ParaNet BBS/clark
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ParaNet BBS/clark
| File Name: | clark.txt |
|---|---|
| Author: | Unknown |
| Date: | Unknown |
| Posting BBS: | Unknown |
| BBS Main Page: | ParaNet Main Page |
| Key Words: | ParaNet, UFO, Ufology |
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ParaNet File Number: 00111
DATE OF UPLOAD: August 18, 1989
ORIGIN OF UPLOAD: Canby, Minnesota
CONTRIBUTED BY: Jerome Clark/CUFOS
========================================================
Recently ParaNet carried a controversial article written by Dr.
Willy Smith regarding the 'State of Ufology Today' as seen by Dr.
Smith. This article (Smith.TXT) lashed out at the two major UFO
research groups in America today, CUFOS and MUFON. In the
interest of providing a balanced viewpoint, we have asked these
groups to rebut Dr. Smith's comments. My conversation with Walt
Andrus, International Director of MUFON, yielded a curt 'no' to
rebutting anything that Dr. Smith had to say, citing that it
"would be beneath his dignity" to do so. CUFOS has, as
represented by Jerry Clark, plans no rebuttal either. However,
Jerry Clark, speaking for himself, and not officially for CUFOS,
has prepared a rebuttal called the 'The Smith Principle' which
appears here in this file. It is ParaNet's understanding that
something of like material is forthcoming from Dan Wright,
Director of Investgations for MUFON which will appear upon it's
arrival.
THE SMITH PRINCIPLE
by Jerome Clark
It has been my sad experience that to pay attention to Willy
Smith is to encourage him in his excesses, and so it is with much
reluctance that I respond, as after reflection I feel I must, to
his attack on me in "The Decline and Fall of American Ufology,"
of which I was recently shown a copy. This is not an official
response from the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies; there
will be none. CUFOS as an organization has no desire to engage
in fruitless personal dispute. CUFOS chooses to deal with
issues, not personalities, and that of course is a wise course.
Since, however, Smith has made a series of false personal charges
against me, I feel obligated to set the record straight. The
following is written not for Smith's benefit, since Smith always
believes whatever he wants to believe, however bizarre or
unverifiable; this is instead for ParaNet people such as Michael
Corbin (whom to the best of my memory I've never met or
corresponded with) who think that Smith's attack "is perhaps 'on
target'" and that it "is time we start demanding the truth and
get it." It is safe to say that Willy Smith's accounts are not
the place to get it.
Smith's basic charge is that I am the evil force that
controls the organization; Mark Rodeghier, its ostensible head,
is a mere cipher, unable to resist the demands of my strong
personality. Yet at the same time, even as Rodeghier and the
entire CUFOS board bow to my every whim owing to the sheer force
of my personality, I also have a weak personality (perhaps on
alternating days of the week) which bows to the prevailing winds,
usually coming, Smith would have us believe, from Budd Hopkins
and Jenny Randles. Smith can't have it both ways; I can't have
both a strong personality and a weak personality, i.e., be a
tyrant and obsequious subject at once. This sort of incoherence
pretty much defines Smith's polemics. Apparently it doesn't
matter that one paragraph doesn't follow logically from the next,
or actively contradicts it. The important thing is to nail the
sinister manipulator and the timid follower -- both of them me.
The current CUFOS board, aside from me, consists of Mark
Rodeghier, John P. Timmerman, George M. Eberhart, Don Schmitt,
Michael D. Swords, Jennie Zeidman, and Nancy Clark (who happens
to be my wife). (Names of current board members are published
every year in IUR.) I will gladly furnish addresses and
telephone numbers of any or all of these individuals to any
ParaNet participant who wishes to contact them privately to get
their views on me and on Smith's representation of CUFOS in
general. I urge these inquirers to ask specifically if it is
true, as Smith charges, that I dominate CUFOS, that Rodeghier is
a weak-willed figurehead, based on my whims. Inquirers will
find, I can state confidently, that these individuals will
declare Smith's charges laughable, if not downright
hallucinatory, and that they will proceed to relate instances
explaining why we, in common with other UFO organizations and
ufologists, have found Smith impossible to work with. They will
also relate instances in which Smith has made bizarre claims
which, if publicized, would call into question his judgment and
perhaps his sanity as well.
