Majestic Documents Proven Frauds

While searching through Google news I came across this. I have not had time to look into it much.

www.prweb.com...

The documents were tested by Dr. Carol Chaski of Georgetown, DE, who was hired by Dr. Michael Heiser, a biblical scholar with an interest in the UFO phenomenon. Dr. Chaski is a leading expert in the linguistic science of authorship attribution, a discipline that uses computers to extract and define stylistic patterns in a given author's writings -- a "linguistic fingerprint". Dr. Chaski pioneered her own computational document authentication software program, ALIAS, for such testing, and is currently the president of ALIAS Technology, LLC. Among the stylistic patterns detected by Dr. Chaski's specially-developed computer program are patterns in sentence structure, word order in parts of speech and use of punctuation.

A total of 17 documents were tested, allegedly written by nine different authors. Dr. Heiser typed the prose text of the disputed Majestic Documents and a set of undisputed control documents for each author for Dr. Chaski's testing. Of the 17 documents tested, only one can be scientifically validated as having been written by the author who is named. Dr. Heiser's assessment: "Anyone basing any claims of alien existence or an alien crash at Roswell on these documents would be foolish to do so; they just don't stand up to cutting edge scientific analysis."

It then gives a website:

www.mj12documents.com...

But of course you have to pay for the report.

Also found this related website:

www.michaelsheiser.com...

I just emailed this info to Ryan Woods of the Majestic Documents web site. I'm sure he's already aware of the matter, but it will be interesting to see a response.

these so called "drs" are just trying to make a buck, many of the majestic documents were written by unnamed authors such as personal secretaries of these govt officials

when you write a speech you write it a certain way and when you write private memos you usually write it different, especially memos that contain et information

thats whats wrong with science, theres good scientists and then there are these fools trying to decieve people that cant make sense out of anything to begin with and then trying to make a buck off it too, give me a break

The most disturbing thing about this is that if it were real science, it would be published in a journal which uses peer review and available for all to read. I'm not saying it wouldn't cost you to get a copy. The journals aren't cheap and even Interlibrary Loan can have costs attached, but it would not be this blatant $12-20 PDF file available for download. That's not how science is done. Unfortunately, no one can check their work without giving them a direct profit.

So we're flying blind here. Linguistic analysis is tricky business. The fact that a computer program is used does not make this more scientific. Computers can cast very precise-looking astrology charts, after all. It is the underlying statistical methods that will make this work or not. If that is locked up in proprietary binary source code it is not available for analysis either. So much for letting others check your work.

This method reminds me of "The Bible Code" that generated a couple of books a few years ago. The idea there was that the first four books of the Bible contained prophetic information that could be accessed by computer. If you skipped letters in the original Hebrew, say read every fourth letter, etc., the prophecies would emerge. A computer allowed you to process every conceivable skip pattern in seconds. There were plenty of PhDs in the midst of this discovery as well. I bought the software and could not replicate what the books said.

It's the same kind of issue here. The underlying assumption that people write in certain patterns enough so that you can recognize the work of a certain person through their writings is somewhat suspect--especially when you are dealing with governmentese that demands strict adherence to patterns all by itself. It demands passive voice, for example, and the absence of first person. It would be interesting to see what this method would do on the 'Shakespeare was written by Francis Bacon" theory. But for now, I don't think this analysis constitutes proof one way or another--and I'm not going to pay $12 to check it out.

Just to add a little fuel to this, I have done some linguistic analysis work myself. I published a piece of software called “Readability” in the MS-DOS days that measured the grade-level of passages against nine different formulas. It was published by Micro Power & Light out of Dallas, Texas. It sold for over a decade and on the whole probably bought me a new car. I've also published on the subject in peer reviewed journals, such as the 'Journal of Reading.' On the off-chance you’re interested in some of the specifics, this might apply to the Majestic paper analysis.

A computer can do nothing but count and make comparisons, therefore when you use a computer in linguistic analysis you are immediately constrained by the ‘tyranny of the machine.’ You must conform to what a computer can do. ‘Readability’ is the concept that some text is easier to read than others. If you are writing for a fourth-grade level audience you don’t want the text to be at a college level. You measure the difficulty by counting things like the number of words in a sentence, the number of three-syllable (and therefore more difficult) words, or you bounce the written words off a giant list of words and count how many you found. You then use rather simple linear regression equations to slice all the data up and come out with a score. Some formulas are plotted on a graph, e.g. Fry, some formulas give you amusingly precise answers, e.g. Grade 4.32, and some formulas result in a stated range, such as ‘Grade 4-5,’ e.g. Dale-Chall. Some of these formulas are more ‘scientific’ than others in the way the formulas are constructed. Generally speaking, the ones which offer a range are probably more valuable than ones that insist on a specific grade.

