixture of ammonia
and oxygen after spark-ignition. Neither cited account permits a reader to
decide whether this was some slow combustion process or perhaps chemilumi-
nescence. Klass states that, on triggering the process with the spark, "a
glowing saucer-shaped object would form, providing the mixture had the right
proportions." "Sometimes the glowing object would hover horizontally... at
other times, the tiny UFO would pulsate mysteriously and flip over onto its
rim or turn upside down." Interesting, from a scientific point of view; but
what can this have to do with the UFO problem? Klass answers that question:
"The ammonia gas that Melpar used in its experiments... could be found over
newly fertilized farmlands - another possible reason why UFOs are more
frequently seen in rural areas." Here is one more good illustration of
omitting highly relevant quantitative considerations.

28
The Melpar experiment is not described in terms one would require in
order to make precise statements; but it seems clear that the partial pres-
sure of NH3 in their reaction vessel is a fair fraction of an atmosphere.
Lacking data on maximum NH 3 concentrations over farm barnyards, I will
appeal to the fact that public health officials seem never to have expressed
concern over the safety of farmers exposed to hazardous concentrations of
that gas, so that barnyard concentrations presumably fall well under the
100 ppm "maximum allowable concentration" set as the industrial safe limit
(29, p. 24). This would be three to four orders of magnitude below the
partial pressures likely to be involved in the Melpar demonstration. Not
only would reaction rates be slowed down by something like 3-4 orders of
magnitude by virtue of that adverse concentration ratio, but it seems
entirely out of the question that it could be self-sustaining in such concentrations, even if there were a spark-source near every barnyard to pro
vide the requisite ignition. Actually, it seems so unreasonable to suggest
that farm concentrations of NH3 could yield effects comparable to those
obtained in the Melpar laboratory demonstration that the proper reaction
would seem to be astonishment that any such suggestion should have been made
in the first place. g
Argumentation by Concatenation - Thunderstorms, Dust Devils, and Ball 
Lightning. Throughout his book, Klass uses a very curious type of "argumentation by concatenation". Noting that there exists some vague relation

between concept A and concept B, he next passes on to observe another remote
relation between B and C. Then C may have something or other in common with
D, and Klass is soon asserting that A and D are related. Put in that
abstract form, the only criticism that could be made is that stringing such
chains may be dangerous. But seen in the form of particular instances,
Klass' use of this mode of deduction appears almost ludicrous. A good illustration has already been cited - that concerning the chain of steps by which
Klass went from the diurnal variation of potential gradient at land stations
to a conclusion that this bears on the diurnal variation of UFO reports, via
pollutants and inversions and radon gas.

Another example of this uncomfortably non-scientific mode of argument
leads him to the following conclusion (18, p. 113): "The dust devil and the
kugelblitz (BL), which a few weeks earlier had seemed poles apart, now were
beginning to show signs of a possible family tie, at least on some occa-
sions. Nature, I was beginning to realize, offers an even wider range of
explanations for UFOs than I had first imagined."
Let's trace back through the concatenation of remarks that led to that
statement.
He gets into it by attempts to explain the many daytime sightings in
which UFO witnesses have asserted that the object looked "metallic". This,
Klass feels, can be understood if the UFOs are glowing plasmas (18, p. 108).
Briefly, the observer is fooled into thinking that the self-glow is
"metallic reflection" of sunlight. Leaving aside objections to that con-
clusion, we next find (18, p. 109) him bothered by a UFO sighting in which
"dark crescents" were seen on an otherwise white or silvery UFO; so Klass
asks himself what might render a plasma-UFO dark in spots. He explains:
"The most obvious answer popped into my mind: dust particles."
Next he cites a model of BL due to E. L. Hill, in which it had been
suggested that BL might consist of "electrically charged dust particles and
groups of molecules which somehow are electrically separated into positively
and negatively charged clusters by the action of a lightning stroke," a

