Below my review of Mark O’Connell’s biography of astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the famed skeptic turned UFO believer who investigated UFOs as part of Project Blue Book and later inspired Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind:
Threads the eye of the needle between science and the ‘supersensible realm’. There is one incredible reveal here in that the author quotes Hynek saying that the French scientist in Spielberg’s Close Encounters film was inspired not by Jacque Vallee as I previously had thought but in fact by another French scientist/ufologist- Claude Poher! I do appreciate this book but still have a lot of questions. Perhaps there is no escape from questions in this. It surprised me a little that Hynek was into occult esotericism, particularly Rosicrucianism, but given this in his background perhaps his eventual conversion to UFO believer makes more sense. (The people who founded the esoteric community Findhorn were also connnected to Rosicrucianism…) This book paints Hynek as scientifically minded, yes, but still having a weakness for the types of ‘wild speculation’ common to the UFO program. He maintains scientific objectivity in many of his statements and writings on the subject yet he seems to be taken in easily by the Barney and Betty Hill story for example, which appears psychologically suspect from a number of angles, including even as pointed out by the author who references an article stating that just prior to the Hills’ hypnosis sessions an episode of the Outer Limits “the Belaro shield” aired with an alien similar to the ones ‘remembered’ by the Hills. Hynek was never a psychologist. Why would he fall for psychological ’proofs’ without the requisite expertise to scientifically analyze these results? His approach from that angle appears scientifically unsound. Yes, the Pascagoula encounter is terrifying, and also measures high on the strangeness scale, but there is a psychological dimension that is never fully explored by Hynek or other believers. I too am a fan of the Simonton interstellar pancakes encounter, but considered within the measure of tall tales is hardly proof of much. I also found it a bit ridiculous that Hynek embraced the Close Encounters film so enthusiastically when it seems to cut against all of his efforts to portray himself as scientifically objective, by generally denying that he was making truth claims about extraterrestrials. Then ironically the book spins such episodes as the famous “swamp gas” sightings as in fact being likely nothing more than . . . swamp gas! I’ve read elsewhere of the Coyne helicopter encounter debunked as likely a close call and misidentification of a tanker refueling plane. (You can imagine in fact why pilots will never admit they misidentified a plane, right?) There is an old newspaper article archived online about how the famous Ohio UFO police chase case was a hoax perpetrated by physics grad students. And another review on Amazon mentions the infamous “file 13” from Project Grudge alleged to describe a human mutilation case that happened in 1956. This kind of thing makes me wonder why Hynek didn’t actively work to debunk some of the more outlandish claims made by UFO believers. He would rather it seems have argued with the arch nemesis Carl Sagan. Colin Wilson too denigrates Sagan in his book Alien Dawn. The other thing I found strange about this book is how little change is apparent in the UFO field since Hynek’s lifetime. We still are locked in essentially the same information doom loop circling between hoaxsters, counterintel rumors, and the merely unexplained. If UFOs are such a big deal, why this never ending cul de sac with no big reveal? Perhaps John Keel was right to mistrust the phenomenon as a trickster, arguing that it changes form to suit the preconceptions of each investigator.
The quote on the cover from Leslie Kean who got the story about UAP into the New York Times also I found troubling rather than trustworthy, as a lot of those UAP stories seem to be crumbing under the weight of the skinwalker ranch and other questionable associations. Is UAP nothing more than counterintelligence for the benefit of Lockheed Martin? Has anyone really seen a “dinobeaver”? This book makes no claims in that direction but the New York Post has been busy debunking as of late and caught my attention. Based on the proliferation of hucksterism at present, and despite the enjoyable read here about the good ole days (pre-Roswell crash and pre-Rick Doty, you might say), I myself have decided to go back to my old perspective that it is mostly meaningless until a real flying saucer lands on the White House lawn.
