Commentary on the Test Results

3.1. A Positive Contribution to Ufology

Although some readers might quickly conclude that this preliminary report severely damages the validity of the UFO phenomenon, such a conclusion would be misguided. The genuineness of the UFO phenomenon, whatever its true nature might be, does not depend on the Majestic documents. It would be far more accurate to say that the test results cast significant doubt on the wisdom of using the Majestic documents tested by Dr. Chaski to draw any conclusions about UFOs. Since the documents are very likely fraudulent, no arguments should be based on them. They cannot be held up by researchers as valid evidence for anything associated with UFOs, except perhaps a will to deceive on the part of someone, or a desire to move people to a certain conclusion about UFOs. So how do the test results make a positive contribution to ufology? I believe this is the case in several respects.

First, the report ought to encourage researchers and interested amateurs to focus on the demonstrably real abundance of physical evidence that stands behind the thousands of people who have seen things in the sky that defy precise scientific identification. This abundance includes a great deal of documentary evidence from official government agencies that existed prior to the appearance of the Majestic documents.32 If nothing else, perhaps this study will help researchers not be unnecessarily distracted by data that is unreliable.

Second, the test results validate the persistent work of Stanton Friedman, including his positions on the fraudulence of certain Majestic documents. Friedman’s stance on the fraudulence of several Majestic documents has not been embraced by some important UFO researchers, namely Dr. Robert and Ryan Wood. Dr. Chaski’s testing ought to compel Friedman’s opponents on these documents to concede the point, at least with respect to those fraudulent documents included in our testing.

Third, the test results represent the application of genuine science to UFO studies. This in turn argues for continued testing. The question still exists as to whether some of the Majestic documents lacking a named author—and thus not included in this round of testing—may be genuine. While authorship attribution testing cannot be applied directly to these documents, now that such testing has been conducted on documents bearing author names, the results of those tests can potentially be applied to testing the other Majestic documents (see Section 4 below).

Lastly, since Dr. Chaski’s methods have met the standards of peer review within her profession and the standards of evidence in the legal profession, the document that has passed linguistic testing—and any documents that pass subsequent testing—should be considered very likely of genuine authorship.

3.2. Unfavorable Implications for the Extraterrestrial Explanation for UFOs

First, it must be observed that none of the author-bearing Majestic documents that refer to the recovery of alien bodies or contact with extraterrestrials passed the computational linguistic testing. This being the case, it would be fair to say that, as far as those Majestic documents which bear an author name, the alien hypothesis has been noticeably weakened.

However, the reader is reminded that: (a) other Majestic documents that have no author name and so could not be tested do contain such dramatic references; and (b) other UFOrelated documents outside the Majestic cache (but which are themselves unprovenanced) occasionally contain such language.33 That such language is present in other documents of course does not prove that there are extraterrestrials and that extraterrestrial visitations toearth have occurred. Obviously, just because an opinion is expressed in writing does not make that opinion a reality, and just because the author of a document suspected or believed a particular idea does not make that idea a reality.

Second, the test results cast a shadow over the Majestic documents as reliable data en toto. It seems quite obvious, given the work of Friedman and Dr. Chaski, that a concerted disinformation attempt was in play with respect to the leaks of the Majestic documents. Such a state of affairs calls to remembrance Greg Bishop’s recent expose on the deliberate manipulation of Dr. Paul Bennewitz by the U.S. government to both perpetuate UFO mythology and penetrate UFO groups.

Third, it is possible that further testing will succeed in linking the stylistics of other Majestic documents that do not bear author names with certain Majestic documents which have failed the linguistic testing already conducted. That is, it might be that the stylistics of a forged or faked Majestic document could be matched to other Majestic documents which were not tested. If such matching emerges, even more Majestic documents will be tainted by the association and thus come under suspicion as forgeries or fakes.