29

model which I believe most students of the BL problem would regard as
unpromising. But that model has dust and it has spin, and that's the
direction in which this chain is to be strung out.
By way of seeming to confirm the notion that dust may be involved in
UFO phenomena, Klass then cites (18, p. Ill) a UFO sighting in which beams
of light, from the UFO's eight large "windows", were described as shining
so brightly that air-dust could be seen in the beams. (See 3, p. 69 for
the complete account that is very abbreviated in the summary given by
Klass. The sighting was made by a minister and his wife in Cleveland in
the early evening of Nov. 5, 1955; 'the object hovered for an estimated ten
minutes, at a height estimated at 500 ft and at a distance from the two
witnesses of about a half mile before it began to slowly move away and pass
out of sight. Out of all this, Klass takes the point that dust was visible
in the beams reportedly shining out of apertures of some sort on the object,
and builds that point into his chain. The fact that this plasma lasted ten
minutes and had eight bright spots rather than dust-produced dark spots is
ignored. The important point for the idea-chain is that dust was present.)
So next (18, p. Ill), Klass ponders "swirling, charged dust particles,
interacting in complex ways with charged air particles in a plasma (which
could) explain the mysterious, moving, dark crescent-shaped areas" in the
sighting that started the chain. This is preparation for the next jump:
"This suggested still another phenomenon that I ought to investigate -

'dust devils'...". So he then spoke with several persons who gave him infor-
mation about the well-known fact that dust-devils and dust storms (28, p.122)

can disturb the fair-weather potential gradient by virtue of strong fric-
tional electrification. When one of his informants remarked that dust devils

are sometimes formed around the outflowing cool air that spreads out from
thunderstorm downdrafts in summer storms over the arid Southwest, the last
link in the chain was forged. Klass notes, with an almost audible "Ah,
hah!" implicit in the italicized windup that "... thunderstorms are the
most frequent sources of ball lightning."
That, in brief, is how Klass arrived at the passage quoted at the start
of this section. That is how he established the bond between dust devils
and ball lightning, with swirling, dust-laden vortical plasmoids created out
of the rhetorical exercise.

The term "vortex" is one Klass likes to conjure with; it comes up
repeatedly throughout the book, and is woven into his model of the plasma-
UFO in several ways - almost invariably without paying any attention to
scale-factors, as in the above case of dust devils and BL. One sees that
same casual neglect of disparate scale factors, the same word-play in a
later discussion where concatenative argumentation takes Klass from tornadoes
to spinning UFOs. At one intermediate step of that particular chain (18,
p. 157), he begins a paragraph speaking about tornadoes in the ordinary
sense of the word, and shifts to an idea proposed by one investigator of the
radar-angel problem, namely, that some angels are small airborne vortices,
which that investigator dubbed "micro-tornadoes." Because Klass had, else-
where in the book (18, p. 89) intimated that probably angels are often caused
by plasma-UFOs (thus clearing up, in his contention, many cases where UFOs
were tracked on radar), one comes out of the cited paragraph on p. 157 with
the impression that Klass does indeed infer that "tornadoes and at least some
UFOs may be distantly related members of the same family," and evidently
"micro-tornadoes" and angels are also in that family. If in approaching
problems of meteorology and geophysics, scientists customarily employed that
kind of concatenative logic, so casually ignored important scale considerations, and rested everything on verbal arguments almost wholly devoid of
quantitative considerations, they could easily show that volcanoes are
related to hurricanes and earthquakes to blizzards.

30
UFOs and Radar. From the chapter so labeled in Klass' book, one can
draw additional instances of the author's failure to understand much of what
he is talking about. He remarks, correctly, that plasmas can be seen on
radar, re-entry plasma sheaths around space capsules and satellite debris
being a well-known example. From that qualitatively correct beginning, without further attention to all-important quantitative matters, he proceeds to
explain instances of UFOs seen on radar.

