(BLOGGER'S NOTE: Brad Sparks recently published the following on a closed discussion list so I asked permission to make it available to a wider audience. Brad kindly gave his permission, but he asked that I publish a slightly updated version. The following was written and updated by Brad.) Recently, my attention was called to a story in Allan Hendry's "UFO Handbook" of 1979, by a Euroskeptic who was properly cautious in bringing it up, saying "IF CITED CORRECTLY" by Hendry, then it might be instructive. Purportedly, the Detroit, Mich., airport controllers had many times "cleared" the planet Venus to land at the airport In the first of two statements by Hendry, the context is one nestled among numbered CUFOS UFO / IFO cases (details omitted as not relevant to the point, which is that they were numbered). Yet the Venus story itself has no case number. In fact, it doesn't even rise to the level of an actual story but is more of an aphorism or a quip. Hendry, p. 27: Venus continued to attract attention asa "UFO" throughout the period of mystudy. The witness in case 519 [sighted etc.].... In cases 890 and 896, the witnesses [sighted etc.].... My favorite comment, however, was providedby the FAA at Detroit MetropolitanAirport: "Do you know howmany times we've cleared Venus to land?" [No case number]Hendry p. 102:I was once told by amember of the FAA control at the DetroitMetropolitan Airport, "Do youknow how many times we have clearedVenus to land?" [No case number]I can answer the alleged anonymous airport official's misleading question: "ZERO". Yes, that's right, the story is a complete and total fiction. The planet Venus cannot "RADIO" for clearance to land -- I mean to even have to explain this is ridiculous, Venus is an inanimate object incapable of intelligent thought and communication, radio or otherwise. An aircraft that tries to land at a busy airport in a restricted airway without obtaining "RADIO CLEARANCE" first is either an "EMERGENCY" due to radio failure or disability of the pilot, or it is a potential "HIJACKING OR TERRORIST AIRCRAFT OR SOME HOSTILE ATTACK ACTIVITY. "It is an extremely serious matter, not to be laughed off as just "lights in the sky playing tricks." The airport "RADAR "will have been checked by controllers to verify that an aircraft is coming in on a standard approach path and/or is a hazard to other flights. Repeated efforts will have been made to establish radio contact. When there is no response, swift emergency action will be taken. It would be in all the newspapers and the subject of official FAA or NTSB investigation and by similar agencies in other countries if it ever occurred there. The AF would be alerted to scramble fighters to intercept unless it was clearly just a pilot in trouble and not suspicious or hostile action. Having something like this happen at night is an especially dangerous situation. We would know all about it. Hendry would have been able to provide names, dates, places, the whole works -- if anything like it had actually ever happened. And why only Detroit airport anyway? Doesn't Venus radio other airports for clearance to land? What about Jupiter and Sirius, don't they radio too?The more I thought about it the more I was struck by the absurdity of the story insinuating that Detroit Airport controllers had many times "cleared" the planet Venus to "land" at the airport. This seems to be something of a debunker article of faith, a prooftext for the stupidity of even trained air traffic controllers. Yet it is not even claimed to be a UFO sighting. We are supposed to believe that Venus just shines brightly in the sky one evening and that busy air traffic controllers then become mesmerized by the sight and actually go through their procedures to "clear" the planet for landing -- the specifics of those "clearance procedures" being conveniently hazy in this debunker thought-balloon. It is a grossly embarrassing act of folly -- if it ever happened. Therefore, this cautionary tale supposedly tells us that UFO cases at airports can just be similar stupidity and it instructs us on how stupid people can be if even air traffic controllers can make such mammoth mistakes of "misperception" (whatever that loaded term really means, which I contend is a nonsense term anyway, but that's another story for another day). But in reality it is an example of a "DEBUNKER HOAX". Yes, debunkers, can and do perpetrate hoaxes, just like the Adamskis of the world. But it is a category of event or fabricated non-event that is not recognized or studied or debated. There seems to be the attitude that debunkers are just skeptics trying to defend "truth," so by very definition they don't engage in untruthful or fraudulent hoaxes, right? When I read what Hendry wrote, though, I was bothered by a number of things besides the patent absurdity of the story, such as the fact it is not even an assertion of fact but a "QUESTION", an unanswered question at that. Was Hendry's source simply playing a rhetorical game? Was it a joke inspired by the similarity of the words "plane" and "planet"? No UFO report is attached to the story, as I said, nor any IFO report. No date, no names of alleged witnesses, whether FAA controllers or not. No "sighting details." It is clear to me that the story was calculated to produce shame, and the shame was intended to shut down all thought and critical faculties. The shame has the effect of allowing misconceptions, stereotypes and prejudices to fill in the vacuum left by shutting down thought -- in this case to forget everything we ought to know about airport procedures, even from watching the movies or television. Debunkers apparently expect that it will be too embarrassing for critics to ask questions because it only draws more attention to the uncomfortable (alleged) "fact" that air controllers cleared a planet, Venus, for landing many times. Embarrassment and shame obviate the need to supply any documentation -- no one dares bring up the subject to ask. We are supposed to accept the story without question and let it have its intended effect, in this case a very deceitful one. The Venus-cleared-to-land story is patently so false, so fraudulent, so outrageous, that it is amazing to me that it hasn't been exposed sooner. The shaming effect evidently shuts down all thinking, stops all questioning. This raises many disturbing questions: Who in the FAA at Detroit made up this obviously false story? Why did Hendry not question the story or attempt to get documentation for at least one purported instance? Why hasn't anyone questioned this fraudulent and outrageous debunker hoax before? Here we are 34 years after Hendry's book was published so why hasn't anyone blown the whistle? Hendry's book has been the darling of skeptics and debunkers, who supposedly epitomize "critical thinking" yet seem to have trouble critically thinking about their own "side" (a point that Jerry Clark has been making for years). Maybe there is some obscure review somewhere that has called attention to this bogus story and maybe the many other huge errors of astronomy, statistics, math, logic, etc., in the same book. And by the way, the falsity of this story does not mean the opposite is true, that controllers never make mistakes, never mistake IFO's for UFO's, just that they never foolishly radio clearances to land to unidentified aircraft or objects in the sky. And my position on ETH needs to be reiterated here lest I be misunderstood: The falsity of this story does not prove that UFO's are alien spacecraft. I do not accept or "believe in" ET or alien visitation, never have, but others are welcome to draw their own conclusions as to what the unexplained UFO phenomenon may represent. I agree with most of Jacques Vall'ee's 5 numbered arguments in his "Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects, JSE", 1990, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 105-117, with corrections and modifications, and additional reasons of my own, again a discussion for another time.
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