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AREA 51 He had nothing of the kind, of course. All he had was a videotape of pleasant-looking strangers making wild claims. How could scientists 81 sive "revelations" even when they absolutely know them to be false. It works like this: A stranger calls you on the phone and breathlessly reveals to you some extraordinary confidential fact. For instance, he might assure you that a flying saucer will land next week at a certain spot in New Mexico. If you are a dedicated researcher, you fly to New Mexico in time for the big event. The flying saucer never comes. Now you have a perfect opportunity to tell the stranger that he is a self-deluded fool and that he must never call you again. According to Pitfall Three, however, you are unlikely to do this, because he has now become a source of adventure and privileged information for you and you are afraid to be cut off from his data stream if you offend him. Many ufologists derive a curious form of self-gratification and a sense of power from such sources, even though their revelations are consistently spuri- ous. It does not matter how often the Mysterious Stranger is wrong, as long as he or she keeps producing a sequence of good stories that play into your expectations. Pitfall Four: the Lure of the Physical As I compiled the data for this book I observed a novel fact that I found as amazing as the UFO phenomenon itself. Again and again I witnessed experienced researchers, people who had patiently studied the paranor- mal and related effects for many years, actually flipping in a matter of a few hours when exposed to taped interviews of people like Falcon or Condor. Once, in San Francisco, an entire lecture hall filled with the creme de la creme of California parapsychological research heard re- spected scientist and philosopher Arthur Young, inventor of the rotor for the Bell helicopter, introducing taped revelations about the alleged aliens in secret bases. Many came away convinced that proof was at hand. As one of these researchers told me, "At long last we have something tangible!"