If You Go Down to the Woods Tonight

John Harney
Magonia 74, April 2001

Some UFO stories have been exposed as hoaxes, and others can easily be explained as hoaxes. It is often difficult, though, to persuade most ufologists that a particular story is a hoax, because, as they want to believe the story, they fail to notice or deliberately ignore false assertions or logical contradictions in the story as it is presented to them. Sceptics, on the other hand, too often seem to take the view that the details don’t really matter, and that if the alleged witnesses had obvious motives for hoaxing then that must be the explanation.

Saucers and Science: Where Did It All Go Wromg?

John Harney
From Magonia 65, November 1998

There are several reasons why the scientific community refuses to treat UFO reports very seriously and a discussion of them could prove enlightening. We could begin by asking a question: When reports of strange aerial phenomena first attracted wide public attention in the USA in 1947, why where the most detailed and best-witnessed of these reports not simply subjected to critical analysis in an attempt to explain them?

Physical Evidence for UFO Reports: The Sturrock Report

John Harney

Magonia 64, August 1998

The recent report of a workshop on UFO reports, funded by Laurance S. Rockefeller and given administrative support by the Society for Scientific Exploration was, according to the New Scientist, " ... funded by a little-known organisation which has published papers supporting such concepts as dowsing and reincarnation. What's more, the panel included a physicist who "designs' perpetual motion machines and an engineer who tries to move objects by concentrating hard". [1] 

He Can remember It For You Wholesale: Thoughts on Budd Hopkins’ ‘Witnessed’.

John Harney
Magonia 59, April 1997

The worrying thing about UFO abduction stories is not that people like Budd Hopkins insist that we should take them seriously – we do. Over the years a number of thoughtful articles on the subject have been published in Magonia. Martin Kottmeyer discussed the types of people who report such experiences and their possible subconscious motivations. (1) Kevin McClure expressed his concerns about the effects of the techniques and lines of questioning and speculations indulged in by investigators on children involved in abduction cases. (2)

UFO Crash Retrievals – A Developing Myth

John Harney

Magonia 58, January 1997

Ufology as a separate field of study depends on the hypothesis that some UFO reports are genuine descriptions or instrumental records of objects or phenomena unknown to modern science, It is generally agreed that the vast majority of UFO reports are wrongly interpreted sightings of objects such as aircraft or meteors, for many of the stranger reports, convincing psychological explanations are available.

Sceptical About the Sceptics

John Harney

Magonia 56, June 1996

 

On being invited to review this book, [1} one of the latest sceptical works, I decided to try to get a clearer idea of what scepticism is and what sceptics aim to do. What are sceptics supposed to be sceptical about? Do sceptics believe nothing at all about anything unless they have cast-iron proof? Where does scepticism stop? One of their main preoccupations is with the debunking of allegedly paranormal events. The problem here is that they do not give any definition of what they mean by paranormal.

In Search of the Real UFOs

John Harney

Magonia 49, June 1994

At a very early stage in the investigation of UFO reports it became generally accepted that if a significant number of verified reports remained unexplained after exhaustive investigation then these UFOs must be interplanetary spacecraft. Some people argued that there were no really good cases and that the whole business was just a manifestation of human irrationality and gullibility. Students of the subject thus became divided into believers and sceptics.

Catflaps

John Harney and John Rimmer

Magonia 43, July 1992

You’ve probably heard stories about dogs, rats and cats disappearing through the back doors of Chinese or Indian restaurants, and being slaughtered, stewed, and served with curry and rice. Police and RSPCA inspectors have wasted a great deal of time investigating such allegations and, so far as I am aware, not a shred of worthwhile evidence has ever been found to support them.

Roswell: The Search for the ‘Real’ UFO

John Harney
Magonia 41, November 1991

Most European ufologists have long since given up naive interpretations of UFO reports in favour of psychological explanations. The Americans, however, are not satisfied with this; they want the space aliens and they are determined to persuade us of their reality. For many years they have argued that many abduction cases are real experiences — not real in the sense that the abductees really believe the events happened to them as reported, but interactions with real extraterrestrials (ETs).

Second Look – The Galileo Fallacy

John Harney and Robert Morrell

Magonia 23, July 1986

In our occasional Second Look feature, contributors reconsidered an article in a previous edition of Magonia. Here Robert Morrell looks at John Harney’s 'The Galileo Myth' which appeared in Magonia 21.

Robert Morrell: John Harney is to be warmly congratulated for his splendid vindication of the action taken against the scientist Galileo.

The Galileo Fallacy

John Harney
Magonia 21, December 1985

We all agree, don’t we, that Christians in general, and Catholics in particular, ought to cringe at the name of Galileo, because of the way he was treated by the Church. Galileo, as we all know, was persecuted by the Church, and attempts were made to suppress his theories and discoveries because of the stupidity, ignorance and general fat-headedness of the Pope and his henchmen. This is more or less the generally accepted view, but is it true?

Reincarnation and Personal Identity

John Harney
Magonia 19, May 1985.

Most people know what reincarnation is. That is, most people would say that the statement that we live a succession of lives in different bodies is either true or false. For it to be true or false it must be meaningful. But will this apparent meaningfulness stand up to attempts to analyse it? Apparent memories of past lives are usually obtained by means of the procedure known as hypnotic regression.

A Plea For The ETH

John Harney

Magonia 17, October 1984.

 

1. INTRODUCTION

In recent years there has developed a two-pronged attack on the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) as an explanation for UFO reports. These two prongs may be termed the cosmological approach and the psycho-sociological approach. We can put them together and sum them up as follows:

The Earthlights Controversy - John Harney replies

John Harney
Magonia 13, 1983

In the previous issue of Magonia (No. 12) appeared a long letter from Paul Devereux which was devoted to attacking my review of his book Earthlights (EL) which was published in Magonia 11. He seems annoyed that his work did not inspire me to write pages of gushing prose in fulsome praise of it. However, he more than makes up for my ‘bored and dismissive’ review in his letter. Its bludgeoning, rhetorical style may make it a good read but I hardly think that it will convince many of our readers.

The Plurality of Worlds, Part 1: From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century

John Harney
Magonia 4, Summer 1988.

 

We may perhaps gain some insight into the real nature of the controversy concerning the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) as an explanation for UFO reports by examining the historical development of the idea of life on other worlds. Our attitudes to this question are determined, to some extent, by the traditional world pictures and world views which we have inherited.

The Plurality of Worlds, Part 2: From Darwin to the Present Day

John Harney

From Magonia 6, 1981

In part one of this series I noted that when Descartes, in expounding his mechanistic philosophy, asserted that animals were soulless automatons, he was warned that this idea would ultimately be extended to human beings. Descartes wanted physical and spiritual matters to be considered separately; this would avoid useless and sterile conflict between science and theology.

The Plurality of Worlds, Part 3. Deserts of Arid Speculation

John Harney

Magonia 9, 1982

 

In a letter commenting on Part One of this series, Hilary Evans suggested that I had lost myself in ‘a lifeless desert of arid speculation’ (Magonia 5). Now I think that this is quite a good phrase to use to describe ufology. My speculations in the previous articles were based on historical facts and those who wish to disagree with my opinions can do so by re-examining those facts and others which I have not mentioned, or am not aware of, and formulating their own ideas and arguments.