Citing (quite incompletely) a case from Hall (3, p. 85) in which an
unknown object whose radar return suggested it was as big as "any of our
larger transport planes" was follqwed for over 30 minutes from an East coast
USAF radar installation, Klass proceeds to the concTusion that this was just
a plasma. The important item of information concerning duration of the radar
sighting was omitted by Klass; it was a clear moonlit night in the fall, and
plasmoids lasting 30 minutes are rather difficult to explain. The radar target was described as moving, then stopping and remaining fixed (for the 30-
minute period). An Air Force C-124 transport that came into the radar-coverage area was vectored towards the unknown. Both blips remained on the scope
until the C-124 came to within a distance that the radar operator estimated 
at about a half-mile from the unknown, at which juncture the unknown suddenly
disappeared from the scope.

Klass explains the fact that the C-124 crew could not see the plasma as
due to its being "on its last legs", so that "it did not have sufficient
energy to be luminous and thus was not visible..." Its sudden disappearance
from the radar scope Klass sees as having resulted from the fact that "the
proximity of the large metal aircraft hastened the plasma's demise, serving
to drain off its residual energy in much the same way that a lightning rod
attracts a lightning stroke..."

This kind of easy argumentation makes it possible to assert that casuallyjS
that a plasma too weak to yield a visible glow is at so high an electrical
potential relative to an ungrounded aircraft that it sends out a stroke over
the half-mile gap separating it from the aircraft. And it permits Klass to
ignore all considerations of recombination-times as he glosses over the 30+

minutes' duration of the reported radar sighting prior to sudden disappear-
ance. Considering lightning returns on radar gives a much fairer comparison

than plasma-sheathed re-entry vehicles. The latter draw steadily upon the

kinetic energy of the entering object to maintain the plasma against recom-
binative losses. In lightning strokes, however, no such "steady" energy

source is available. The result is that spotting lightning strokes on radar
is a rather rare (though definitely well-known) occurrence. Why? Because
to get a discernible radar return demands that the electron concentration in
the lightning channel shall imply a "plasma frequency" greater than the radar
frequency. For the frequencies employed in conventional radar practice, the
requisite electron concentration runs from about 1010 to 1012 electrons/cm3. But recombination processes go on at rates that rise very rapidly (roughly as
the square) with increasing free electron concentration, so that lightning
channels quickly quench out to radar-invisibility (37, p. 108). Estimated
durations of radar-visibility of lightning run well under a second. The
sweep-periods of typical search radar are so long compared with this time
that the probability of seeing a lightning stroke on radar is rather low.
All the same, basic physics must apply to any plasmoid that one hopes to
see on radar. If it lacks a sustaining steady energy source (virtually all
of Klass' plasmoids suffer that deficiency), then their lifetimes relative to
radar visibility must closely parallel that of lightning channels - of the
order of a second or less. An unknown that gives a radar-return as intense
as that of a large transport aircraft over a period exceeding 30 minutes can,
therefore, be explained as a plasma only if one accounts for a continuing
source of energy. Klass does not do so.

31

(Sudden disappearance of unknowns from radar screens, following uncon-
ventional behavior, is encountered in many UFO radar cases. Significantly,
"sudden" disappearance in the sense of getting out of sight in a few seconds,
is even more common among cases of visual sightings by credible observers.
As has often been remarked before, anything that could move many miles in a
few seconds would seem to disappear "suddenly" from all surveillance radars
with sweep periods greater than a number of seconds.)
Another example of misunderstanding of radar principles from the cited
chapter concerns anomalous propagation effects (18, p. 88-9). Klass seems
to be under the misimpression that 'spurious returns occur with anomalous
propagation only if an aircraft is flying in the vicinity to provide an air-
borne reflecting agent. He also seems to feel that "motions and turbulence
in the atmospheric layers" cause ground-returns, bounced off the aircraft,
to shift and move erratically, yielding the impression that the radar
observer's vicinity "is being invaded by dozens of UFOs." This particular
set of misconceptions appears suspiciously like a garbled version of Menzel's
misconceptions about anomalous propagation and aircraft-reflections (11,
p. 153-171). The reader familiar with radar propagation physics is urged to
study both of these treatments and judge for himself. A detailed recounting
of Klass' version of the matter does not seem worth presenting here.
He argues (18, p. 89) that because 67 per cent of NICAP's UFO radar
sightings3 fell in the months of May, July, August, September, and November,
when radar "angels" prove to be most common, it follows that the NICAP radar
cases "are classic radar angels", for there would have been "only 42 per cent
in these five months had the UFO radar cases been equally distributed through-
out the year." Evidently Klass has very scant knowledge of statistical sam-
pling theory, too. He intimates that the famous July, 1952 Washington

