The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) is an American grant-making institution founded in 1996 by magician and skeptic James Randi. As a nonprofit organization, the mission of JREF includes educating the public and the media on the dangers of accepting unproven claims, and to support research into paranormal claims in controlled scientific experimental conditions. The organization announced its change to a grant-making foundation in September 2015.
Majestic 12, also known as Majic-12, and MJ-12 for short, is a purported organization that appeared in fake documents first circulated by ufologists in 1984, and that some UFO conspiracy theories still claim to have existed. The organization is claimed to be the code name of an alleged secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to facilitate recovery and investigation of alien spacecraft. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declared the documents to be "completely bogus", and many ufologists consider them to be an elaborate hoax. Majestic 12 remains popular among some UFO conspiracy theorists and the concept has appeared in popular culture including television, film, video games, and literature.
Ufology, sometimes written UFOlogy, is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins. While there are instances of government, private, and fringe science investigations of UFOs, ufology is generally regarded by skeptics and science educators as an example of pseudoscience.
A debunker is a person or organization that exposes or discredits claims believed to be false, exaggerated, or pretentious. The term is often associated with skeptical investigation of controversial topics such as UFOs, claimed paranormal phenomena, cryptids, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, religion, exploratory or fringe areas of scientific, or pseudoscientific research.
The Varginha UFO incident involves a series of events in 1996 when residents of Varginha, Brazil claimed seeing one or more strange creatures and at least one unidentified flying object (UFO). The reports garnered extensive media coverage. Other associated claims include the capture of one or more extraterrestrial beings by the Brazilian authorities, animal fatalities at a zoo, and a woman impregnated by an extraterrestrial. An investigation by the Brazilian Army concluded that a city resident was mistaken for an alien creature and the movement of military personnel in the region was routine.
The Maury Island incident refers to claims made by Fred Crisman and Harold Dahl of falling debris and threats by men in black following sightings of unidentified flying objects in the sky over Maury Island, Washington, United States. The pair claimed that the events had occurred on June 21, 1947. The incident is widely regarded as a hoax, even by believers of flying saucers and UFOs.
Black triangles are UFOs reported as having a triangular shape and dark color, typically observed at night, described as large, silent, hovering, moving slowly, and displaying pulsating, colored lights which they can turn off.
Polybius is a fictitious 1981 arcade game that features in an urban legend. The legend describes the game as part of a government-run crowdsourced psychology experiment based in Portland, Oregon. Gameplay supposedly produced intense psychoactive and addictive effects in the player. These few publicly staged arcade machines were said to have been visited periodically by men in black for the purpose of data-mining the machines and analyzing these effects. Supposedly, all of these Polybius arcade machines then disappeared from the arcade market.
The Lonnie Zamora incident was an alleged UFO sighting that occurred on April 24, 1964 near Socorro, New Mexico when Socorro police officer Lonnie Zamora claimed he saw two people beside a shiny object that later rose into the air accompanied by a roaring blue and orange flame. Zamora's claims were subject to attention from news media, UFO investigators and UFO organizations, and the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book listed the case as "unknown". Conventional explanations of Zamora's claims include a lunar lander test by White Sands Missile Range and a hoax by New Mexico Tech students.
The Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter was a claimed close encounter with extraterrestrial beings that occurred near the communities of Kelly and Hopkinsville in Christian County, Kentucky, United States during the night and early morning of August 21-22, 1955. UFOlogists regard it as one of the most significant and well-documented cases in the history of UFO incidents, while skeptics maintain there was no real physical evidence of the encounter and the reports were due to "the effects of excitement" and misidentification of natural phenomena such as meteors and owls. The United States Air Force classified the alleged incident as a hoax in the Project Blue Book files.
The Amazing Meeting (TAM), stylized as The Amaz!ng Meeting, was an annual conference that focused on science, skepticism, and critical thinking; it was held for twelve years. The conference started in 2003 and was sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Perennial speakers included Penn & Teller, Phil Plait, Michael Shermer and James "The Amazing" Randi. Speakers at the four-day conference were selected from a variety of disciplines including scientific educators, magicians, and community activists. Outside the plenary sessions the conference included workshops, additional panel discussions, music and magic performances and live taping of podcasts including The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. The final Amazing Meeting was held in July 2015.
Proponents and practitioners of various esoteric forms of spirituality and alternative medicine refer to a variety of claimed experiences and phenomena as being due to "energy" or "force" that defy measurement or experimentation, and thus are distinguished from the scientific form of energy.
The 1976 Tehran UFO Incident was a radar and visual sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO) over Tehran, the capital of Iran, during the early morning hours of 19 September 1976. During the incident, two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jet interceptors reported losing instrumentation and communications as they approached the object. These were restored upon withdrawal. One of the aircraft also reported a temporary weapons systems failure while the crew was preparing to open fire. An initial report of the incident was relayed to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff on the day of the incident.
The Parsec Awards were a set of annual awards created to recognize excellence in science fiction podcasts and podcast novels. The awards were created by Mur Lafferty, Tracy Hickman and Michael R. Mennenga and awarded by FarPoint Media. They were first presented in 2006 at DragonCon. In 2009 the awards were described as "one of the most recognizable honors in science and fiction podcasting". The awards were given from 2006 to 2018.
Mur Lafferty is an American podcaster and writer based in Durham, North Carolina. She was the editor and host of Escape Pod from 2010, when she took over from Steve Eley, until 2012, when she was replaced by Norm Sherman. She is also the host and creator of the podcast I Should Be Writing. Until July 2007, she was host and co-editor of Pseudopod. She was the Editor-in-Chief of the Escape Artists short fiction magazine Mothership Zeta until it went on hiatus in 2016.
The Belgian UAP wave was a series of sightings of triangular UAPs in Belgium, which lasted from 29 November 1989 to April 1990.
Sharon A. Hill is an American science writer and speaker known for her research into the interaction between science and the public, focusing on education and media topics. Hill's research has dealt mainly with paranormal, pseudoscience, and strange natural phenomena and began at the University at Buffalo, where she performed her graduate work in this area. Hill attended Pennsylvania State University, earning her Bachelor of Science degree in geosciences and working as a Pennsylvania geologist.
Emery Emery is an American comedian, film editor and producer, and outspoken atheist, known for his contribution to numerous comedy-related films and TV shows, his two podcasts, Skeptically Yours, and the award-winning Ardent Atheist. Further, he has the distinction of being a contributor to The Atheist's Guide to Christmas, and the editor of the documentary The Aristocrats.
The Black Knight satellite conspiracy theory claims that a spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin is in near-polar orbit of the Earth, and that NASA is covering up its existence and origin. This conspiracy theory combines several unrelated stories into one narrative.
