Alien Encounters, or, How One Academic Proves You Need Not Do Any Research To Get Some Publicity

  McGill University used to have a good reputation for research. Sadly, the years have not been good to it or so it seems. A well known university with access to all the research you can find online and all the books it must hold...

Have you heard of its Office for Science and Society -"separating Sense from Nonsense"? Well, I do know one thing: Joe Schwarcz, Phd writes a lot for its website. Basically, its like a social studies department but giving itself a grander title.

Sadly, as I have already pointed out, Schwarcz's articles on various subjects cannot be taken seriously. That is not an accusation I make lightly. There were some articles I was interested in ...until I found one titled Alien Encounters.

In this post Schwarcz refers to the encounter at Kelly and the Sutton family. It's a complex case that he skirts over details on (but, hey -"UAP" are big at the moment so he probably wants some of that attention) and is "inaccurate" but does end with: "What actually happened that night remains a mystery but no trace of an alien encounter has ever been found". In other words he dare not actually look at the details of the case and give an honest opinion based on that.

When he comes to the Betty and Barney Hill case which I have, as everyone knows, tried three times to shake the authenticity of and failed, Schwarcz writes: 

"While the veracity of the Hills’ close encounter of the third kind is suspect, there is no question that the publicity the supposed event eventually received spawned a host of alien abduction reports".

So they were making it all up? Lying? And what of all the extra independent evidence surrounding the case?  No matter it seems as Schwarcz appears to base his version of the Hills encounter on a badly researched internet site.

This piece was throwing out integrity to get the "pop hits" because it was almost reminiscent of the debunking pieces published in the 1950s and 1960s. "Sorting the Sense from Nonsense"  in this case ought to be replaced with "Talking Nonsense and Ignoring Research".

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/alien-encounters?fbclid=IwAR2fDCJpZjLRXzLq1-bmN7sSs0jw6kShcA50vKEfxAimQcyPuU_vENx1--Q

Then I saw Schwarcz's chosen image for the piece. "A pictures speaks a thousand words".

And Schwarcz's is mocking UFO encounters?