National Airport UFO radar-visual sightings might have been plasma-UFOs, and
closes with the comment that complete analysis is difficult fifteen years
later. Not so. The data on that famous sighting, as I indicated earlier
here, can be reexamined quite meaningfully even today, including the erro-
neous USAF claims that anomalous propagation and mirage effects accounted for
its main features. Neither the latter, nor plasma-UFOs match convincingly
the events of those two famous nights in UFO history.
Klass asks, finally, why all of our surveillance radar nets never see
UFOs. My reply to that is to ask why he feels so sure that they do not?

Spinning Plasmas. As noted above, Klass seems to place considerable
emphasis upon rotation of his plasmoids. He notes that extensive surveys of
ball lightning witnesses (esp. 21, 22) find that from a fourth to a third of
the BL reports involve mention of a noticeable spinning motion. His argu-
ments about dust devils, tornadoes, and micro-tornadoes, plus other similar
arguments, dispose him to the view that UFO-plasmas will often (perhaps
usually) be spinning.
On p. 160, he accepts a qualitative suggestion that rotation of a
doughnut-shaped plasmoid might store enough energy as rotational kinetic
energy to account for its characteristics. But suppose we hope thereby to
extract luminous energy at the modest rate of 100 watts for the reasonable
time of 10 seconds, i.c., we ask for 1010 ergs. The result is a spin rate
of about 1000 rev/sec. Clearly, no human eye could discern angular motions
at so extremely high a speed. Angular motions do not constitute a partic-
ularly attractive storage mode for energy of plasmoids.

Klass turns to an experiment by Vonnegut, Moore, and Harris38 which, to
fill his needs, he identifies as one relating to vortex motion of the outer
shell of a plasma." On reading the original paper, one finds that it is
only very distantly related to Klass' idea of plasma-UFOs, for it actually
concerns the favorable effects of a vortex on maintenance of an arc dis-
charge struck along the axis of air rotation. The inward-directed buoyancy-
forces, the authors note, convectively force the hot arc gases into the
center of the vortex, reducing sinuous excursions of the arc and permitting
an arc to exist stably over arc-spacings about twice the spacings attainable
without the vortex. Clearly, the vortical effects employed here bear on
stability of the high-temperature gases in an arc discharge but have no
obvious bearing on stability of BL or UFOs, since no one believes that arc
discharge is involved in either of those phenomena. One more instance
wherein Klass either fails to understand what he is talking about or else
crowds it into his mold - probably the former.

The just-cited section of the book is followed by another curiosity.
Klass suggests next that "this same vortex motion also helps to explain some
of the weird movements reported both for ball lightning and UFOs, such as
their right-angle turns, because it would make them behave like gyroscopes
(18, p. 161). He next remarks that a spinning gyro "does not move in the
direction of the push" one applies to it, "instead its gyroscopic properties
cause it to move at right-angles to the direction of the push." He then
suggests that "if a plasma-UFO is spinning at moderately high speed when it
comes near a metal object or a source of electromagnetic fields, the elec-
trical interaction in combination with its gyroscopic properties could cause
it to move at right angles to the direction of its previous motion, as 'is
frequently reported."
Here, as before, Klass gets demerits for ignorance of undergraduate
physics. It is torques, not gross body forces, which produce the noto-
riously perverse reactions of gyros. A fast-spinning gyro acted upon by
an external force moves in entirely direct response thereto, and not at
90° to that force, as Klass evidently assumes.

