ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605280049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE
SOURCE: JAN CIENSKI ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE SOCIETY FOR SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION'S agenda at its annual meeting included UFOs and reincarnation.
UFOs, alien abductions, reincarnation and faces on the surface of Mars - they don't sound much like science.
But that mixed bag of beliefs was tossed around at the annual meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration. Though the theories may sound bizarre, the society tries to apply the rules of science to see if any of the concepts hold water.
``The intent is to provide a place for people to bring out serious studies about what might be called unusual events at the margin of science,'' said Charles R. Tolbert, a University of Virginia astronomy professor who helped organize the symposium.
The three-day conference that ended Saturday drew about 100 researchers.
Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, was at the meeting to give the real story on UFOs and what he calls a ``cosmic Watergate'' plot by the government to cover up the existence of aliens.
``The evidence is overwhelming that the planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled alien spacecraft,'' said Friedman, standing in front of a table filled with books and compact discs about UFOs. A battered suitcase stood nearby, used to ferry his UFO literature from conference to conference.
Another speaker was Mark J. Carlotto, an electrical engineer from Beverly, Mass., who gave a talk suggesting that there is an artificially built ``humanoid face'' on the Martian surface.
``It's clear that these phenomena exist,'' said Tolbert. ``Are they psychological or real is another question. Do we trust that it is crazy or is there some kernel of usefulness involved that we ought to at least study?''
It was that desire to find kernels of truth that led a group of scientists to found the society 15 years ago. Tolbert joined after signing a letter debunking astrology. When he was asked for his research showing that astrology was false, he realized he had never bothered to check.
Society members have to have a doctoral degree, an appointment at a university or research institution and a track record of publishing scientific literature.
The tough criteria tend to scare off true crackpots who have no interest in trying to prove that their theories are true.
Speaking in an auditorium at the university founded by thinker and tinkerer Thomas Jefferson, scientists can get a sympathetic hearing for theories that their more mainstream colleagues might laugh out of the room.
``The academic community is extremely conservative and most people don't appreciate the work I do,'' said David Jacobs, a history professor at Philadelphia's Temple University who studies alien abduction.
``If your evidence leads you a certain way, you have to follow,'' he said, explaining why he believes that people have been snatched by aliens.
The scientists taking part in the symposium point out that much of what is mainstream science today was once considered radical and bizarre.
The ideas of Copernicus and Galileo that the Earth was not the center of the universe were once beyond the pale. It wasn't until the 19th century that scientists accepted that meteorites were real, even though millions of people had seen them.
``I could do conventional research but that's not where the action is,'' said Dean Radin, director of the Consciousness Research Laboratory at the University of Nevada. He is studying hunches, or how people sometimes know something is going to happen before it does.
``Most of us here are interested in significantly advancing our fields and that doesn't happen by working conventionally.''
Hal Puthoff at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, Texas, used to study mental imaging for the CIA.
``Scientists looking at anomalies are like chefs, while most scientists are cooks following recipe books'' he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman (left), discussesby CNBUFOs with David Jacobs (right) of Temple University. Betty Plumer
and Bonnie Williams of Alexandria, Va., listen in. color