La question des canulars présente un aspect intéressant du phénomène ovni. Elle peut tester si les enquêtes ufologiques sont bien menées et mesurer la puissante "envie de croire" de nombreux auteurs et enquêteurs ufologues. Ce ne sera que lorsque, et si, ces leçons seront pleinement appréciées que les ufologues sérieux se débarasser de la suspicion d'être souvent victimes, volontairement ou non, de canulars.
Le physicien anglais David I. Simpson mit au point il y a quelques années des canulars très rélévateurs sous forme d'expérience ovni
contrôlée
. Selon son rapport publié dans le n° de printemps l'année d'avant du Skeptical Inquirer, les
tests ont comparé des détails connus de stimuli 'ovni' fabriqués avec les déclarations d'enquêteurs qui
s'ensuivirent
. De plus, Simpson voulait tester les capacités des ufologues en laissant des indices qui
pourraient suggérer une explication. Les canulars furent
conçus pour présenter des incohérences substantielles qui permettraient à tout enquêteur un peu critique d'avoir de
sérieux doutes quant à leur authenticité.
Une expérience en particulier fut menée le soir du samedi 28, alors qu'un groupe britannique de passionnés d'ovnis près de Warminster (Wiltshire), était à la recherche d'ovnis qui avaient été signalés fréquemment dans la région. Simpson installa un projecteur rose sur une colline voisine. Lorsqu'il l'allumait ou l'éteignait soudainement, un faux "détecteur magnétique" sonnait une alarme sur le site d'observation. Un complice avec un appareil photo contenant une pellicule préexposée (qui contenait déjà des images d'ovnis) faisait plusieurs clichés de l'horizon puis confiait l'appareil — avec la pellicule à l'intérieur — à un ufologue réputé.
Simpson avait préparé la pellicule du canular de manière à ce que la direction photographiée et l'apparence de l'"ovni" soient grossièrement différents de ce que les observateurs avaient effectivement vu. Il saw to it également que les 2 premières images préexposées (prises presque 1 an plus tôt) montraient des arrière-plans significativement différents des 2 expositions réelles suivantes (qui bien sûr ne montraient aucun ovni). Cela aurait dû être évident même pour l'enquêteur le moins expérimenté.
Mais personne ne sembla remarquer (et personne n'interrogea même le photographe). Après 2 mois d'étude par des
experts ufologues en Europe, les photographies furent déclarées par Charles Bowen
, rédacteur-en-chef de la FSR, être
authentiques au-delà de tout doute raisonnable
.
Un consultant rapporta qu'il n'y a rien dans ces photographies qui me suggère qu'elles aient été fabriquées d'une
manière ou d'une autre
.
Le Dr. Pierre Guérin
, ufologue et directeur de recherches à l'Institut
Astrophysique du CNRS français, indiqua qu'il est exclu que l'objet photographié ait été le résultat d'une
fabrication
.
Une représentation artistique de l'ovni parut sur la couverture du n'° de juillet 1970 à août 1970 de la FSR ; elle montrait l'"objet" avec un diamètre angulaire 10 fois trop grand (les experts avaient calculé que la soucoupe volante faisait 60 pieds de long et 30 pieds de diamètre).
Les témoins oculaires décrivirent comment l'ovni — violet, bordé de blanc, ayant une lumière cramoisie au milieu —
resta en survol pendant un moment puis se déplaça vers Warminster avant de s'arrêter à nouveau. Toutes les estimations
de direction et de durée étaient significativement erronées, et les erreurs s'accumulèrent avec le temps (par la suite
l'objet fut décrit comme émettant une lumière ultraviolette et entouré d'un halo rouge-rubis
.)
La critique de l'"enquête" par Simpson, qu'il laissa se poursuivre pendant 2 ans 1/2 avant de révéler le canular, fut dévastatrice : Mes expériences dans le domaine
des ovnis ont montré que l'incompétence en matière d'enquête démontrée dans cette expérience particulière, loin d'être
exceptionnelle, est typique... Parfois des personnes aux qualifications techniques appropriées sont impliquées ; il
est dérangeant de voir elles abandonnent leur discipline mentale et tout sens commun... Si jamais un jour apparait un
indice subtil suggérant une visite extraterrestre, il est peu probable qu'il soit découvert par un ufologue typique.