Plasmas as Nature's Rorschach Blots. To meet the objection that many
witnesses have~reported seeing machine-like UFOs, sometimes with ports,
domes, leg-like structures, etc., Klass offers the proposal that a plasma
would act like a Rorschach ink blot (18, p. 77). Without wishing to become
embroiled in arguments of primarily psychological nature, I would object
that projective tests of the Rorschach type do not function by virtue of the
illusory mechanism Klass adduces. Normal persons arrive at their Rorschach
answers by dint of requested interpretation of the unstructured blots dis-
played before them. To suggest, as Klass does, that light and dark areas on
his alleged plasmoids are illusorily converted by observers into fanciful
ports and domes is to introduce something well beyond Rorschach factors. I
cite this because it is the closest Klass seems to come to confronting the
very important point that, in many highly credible UFO reports, structured,
craft-like objects are described in terms that fail to square with an amor-
phous blob of glowing plasma. I would suggest that his Rorschach idea be
dropped as unreasonable. The best observations of machine-like UFOs are day-
light observations where no glow is even involved, so the Rorschach-plasma
idea seems to fail completely. See, for example, the Powell sighting of
May 21, 1966 6 for a single example which Klass has heard directly from the
witnesses, at the same time that I did. An 18,000-hour pilot, with a second
witness, saw a domed disc pass his light plane at an estimated distance of a
hundred yards in midday, with excellent visibility. It was opaque, and was
described as having quite distinct edges, and had a sharply contrasting white
dome over red disc. Many others in that kind of category not covered by
Rorschach effects could be cited.

Mesmeric Properties of Plasma-UFOs. Not only does Klass propose that
his plasma-UFOs are Rorschach blots, but also he intimates (18, p. 227) that
perhaps they have " a hypnotic effect on some observers, especially if the
UFO were seen at close quarters in darkness." Commenting on use of lights
in concentrating a subject's attention in hypnotic experiments, he notes
that "the plasma-UFO, with its intense glow, its flashing pockets of color,
and its changing shape, certainly would focus the observers' attention.
This could deprive his brain of its normal contact with the outside world,
especially for night sightings when the object is in a remote spot..."
There is one very striking similarity between Klass' plasma-UFOs and
Menzel's meteorological-optical phenomena: Both are stretched to cover a
most astonishing range of UFO events. The stretching and straining of
scientific principles found in their writings on UFOs is paralleled in the
crackpot literature on UFOs. Indeed, if some of the unreasonable argumentation which they employ were found in something by, say George Adamski, it
would be regarded as scientifically hilarious. As it is, such warping of m
familiar scientific principles seems only depressing. 

Interference of Non-C o herent Light Sources. Another bothersome
example of failure to understand rather elementary physical principles is
to be found in Klass' discussion of a sighting in which a chemist, having 
the presence of mind to try viewing a UFO through his Polaroid glasses, discerned a series of concentric light and dark rings around the airborne UFO -n
(18, p. 99). Klass, ignoring the basic requirement of having coherent light
sources if one is to generate interference effects, offers the suggestion
that interference between polarized sky light and the light being emitted by 
the object caused the light and dark circles reportedly seen by Webb. Not 
realizing that his argument was already lost,Klass continues to suggest that 
the reason that the light from the UFO was polarized was that motions of
charges in the plasma that it really was generated magnetic fields that
caused the polarization of the emitted light that then interfered with sky
light when viewed through the chemist's Polaroid sunglasses. With arguments
like that, one might hope to show that the moon is a plasmoid.
Cold Plasmas of Ice Crystals. Perhaps the most bothersome general
feature of Klass' book is the way it repeatedly tends to carry the unwary
through what may appear to be reasonable deductions, but which involve large
leaps of unjustified nature when you reexamine them.

A good example concerns his discussion of "cold plasmas" (18, pp. 114
115). Let me quote his conclusion first, and then go back over the arguments
that purportedly support it: "...one thing was emerging as absolutely cer-
tain. Nature has a surprisingly large bag of atmospheric electrical tricks
with which it can create unusual 'flying objects.'" Working backwards, one
sees some intermediate remarks about "cold plasmas" of charged ice crystals,
and working still further back one arrives at a reference to a short note by
Vonnegut in the October, 1955 issue of Weather. Reading Klass' version of it,
one gets the impression that electrical discharges in thunderclouds can so
alter electrical forces on charged ice crystals as to make them change atti-
tude relative to the sun that marked reflectivity or transmissivity of the
cloud could result, and that this "would cause the ice cloud to appear solid
(because no sunlight passes through) and could even give a silhouette effect."
Then, in a non seguitur he adds that "the raw materials for such a phenomenon,
beyond those provided by nature, could come from the growing numbers of high-
altitude jet aircraft", and seems to intimate that the charges are to come
from jet turbine blades!

