Stanton Friedman is the original civilian investigator of the Roswell UFO incident and supports the hypothesis that it was a genuine crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. After researching and fact checking the Majestic 12 documents, Friedman believes that there is no substantive grounds for dismissing their authenticity.
On George Noory's "Coast to Coast" radio show, Friedman debated the SETI Institute's Senior Astronomer, Seth Shostak. Like Friedman, Shostak also believes in the existence of intelligent life other than humans; however, unlike Friedman, he doesn't believe such life is currently on Earth or is related to UFO sightings.
In 1968 Friedman argued to a Committee of The House Of Representatives that the evidence suggests that Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial vehicles. Friedman also stated he believed that UFO sightings were consistent with magnetohydrodynamic propulsion - a technology, referred to in the French COMETA report, that may be feasible in the near future. The COMETA report claims about magnetohydrodynamic propulsion are based on the scientific works of Jean-Pierre Petit. It is also currently being investigated by aeronautical engineer Leik Myrabo. MHD propulsion can only explain the shock wave annihilation and the halo that is often seen in ufo sightings. It can not explain intergalactic travels which the standard cosmologic model can just not imagine.
Friedman has further hypothesized that UFOs may originate from relatively nearby sun-like stars. He has stated that there
- ... are about 1,000 stars within our local galactic neighborhood, meaning the region within 54 light years of Earth ... According to an excellent study done by Terence Dickinson ... 46 of those stars are very similar to our sun .... the star pair Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, in the southern sky constellation Reticulum (the Net) only 39 light years away from us, are sun-like stars about 35 times closer to each other than the sun is to our nearest stellar neighbor. They are also about 1 billion years older than the sun. A civilization that had a billion-year head start on us will certainly know things that we can't even dream of. Our own limited science has shown that nuclear fusion rockets can provide thrust far in excess of that provided by chemical rocket, and so interestellar travel may be as easy for other civilizations now as nonstop flight across the ocean is for us today". (p.217)
A piece of evidence that he often cites with respect to this hypothesis is the 1964 star-map drawn by alleged alien abductee Betty Hill during a hypnosis session, which she said was shown to her during her abduction. Astronomer Marjorie Fish constructed a 3-dimensional map of nearby sun-like stars and claimed a good match from the perspective of Zeta Reticuli, about 39 light years distant. The fit of the Hill/Fish star maps was hotly debated in the December 1974 edition of
Astronomy Magazine , with Friedman and others defending the statistical validity of the match.
Major conclusions and arguments
Friedman states that he has reached major conclusions on the basis of his research dating back to the late 1950s. These can be summarised as follows:
- There is overwhelming evidence that planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft; i.e. some UFOs are ET spacecraft, though most are not.
- A few people in the US and other governments have known the above since at least 1947 and employ a "need-to-know" policy regarding this knowledge; i.e. the knowledge is highly classified largely as sensitive military information.
In addition, Friedman maintains that, although arguments against these conclusions sound plausible, "when one examines them, they collapse, because of an absence of evidence to support them, and the presence of evidence that contradicts them" (p. 30). Friedman argues that, reproducibility is largely irrelevant to the study of UFOs, essentially because by definition, scientists do not control variables if UFO phenomena involve intelligent extraterrestrial control; i.e. in this case, the study of UFOs does not involve experiment and experimental methods. This position can be criticized on the basis that experiments can be conducted on materials or technology that are hypothesized to have an extraterrestrial origin. Although Friedman maintains that such materials have on at least one occasion been obtained, as stated above, he maintains these are highly classified and not available for conventional or mainstream scientific study.
Friedman has characterized the kinds of evidence, scientific and otherwise, that he considers to be relevant, which include evidence such as credible testimony, analyses of documents, video and physical trace evidence; and particularly multiple sources of mutually corroborating evidence of one or more kind. Regarding testimony, he states that "we must remember that the reason most sightings can be determined to be relatively conventional phenomena, often seen under unusual circumstances, is that most people are relatively good observers. The problem comes with the interpretation of what was observed ... it would be irrational to say that people are good observers when their input allows us to identify the object being observed, and yet poor observers if we can't identify the UFO as something conventional" (pp. 32—33). In response to criticism on the basis of psychological or other grounds, he refers to the quality evaluation reported in the
Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 and other evidence, such as that contained in the COMETA report.
SETI
Friedman has stated strong views against SETI research, largely on the basis of rejection of the basic assumptions underpinning the research. Perhaps most fundamentally, Friedman contests the implicit premise that there has been no extratterestrial visitation of the planet. He has argued that SETI is seeking only signals; not extraterrestrial intelligence or beings. He maintains that the prominence and widespread public claims of those involved with SETI, including ridicule, has tended to prevent serious research, including by journalists (p. 129)
For the same reason, Friedman criticized Carl Sagan, a proponent of SETI, for ignoring empirical evidence, such as "600-plus UNKNOWNS of
Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14". Friedman argued that this empirical data directly contradicts Sagan's claim in
Other Worlds, that the "reliable cases are uninteresting and the interesting cases are unreliable". Specifically, Friedman refers to a table in
Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 that he says "shows that the better the quality of the sighting, the more likely it was to be an 'unknown', and the less likely it was to be listed as 'insufficient information'" (p. 42).
Public and scientific opinion
Friedman says of the response to his talks, "I know that most people are unfamiliar with the several large-scale scientific studies ... because I ask, after I show a slide and ask about each one, "how many here have read this?" Typically it is only 1 or 2 percent." He says that a talk he gave to Canadian journalists in Saint John, New Brunswick caused the attitudes of the journalists to change because "Attendees had had no idea there was so much solid information, as opposed to the tabloid nonsense they thought was the primary source of UFO data." (p. 202)
Friedman has summarized the results of polls in making the argument that the majority of people believe UFOs exist and the indication is the same holds for at least some groups of scientists. Specifically, Friedman (2008) refers to the following data in support of his position .
- Gallup Polls between 1966 and 1987 asked respondents the question: "Are UFOs something real, or just people's imagination?". Of those who took a position one way or the other, 61%, 64%, 68% and 60% took the position they are real in 1966, 1977, 1978 and 1987 respectively.
- With respect to scientists, a poll was taken by Industrial Research and Development in 1971 and 1979. Of the respondents who took a position, 64% and 69% stated they believed UFOs either probably or definitely exist. Of this subgroup, 32% and 44% considered their origin to be Outer Space in 1971 and 1979 respectively. Of the rest of this subgroup, approximately half believed them to be Natural Phenomena and half were "Undecided".
- Dr. Peter Sturrock also polled the membership of the American Astronomical Society and found that "the greater the amount of time one spent on reading UFO-related material, the more likely one is to accept their reality" (p. 210).