One thing is certainly true, and that is that they disagree. They DO tend to show a general trend, but some things can throw the formulas off pretty readily. For example, the Dale Chall word list was originally of 3,000 words known to the majority of fourth graders. It was developed in the forties and had the word ‘schoolmaster,’ but not the word ‘television.’ It has since been updated, but it was used well into the eighties and was one of the more reputable formulas at hand.

I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that this program used to analyze the Majestic papers has at least some readability formulas as part of the analysis. They could easily add the use of punctuation and other parameters. For example, the use of a semi-colon with writers in English is rare. If you compared two samples of writing from ‘different’ people and found the same use of semi-colons, this would be a point in favor of ‘same authorship,’ but only a point. It may be they are the same age and were subjected to the same textbooks. If you found the equivalent use of favorite phrases, such as ‘adamantly reject,’ for example, that would be another point in favor of ‘same authorship.’ Pokey Oats tried to use this method to show that Ghost Raven’s admission of a hoax was written by Springer. It wasn’t. That shows how tricky and dangerous it is to make conclusions built on this kind of evidence. If you find the same mis-use of words consistently between documents, that’s another flag. For example, people using ‘it’s’ when they mean ‘its’ or ‘they’re’ in place of ‘their.’ If you found a consistent form of grammar, such as using a plural verb after a conditional statement (correct, but rare these days. It’s ‘If I were,’ not ‘If I was.’), that would be a point in favor. None of these are a smoking gun, rather maybe smoking pellets in a shotgun shell. If ALL those pellets come out smoking, you’ve (probably) got yourself a match.

Now, the way to validate a formula is through statistics, but that begs the question of the underlying assumptions, which we don’t know. (An aside: the way I started this paragraph types this as my text. I frequently use it.) In order to even be considered valid they would have to say something like, ‘There is a 95% chance that these two samples were written by the same person.” The question is, what led them to that conclusion and how valid is it? This is particularly true when you must layer the governmentese idiolect over the top of a person’s normal mode of expression. Most people would not choose to write like a government memo if they had the freedom not to. It is stylistically strict. If these assumptions are locked away in proprietary software, we have to take their word for it. We’re still flying blind here, putting up a straw man to knock down. It’s just that they put us in the barn in the first place. I think it’s pretty shaky stuff. If I were a lawyer in court with their expert testimony to contend with, I’d tear into this issue with a chain saw.




[edit on 7/24/2007 by schuyler]

Dulci, et al...

interesting discovery (and an intriguing read) - thanks for posting it.

As you may know, Stan Friedman has researched and written extensively about the Majic documents and has identified fraudulent pieces and made some other curious distinctions among several of the items in question.

I asked Mr. Friedman this morning for a reaction to this latest "report" and the Heisler/Chaski developments. Here was his reply:

by Stan Friedman
...I read it and am concerned because I had seen wrong claims by Heisler before. I tried unsuccessfully to order the report and then called Dr. Chaski.. she was friendly [and] seemed surprised that I had said there were many phony MJ-12 documents. Hesiler provided all the documents. She knows nothing about MJ-12 UFOs etc. I will call her back after she has some appointments and I do a radio show. Tomorrow night I will be on Coast to Coast radio debating Michael Shermer 11PM to 2AM your time [PST]. It is hard for me to say anything until I know which documents were tested. I could certainly find a mess of phony MJ-12 documents as I noted in the 2nd edition of Top Secret/MAJIC (afterword). There was an article [as well] on UFO updates.
Hastily,
Stan

I believe we have substantial research to follow-up on yet regarding this issue.

BTW - I looked at C2C's broadcast schedule and didn't see the pending Friedman/Shermer debate. It's one I would highly recommend listening to - as all of you probably know, Friedman barely got a word in edgewise to Shermer among the cacophonous circus that was the Larry King "UFO Special" of a week or two ago...

p.s. Shuyler - thanks for the detailed linguistics explanation...

[edit on 7/24/2007 by Outrageo]

Excellent post schuyler, very interesting.

Also, good work Outrageo.

the worst thing about these people is that they think hey if i can prove that the majestic documents are false then that means that there was no roswell and if theres no roswell theres no et space craft and if theres no et space craft then theres no ets and if theres no ets then that means theyve successfully dumbed us down to their level

Just some quick thoughts, while personally still on the fence regarding some of the mj material.

First thing that came into my mind has been, that the buyer usually gets what he wants from such testing, even from established institutes. Now considering, that Heiser is ..well.... let me quote from an article available on his website and judge for yourself

As explosive as this chapter is, it only prepares us for what’s to come. The divine council shows up in other quite unexpected places, some of the most important passages in the Bible. Their story is at the heart of God’s original intention for humanity, the Fall, the story of Israel and the nations, and the ancient plan for the redemption of humanity. We need only lose the scales of tradition that have covered out eyes. Your journey into the world of the patriarchs and prophets has just begun.

