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This Ministry of Defence file, released through The National Archives and published by The Black Vault, holds the MOD's 2002 handling of Dr David Clarke's requests for UFO documents under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. It includes the MOD's 9 December 2002 reply, which covered reports from 1976, 1980, 1993 and 1996 and charged £260. It also contains internal emails and file requisitions, plus Foreign Office and United Nations papers from 1978 on Grenada's proposal for UFO research.
“Nature”39 pages
1303 · Unidmtified [LORDS} Flyingbbje'cts l30.f [The Earl of Cork and Orrery.] of it. If this represents all that the Conservative Party can produce in the way of thinking on what is undoubtedly a serious subject, whatever your opinion about it may be, then this is deplor~ble. If the noble Lord really thinks that there is no serious interest or belief taken nowadays in witchnaft, perhaps he docs not read the right newspapers, but I can assure him that this is far from true. He is not. a believer in unidentified flying objects. " I am no believer in UFOs ", he said. I do not know how you can not believe in UFOs. You can take it for granted, if your mind takes a leap ahead, that by an unidentified flying object something is· intended that is supposed to have originated in outer space, and you can say you do not believe in that. But I do not know what it implies to say that you do not believe in an unidentified flying object. You do not believe in the object? You do not believe in its flying'? You do not believe it is unidentified? There are things that are unidentified. Perhaps we are not trying. I do not think it is reasonable to say that they do not exist. :Nobody, except my noble friend Lord Hewlett, has seriously contended that they do not exist. The question is, \vhat are they? · Lord TREFGARNE: I am pleased my noble friend has allowed me to intervene, my Lords, because he has been very caustic about wLat I had to say. I do not deny the existence of unidentified flying objects. I simply say that most of them are iden- tifiabie, that some are not objects at all but simply a trick of the light or a meteo- rological ·pheiJonemon-I think that is so in many cases-and that I agree one cannot deny the existence of unidentified flying objects. 1t is simply a question of how we identify them. The Earl of CORK and ORRERY: My Lords, I take my noble friend's point. I am anxious not to misquote him, but he also said that ufologists-it is difficult not to use that word--refer.red to un- explained sightings which would be explained if only we had better evidence; that was the gist of one part of my noble friend's argument. In other words, if we had better evidence we should be able to explain those sightings. That is the ~ole point on which the noble Earl initiated I' ... this debate. That is what I1e is asking for: he wishes evidence to be collected, collated, examined, evaluated and reported on as to what these things are, and it is notable that he himself did not say what he thought they were. Other noble Lords have spoken as though he had said they were fairies or I do not know what. when in fact he said no such thing. I believe he is a leading authority on these matters- certainly he has studied them more closely than anvone else of whom I have heard- and he· must have exercised very great restraint in this matter. and he is to be congratulated on that as well as on initiating the whole debate. I once had an ancestor-J still have him in a sense, in that he is still my ancestor although he is dead--called Robert Boyle who founded a ·society called the Royal Society. I feel that if he returned to the rooms of that enor- mously prestigious society now and found that the present Royal Society contained Fellows of such erudition and charm as the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, he would feel entirely at home; a man of the most agreeable and totally nOli-sc.:eptical nature, even if he did write a book called The Sceptical Chemist. The noble Earl has done a service by displaying before our very eyes the scientist-philosopher who knows precisely the limits of science and makes no effort to go b!;yond them. Nor does he point the finger of scorn ::!t anyone else. He must know, as others know, that it is impcssible to prove anything by negative evidence. If you wish to prove that somcrbing is not so you can do it only in logic-by proving the existence of something that is so that makes that first premise impossible. Thus, vou cannot prove that any particular type of flying object does not exist, and with respect to my noble friend, the fact that the Jodrell Bank telescope has not seen something not only does not prove, but is not even particularly good evidence, that it was not there. I am prepared to accept, if told, that the Jodrell Bank telescope has been operating on a fre- quency suited to the observation of UFOs of one kind or another· fof the last 30 years, but, until I am told that, I shall be sceptical in that matter. Lord HEWLETT: Let me be quite clear about this, my Lords. I did not say other than that Jodrell Bank had made l~ ·--··--~': 1305 many tb able ade natural p TheE thought my Lor has not able. B an argu exist. thing ca friend d about h possible degree o I rem Lords, in the in this 1886. motor-b pens, s Messrs. wereju. on tot eight y kinsmar of the • lived in having under s ·This of rna of us, been· indeed those imposs perha argum wish t _may b is no produ the n tioned
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