There has been some recent discussion on ParaNet regarding the Philadelphia Experiment and the Montauk Project. I am convinced that this whole thing is a hoax based upon some very good research by Jacques Vallee and others. However, despite the research showing that it is a hoax, the story continues to be discussed as if it were all true. Jacques Vallee has provided this article to ParaNet for electronic distribution only via the computer networks, including Odyssey Network and Fidonet UFO. ANATOMY OF A HOAX: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later c Copyright 1993, 1994 by Jacques F. Vallee 1550 California Street, No.6L San Francisco, CA.94109 Note: This article was first printed in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol.8 no.1 (1994) pp.47-71. Distributed on Internet with author's permission. Abstracts of all JSE articles can now be accessed on the net at: http://valley.interact.nl/av/KIOSK/SSE/JSE_home.html Abstract The "Philadelphia Experiment" concerns the allegedly paranormal disappearance of a Navy destroyer from the docks of the Philadelphia Navy yard in the late Summer of 1943, followed by disclosures of official contact with extraterrestrial powers. Claims made by purported witnesses of this supposedly secret Navy test directed by Albert Einstein have been repeatedly found to be fraudulent. The author has now interviewed a man who served on a companion ship to the destroyer in question, and who was on the scene the night of its supposed disappearance, which he is able to explain in minute detail. Yet the features of the story are such that it survives in the UFO literature and that it is now being revived under a novel form for the benefit of a new generation of readers. Using this incident as a model of a successful hoax, the present article extracts thirteen parameters that have been instrumental in its remarkable survival over the last fifty years; it compares the features of this fabrication to other questionable episodes of UFO lore; finally, it attempts to draw up a list of suitable measures for their detection, challenge and ultimate exposure. The Prevalence of Hoaxes One of the remarkable features of the study of the paranormal is the permanence and pernicious influence of hoaxes. Not only do spurious stories arise, as they would in any other field, but they are eagerly seized upon with little effort at initial verification, even by people who have an established reputation as objective researchers. Frank criticism of the process inevitably arises, but it is commonly mistaken for an attack upon the integrity or the intelligence of the advocates of the case who naturally feel defensive and harden their position. Those who continue to question the "evidence" tend to be assimilated with skeptics and their objections are often misrepresented. The media contribute to giving such stories an aura of respectability, to such an extent that tall tales come to represent the only "knowledge" of the paranormal the public will eventually cite in everyday conversation. Even more remarkable is the fact that some hoaxes tend to acquire a life of their own, and continue to be invested with believability among the public even when overwhelming negative data eventually create unanimous agreement among specialists about their lack of substance. This makes the work of the researcher vastly complicated, not only because the field becomes heavily tainted by the unreliability of these stories, but because one has to spend an inordinate amount of time explaining the situation to outsiders and dispelling prior misconceptions. From a sociological point of view, however, hoaxes are quite interesting. They provide rich insights into the preconceptions of both believers and skeptics. They illuminate the motivations of the authors of the plot and the eagerness of the spectators. For any hoax to succeed it has to be believable and relevant. Those that endure, resisting even the absolute proof, the definitive exposure of the culprits and their methods, are endowed with additional qualities. They resonate with deep-seated imagery in the minds of the masses and of the educated public. They never fail to generate high ratings on prime time. They touch all of us, whether or not we like to admit it. Their victims are as likely to be found among the highly educated, even the scientifically trained, as they are among the masses. In the words of Norman Mailer, "if lying is an art, then fine lying is a fine art." (Mailer, 1991) Proven or suspected hoaxes abound in contemporary ufology. The saga of UMMO in Spain provides an example of a story which is simply too good and whose implications appear too profound for believers to be swayed by rational arguments. Even absolute proof of trickery can always be superseded with the notion that a truly superior alien civilization might well plant fake photographs or false prophecies in order to test the faith of its followers on earth, an argument actually volunteered by the self-described Aliens themselves in some UMMO documents (Vallee, 1991). Sociologists have long observed that exposure, in such cases, may even serve to strengthen the core of a belief system, no matter how outrageous, although it does tend to scatter away the outer layer of sympathizers (Festinger, 1956). In this regard, paranormal hoaxes are no different than their religious or political counterparts. Exposure of the Protocols of the Sages of Sion, a fabrication that began as a fake document concocted by the dreaded Russian Okhrana in 1905 and was successfully picked up and reframed against the Jews by Nazi propaganda in the Thirties with terrifying efficacy (Cohn, 1967), has not permanently dulled its impact. Indeed the Protocols have now reappeared as "channeled" material from space entities, thus endowed with that glow of supreme authority that many New Age believers find harder to question than a "mere" historical document, and absolving the human medium from any unnecessary burden of guilt (Ecker, 1992). If specific incentive to study the structure of hoaxes was necessary, this horrible example from recent history should be enough motivation for us to work hard at studying and exposing hoaxes in our own field. The present article focuses on a particularly resilient fabrication that exhibits all the important features of a successful ufological hoax, enabling us to analyze it in detail. As we proceed with this study we will attempt to point out the possible parallels among various UFO stories or rumors exhibiting similar characteristics. Mention UFOs casually in any cocktail conversation, and people are likely to bring up a number of "actual cases" they have heard discuss on television shows such as Sightings or Unsolved Mysteries. The alleged UFO crash at Roswell, the MJ-12 documents (which purport to emanate from an American