Well, anyway, you can order the truth written by heiser on his webpage.
I smell an agenda here and unfortunately, at least for me, this kills any interest in what he may have found out.

Here is Ryan Wood's reponse to my email about this...

There are many problems with his claims…1) Some documents he said were written by Twining were not, 2) He used questionable “fakes” for comparison skewing the results, 3) Carol Chaski, the expert does not support his sweeping conclusions, 4) 1/2 of the analysis is for one page documents that there is insufficient document material to test with any degree of accuracy and 5) he supplied unverified text only input for the analysis.

I put this in the thread that got closed down forgetting that I'd originally posted to this one myself. Sorry!

So I'm guessing Woods sprang for the $12. I guess someone had to do it in the name of science. Good information, though. Thanks for pursuing this angle.

Good thread, good work. As always Fry, surgical. uv777bk, "nice-legs". Outrageo, write-righteous; "Stan"d on it!. shu', you're just scary-good. Conspiracies, within conspiracies, about conspiracies, for the conspiratorially-minded. The truth is a lie and that lie is true.

Yeah, this Heiser person's "argument" is riddled with nuance suggesting something other than an application of critical thinking skills.

Agenda? Check! Bias? Bias is "Go"! Ambiguous language? Check! Non-sequitor Tacticians? "Go flight!" "Experts?" Check! CV's? CV is padded and "Green" Flight! Motive? Cheque! Selective Data? Cherry-picker is "Go"! Media crew? Media is "Green". Bank Account? "Ready-Flight! Spun-meaning-recyclotron? Online and holding steady at 113% of rated truthful RPM. We are "Go"!

This is Launch Control: Beginning final sequence. Scientific Peer-Review?... Scientific Peer-Review?... Scientific Peer-Review? Yeah Launch Control, this is Mia Verity down in Peer-Review - we have a logic-problem. We are "Red" across the board and call a "Hold" at "T-Minus Truth." Repeat: We have a "Hold". "Mia, this is LC on the "Big Loop", that's a "Rog: No Go!" This is Launch Control, we have a "Hold" and are recycling to pick up the count at Scientific Peer-Review...

It may have been 6 decades ago... but "something" happened. "Docs" and docs and Doc-Doctors and Doctors-divine are only indicators... something had happened and is "happening"; no belief required. Just good-folks work and patience. and !

Cheers,

Vic

[edit on 25-7-2007 by V Kaminski]

Originally posted by V Kaminski
Agenda? Check! Bias? Bias is "Go"! Ambiguous language? Check! Non-sequitor Tacticians? "Go flight!" "Experts?" Check! CV's? CV is padded and "Green" Flight! Motive? Cheque! Selective Data? Cherry-picker is "Go"!Media crew? Media is "Green". Bank Account? "Ready-Flight! Spun-meaning-recyclotron? Online and holding steady at 113% of rated truthful RPM. We are "Go"!

Geez, Vic. After reading that I'm motivated to go watch "Apollo 13" again.

After a cursory scroll through the Michael S. Heiser entry on Wikipedia, it would appear that his interest in the UFO subject is limited insomuch as he believes them to be a demonic matter.

And this...

On the topic of extraterrestrial life itself, Heiser considers it unlikely that the universe is populated, but is open to this idea as well. He has worked in explaining how extraterrestrial life, in the event such is discovered, can be reconciled with the Bible and Judaeo-Christian theology (going so far as to cite a little known Church dogma in effect up to the 1700’s that proclaimed the denial of the existence of alien worlds to be a denial of God’s omnipresence and thus heretical).

... I believe proves that he has quite the anti-ETH bias.

Hmmm... I should have read that external quote a bit closer

Taken from email list release from Ryan S. Wood...

No Proof of Fakery in Leaked "Top Secret" Government UFO Documents

Broomfield, CO July 25, 2007 - A determined effort to muddy the waters with claims of "fraud" concerning the extensive Top Secret Majestic, or MJ-12, documents that have leaked from multiple sources in recent years has failed several tests of credibility.

Recently minted Bible professor Michael S. Heiser has issued press notices about his claims in association with a report he is selling on the Internet with promotion for sales of his novel concluding that UFOs are a plot by Satan to take over the earth in the "the façade" of an Air Force colonel running Area 51.

Heiser recently paid thousands of dollars to a document examiner, Dr. Carol Chaski to look at only 11 pages (about 5,000 words) of the 3,500 pages of MJ-12 documents leaked to researchers since 1984. Despite the examiner's conclusion that at least one of the 11 pages was in fact written by the author claimed, Heiser has issued sweeping conclusions that all the MJ-12 documents are fraudulent.

