Mise à jour sur les ovnis

James Oberg: Omni Magazine, pp. 32, 114-118,

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 en 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 le , 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.

Fact or fantasy? This UFO photo from Pennsylvania is a type commonly associated with hoaxes
Fact or fantasy? This UFO photo from Pennsylvania is a type commonly associated with hoaxes

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 BowenCharles 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 GuérinPierre 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 en de la FSR ; elle montrait l'"objet" avec un diamètre angulaire 10 fois trop grand (les experts avaient calculé que la soucoupe volante faisait 18 m de long et 9 m 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 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 DerenbergerLa rencontre de Woodraw 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. en 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 BeckleyTimothy Green Beckley enregistra une interview et écrivit plusieurs articles de magazines présentant le récit comme factuel ; l'auteur et théoricien ufologue renommé John KeelJohn 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, BeckleyTimothy Green Beckley et KeelJohn 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 MoseleyJames 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. KeelJohn 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," BeckleyTimothy Green 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 le , 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' en 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" picturesLa photographie de Fogl taken in en and first published in en . 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 PalmerRay Palmer declared, We are forced to admit this is not a fake. In en 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 en 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 en 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 en 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 le . 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 MoseleyJames 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 accountPascagoula and the 1975 Snowflake, Arizona, woodcutters' accountLa disparition de Travis Walton) and some of the classic UFO photographs (such as the 1950 McMinnville photosLes photographies de McMinnville and the 1957 Trinidade Island photosL'observation de l'île de la Trinité) 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.