Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 In the context of this book, the AIDS crisis had crested. Not to say that it was gone, or that the epidemic was over; but that the initial wave had receded. Thanks to the efforts of people like Surgeon General C. Everett Coop; the American population learned a great deal of how AIDS/HIV was spread and how to prevent it. The population learned this despite protests from the Reagan administration and their evangelical base. When Cooper sits down to write the book a few things have occurred: the information about AIDS is out, everyone feels confident about how the disease is spread, and the long tentacles of a Soviet disinformation campaign have worked their way into the American counterculture. Cooper is doing one of two things, and neither of them are good. He’s either adopted the conspiracy theorists’ strategy of just denying every mainstream or he’s lost the ability to be incredulous about claims that fall into his view. I doubt that he’s a willing player here. What Cooper is cla...

Writing about Cooper's book has the advantage of being nearly 30 years after the fact. We know that most of the things he's claimed have not happened. There was no nuclear reaction on Jupiter to turn it into a second star. The JASON project either never existed or it failed in its attempt. Cooper has closed the book on what was allegedly proof of aliens at Area 51 in Appendix B, and now we've moved on to Appendix C titled "Alien Implants."  90s Alien conspiracies centered around the idea that aliens were going to put things in our bodies. Why? Not sure. In some cases it was for mind control, in other cases it was to track us, and then there was some kind of hybridization role (I think...it's hard to remember). No matter why, the alien implant idea was invasion of bodily autonomy claimed by the people most likely to vote against people wanting to preserve bodily autonomy. Aliens were kidnapping us and then inserting something inside us, that's the fear. It...

 Quick correction: last week should have ended on page 420. Appendix B would make more sense if we learned about the government coverup of extra-terrestrials and UFOs in any significant manner during this book. We just haven’t and it makes this extra-long part just an add-on. Cooper is like, “hey look, alien stuff, it’s all true.” It would even make sense if it had a place in the narrative, but this stuff does not. I sincerely wonder if Cooper had an idea for a UFO book but abandoned the project and this is the stuff that’s left over. This week begins with a letter from Col. L. Gordon Cooper (USAF) to Ambassador Griffith of Grenada. Cooper is legitimate astronaut, he flew in the Mercury and Gemini missions, and just missed out on being the commander of Apollo 13. The story that Col. Cooper tells is that he saw some UFOs over West Germany in the 50s, and that even other Air Force and Astronauts are reluctant to share their stories. That’s it. It’s a lot of nothing, and because this ...

 There is an interesting balance that one must strike when discussing aliens. If you see something in the sky, you can admit that it was a UFO. You can even admit that you think you saw an alien spacecraft, but as soon as you start getting specific about what kind of alien spacecraft it was—you start to look like a crank. The balance is between just enough knowledge to imply what it is that you saw, but not enough that you know what it was. In the UFOlogy world this presented a problem, the conspiracy theorists needed to constantly toe that line because eventually the blurry photographs just lose appeal. We are still in Appendix B, and we’ve been provided with one person’s testimony that they built storage warehouses for aircraft crash recovery. I’m using the word “aircraft” in the loosest sense of the term; it was a craft that used to be in the air. I am giving the unnamed writer the benefit of the doubt that he’s not lying. Then we were treated to two really blurry and poorly cop...