Heiser's allegations have drawn attention to the Internet marketing campaign for his novel, published to little response in 2004 but now advertised again on the Internet next to his claims of MJ-12 fraud.

The novel's hero is a Bible student (as was Heiser) who claims the Bible describes a "Divine Council" of gods responsible for creation (as Heiser's own dissertation alleges). A secret-agent Vatican priest pretends to be part of the plot until Satan crushes him, and in the end, of course, the Bible student gets the beautiful young woman scientist.

"The real façade may be that any responsible scholar would make such sweeping claims on the basis of such limited and conflicting evidence," said businessman and prominent UFO researcher Ryan Wood. "The least that any intellectually honest person can do is to look at the weight of extensive research that Heiser neglects to mention and keep an open mind."

Ryan Wood along with distinguished aerospace physicist Dr. Robert Wood and nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman have published in-depth research on the so-called MJ-12, or Majestic, documents, some of which have been found in the archives of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Heiser, who claims to be among the "top 100 UFO experts," recently hired Dr. Carol Chaski, a forensic linguistic researcher, who ran the pages through a computer program to see if their language is like that of other documents purportedly from the same or similar authors. She concluded that 10 of the 11 pages were questionable.

"A logical flaw is obvious to anyone who has worked in government or the military," said Wood. "General officers and senior public officials do not write 90 percent of the official documents they sign. Government documents are frequently written by subordinates for commanders, or by committees and secretaries. Expecting linguistic authorship to match across such documents is unlikely from the start."

"The notion that forensic linguistics, a very new science is the silver bullet that dethrones the validity of the entire majestic document collection, or the Roswell Crash reality is a gross misstatement." said Ryan S. Wood document researcher.

continues ...

Remainder of above email...

Questioned Document Authentication

The field of document authentication is very old and focuses on many vectors of authenticity, namely forensics (ink, paper), chronology (out of time/place), chirography (handwriting), typography, provenance, content and anachronisms. The results advertised by Heiser stem from what document examiners consider among the least accurate of their analysis techniques. "The notion that forensic linguistics, a very new science with just one peer reviewed journal and a handful of experts is the silver bullet that dethrones the validity of the entire majestic document collection is a gross misstatement." said Ryan Wood, document researcher.

Complicating the matter, Heiser has released only his brief summary of Dr. Chaski's research. While making scientific claims, he has not revealed the alleged scientific details of what was examined, including the "control documents" she may have used for comparison. So as the saying goes "garbage in garbage out" applies. The bottom line is the tool of forensic linguistics is just one of several state-of-the-art question document examination techniques.

"Far beyond Heiser's approach, we have originals of some of the MJ-12 documents," said the Wood's. "And careful forensic examination of these rare documents has stood the test of authenticity. At a minimum, there is no complete consensus yet from the so-called experts, and it is disingenuous for Heiser, whose previous UFO publishing is confined to his novel, to claim otherwise."

On the other hand, of the nearly 3,500 pages of other leaked Majestic documents that Heiser ignores -- meticulous research for the past decade has cross-verified content with known military activities at a level of detail that is hard to write off as fakery. Corroborating such documents are the direct testimony by astronauts like Gordon Cooper, retired Air Force generals like Arthur Exon and others who have put their direct testimony in the record concerning the reality of non-human craft observed near Earth.

"One problem is that the campaign of ridicule, plus imaginative novels combining UFOs with personal theology, is that it keeps sensible people from exploring the real weight of evidence for themselves. We have gone to considerable effort to put most of the important leaked documents at www.majesticdocuments.com," said Wood.

To date," Wood emphasized, "no credible evidence has tarnished the authenticity of the 'Special Operations Manual: Extraterrestrial Entities Technology Recovery and Disposal' of April 1954; the 'Eisenhower Briefing Document' of November 1952; the 'White Hot Report' of September 1947; or the 'Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit' Counter Intelligence Report of July 22, 1947.

In a rare failure of security, the U.S. Army revealed in reply to a Freedom of Information Act request that the Counter Intelligence Corps did indeed have an "Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit" during the period of the now-leaked Majestic documents. Without explaining why "interplanetary phenomena" would be of interest to the Army's security branch, the Army simply said the files had been passed to the Air Force's own Office of Special Investigations who have likewise never explained their counter-intelligence interest.

The questioned documents are extensively discussed in Stanton Friedman's landmark book "TOP SECRET/MAJIC" and in Ryan Wood's recent book "MAJIC EYES ONLY," which has received endorsements from astronauts, scientists, retired Air Force officers and others.

So, can we change the title of this thread now?

Originally posted by schuyler
So, can we change the title of this thread now?

Yes, I think we can safely say that the question has been taken to task