Certains canulars ufologiques commençent comme des blagues
spontanées plutôt que des expériences scientifiques planifiées avec soin. En mars 1968 plusieurs étudiants
de l'Université du Maryland écoutaient une interview radio en libre antenne où un homme
prétendait avoir été emmené par des gens d'une soucoupe volante sur leur planète, Lanulos, dans la constellation
éloignée de Ganymede
. Un des étudiants, Tom Monteleone, un passionné de
science-fiction, appela pour poser une question. Puis Monteleone pensa soudain, Juste
pour rire, pourquoi est-ce que je ne dirais pas que j'ai été sur Lanulos, moi aussi ? Ça m'éclaterait !
Et il le fit et ça ne rata pas. Le "contacté" abasourdi, Woodrow Derenberger, retrouva rapidement son sang-froid et corrobora la description de Monteleone de la planète Lanulos, validant des détails qui contredisaient des choses que Derenberger venait de révéler dans l'émission. plus tard Monteleone raccrocha et s'esclaffa avec ses collègues de chambrée, jusqu'à ce que le téléphone sonne. La station radio avait retrouvé son numéro et voulait maintenant plus d'informations.
Les 2 années qui suivirent furent des années de ruse pour Monteleone, qui fournit aux
ufologues des informations glanées dans les récits de Derenberger et la littérature ufologique en général. À chaque
fois qu'il "corroborait" des informations données précédemment sa crédibilité augmentait (il dit à des enquêteurs ne
pas être familier de la littérature ufologique, et ils le croyaient), le journaliste spécialisé dans les ovnis Harold Salkin fut impressionné que l'histoire de Monteleone fut
si précisément synchronisée
avec celle de Derenberger, l'auteur ufologique et rédacteur-en-chef Timothy Green Beckley
enregistra une interview et écrivit plusieurs articles de magazines
présentant le récit comme factuel ; l'auteur et théoricien ufologue renommé John A. Keel
qualifia l'histoire de l'un des récits de contact les plus intrigants que j'aie dans mes dossiers. ... Je suis
forcé d'accepter qu'il soit vrai
(même si, comme Monteleone le fit remarquer, les
récits de l'histoire publiés par Keel étaient considérablement déformés).
J'ai fait de longues interviews
, a raconté Monteleone à Omni (1979-05). Non seulement j'ai répété mes fausses aventures, mais j'ai aussi ajouté des
embellissements et des absurdités — juste pour voir jusqu'où je pourrai pousser le canular avant d'être discrédité
.
Monteleone se soumit même à une session d'hypnose, payée par Salkin, durant laquelle il simula la transe et "passa" le test comme un champion.
Assez étrangement, lorsque les aveux complets du canular furent publiés dans le magazine Fate à la
fin de l'année dernière (Omni avait eu l'info un an et demi avant Fate), Monteleone
fut celui qu'on accusa d'avoir créé la confusion. Ses actions, a écrit l'auteur Karl Pflock, n'ont servi qu'à troubler encore plus les eaux déjà boueuses de l'ufologie. La
dernière chose dont on ait besoin, si l'on veut percer le mystère des ovnis, est ce genre de fausses pistes qui
consomment une partie déjà trop limitée des ressources des enquêteurs sérieux
— ce que Pflock,
Salkin, Beckley et Keel considéraient
être, parmi d'autres. Cette complainte ironique semblait absoudre les enquêteurs crédules de toute responsabilité dans
leur acceptation aveugle et crédule des inventions délibérément absurdes de Monleleone. Le magazine Fate semblait dire que ce n'était pas leur faute s'ils avaient cru au canular.
