|
Hellyer has never provided a shred of evidence for anything and absolutely nothing he has said has been confirmed by any credible 3rd party. Until that changes he's nothing more than a crazy old man spinning stories.
This is one of the problems with this entire area of interest: too much anecdotal 'evidence' is taken on faith by believers. It's basically just another type of religious belief. It's confirmation bias in a lot of cases.
In my opinion people need to be skeptical. Not debunk, just be skeptical. A lot of unexplained or unusual things happen in this world. There's zero doubt about that. And those things need to be studied from a neutral point of view, with an emphasis clearly and solidly placed on recordable (and if possible repeatable) events over testimony. The days of self-appointed 'researchers' with zero forensic or psychological training traveling around collecting testimony from eye witnesses needs to be relegated primarily to the realm of entertainment, as do these 'death bed confessions' and real, actual study of these varied phenomena by trained professionals needs to take place.
If that doesn't happen, this field is just going to die. It's already happening. Most of your die hard interest comes from older folks, 60s and above. Millennials don't have much interest. It needs to be legitimized before the whole thing fades away. Although maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing, since the baby boomers and their kids are the ones responsible for the science fiction over science approach of the last 30 years.
And that's what Hellyer is: science fiction.
It's okay to be entertained by it. I actually find all his tall white money mafia stuff wildly entertaining. But it makes zero sense to actually believe in the stories he spins when they can't be substantiated in any way. I guess that outlines another issue with the paranormal: some folks will believe literally anything, and seem entirely unable to differentiate between verifiable truth and absolute fiction.
I'm glad to see some more recent events like the study of the not-Roswell slides, the homeland security ufo video and now the Chilean ufo video. Maybe the answers provided in these cases aren't what people want, but that's the way this field needs to work, so when we do have solid proof (note I say when and not if) it can go mainstream without quite as much ridicule as things like, for interest, Hellyer's comments.
|