34
But returning to the foundation on which the above series of steps
rests, let us see just what Vonnegut actually reported in the cited note.
What he reported was a pilot observation of a bright band that propagated
across the top of a thunderhead, a ground observation of a bright streamer
of cloud that built up slowly and then disappeared suddenly at the moment of
lightning discharge within the thunderstorm, and finally some field observa-
tions by Vonnegut on brightness changes (amounting to a mere few tenths of
a per cent) of thunderclouds at instant of lightning discharge within the
cloud (as detected by radio-frequency noise gear). What in all of this
remotely suggests UFOs to Klass? One could start talking about a very large
variety of cloud-physical effects of unusual nature and remain equally far
from the area of UFOs. Yet after juxtaposing the foregoing, Klass leaves
his reader with the conclusion that "Nature has a surprisingly large bag of
atmospheric electrical tricks with which it can create unusual 'flying
objects.What flying objects?

In an earlier discussion of Vonnegut's note17, Klass went even farther
from such slim supporting evidence. Introducing without any atmospheric-
physical basis the notion of a "vortex of ice crystals", he merges it with
Vonnegut's idea of electrical orientation effects as follows: "If the angle
of incidence of sunlight playing on a vortex of ice crystals aligned by elec-
tric fields were such that reflected light was directed away from an observer,
it conceivably could produce a silhouette effect...(and) if the airborne vor-
tex contains charged dust particles, similarly aligned by electric fields...a
very pronounced silhouette could result. If electric discharge is taking
place within the vortex between charged dust particles, as has been suggested
by some ball lightning theories, it could easily create the illusion of a
solid spacecraft with small lighted windows." All of this suggests the con-
clusion that if someone sets out to create UFOs out of almost thin air, he
can do so.

Mirror Images and the Car-Stopping Problem. Klass (18, p. 96) evidently
accepts^ as do I, the reality of a puzzling number of instances where obser-
vers have reported engine and headlight failure coincident with close passage
of a UFO. Klass suggests that "because a plasma contains a cloud of electri-
fied particles, there is no doubt that if an auto battery were enveloped by
such a plasma the battery could be short-circuited. But it is difficult to
explain how a UFO-plasma could gain entry to the car battery in the engine
compartment without first dissipating its energy to the metal body of the
car. "

However, he then comes up with an extremely curious suggestion that may
be some measure of the scientific level of Klass' analyses. He needs to have
his plasma ions inside the hood, to short the battery. So he remarks that
"an electric charge in the vicinity of a conducting surface, such as a car's
hood, creates a mirror image of itself on the opposite side of the conducting
surface." Quite clearly, Klass is under the impression that "image charges"
are real charges, and that the "image charge" induced on the inside of the
hooded engine compartment can short-circuit the battery and cause other real
effects. This is a puzzlingly erroneous misconception to be held by an
electrical engineer.

Aeronautical engineers in the CAST audience can appreciate the parallel
to another closely similar situation where boundary-conditions can be handled
by a similar ruse: The use of "image-objects" in flow problems near solid,
plane boundaries. For instance, the enhanced lift that accounts for the
familiar "flare-out" as an aircraft comes down to within a few feet of an
airstrip can be treated, mathematically, in terms of an identical aircraft
imagined to be upside down and moving along at a distance below the real

35
aircraft's true distance above the ground-plane. In fact, wind-tunnel
tests of flow problems near the ground-plane are actually conducted with
real model-pairs mounted in this "mirror-image" attitude. To suggest that
a real automobile battery could be shorted out by "image charges" induced
in the hood is comparable, then, to suggesting that "flare-out" on landing
results from the fact that a real aircraft is actually flying along upside
down, just underneath the airstrip.