D'autres réactions aux aveux de Monteleone sont assez amusantes. Salkin, qui est décrit
par l'observateur expérimenté du monde ufologique James Moseley
comme quelqu'un de chaleureux,
aimable, mais plutôt crédule.
refuse toujours de croire à la confession de Monteleone. Keel est particulièrement
contrarié et a fait une déclaration qualifiant l'article de Fate comme une tentative de
discréditer l'ensemble de mon travail et ma réputation professionelle de journaliste de plus de 35 ans.
Keel prépare des poursuites judiciaires, selon certains.
Quant à Beckley, il doit déjà se préoccuper d'entailles plus récentes dans sa crédibilité d'enquêteur ufologue compétent. Dans un numéro récent de son tabloid mensuel UFO Review, Beckley a apparement été victime d'un autre canular ovni.
Dans un article intitulé "Rencontres Érotiques de Type Très Rapproché," Beckley commence
avec ces mots surprenants, Il n'est pas rare que les occupants d'ovnis aient des contacts sexuels avec les
humains.
Il tried to lay the foundation for this far-out story in an editorial on the facing page: Some
readers undoubtedly will believe that we are getting a wee bit carried away when we turn to sex in order to sell a
UFO newspaper. , . . We really aren't trying to capture a larger audience by printing a sensationalistic headline on
our cover. If we wanted to take this approach, we'd . . . simply fabricate the stories we print. But we don't cater
to the gullible. ... All the items we mention in our story are fully documented. We need not substitute fiction for
truth -- for truth is far greater than fiction in the field of UFOlogy.
The principal source of Beckley's "saucer sex" story was a newspaper account dated dimanche 12 février 1978, which
carried the headline kidnapped to venus. Reporter Jerry Burger told of a thirty-one-year-old librarian found by police
as she rambled around in a park, wearing no clothes. She claimed she had been abducted by Venusians
and taken to the back
of the moon
, where she was implanted with outer-space semen
before being returned to Earth. Beckley
reported the case as true and added that such reports are taking place on a global scale There can be little doubt
from the documented evidence that some tremendous event is slated to happen that will guide us to a higher
understanding ot ourselves and the cosmos. . . . The UFOnauts are trying to teach us a lesson — that love is
universal and encompasses every living creature, regardless of their planet or dimension of origin.
And for
those readers who wanted more information, Beckley added that the "saucer sex" story is just one chapter in his new
book, Strange Encounters Bizarre & Eerie Contacts with Flying Saucers, available from the author for
$6.95 plus postage and handling.
Unfortunately, Beckley's story is even more absurd than it first appears. Houston spaceflight expert Robert Nichols
sent Omni the actual source of the outer-space semen
story, in the form of the newspaper clipping Beckley
quoted. The article did not come from a newspaper at all, but from a' dimanche 12 satirical publication, the Sunday Newspaper Parody, written by the National Lampoon. Beckley (or someone on his
staff) evidently made some editorial changes by adding realistic touches to the article and changing the original
spelling of the saucer-rape victim from the highly suspicious "Penelope Cuntz" to the acceptably ethnic "Penelope
Kuntz." Beckley also altered the name of the newspaper from the Utopian Dacron, Ohio, Republican Democrat to the
Toronto Sunday Sun. The entire account, then, is a fictional spoof, but the extent of Beckley's role in promoting and
altering it (or merely passing it along credulously) is still undetermined.
Photographs are even more subject to hoaxing. In fact, while only a very small percentage of raw UFO reports are hoaxes, it is generally acknowledged even by UFO believers that the overwhelming majority of published UFO photographs are hoax - either forgeries, models, or misrepresented ordinary phenomena
A classic UFO photographic hoax involved the "Fogl flying saucer"
pictures taken in décembre 1957 and first published in 1959. As chronicled by skeptical
ufologist David A. Schroth, the photographs were embraced by magazines in Great Britain and the United States; UFO
experts argued that some features on the bottom of the flying saucer were identical to features seen in other
photographs, testifying to the authenticity of Fogl's photographs. American UFO publicist Ray Palmer
declared, We are forced to admit this is not a fake.