Government agency that knows all about the nature and purpose of UFOs and their alien occupants) and various sensational abduction reports will probably be mentioned. Then, almost as an afterthought, someone may ask, "wasn't there a secret Navy test in the Forties, in which a whole destroyer actually disappeared?" Others may volunteer that Einstein had something to do with it, and that many serious researchers believed the incident to be the key to the nature of UFOs. You will be confronted once again with the tall tale of the Philadelphia Experiment. The story, of which we have just celebrated the fiftieth birthday, is a good example of a hoax about which everything has become known, thanks to many years of diligent research by people who were first fascinated by the tale and gradually grew skeptical of its extraordinary claims. Its impact on the public over the fifty years that have elapsed since the initial incident has been significant: one hardcover book signed by widely-read author Charles Berlitz and veteran paranormal investigator William L. Moore has become the standard reference (Berlitz and Moore, 1979). It is "dedicated to the outriders of science whose quest for knowledge takes them to the most distant stars and to the innermost worlds." A feature movie directed by Stewart Raffill was released in 1984, starring Michael Pare in the role of a vanishing sailor. The dramatic nature of the story was enhanced by its impact on several early UFO researchers, including Morris K. Jessup. It was given an aura of further credibility by the obvious interest shown by the Office of Naval Research in the initial stages and by the secrecy surrounding it. Official secrecy, which often results from purely bureaucratic procedures, tends to be taken by advocates as evidence of coverup, making wild speculation seem legitimate. Contributing to the mystery was the enigmatic personality of the man who claimed to be the main witness and a direct link to space intelligences, Carl M. Allen alias Carlos Allende. Conclusions Few tasks are as important in the field of paranormal investigation as the detection and elimination of hoaxes. An area of research that does not police itself is eventually policed by others with utterly devastating consequences, as recent examples of fraud in academic research have shown. Popular ufology, which thrives on rumors, poorly-investigated reports, shoddy scholarship and outright fraud to the detriment of those genuine facts that are potentially relevant to science, provides a long history of colorful hoaxes that have come to define the field in the mind of the general public and have tainted it with a negative image in the view of scientists and educated laymen. The problem with hoaxes is that they are charming, tantalizing, entertaining, and often correspond to what we would like to be true, as opposed to what is actually true. We have seen that the Philadelphia Experiment had all of these characteristics. This hoax, which should have died a long time ago under the combined efforts of several researchers, is an example of a story that simply refuses to die. It is surrounded with such an aura of mystery that it continues to be successfully exploited. Like some of those exhausted gold mines in the hills of Colorado which were drained of every ounce of metal in the nineteenth century, yet revive periodically in the offering circulars of unscrupulous underwriters as penny-stock mining companies with new fancy names, certain UFO stories always find gullible new investors. Even in 1993 the tale of the disappearance of the DE173 has lost none of its peculiar charm. Hoaxes have been defined as "deliberately concocted untruths made to masquerade as fact" (MacDougall 1958). In a recent theoretical article on hoaxes, Marcello Truzzi notes that "there has been little deductive effort in social science specifically to describe or explain hoaxes." (Truzzi, 1993). He points out that according to Curtis MacDougall a hoax's success is the result of two sets of psychological forces acting within the victim: under the rubric "why we don't disbelieve" MacDougall lists ignorance, superstition, suggestion, prestige. Under "incentives to believe" he lists financial gain, vanity, chauvinism, prejudice, pet theories, the thirst for thrills, and cultural climate. We have seen that such factors were indeed at work in the infrastructure of the present story. MacDougall also remarked: "When a hoax achieves the longevity to qualify for classification as either myth or legend, hope of stopping it almost may be abandoned." After fifty years we may well have reached that point in the matter of the Philadelphia Experiment. Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Mr.Edward Dudgeon for his invaluable help in clarifying the happenings in Philadelphia. The willingness of VAdm. William D.Houser to review the manuscript of this article is deeply appreciated. Among numerous correspondents who have also supplied precious assistance in tracking down various parts of the story we must acknowledge William Banks, Gary Edwards, Allen Hovey, M.Troy, Heidi Streetman, David Edwards, Marshall Philyaw and Keith Sjosten. References Allende, Carlos (1967): Letters to the author, personal communication. Berlitz, Charles and Moore, William L. (1979): The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility. New York: Grosset & Dunlap 1979. Clark, Jerome (1968) The Invisible Visitors from Outer Space, in Steiger, Brad and Whritenour, Joan (1968): The Allende Letters. New York: Award Special, n.d., pp. XX-XX) Cohn, Norman (1967): Histoire d'un Mythe: La "Conspiration" Juive et les Protocoles des Sages de Sion. Paris: Gallimard. French translation by Leon Poliakov of Warrant for Genocide. Dudgeon, Edward (1992): Letter of 29 November 1992. Private communication to the author. Ecker, Don (1992): Hatonn's World: a neo-Nazi E.T.? UFO Magazine Vol.7, No.4, pp.30-31, July-August. Festinger, Leon, Riecker, H.W. and Schachter, S. (1956): When Prophecy Fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. University of Minnesota Press. Goerman, Robert A. (1980): Alias Carlos Allende. FATE Magazine 33, No.10, October. Hauser, Robert (1987): letter to the author, 27 March. Klimo, Jon (1993): UFOs: Billy Meier and the Pleiadian Contact. IRIDIS Vol.31 No.10, p.2, June. Berkeley: California Society for Psychical Study. MacDougall, Curtis D. (1958): Hoaxes. New York: Dover. (First published in 1940) Mailer, Norman (1991): Harlot's Ghost. New York: Random House. Petit, Jean-Pierre (1991): Enqute sur des Extraterrestres qui sont dj parmi nous: Le Myst re des Ummites. Paris: Albin Michel. Pothier, Joseph (1993): The Philadelphia Experiment Revisited. Electric Spacecraft Journal Jul/Aug/Sep.92, issue 7, published 28 January 1993, pp.15-25. 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