SUBJECT: THE VARIETIES OF DEBUNKERITIS FILE: UFO3256 THE VARIETIES OF DEBUNKERITIS: A PARTIAL LIST Compiled by Jerome Clark, December 1992. Reprinted with permission on ParaNet Information Services DEBUNKERITIS: The inability of some leading self-described "skeptics" to bring rational discourse to the debate on UFOs and other anomalous claims. McCarthy's disease: An irresistible compulsion to intimate that ufologists may be harming America by doing things that America's enemies also seek to accomplish, such as make the extraordinarily irresponsible claim that "our government cannot be trusted" and that it sometimes "lies" and "falsifies," just as the Soviet Union has charged. Further symptoms call for the sufferer to express his outrage "as a patriotic citizen" and to speak of Nazi Party meetings in discussions of meetings of ufologists, as if to imply the two were somehow comparable. The sufferer may also threaten to sue when someone reveals that sufferer has expressed such sentiments; see bully's disease below. Snooper's disease: A helpless inability to resist (1) investigating the personal lives of those with whom the sufferer disagrees; or (2) encouraging others to do so; or (3) bringing personal matters otherwise deemed irrelevant into debates on issues related to UFOs or like phenomena. Apocalyptist's disease: The strange view that popular interest in anomalies and the paranormal threatens not only science, which most would regard as hugely powerful entity in any modern society which depends on sophisticated technology for its economic survival, but also the continued existence of civilization and democracy. Further symptom: the belief that those who hold unconventional views comprise such a clear and present danger that hundreds of thousands of dollars must be raised as rapidly as possible to construct a Taj Mahal of debunkeritis near Buffalo, New York. Party-Line disease: Utter failure to understand that "scientific investigation of claims of the paranormal" - or anything else - requires vigorous internal debate, criticism, and policing, not just the bashing of persons who perversely hold views one does not like; nor does it require emotional and desperate defenses of allies even in the face of brazen, occasionally even criminal, misconduct. Within the UFO-debunking subcult, for example, sufferers compete to see who can express more absolute agreement than the next with the dictates of the subcult's leader, even (or particularly) when he is exhibiting symptoms of McCarthy's disease, snooper's disease, or other afflictions. A related symptom: Sometimes, when the dictate in question is so outrageous that it cannot be specifically defended, either the sufferer's allies will stonewall rather than dissent or they will attack, typically without mentioning the dictate at issue, the individual who has complained about it; see, for example, Skeptical Inquirer, Summer 1987, p. 334. Crackpot's disease: Inability to write without significant, sometimes total, recourse to bold or enhanced type and italics, underlined, or capitalized words, or - frequently - combinations thereof in the same phrase or sentence. Bully's disease: Tendency to threaten those with whom one disagrees with legal suits when all else fails to silence them. One prominent debunkeritis sufferer hurls or hints at such threats so often that the total may be impossible to calculate. Demonologist's disease: The conviction that those who criticize an organization with which you are associated are "evil." This last word is not a paraphrase. It is an exact quote from a pronouncement of a leading debunkeritis sufferer. Stroker's disease: The pathetic need to belong to an organization whose purpose is to continually assure its members, associates, and subscribers of how rational they are. END ********************************************************************* * -------->>> THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo <<<------- * *********************************************************************