Summary-Critique of Klass1 Plasma-UFO Thesis. In the foregoing sections,
I have pointed out a number of serious scientific errors and misconceptions
that mark Klass' writings on UFOs17'18. Although he has diligently pursued
the subject of UFOs for some months, his handling of the scientific questions
involved reveals so many misunderstandings, often of elementary principles,
that his principal thesis, namely, that a substantial portion of the pre-
viously most puzzling UFO cases can be explained as plasmas, cannot be
regarded as supported.

It is important to note that Klass does not claim that all UFOs are
plasmoids (18, p. 282); he feels that meteors, balloons, optical phenomena, 
planets, and other misidentified phenomena account for many UFO reports. He 
does indicate, however, that he feels he has "identified most if not all of 
the previously unexplained UFOs as atmospheric electrical phenomena, using
NICAP's most convincing cases (18, p. 174)." By the latter, he refers to 
the more than 700 cases in Hall's UFO Evidence3. Such a claim is fatuous;
there are in Reference 3 hundreds of cases that could not even remotely be
reconciled with Klass' plasma-UFO hypothesis on any reasonable, scientific
grounds. Indeed, even considering the percentually small sampling of those
NICAP cases that are specifically cited in Klass' book, I would say that
only perhaps two or three cases could be even tentatively viewed as some
atmospheric-electrical plasmoid phenomenon. His claims to have "identified"
the difficult NICAP UFO cases are gratuitous and lacking in scientific basis.
Klass asserts (18, p. 286) that "it is time that these two influential
organizations (meaning NICAP and AFRO) encouraged their members to open
their minds to the possibility that UFOs may be only freak atmospheric
electrical phenomena." He adds that NICAP and APRO should "more fully
inform their members about the plasma theory", evidently thinking that this
will lead them to accept his hypothesis that the most interesting UFOs are
"freak atmospheric electrical phenomena." As a matter of fact, members of
NICAP and APRO had weighed and rejected hypotheses similar to Klass' long
before he developed an interest in the UFO problem, and three communications
cited in his book (18, pp. 55, 58, and 177) from NICAP members contain more
reasoned, albeit brief, reactions to that hypothesis than one finds in all
of Klass' writings. The provocative UFO cases are low-altitude, close-
range sightings of structured, machine-like objects of entirely unconven-
tional nature, reported by witnesses whose credibility does not appear to
be in questTon. The nearest Klass comes to confronting such cases is to
suggest hypnotic effects or Rorschach-projective effects that make the wit-
nesses see plasmoids as if they were structured vehicular objects with domes,
panels, legs, ports, markings, etc. I have, myself, interviewed so many wit-
nesses who have seen such objects that I can only smile weakly at the
unreasonableness of Klass' intimation that he has "identified" such UFOs as
plasmoids.

Furthermore, implicit in Klass' plea that NICAP, APRO, and the rest of
those whom he labels as "UFOrians" should be made "fully informed" about
plasma theory, is the tacit assumption that Klass, himself, is so informed.
The many instances cited above wherein Klass completely misconceived perti-
nent aspects of the plasma physics he was attempting to talk about make such
a plea quite hollow. The net effect of further study of plasma theory by

36
any "UFOrians" will be to make still clearer that Klass has written a book
filled with sometimes ludicrous errors concerning plasma theory and related
physics. He accuses the "UFOrians" of having closed minds; looking at his
handling of the UFO problem, I am left with the difficult choice of deciding
whether he, himself, has an even more tightly closed mind or whether the
glaring weakness of his book simply reflects his ignorance of elementary
principles of physics and electrical engineering. Rather than make that
choice, I split my opinion about down the middle on those two alternatives.
The principal points I would emphasize by way of critique of Klass'
plasma-UFO theory are the following:

1) He fails' to put numbers into his hypotheses where numbers are read-
ily inserted. The result is that he presents what may appear to be
plausible arguments because they contain some qualitatively plaus-
ible elements. In this regard, Klass resembles Menzel. Quantita-
tive evaluations reveal serious difficulties, sometimes outright
absurdity, in instance after instance in the writings of these two
principal proponents of the notion that UFOs are only misidentified
natural phenomena.