In 1966 one of the photographs was presented
as authentic in Life, That may have been the last straw for Fogl, who finally revealed that the UFOs were faked — made
with a small model hung on a wire. When asked why he did what he did, Fogl replied that he wanted to show that
certain people make utter fools of themselves. Far too many people make a racket of the UFO business, writing phony
books, supported by faked pictures.
As if in fulfillment of Fogl's point, UFO writers continued to use the hoax pictures. Palmer (who is credited by UFO
historian Daniel Cohen with having "invented" the concept of "flying saucers") wrote that it was impossible
for
the photos to be fakes and that Fogl's confession must be a hoax. And in 1979 McGraw-Hill published David
C. Knight's UFOs; A Pictorial History, with page 86 proudly presenting one of Fogl's pictures as still
authentic.
Another famous UFO hoax provides eloquent warning against well-meaning UFO stories that originate at a great dis- tance in space or time. They are thus im: mune from any real investigation. If they are hoaxes, it is next to impossible to prove. As part of a "UFO flap" in 1897, the story of Alexander Hamilton, of Yates Center, Kansas, stands out. The farmer reported that a cigar-shaped airship flown by jabbering humanoids hovered over his farm and caught hold of a calf with a rope. Hamilton's account was published in the local newspaper, along with a statement vouching for his honesty, signed by five leading citizens of the town. The story rapidly spread around the world, and for decades UFO writers considered it one of the best-documented "close encounters of the third kind" ever.
Hamilton and the five leading citizens actually had organized a local Liars Club, and Hamilton's "calfnapping
airship" whopper, a tall tale through and through, topped all other fabrications. The newspaper story was all a joke,
as it turned out, but neither the editor nor the town citizens realized how seriously the outside world had taken the
account. It was not until early 1977 that the full story appeared, in Fate magazine. Associate editor
Jerry Clark, a diligent and highly principled pro-UFO investigator, revealed what he
called the biggest hoax ever known in UFO history
when he published hitherto-unknown documentation that
established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Kansas farmer's story was phony.
Buf the same old "uforic" patterns continued. New writers based their books and articles on older UFO books and articles, not relying On original sources or their own independent verification. Among the subsequent UFO literature that continued to use the Hamilton story as if it were authentic were Knight's UFOs: A Pictorial History and Ripley's Believe It or Not: Stars, Space and UFOs (thirty-third in a series).
The janvier 1980 issue of UFO Journal (issued by MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, a well-organized private research group with a good reputation) provided some very interesting insights into the minds of a UFO hoaxer and of the UFO investigator who worked on the case. The witness was a twenty-six-year-old security guard who claimed to have encountered aliens in the San Joaquin Valley on dimanche 27 février 1977. A year and a half later, after trying to dig up supporting evidence, he contacted MUFON
The investigator (who, along with the witness, was kept anonymous in the article) reported: I was impressed with
this young man's sincerity, his apparent honesty, and his concern that he was unable to locate any other witnesses. I
am by nature a cautious and suspicious person , . . having run into enough hoaxes and fraudulent cases in my 22 years
of investigation to give me adequate insight and recognition for such incidents I was quite satisfied as to his
honesty.
The UFO incident filled nearly four pages in the magazine,
But at the end of the article the entire tone changed: The important message for all of us
, wrote editor
Richard Hall, is that this case is a hoax — a confessed hoax
. "The investigators didn't find this out for sure
until the article had been typeset, but they decided to publish it anyway as a lesson in human vulnerability to
hoaxes. The story content fit so well with other cases, and the reporter seemed so 'sincere' and in a responsible
position, that we were nearly taken in.
Even without the confession, MUFON
investigators had become suspicious of glaring discrepancies in the story as told to different investigators, but even
those considerations might not have been enough to prove the case a hoax if the witness himself had not confessed when
confronted with the inconsistencies and contradictions in his story.
In a letter to MUFON, the hoaxer (code-named "Carl" to preserve his anonymity)
explained his motives: All my life I had been a nobody, unimportant. ... I wanted to be important. ... I am not
psychologically deranged but just wanted some attention.