It should be noted that Smith's track record of reliability,
even when he's describing something he knows about (certainly not
the case with CUFOS), is pretty awful. It has recently been
demonstrated, for example, that he has consistently
misrepresented his educational background. Under the
circumstances it seems peculiar he is busily accusing other
people of assorted crimes (largely imaginary), unless he wants to
draw attention away from the recent embarrassing revelations
about him.
Careful readers will have noticed that, while Smith declares
dramatically that "CUFOS was precipitously departing from what
had been the basic philosophy of its founder," owing to the evil
schemes of strong personality/weak personality Jerry Clark, he
provides no real specifics whatsoever. That is because there
are none to give. All he can do is attempt a smear by
association. I have a "dubious pedigree" because I worked for
Fate. So what? Fate was, and is, a popular and widely read
magazine on anomalies and the paranormal, and just about
everybody who was ever anybody in these areas, whether skeptic,
believer or neither, has written for the magazine at one time or
another, including Allen Hynek, who used to tell me he liked the
magazine. In fact, at one time about 10 years ago, when CUFOS
was in financial trouble, Allen actually approached Curtis
Fuller, Fate's publisher, to suggest that IUR be published as a
Fate supplement! Neither Curt nor I thought this was a good idea
-- CUFOS was a scientific organization, Fate a popular magazine
with strange ads, not a good mix -- and told Allen as much. In
due course IUR appeared for a brief while as a supplement to the
short lived paranormal magazine Probe the Unknown.
My thoughts about Fate are many and complex and one day I
will write about them in detail, but that is not the question
that need concern here. Suffice it to say that, at its best, for
what it was (a popular magazine with all the limitations of that
format), Fate under the Fullers and me was a good magazine,
balancing good analysis with interesting anecdotal accounts of
paranormal and anomalous experience. Even many members of CSICOP
(Gardner, Klass, Oberg, Sheaffer, Frazier, de Camp, Nickell,
Stein, Jerome and others) have contributed to it. Not everything
it published was to my taste, as you will learn from Mary Fuller
(with whom I used to vigorously debate manuscript choices, on
which she had the final word up till the last few months of my
employment there; the last issue I edited, May 1989, was the one
of which I am proudest; my ideal of what the editorial content
and slant should have been always), but I respected the
magazine's honesty. It never hesitated to admit error and more
than a few times ended up debunking claims it had printed
previously. And it was never sensationalistic, Smith to the
contrary. (I think that everybody except Smith would define
sensationalism as what happens when supermarket tabloids deal
with extraordinary claims.) Fate's regular writers included
scientists, folklorists, psychologists, and religious historians
as well as plain folks naively relating experiences that they
sincerely believed had happened to them (and which are typical of
such accounts worldwide, as has repeatedly been demonstrated in
folkloric and parapsychological surveys it is safe to say Smith
has never heard of). Smith says I regularly wrote UFO material
for Fate but he wisely doesn't get specific about what I wrote in
those articles and reviews. The reason is that anyone seeing
those articles is going to see a sober, critical minded treatment
of the evidence. There's nothing in there, in other words, to
indicate that I'm crazy or credulous or anything but supportive
of a scientific approach. The UFO material Fate published
(others wrote most of it, although I usually solicited and edited
their articles) was always some of the best stuff in the
magazine, and the writers included most of the most respected
people in the field. Smith's vagueness is especially amusing in
light of a sentence in his very next paragraph, the one where he
(as usual, falsely) accuses Jenny Randles "of unjustified attacks
against FSR which are written in vague terms and not in a
constructive manner amenable to rebuttal" -- a pretty accurate
description of what he's tried to do with me and Fate.
Smith claims that "even Dr. Hynek was not happy with his own
choice of editor for the IUR." Oh, really? Allen repeatedly
told me that he was very happy with what I was doing, and if fact
that was the subject of the last letter I ever received from him.
