Presented by Robert Sheaffer
Saturday, April 2, 1:30PM
Live event on YouTube (https://youtu.be/EqiF-ApmO7c)
Robert Sheaffer, one of the leading skeptical investigators of
UFOs, will discuss the history of the phenomenon (including an
update about a famous case, now solved), recent news, and possible
future directions. He'll recall his mentor, colleague, and
friend, Philip J. Klass (1919-2005), generally considered the top
skeptical UFO investigator of his time. Klass was a founding
member of CSICOP (now called CSI, the Committee for Skeptical
Inquiry), was one of the original conveners of NCAS in 1987, and
was an important long-time mentor to the organization. Also, what
was it like to be a skeptic in the Washington, DC area in the
1970s? Sheaffer can speak from personal experience.
Robert Sheaffer is a writer with a lifelong interest in astronomy
and the question of life on other worlds. The author of UFO
Sightings (1998), his latest book is Bad UFOs (2016),
which is also the name of his blog that casts a skeptical eye on
claims about UFOs. He was a founding member (with Philip J.
Klass and James Oberg) of the UFO Subcommittee of the Committee for
Skeptical Inquiry, and was a longtime fellow of that organization.
Mr. Sheaffer is also a founding director and past Chairman of the
Bay Area Skeptics, a local skeptics' group in the San Francisco Bay
area. He has appeared on many radio and TV programs, and his
writings and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as OMNI,
Scientific American, Spaceflight, Astronomy,
The Humanist, Free Inquiry, Reason, and
others. His "Psychic Vibrations" column in Skeptical Inquirer
kept readers informed of weird developments in the "science" of
UFOs, psychic research, cryptozoology, etc from 1977 to 2017. Mr.
Sheaffer lives near San Diego, California, having most recently
worked as a data communications engineer in Silicon Valley. ncas@ncas.org