2) Plasmas are notoriously unstable and evanescent, except when suit-
ably contained and provided with sustaining energy sources. Klass
appears to be almost unaware of these prime characteristics of
plasmas for he casually adduces plasma-explanations in UFO inci-
dents for which he offers no suggestions as to what provides the
continuing energy sources of his plasmas, often over times of the
order of not only tens of seconds, but often tens of minutes.

3) In the one or two instances where Klass does actually propose some-
thing resembling an energy source (powerline corona, TV antennas,
aircraft charge-leakage), it has been shown above that there are
fatal difficulties with his position.

4) Through a quite astonishing series of misunderstandings, Klass
builds up a thesis to the effect that air pollutants are favorable
to plasma-formation, and from this, makes repeated deductions (such
as greater incidence of high-altitude UFOs because of more jets
polluting the airways) of exorbitant nature. That Klass would go
to press with such error-riddled ideas is surprising,

5) Through failure to understand elementary principles of atmospheric
electricity (the field in which he claims to be making discoveries),
he builds an error-chain extending from diurnal variation of atmos-
pheric potential gradient to diurnal variation of UFOs, and deduces
therefrom an "explanation" of excess of rural over urban sightings.
For someone claiming to have uncovered an intriguing new phenomenon
of atmospheric electricity, Klass' ignorance of fundamentals of
that subject seems startling.

6) His claim to have accounted for the high frequency with which pilots
observe UFOs following aircraft falls apart completely on subjecting
the idea to quantitative assessment, as shown above. His related
intimations that charged automobiles and charged pedestrians also
attract plasma-UFOs are absurd. It is to be stressed that the quan-
titative evaluation of that hypothesis involves only elementary
physics and, say, electrical engineering, yet no such evaluation
was made by Klass. And, to add an extremely important criticism,
he overlooks dozens of well-reported cases wherein UFO maneuvers
would defy explanation in terms of his Coulomb-attraction hypothesis.

7) It seems entirely fair to suggest that part of the reason for the
credence and attention given Klass' plasma-UFO hypothesis in press
and non-scientific journals rests on his being an electrical engi-
neer (the other part being, of course, his senior editorial posi-
tion with a well-known aviation/aerospace magazine). In this
light, his almost incredible misconceptions about "mirror-image
charges", as noted above in connection with the long-puzzling UFO
car-stopping problem, and the cited instance in which he was clearly
confusing voltage and voltage-gradient, not to mention the many mis-
conceptions about plasmas themselves, deserve the emphasis given to
them above.

Finally, the most pervasively disturbing feature of Klass' book18
is the frequency with which it relies on argument by innuendo,
argument by concatenation (to re-use the phrase employed above,
argument by juxtaposition - that is, his specious assembly of what
to many an unwary reader will look like a clever series of related
deductions, carried out in the detective-story atmosphere that he
repeatedly tries to create in his writing. After giving that
annoying feature of his writing a good deal of thought, and after
reflecting on the high frequency of scientific errors in his writ-
ing, it is my guess that these arguments are probably not deviously
contrived to fool the reader but constitute reflection on the lack
of preparation of the author. The reason that they need exposure,
however, is that at the present time, the UFO problem is not yet
being fought-out in the usual context of serious scientific dis-
cussion. The present major difficulty still remains that of con-
vincing a large number of persons (in the scientific community, in
federal science-related agencies, in Congress, and in the general
public) that the UFO problem is an extremely serious scientific
problem too long laughed out of court. For this reason, the kind of
of easy acceptance already given to Klass in the press cannot be
viewed as unimportant. Menzel's role in helping to foster the
impression,for many years nowjthat UFOs are all explainable, in
quite conventional terms has had very deleterious influence on the
UFO problem; Klass will now join Menzel in extending that influence
if the serious deficiencies of his thesis are not held up to care-
ful scrutiny. It is for this reason that I have devoted so much
space here to what ought perhaps to be regarded as so unscientific
an exposition as to need no comment.