Case file · Disclosure & CE-5
Philip J. Klass
Aviation Week senior editor (1919–2005) and the best-known UFO sceptic of the 20th century.
1968 CE · 38.91, -77.04 · status: explained
The account
Klass joined Aviation Week in Washington in 1952. 'UFOs–Identified' (1968), prompted by the 1965 Exeter sightings, proposed that plasmas explained many reports; 'UFOs Explained' (1974) attributed most to misidentification and hoaxes. A founding fellow of CSICOP, he published the Skeptics UFO Newsletter from 1989 to 2003 and challenged the MJ-12 documents. He held that almost all witnesses are honest people who saw something unfamiliar.
The sceptical view
Ufologists such as Jerome Clark accused him of promoting hoax explanations on thin evidence, and Allan Hendry objected to his tactics.
Connections in the atlas
- Robert Sheaffer
- Philip J. Klass
- ? Can ball lightning explain UFO reports?
- Philip J. Klass
- Tehran incident
- Allan Hendry
- Travis Walton
- Whitley Strieber
- Donald Menzel
- James E. McDonald
- Stanton T. Friedman
- J. Allen Hynek