How Many Dollars
A blog for Three-Dollar Kit
4/25/2024 0 Comments Concerning CoulthartRoss Coulthart has a problem. As a key voice in ufology, that means he is a problem.
Looking over the stories Coulthart has reported on in the UFO space over the past couple of years, his credulity, poor sources, overhyping of weak evidence, and failure to issue retractions, are adding up to severely impact his credibility. This is a rundown of some of his UFO work that I find problematic - cases that I personally find interesting. Unfortunately, this shoddy work casts doubt on all his reporting, especially when he often uses unnamed sources and is cagey about providing evidence - even while hinting he has it.
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A rotten egg: the plot“Investigative journalist” Ross Coulthart (see: Jim’s ball) recently told a story on his Need To Know podcast (Aug 4, 2023) about an egg-shaped craft discovered in the 1980s that was analyzed in a UFO reverse engineering (RE) program at Area 51 in the 1990s. The story comes from a new source (let’s call him Bill) who sent Coulthart a photo of his uncle's patch that Coulthart is claiming comes from a RE program, along with a photo of his team, and sufficient evidence to convince Coulthart that Bill’s great uncle (let's call him Gruncle) worked at Area 51 for contractor EG&G from 1997-2014 and that Bill has talked to AARO about it for 45 minutes (with what amounts to a third-hand story). Gruncle never saw the egg-shaped craft for himself. According to Bill, Gruncle's job was putting data from human tech into storage vaults. He never saw UFOs or aliens or even data about UFOs or aliens. Gruncle was told about an alien reverse engineering program by the senior engineer in charge of that program, when he started work in 1997. The senior engineer described an egg-shaped craft, silverish-grey, featureless, and the size of an SUV. It was never cracked open, was impenetrable to X-rays, but was nevertheless concluded to be a “probe craft from another planet”. He retired the next year and Gruncle died last year, so we'll just have to take Bill's word for all this. Later, Gruncle saw hanging on the wall of a secure data storage room at Area 51 a “close-up crystal-clear” “huge image” of “the same exact object” (i.e. a featureless silver egg he'd never seen in person). Coulthart was sent the one and only photo that Bill sneakily took of Gruncle's insignia patch from the program (he took it while Gruncle was sleeping).
In showing the patch, Coulthart’s worst nightmare came true: it got analyzed.
Here I lay out the problems with Coulthart’s story and his source, and present the actual origin of the patch. The evidence comes from Twitter users' interactions with Bill as well as research done on Metabunk. 7/21/2023 5 Comments Bright lights of Salem, 1952In 1952, Shell R. Alpert, US Coast Guard photographer, shot this formation of four bright lights through the window of his photo lab in Salem MA, in the middle of the 2-week “Washington flap”.
It’s hailed as a classic UFO photo. It was in all the papers! Was it a genuine UFO? A misunderstanding? Or a hoax? 9/14/2022 0 Comments LARPing on RedditWhile Charlie Wiser does not use any alts on social media, it's up to others to decide whether or not they want or need alts. Not my business.
However, when someone is deliberately exploiting known weaknesses to manipulate others in a community (which I'll loosely define as a group using a platform to discuss a topic - #ufotwitter on Twitter, UFO-related subreddits, etc.), I have thoughts about it, especially if that user has gone one step further and attempted to gain people's trust with a personal touch - in DMs. I've written before about the little red flag in a case that can't be reconciled with witness statements being true. Once that nugget of truth is forgotten, and the hoax is given free rein, laziness sets in. The original research and documentation are forgotten in favor of the re-re-repeated myth.
What if the answer was back there at the start all along? When the nugget comes to light, the case falls apart. When the gods are smiling, that nugget is also hilarious. Ross Coulthart’s 7NEWS Spotlight “Out of this world” (Aug 21, 2022) promised us “conclusive proof”, “testable evidence of alien technology”, and a “renowned scientist” who “confirms it all”.
6/18/2022 0 Comments Don't fear phantomsSleep paralysis has been offered as an explanation for some alien abduction experiences (I first read about it from Carl Sagan but I'm sure he wasn't the first), and the evidence shows the explanation is a good one.
1/11/2022 0 Comments Tweeting for the agesFor the three main cases covered on this site, I've added links to my relevant Twitter threads that cover aspects of each case in summary form.
The tweets are linked as bulleted lists from the main page for each case: My pinned tweet lists a few additional threads, including for these cases:
12/29/2021 7 Comments Eight months of UFOlogyIn May someone on Twitter told me about an alien abduction case where two guys on different continents woke up wearing each other’s shirts. Then he mentioned Travis Walton, who I'd never heard of, and I read some stuff and made this site.
Since then I've looked into a handful of cases that interested me, bitten the heads off a few people who think they know better than me what I should be interested in, and written some Twitter threads. This is a retrospective from my point of view of the past 8 months, itemizing some things I've learned. 12/12/2021 0 Comments The Skinny on BobThe name Skinny Bob kept coming up on Twitter. Every time I googled the name, I ended up at YouTube videos depicting alien creature sightings with titles like: "This looks like Skinny Bob."
But who was Skinny Bob? |
Charlie WiserI'm blogging about the Three-Dollar Kit. Archives
October 2024
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