He told me, Mark and others that he felt he had left the
organization in good hands. Since then we have not had a whisper
of criticism from Mimi Hynek, who is surely a greater authority
on Allen's legacy than the self appointed Smith. Smith, in fact,
is the only person I've ever heard claim Allen wasn't pleased
with us, and in this case we all would be well advised to
consider the source. Amusingly, Smith cites an IUR reference
which apparently is supposed to prove that Allen was mad because
I was taking a CUFOS from science. Those who follow up the
reference (IUR 10[4],2) will find that it has to do with a
disagreement Allen and I had about a particular series of UFO
episodes. I was taking the skeptical position because I wasn't
satisfied with the quality of the investigation; Allen felt
differently. And that's fine. But Smith drops this into context
that would lead the unsuspecting reader to think Allen was
complaining because I was taking IUR and CUFOS into some wild
blue yonder land of supernatural speculation.
At any rate, the dispute about the particular case blew
over, as disputes usually do that do not involve Smith, and in
due course I came to feel (as did other CUFOS personnel who had
shared my initial reservations) that Allen was probably right,
that the case was an important one. Disagreements arise between
intelligent, well meaning individuals and, except in Smith's
universe, are usually not seen as evidence of conspiracy or
venality.
One disagreement some of us in CUFOS had with Allen
concerned the alleged relationship between psychic phenomenon and
UFOs. In his later years (see, for example, the Omni interview)
Allen talked both privately and publicly about his increasingly
esoteric perspective on the UFO phenomenon, which frankly made
those of us who knew and cared about Allen uncomfortable. In
some senses Allen seemed to have given up on the prospect of
using science to solve the UFO riddle and in conversation with me
(and I'm sure others) he sometimes sounded like Smith's pal
Gordon Creighton, the occultist who edits FSR and who opts for
magical solutions (believing, for example, that UFOs are djinn --
i.e., supernatural creatures from ancient folk belief; Creighton
may be the only person in the West to believe in their
existence). How much Allen actually believed this is another
question; I liked to think he had an imagination that might be
described (so to speak) as impish and perhaps he enjoyed being
outrageous. But as time went by, I -- and many other people --
were less sure. Certainly we had grown concerned about his too
ready acceptance of various cases and theories. Allen was
getting lambasted in places like Discover and Skeptical Inquirer
for incautious statements; one, as I recall, had to do with his
seeming endorsement of the old occult concept of the "etheric
realm." We were concerned, in short, about Allen's and CUFOS'
scientific reputation. This is not in any way to demean the
enormous contributions this admirable man made over many years to
serious UFO inquiry; it is well to keep in mind that when these
unhappy developments were occurring, he was old, tired,
distracted and (though none of us knew it then) suffering from
the brain tumor that would kill him.
When Allen moved to Arizona, CUFOS and IUR took a sharp turn
to the right, perhaps a bit too far as I think when I re-read
some of my early editorials. But we felt we had to re-establish
immediately CUFOS' conservative (i.e., scientific) credentials.
An early editorial decision all of us involved with IUR agreed on
was that there would be no discussion of psychic phenomena in the
pages of IUR. Cattle mutilations would be treated with the
skepticism we felt they deserved, especially following the
publication of Kagan and Summers' devastating Mute Evidence.
Cases published in IUR would be scrutinized far more closely,
this in response to earlier articles in which possible IFOs had
been treated as certain UFOs, mostly because Allen was no longer
paying strict (i.e., scientific) attention to the material he was
letting appear. Again, none of this was characteristic of Allen
in his younger, vigorous years, but it was a problem toward the
end.
I should point out here that, though he pretends to
expertise about my personality, activities and motivations, Willy
Smith is barely an acquaintance of mine. Several years ago we
exchanged a few letters. On one or two occasions we spoke over
the phone. This is the extent of Smith's knowledge of me. He
has never visited CUFOS headquarters during Mark Rodeghier's
tenure as director and he knows no board members well, with the
possible exception of John Timmerman, whom Smith calls a
"gentleman" and who tells me (most recently in a phone
conversation on July 29) that Smith's ideas about CUFOS are
wildly off the mark. In fact, John says, recently he tried to
set Smith straight, to no avail. I do find it hilarious,
however, that Smith calls me a "weekend ufologist" (which is what
99 percent of ufologists are, by the way) when I happen to be one
of the world's very few full time ufologists.
