Monday, August 20, 2007

Editorial: "Skeptical Believers"

Some researchers in this field of inquiry are hardworking and dedicated to solving this mystery, but they do occasionally get taken in and fooled by things that would not fool a give-year-old child. Some of them are what we call "romantics" who tend to take every report, film, video, audio recording and piece of evidence at face value and don't question anything. Then there is a small but emerging group of researchers known as "skeptical believers." This group is one who stand back, look closely at pieces of evidence or stories or films or videos or audio recordings and say, "Whoa, wait a minute, let us be analytical about this and take a jaundiced view of it." I am beginning to become a "skeptical believer," even though I have had two sightings; Don Keating, a fellow "SB" from Ohio, has had one sighting, and he would be classed an SB" himself. Others considered "skeptical believers" are Larry Lund, Ron Schaffner, Bobbie Short, Diane Stocking, Eric Altman, John Green, Peter Byrne and Sean Forker. They do not take every piece of evidence or report without at least closely examining it for holes in the story or piece of evidence, and they try to be as objective as possible when it comes to these things and examine them with a jaundiced eye. I think they are extremely valuable to this field of inquiry, and they should be highly regarded in this field.

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