Another study, reported in the Minnesota MUFON Journal, in issue #102 and dated July/Aug 2003, provides an interesting diversion from the classical interpretation. Bill McNeff and Glenn Fishbine decided they too would attempt to read the Ramey Memo and their results change, to some extent, the importance of it.
They note that theirs is a preliminary study and then wrote, “Ten different types of image restoration techniques were employed in an effort to make this message more readable. They are highly technical and will not be detailed in this article.”
Which, of course, opens them up for criticism simply because we can ask, how valid are their techniques if they don’t tell us what they are. It can also be noted that sometimes a detailed description of the technical aspects of a study inhibit the reporting of it, and, they do provide some clues about what they looked at in their study.
Rudiak, for example, made some assumptions that are important to his interpretation of the memo. McNeff and Fishbine wrote, “First of all, we do not agree with the ‘established’ character count, especially at the end because of the creases [in the memo]. Second, while we agree with the interpretation of some letters found by others, there are a significant # (sic) of cases where their reading of a letter was a reading of a film grain pattern. In some cases we were able to find text in the grain background. Also, some of the other readings came from grain patterns above, below, or to the right of the actual letters. Third, a lot of the readings came from what looks like a photoshop gaussian blur of one of the original scans. That kind of blur creates some amazing artifacts & (sic) psychological interpretations. We avoided the blurring at all costs.”
So now we have another study like that done by Estes, that is suggesting that people might be seeing what they want to see. In fact, the key word, “victims” is not one that they identified. They wrote, in discussing their methods, “It was especially good on a few letters. It brought out the E in REMAINS very clearly.”
That is “remains” instead of “victims.” Rather thanseeing “The victims of the wreck,” they saw, “The remains of the wreck…” And that changes the meaning because remains could refer to the weather balloon debris rather than living creatures that were killed.
Rudiak had reported on his web site that victims was the only word that fit into context of the six letter word that began with a “v”. What could the word be if it was not victims? But if the first letter is an artifact of blurring and psychological interpretation, then Rudiak’s argument based on the first letter being a “v” is flawed.
“Priming” of the Victims
Unfortunately, we all have now been “primed” to see the word. There might be other interpretations that if conducted by those who have yet to be contaminated could tell us something. That was the basis of an experiment designed and conducted by James Houran, then a psychologist in Illinois. With my help, he gathered a cross section of people to review photographic enlargements of message. There were three groups and three conditions. One group was told that the message related to the Roswell UFO crash. One group was told that the memo related to atomic testing. And the control group was told nothing about the contents, only asked if they could read any of the words.
Yes, there were some words that were made out easily. Fort Worth, Tex., weather baloons (sic) and the like. But the critical word, that is, victims, was not seen by any of the subjects. And, those who were told the message was about an atomic test rather than a spaceship crash saw words like flash, which related to the atomic test but that has surfaced in none of the interpretations of the message by UFO researchers.
This suggests that “priming” or contamination, might have some affect one what people see. The results were laid out in an article for the Journal of Scientific Exploration in the Spring, 2002 issue.
There is one problem, or rather one that some of the proponents of reading the message make about the experiment. Through error, one of the student assistants threw out the raw data after copying it onto the score sheets. Yes, the raw data should have been saved, but then the data, in a finer state was preserved. Does this negate the experiment? No.
It does however, complicate the matter. Not long ago I was looking at the records about the J. B. Rhine experiments into ESP. Questions about the statistical study were raised and much of the data were reviewed. What was found was that in some cases the graduate students and the post-docs running the experiments had “fudged” the data. Without the preliminary information properly preserved, we wouldn’t have known that.
Now, we must expect those reviewing our data will accept that the raw data was transcribed properly and without error. While there is no evidence that any of the numbers were fudged, and those running the experiment did not know what results were expected, it does throw a bit of a cloud over the work.
I suppose I should also note that the time each of the subjects spent trying to read the message was about twenty minutes. Rudiak pointed out that he had spent months on his work, that he used the best copies of the photographs possible and the best computer programs. It’s not quite the same as a student trying to read the message off a computer screen in twenty minutes. His work should count for more.
But the point is that without priming, no one identified the critical word, which is victims. None of them. Though they were using some of the best images available they were unable to see that specific word. This suggests that a second experiment should be preformed to determine the validity of the results of those reading the Ramey memo.
So, the experiment conducted suggested that priming might have lead to some researchers seeing the critical word victims. But it should also be noted that researchers did, independently, pick out some of the more obscured words. In fact, Rudiak, in an email to me suggested there was more consensus than disagreement. And he notes that there is more agreement in context than there is in precise wording.
Agreement in the Wording
Rudiak wrote, “We do have some important points of agreement. Brad [Sparks] and I totally independently of one another [emphasis in the original] picked out the words, ‘disc’ and ‘Roswell’ in the body of the message (‘Roswell’ where the RPIT group saw the obviously erroneous word ‘Magdalena,’ which is too long). We both agree on the Ramey signature, that the message is definitely military, and that the end of the message is about the cover-up. Sparks also agrees that the address heading may contain ‘Vandenberg’ (though disagrees that the message would be directly addressed to him).”
Rudiak did post his reconstruction of the message and details of his analysis to this web site http://roswellproof.homestead.com. While it does agree with some of the other interpretations, it also goes off at its own angles in some places.
Rudiak, using the system developed by Neil Morris, and expanding it, finally produced this interpretation:
(A) URGENt (B) HQAAF
C) WAShiNGton
(D) 8 Jul 1947
(E) VANDENBERG
(F) FROM hQ 8 th aaf
(G) suB: roswell
(0) fWAAf AcKNOWleDGEs THAT a “DISK iS NEXT NEW FIND WEST of (1) the CordOn at locATION Was A wreck NEAR OPErAtion AT THE in addiTION “pod”
(2) ranCH” AnD THE VICTIMS OF THE WRECK YOU FORWARDED TO THE (3) teAm AT FORT WORTH, TEX.
(4) aviAToRS IN THE “DISC” THEY WILL SHIP FOR A1- 8 TH ARMY amhc (5) bY B29 — ST OR C47 WrIGht AF ASSeSs airFOil AT ROSWELL ASSURDED ASSiSt fly-Out
(6) That CiC/TEAM SAID THIS MISSTATE MEANING OF THE STORY AND THINK (7) laTE TODAY NEXT SENT OUT PR OF WEATHER BALLOON WoulD FarE (8) better iF THEY ADD LAND DemoRAWIN CREWS