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Prominent UFO Author exposed

lancemoody

Student
L
Joined
Jan 30, 2010
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46
Hello JREFers,

I just wanted to mention my recently published blog account of taking down the famous UFO author, Philip J. Imbrogno.

It seems that Imbrogno's impressive credentials were all a fabrication. Shortly after I began my investigation, Imbrogno announced that he was leaving the field. In my article, I also tie together this event with past frauds in UFOology.

Admittedly this is not related to the topic of Feminism in Skepticism but I still thought some folks here might be interested.

Thanks,

Lance Moody
My blog: notaghost com
 
thanks for that Lance. I for one try follow the field, so this is important news. I hope the more skeptical ufologists give a lot of attention to this (and by skeptical I include all non-ET/alien craft type believers).

Even though I don't believe in the ET hypothesis myself re ufology, I am sure there are a few who are honest, maybe not very many, but a few (even if very few)..
 
Lies, deceit, pseudoscience and a lack of critical thinking in ufology???!!!

I'm shocked, I tell you! Shocked!!!


Or not.


ETA: Not you, blue raven. :) I must be more careful with my broad brushings!

Welcome to the Forum.


 
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Good for you. I've at least got a real picture of myself standing with Phil Klass and Hynek, and fellow skeptic Gary Posner --- taken at a CSICOP meeting years ago. Keep after those tossing out phony credentials, and move on to paranormal claimers as soon as you can. I've found about 90% of psychic actresses and psychic actors either have non-accredited degrees they attempt to pass off as accedited, or claim degrees that don't exist from schools they didn't attend.
 
Thanks for the hello Akhenaten.

Actually there has been a discussion about the faked credentials of Imbrogno at the abovetopsecret.com forum. It's eight pages long now, and Moody has weighed in there too, with a number of posts. So has David Biedny (former paracast host) and Jeremy Vaeni and Jeff Ritzmann of paratopia. If you are interested in this, you gotta check that thread out.

It's interesting to see how these guys have fallen out with one another (I mean from the broad believers camp), very much revealed in that thread if you didn't already know. Bierdney left the paracast (the insufferable Gene Steinberg and Chris O'Brien co-host the show now), having fallen out with Steinberg. He also can't stand the paratopia guys, although they used to be mates..

Anyhoooow, I agree with what Moody says about Imbrogno on that thread, why did so few people bother checking up on Imbrogno before? I mean he was so obviously full of ****. I mean the Saudis battling djinns in secret ops!! and the Saudis spill the beans to Imbrogno based on his supposed high level military security clearance stateside!! It was like he was asking to be exposed.
 
Imbrogno, at the bus stop, sitting on his suitcase waiting for the Greyhound to No-wheresville.

[background music: Queen - Another One Bites the Dust].

Cue Credits.

Fade to black.

It's a wrap, great work Lance. :D
 
This is somewhat relative to the "Is UFOlogy a pseudoscience" thread. Exactly how many scientific fields allow people to so easily falsify their resume' and publish articles in journals?I am sure it occurs in science now and then but not to the degree it happens in pseudoscientific fields because science tends to be far more restricitve. UFOlogy tends to accept peoples claims with no checking. This, apparently, includes their researcher's credentials. People like Jim Dilettoso and Don Schmitt stand out in my memory but I am sure there are more. They are allowed to write in prestigious jounals like the "international UFO reporter", which is supposedly peer reviewed (but not reviewed enough to check their writer's credentials).
Imbrogno should consider himself lucky. Both Schmitt and Dilettoso have resurrected their "careers" in UFOlogy and are highly regarded by many. That would never happen in a scientific field.
 
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I'm not much into the UFO bit, but when I read the thread title Stanton Friedman came to mind. Never heard of this guy.
 
Thanks for the kind comments everyone.

One of the things that doesn't seem to get discussed about the story is that, even without a credentials scandal, the guy's ideas were ridiculous.

I note that the crazier his books became, the more he seemed to be respected and loved.

Lance
 
Greetings lancemoody,welcome, and thanks for that excellent article exposing yet another fraud ! Well done,well investigated,well written and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. !
 
I notice neither ufologist nor Rramjet have been here to thank you for cleaning up a small part of their chosen hobby. You'd think that genuine people involved in researching unidentified flying objects would be all for rooting out the frauds and charlatans wouldn't you?

.... well, maybe not.
 
Nick Pope once told me that he'd never seen anything that didn't have a rational, mundane explanation. That doesn't seem to have stopped him from having a career stating the opposite though
:D
 
Nice work.

Akhenaten said:
Lies, deceit, pseudoscience and a lack of critical thinking in ufology???!!!

I'm shocked, I tell you! Shocked!!!
Click to expand...

I found it positively extraordinary!


On this point:
Is it even legal to have two legal names?
Click to expand...
As I understand it, yes. In the US at least. There was a thread that touched on the subject a while back, and the outcome was that your name is actually just whatever you call yourself. Getting a name change officially recognised by somewhere it's already officially registered may require jumping through some hoops, but in general you're absolutely fine just waking up one morning and deciding you want to be called something else.

To back that up, I know quite a few people (in the UK) who regularly use at least two names. Mostly it's because they changed names after getting married, but couldn't be bothered with the hassle of changing work related documents and so on. People like actors and authors often use pseudonyms and stage names as well.

Obviously this doesn't make Imbrogno's excuses any more plausible though.
 
A question-

When he wrote Night Siege with Hynek, was he already fabricating his credentials? This worries me, because you know, if you associate yourself with kooks...

Hynek, as far as I know, kept distance from UFOlogy kooks. If Hynek knew about his lies, and despite of this fact worked with him, this could be a major blow to UFOlogy's credibility as whole.
 
I think the jury is still out on that one. As I point out in my piece, it is obvious that at least some of the stories he told about Hynek could not be true.

Lance
 
Stray Cat said:
I notice neither ufologist nor Rramjet have been here to thank you for cleaning up a small part of their chosen hobby. You'd think that genuine people involved in researching unidentified flying objects would be all for rooting out the frauds and charlatans wouldn't you?
Click to expand...


Considering ufology's own words of the subject, one would certainly think so...


ufology said:
As for lies and deception, let's smoke them out and expose them for what they are. We don't need them in ufology any more than anyone else does.

j.r.
Click to expand...


But as you suggested, maybe it's not all that surprising after all.
 
In my copy of the book, he is described as being chairman of the science depatment for Windward school at White Plains. His other items of interest was he was a technical consultant for Meade Instruments (probably a sales rep or gave them some feedback for one of their products) and he was a member of the board of directors for Bowman observatory in Greenwich, CT. The latter is an amateur astronomy observatory. Usually people in the astronomy group take turns managing this sort of thing. It is not that big a deal because sometimes people don't want to get involved and it falls to whoever wants to do it.
 
I gotta say in Hynek's defense, I very much doubt he had an inkling about Imbrogno's lies, although Hynek should have been more skeptical about his co-author to start with. Still one can't smear Hynek with the Imbrogno brush, that would be an unfair guilt by association argument. Anything Imbrogno wrote about Hynek though, that cannot be independently verified, cannot be taken seriously at all. At Kevin Randle's blog, 'A Different Perspective' more info about Imbrogno's lies have come to earth. It appears he made up a lot of stuff about his national service in Vietnam. Check it out, just plain slippery, vague and dishonest.

kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/07/crash-of-philip-j-imbrogno.html
 
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