But he had not apparently acted as if he sought
attention. He certainly had not sought publicity. Indeed, the investigator had originally reported that fearing
ridicule and harassment from friends and coworkers, Carl kept this story to himself until he simply had to tell
someone who would help ease his frustration and anxiety.
Evidently the "adequate insight" into hoaxes that the
MUFON investigator claimed to possess involved something other than factual evidence.
MUFON's decision to publish the San Joaquin hoax story with the confession was a courageous one, since it did make its investigator sound rather foolish. But the UFO group demonstrated commendable maturity in choosing to try to have all its investigators learn from the experience, lest it be repeated on a wide scale. It still may not help.
The other famous hoaxes were not universally swallowed, either. Monteleone's space trip to Lanulos was never believed
by most of the "nuts and bolts" UFO buffs who have for so long despised the crackpot contactees and the bad publicity
they have brought to the subject. James Moseley, editor of Flying Saucer News, wrote that
Monteleone clearly was not a "classic contactee" and evidently never believed his own story. A perceptive conclusion!
However, the Fogl photographs and Simpson's experiment in England would probably not have survived the sophisticated
photoanalytical techniques now used by some UFO groups, notably William Spaulding's
high-technology Ground Saucer Watch, in Phoenix, and the GEPAN laboratories, in
Paris.
The extent to which serious UFO groups seem determined to detect and reject hoaxes was demonstrated lasf year when, virtually without exception, all major groups and leading investigators publicly denounced Genesis-Ill Productions' book UFOs: Contact from the Pleiades. While the strikingly handsome collection of flying-saucer photographs was being billed'by its publishers as the greatest UFO breakthrough in human history, a number of pro-UFO researchers circulated reports that claimed that the whole business was a money-making fraud. For once UFO skeptics agreed with their traditionally antagonistic pro-UFO counterparts, though a Genesis-Ill spokesman continues to deny that his company is involved in any hoax.
UFO skeptics, however, go even further in their allegations that there have been hoaxes, and they find themselves in bitter disagreement with pro-UFO forces. Some of the highly publicized classic UFO encounters (such as the 1973 Pascagoula fishermen's account and the 1975 Snowflake, Arizona, woodcutters' account) and some of the classic UFO photographs (such as the 1950 McMinnville photos and the 1957 Trinidade Island photos) are considered by skeptics to be hoaxes. Half of the "best UFO cases" of the 1970s-as judged by a blue-ribbon panel of UFO experts sponsored by the National Enquirer—are considered hoaxes, according to independent research by skeptics. Here the battle lines are clearly drawn.
Suggesting that a UFO case is a hoax poses delicate problems. First of all, the UFO witness (whether a hoaxer or not) may have grounds for a libel lawsuit. Although many threats along these lines have been made, so far no suits have been filed. Second, without a confession it is extremely difficult to prove an accusation of "hoax," however spurious the story may sound. Last, UFO skeptics (in particular, the world's undisputed leading skeptic, aviation journalist Philip J. Klass) open themselves up fo countercharges of "character assassination" and "vicious ad hominem attacks" when they point out, usually quite correctly, that the reliability of many famous UFO witnesses is highly questionable because of their past and subsequent histories of exaggeration, fantasy, and outright deception (pro-UFO groups generally downplay, or even cover up, such behavior on the part of people whose credibility they wish to emphasize).
Despite the problems caused by UFO hoaxes (mainly, that they can be far more difficult to solve or even recognize than are "ordinary" honest UFO reports), these patterns in deception can be made useful. Successful hoaxes can help calibrate the reliability of UFO research, as in the case of Monteleone's and Simpson's hoaxes; hoaxes can also instruct serious investigators in caution and humility, as with the San Joaquin hoax reported in JJFO Journal. The claim of the superskeptics, that unsolved UFO cases can all easily be dismissed as unrecognized hoaxes, is unsubstantiated; the claim of UFO eager believers, that the hoax problem is under control, is equally unsubstantiated, if not refuted. And since no one wants to look foolish, the disagreement continues.