Philip Klass was a founding member of CSICOP and one of the world's foremost experts on UFOs.
Trained as an electrical engineer, Klass was senior avionics editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology for over thirty years. He received numerous awards for his work as a technical journalist, from such organizations as the Aviation/Space Writers Association and the Royal Aeronautical Society, and was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He wrote several books, including UFOs -- Identified (1968), The Real Roswell Crashed-saucer Coverup (1997), and UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game (1989). His contribution to the education of young people, with his book Bringing UFOs Down to Earth (1997), is a popular one within CSICOP's Inquiring Minds program.
Klass was known for explaining UFO sightings with pragmatic explanations. Although his detractors styled him a "debunker," in fact, debunking was the consequence, not the purpose, of his efforts. He sought to investigate "flying-saucer" reports and thus convert UFOs (unidentified flying objects) to IFOs (identified flying objects) such as celestial bodies, research balloons, advertising planes, and even secret aircraft.
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Robert Baker was a CSICOP fellow and one of the world's preeminent authorities on such phenomena as ghosts, alien abductions, religious apparitions, and reincarnation.
During his diverse career, Dr. Baker worked at the MIT Lincoln Lab, conducted training research for the U.S. Army, and taught at the University of Kentucky, chairing the psychology department there until his retirement. The author of more than a hundred professional journal articles, Baker also wrote fifteen books, including They Call It Hypnosis (1990), Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within (1992), Mind Games (1996), Child Sexual Abuse and False Memory Syndrome (1998), and (with Joe Nickell) Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts, UFOs, Psychics, and Other Mysteries (1992).
An expert in the workings of the human mind, Dr. Baker explained apparitions as mental experiences (such as hypnosis and hypnopompic hallucinations) and viewed "hypnosis" skeptically as a product of imagination and fantasy (as in so-called past-life regressions and alien-abduction "memories").
A true investigator, he believed paranormal claims should neither be accepted nor dismissed, but carefully investigated and solved.
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