So where does Smith get his ideas? He makes them up, that's
how. For example, how does Smith know that weak personality
Jerry "has been strongly influenced by his friendship with Jenny
Randles"? The answer is nowhere, since (all Smith's wishful
thinking to the contrary) we aren't certifiable lunatics. Our
position has been consistent from the start; that the paper
deserves investigation, that thus far the critics haven't made a
compelling case, that thus far the proponents have been able to
produce only the thinnest and broadest of circumstantial cases.
My own personal feeling is that the paper is probably a hoax and
probably engineered by individuals within the intelligence
community. But that's just speculation; we all would do well
simply to await further developments and better evidence, pro or
con. what could possibly be wrong with that? Of course "the
existence of MJ-12 and the genuineness of the documents are two
separate issues." Does Smith think he's the only person to whom
this obvious consideration ever occurred?
What on earth or in the heavenly firmament is Smith talking
about when he says my alleged feelings about the MJ-12 document
("not based on the available evidence," naturally, since I could
never do anything so unvenal as to base judgments solely on
evidence) stem from my negative "feelings...toward Barry
Greenwood"? What? I scarcely know the guy. I met him once
briefly and have spoken with him two or three times over the
phone, and exchanged probably as many letters. Our interaction,
slight as it has been, has always been cordial, and I've always
thought of him (from what I've read of what he's written) as
sober, bright and reasonable. And he may well be right to be
skeptical about the MJ-12 paper. Smith may not be a good critic,
but he does have a great imagination.
Smith's comments on my villainy vis-a-vis Gulf Breeze are
typically incoherent. On one hand he says weak-personality Jerry
was swayed by his friendship with Budd Hopkins. On the other
hand, strong-personality Jerry was able to bully all of CUFOS
into submission to his point of view. In point of fact, I don't
know any CUFOS person who "believes" in Gulf Breeze; there are
merely different degrees of skepticism, form hard (Rodeghier and
Eberhart) to agnostic (mine). We all agree, however, that clear
disconfirming evidence has yet to emerge (which is not to say it
will never emerge), that the best proponent (Maccabee) has taken
care to answer critics' objections and that much of the
investigation was botched, by both believers and debunkers, who
became wildly emotional when they should have kept their heads
clear. Personally, I had learned from earlier experience that
Smith's claims have to be taken with a large dose of sodium
chloride; his attack on me, the one to which I am responding here
(there have been others about which I've kept silent, with
difficulty), demonstrates what might be called the Smith
Principle: when a fact isn't available, make one up. Gulf
Breeze is a case that may have been blown permanently because the
debate was conducted, for the most part, incompetently by
individuals (with a few honorable exceptions) who were
unqualified intellectually and temperamentally. Much of what
went on on both sides of the issue was, and is, a disgrace. It
also must be said that if Gulf Breeze is an authentic case, those
who from the beginning engaged in relentless character
assassination of the principle witness, Ed, will have earned
their place in the UFO Hall of Shame.
Incidentally, my friend Budd Hopkins did not sway weak-
personality Jerry. He and I conducted a vigorous, sometimes
heated correspondence on the subject. We remained friends,
however, and eventually decided to agree to disagree and to go on
to other things. I don't see how any objective observer could be
anything but confused about Gulf Breeze. Frankly, I don't know
what to make of it and I don't think I am under any obligation to
have a strong opinion. Like any sensible person, I have a
tolerance for ambiguity and there's plenty of that to go around
here. I envy Smith his absolute certainty even in the absence of
evidence convincing to persons other than himself.
Nothing is "missing" in IUR where Gulf Breeze is concerned.
We have published pro (Maccabee, Stacy) and con (Rodeghier, van
Utrecht). We intend to give the subject a rest, however, in the
interests of not trying our readers' patience, until new and
significant evidence comes along. Incidentally, I have no idea
what Smith means when he writes that "lately the pages of the
IUR...disclose Dr. Maccabee's adamant opposition to an
independent computer analysis of the suspected photos..." No
such statement has ever been made in the pages of IUR, by
Maccabee or anyone else, and in fact CUFOS has called (in IUR's
pages and elsewhere) for just such an independent analysis.
