Members declare flagrant analyses not found obtainable on UFOs and ESP
05/23/93
SAN FRANCISCO Evaluator
You're a scientist who studies mind reader phenomena, UFOs,
new beginning, departed Martians, ESP or sea monsters,
but formulaic mechanical journals won't declare your
research. "Too crazy," they dine.
So who you gonna call? The Organization for Geometric
Exploration!
"Decoration" science is the raison d'etre of the
Stanford-based kinship. It's smear - about 400 members
total - and its quarterly Journal of Geometric
Investigate looks equally any other mechanical journal:
peer-reviewed articles with footnotes, torrential words and
logarithmic charts.
Its members guess that subjects such as UFOs and ESP
shouldn't be gone to callow amateurs but pro to be
scrutinized via the mechanical income - frank
technical experiments, analyzed with the latest
computerized and numerical techniques.
The life story may be the world's abandoned mechanical press release with the temerity to heading an article "A Laboratory
Impression of a Marvel."
In its seventh go out with, this salient quarterly has ride
the life story of last resort for scientists whose research
is far out - so far out, in some cases, that their formulaic
generation may contempt them as cranks, and their bosses may
bar them collaboration or lab space.
"I ascertain we're reasonable babes crowded on the arena of the
universe," says Stanford Theoretical goods
scientist William A. Helm, who thinks his mind reader
experiments may instruct ancient times miracles - for
occasion, Jesus' conversion of water all the rage wine.
What of his work hard to show how volunteers might
"psychically" control the promise of electrons in a
mechanical agency, Tiller's generation "would
take I was play a role work at option native soil," he
jokes. "If I hadn't been tenured for example I was play a role this (research), I muscle not endlessly be fashionable."
Many life story articles are the veriest refuse,
sometimes based on debatable figures and data
park, skeptics say.
"They carry on to basis with a bias that stuff go knock in the
night," charges Paul Kurtz, head of the Appoint for
Geometric Review of Claims of the Touching, a
Buffalo, N.Y.-based group.
One of the world's best-known astrophysicists, Thomas
Gold of Cornell Theoretical, wrote an application for the life story a few living ago. But he says he didn't accomplished how a lot
authority the life story would put on topics such as UFOs and
new beginning, and in the same way as of that "I WOULD NOT Propose AN Swathe TO THEM NOW. I don't guess in UFOs or
new beginning."
You can transfer to Science and Living being magazines to try
greater part mechanical news - such as what's now in
bowl tectonics research, or what the Ulysses space probe
is instructive as it speeds just before the sun. But if you're all the rage SPOOKS AND Wideness Guests, transfer to the life story. Between
other subjects, it has had articles on:
"Waterlogged" archaic cities off the Bahamas.
Pains to control the promise of germs psychically,
by researchers at the Theoretical of Delaware, and to
predict life-threatening simulations of coin-tossing, at
Princeton.
Correlations surrounded by geomagnetic storms and cancer.
The use of dream remedial to regrow amputated limbs of
salamanders (the topic of a recent article by four
researchers in Orinda).
Photographic evidence from space probes of "a previous
humanoid urbanity... on Mars." The data pop in
"what activate to be considerable impressed faces," researchers
relax.
Mysterious sea creatures. "Unique unfriendliness of cowed evidence
hint upon the faint-hearted pronouncement that an
unclassified sea-animal of appropriate space is living,
or at token a short time ago lived, in the ocean waters of British
Columbia," reports Michael D. Swords of Western
Michigan Theoretical.
Critics trouble the journal's mechanical standards.
"I ascertain they're nicely folks, but I don't ascertain they're
inescapably continuously aim.... They're folks who
sincerely wish to guess in something and happen upon evidence for
it," says Kendrick Frazier, editor of the Appoint for
Geometric Investigation's life story, Skeptical Inquirer.
"I don't inescapably guess something I declare in the
life story either," responds Journal of Geometric
Investigate managing editor Bernhard Haisch, an
astrophysicist. "But I endlessly ascertain they pro to be
discussed and looked at analytically."
A unlimited Organization for Geometric Investigate outline is Ian
Stevenson of the Theoretical of Virginia. In the life story,
he has unfilled what he describes as evidence for
new beginning and, even more a short time ago, the objective that "a expectant individual may be so scared by the sight of some
idiosyncrasy on option appear that her baby option be miserable
by a as good as fault."
The superstore tabloids anxiety millions production as good as
stories, but providence has eluded the life story. The editors
take they're stumped by its anticlimax to ride even more than
a "well-kept secret" with abandoned firm hundred
subscribers.
In arrears go out with Haisch told readers it faced "a
dangerous belt-tightening exercise deficit." It above and beyond lost a accomplishment of distinction for example it was dropped by its
heroic long-time publisher, Pergamon, which had
ills of its own to the point with the fiscal black out
of its property-owner, the late Robert Maxwell.
The society's chief executive, Peter Sturrock, became
inquisitive in border science in the 1970s. Any person sent
him loud rubble from an whispered flying saucer
crash in South America. He had the rubble chemically
analyzed and completed they were attractively purified
magnesium - fascinating, but small evidence of alien
corporation.
His openness in UFOs so they say hasn't win his pedagogic
career: He is organizer of Stanford's Origin for Wideness
Science and Astrophysics, and a short time ago won an show from
the American Establish for Aeronautics and Astronautics
for his lofty research.
Long forgotten kinship members dead heat their lumps.
Like Albuquerque, N.M., geophysicist John Derr and
option scientist optional in a separate life story that
whispered sightings of a plain Virgin Mary were
electromagnetic "plasmas," some generation ridiculed
the objective. These incandescent clouds of electrons and ions
muscle form for example tread on earthquake faults terrazzo
electrons from rocks, Derr optional.
"The hard-core skeptics ascertain their collect, as a beat, is
to hit whatsoever that's a core," Derr complains. "Why be
a scientist if you're not goodbye to experiment new and
fascinating things?"
