| Fine. I accept that the Army contracts everything out. In which case, my point is that you were ascribing scientific credibility to the Army because they make stealth bombers and I was arguing that the engineering expertise is a.) not pertinent, b.) not within the institution. I don't consider Annie Jacobson to be an unbiased source. Here are some glaring criticisms of her past books in terms of her competence. Leading space historian Michael J. Neufeld, gave a negative review of the book: “Jacobsen concentrates on the scandals, which inevitably leads to an imbalance in presentation. Little is said about the substantive contributions of von Braun.” Space historian Dwayne Day, for instance, called Area 51 a "poorly-sourced, error-filled book" in which the author makes an argument that "defies common sense" and is reliant on one anonymous source. Jeffrey T. Richelson and Robert S. Norris, critiquing Jacobsen's factual errors on the blog Washington Decoded, stated that "[t]here are so many mistakes that it is hard to know where to begin ... Area 51 is a case study of how not to research and write about top-secret activities." Historian Richard Rhodes, writing in The Washington Post, also criticized the book's sensationalistic reporting of "old news" and its "error-ridden" reporting. He wrote: "All of [her main source's] claims appear in one or another of the various publicly available Roswell/UFO/Area 51 books and documents churned out by believers, charlatans and scholars over the past 60 years. In attributing the stories she reports to an unnamed engineer and Manhattan Project veteran while seemingly failing to conduct even minimal research into the man's sources, Jacobsen shows herself at a minimum extraordinarily gullible or journalistically incompetent." The book was sharply criticized for extensive errors in an essay by a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and a senior fellow at the National Security Archive. I will accept it when mainstream psychologists and neuroscientists acknowledge it as something that exists. Not one or two of them, but most of them. |