Smith is blowing smoke again, when he writes that the
"selection of the articles is not determined by a firmly
established policy but by the predominant wind." Evidence?
None. Nor is there evidence that IUR does not have scientific
standards; Smith wisely cites no examples of foolish,
scientifically-indefensible statements in the magazine, knowing
they are not there. He writes, even more incoherently than
usual, "Although the exact circulation of the IUR is not known, a
secret maintained at the price of higher postage rates" -- could
anybody explain what that's supposed to mean? -- "the publication
delays seem to indicate a decreasing readership and a not very
promising future for CUFOS." IUR's circulation is between 1000
and 1100. Renewal rates are excellent and the mail, both to the
CUFOS office in Chicago and to my personal residence in
Minnesota, is almost universally laudatory. (A typical letter
arrived just last week, from a professor of philosophy at a
California state university. He said that of all the magazines
he reads, the IUR is the only one he reads from cover to cover.)
IUR, a bimonthly, comes out regularly every two months; there are
no "delays," and in fact we are close to having the issues out at
the date indicated on the cover. CUFOS is doing quite well,
thank you. We have more money in the bank than we`ve had in
years; mail and inquiries are answered promptly; our files are
all in order and available for the use of any serious researcher.
We have reactivated the Journal for UFO Studies under the capable
editorship of Prof. Michael D. Swords. The issue that came out
earlier this year has been widely praised, and justly so. All
this can be verified by a call to Mark Rodeghier or George
Eberhart at the Chicago office; the number is 312-271-3611. If
CUFOS is an organization with a "not very promising future," I'll
take no promise any day.
In the postscript of Smith's manuscript we finally learn the
reason it was written at all; as a pre-emptive strike against a
two-part article on UNICAT by Paul Fuller of England and Wim van
Utrecht of Belgium. According to Smith, to whom those who
disagree with him never operate from honorable motives (they're
"vitriolic," suffering from "frustration," "destructive" -- never
of course honest in their dissent), the critics of UNICAT "fear
that we may be approaching basic results." Why would they "fear"
that? No answer. In fact, CUFOS had nothing to do with the
Fuller-van Utrecht project, though Mark Rodeghier had long said
privately that he saw major methodological flaws in UNICAT.
Nonetheless he remained silent, not wanting to irritate the
volatile Smith even at the expense of letting stand a dubious
enterprise. Fuller and van Utrecht were well into their work
when they contacted CUFOS (the first we had heard of it) and
asked if they could publish in IUR. They were corresponding with
Smith, seeking information, opinions and explanations from him,
and (as we urged them to do) they showed their manuscript to him
prior to publication. We also made it clear (both indirectly,
through Fuller and van Utrecht, and directly, through me) to
Smith that IUR was open to his rebuttal of the piece (to appear
in the next two issues of the magazine). Smith, however, claimed
that we would never publish his response! Not unnaturally, we
have concluded he has none.
I apologize for taking up all your time (and frankly wish I
hadn't felt compelled to devote mine to this). But there is
scarcely a word of truth in anything Smith's piece says. I've
learned, though, that if falsehoods aren't answered, they're seen
as truths. Should Smith respond to the above, as no doubt he
will, watch carefully to see if there's any evidence, any
documentation, to buttress the bombast. Hold him to standards of
fact. Make him cite chapter and verse. Ask him how he can know
what's going on at CUFOS without knowing the people involved, the
dynamics, the considerations that go into decision-making, and
all the rest. If he claims to know it through psychic powers,
you can rest assured there's plenty of static on the mental
radio. Ask him to produce printed statements, letters, actual
knowledgeable informants (anonymous -- i.e., fictitious -- ones
don't count), anything to back up his fantastic charges. He
won't be able to do it since none exist. But that will not, we
can be sure, stop him; he'll just invent wild new charges. All
that will stop him is if people stop paying attention to him.
Ufology has enough problems. It doesn't need a Willy Smith.
612 North Oscar Avenue
Canby, Minnesota 56220
August 1, 1989
gy has enough problems. It doesn't need a Willy Smith.
612 North Oscar Avenue Canby, Minnesota 56220
August 1, 1989
