Well you posted in the one linked to by me.- you should know. Yes, there's considerable scope for debate as long as there is mutual respect between those with opposing viewpoints.
The trouble is blueblade there are those (on both sides) with such entrenched views that you just know a report will be put in and the banhammer swung because someone can't handle another with an opposing view.
Well you posted in the one linked to by me.- you should know. Yes, there's considerable scope for debate as long as there is mutual respect between those with opposing viewpoints.
Really? It must be so long ago I've forgotten about it. Though, sadly, these days that happens within the hour. Thank you for caring enough to search, though.
I hope there's always mutual respect between me and anyone I debate with, but that still leaves us in disagreement. Which is against the rules of an appreciation thread.
People are having paranormal experiences as much now as they ever did. They see UFO's, ghosts, have NDE's, experience ESP on a daily basis. Regardless of what you consider are the reasons behind it, it's occuring no more or less than at any other time. Some new age circles are always anticipating and discerning the 'great event' or transformative shift which is always promising to come but never arrives. Indeed why should it. What would be the point.
People are having paranormal experiences as much now as they ever did. They see UFO's, ghosts, have NDE's, experience ESP on a daily basis. Regardless of what you consider are the reasons behind it, it's occuring no more or less than at any other time. Some new age circles are always anticipating and discerning the 'great event' or transformative shift which is always promising to come but never arrives. Indeed why should it. What would be the point.
No UFO sightings have shown a marked decline, the same way that more now have access to better cameras. People have cameras on their phones etc. now the blurred smudge can be seen as an aircraft, seagull, balloon etc. With much higher quality cameras available you would expect more evidence, when in fact the opposite is true.
No UFO sightings have shown a marked decline, the same way that more now have access to better cameras. People have cameras on their phones etc. now the blurred smudge can be seen as an aircraft, seagull, balloon etc. With much higher quality cameras available you would expect more evidence, when in fact the opposite is true.
I got the impression sightings had exploded since the nineties and before. I had a quick google and there's a lot of graphs out there that support that view.
I think the aliens just got fed up with Britain and left. The rest of the world seems to have increased sightings.
I got the impression sightings had exploded since the nineties and before. I had a quick google and there's a lot of graphs out there that support that view.
I think the aliens just got fed up with Britain and left. The rest of the world seems to have increased sightings.
I think that's just a phenomenon (sic) of the Internet Age; it makes collating data far easier, and allows people here in Britian to hear about clusters like the Mexico City Cluster, the Brazilian cluster of reports etc. Prior to that...it was wait until someone made a telly documentary about it....if ever...or hope that it was mentioned in some of the "specialist" publications..
I think that's just a phenomenon (sic) of the Internet Age; it makes collating data far easier, and allows people here in Britian to hear about clusters like the Mexico City Cluster, the Brazilian cluster of reports etc. Prior to that...it was wait until someone made a telly documentary about it....if ever...or hope that it was mentioned in some of the "specialist" publications..
So easy I can do this in 60 secs:
"MUFON reports that UFO sightings to their offices have increased by 67% in the previous three years as of 2011. According to MUFON international director Clifford Clift in 2011, "Over the past year, we've been averaging 500 sighting reports a month, compared to about 300 three years ago [67 percent]." wiki
"According to the annual survey of reports conducted by Canadian based UFO research group Ufology Research, reported UFO sightings doubled in Canada from 2011-2012" wiki
"In 2013 the Peruvian government's Departamento de Investigación de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos (Anomalous Aerial Phenomena Research Department), or “DIFAA”, was officially reactivated due to an increase in reported sightings. According to Colonel Julio Vucetich, head of the air force's aerospace interests division who himself claims to have seen an "anomalous aerial object", "On a personal basis, it's evident to me that we are not alone in this world or universe" wiki
If you get the National Geographic or Discovery channels there are plenty of documentaries. Avoid the ones on the "History" channels though - they are dire.
Also....don't discount the use iof the Internet to REPORT sightings ;-) It makes it FAR easier for the average person to report sightings to those counting them, be they government agencies, private individuals or interest groups.
When you see locals using mobile fones or smartfones in Central Africa, or up an Ande somewhere...you realise that they have the ability to reach out and touch the world, not just them having data coming the other way.
What we're seeing is a spike in REPORTED phenomena....that's the real difference - the fact that more can be reported, not necessarily that more are happening.
If you get the National Geographic or Discovery channels there are plenty of documentaries. Avoid the ones on the "History" channels though - they are dire.
...known by default on history forums as the "Mythtory Channels"...:D
I got the impression sightings had exploded since the nineties and before. I had a quick google and there's a lot of graphs out there that support that view...........................
If you try to find different reports of an incident, you notice that virtually every single account begins with the same two or three sentences. It's the same report appearing on different websites, and there's no easy way to find the original.
As for graphs : they're the easiest way of misrepresenting statistics. Change the relative scales of the x and y axes, and you can have a slope at any angle you wish, or have the baseline high up on the vertical axis.
The resulting graph is accurate and true : and completely misleading.
If you try to find different reports of an incident, you notice that virtually every single account begins with the same two or three sentences. It's the same report appearing on different websites, and there's no easy way to find the original.
As for graphs : they're the easiest way of misrepresenting statistics. Change the relative scales of the x and y axes, and you can have a slope at any angle you wish, or have the baseline high up on the vertical axis.
The resulting graph is accurate and true : and completely misleading.
Sure. So how do we know if they're increasing, decreasing or staying the same? How do we know if the prevalent use of mobile phones with cameras has made any difference at all. Are there less UFO sightings, have the aliens taken a dislike to the UK, has the nations eyesight degenerated or are people less likely to report a sighting for fear of being jumped on by all the UK rational thinkers
If there is any increase in reports of paranormal activity then I think it's probably a symptom of what Alvin Toffler called Future Shock, the idea that people are overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technology. As a reaction to this people retreat into the safety of magical thinking, but with the decline in relevance of organised religion people resort to pre-Biblical belief systems - spirits and demons etc.
A similar thing happened in the mid 19th century with the huge interest in spiritualism at a time when the world was being described in more rational, scientific terms, culminating in the theory of evolution.
If there is any increase in reports of paranormal activity then I think it's probably a symptom of what Alvin Toffler called Future Shock, the idea that people are overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technology. As a reaction to this people retreat into the safety of magical thinking, but with the decline in relevance of organised religion people resort to pre-Biblical belief systems - spirits and demons etc.
A similar thing happened in the mid 19th century with the huge interest in spiritualism at a time when the world was being described in more rational, scientific terms, culminating in the theory of evolution.
Alvin Toffler may be overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technology but let me tell you many of us are from the Tomorrows World generation and are seriously underwhelmed.
Alvin Toffler may be overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technology but let me tell you many of us are from the Tomorrows World generation and are seriously underwhelmed.
Nope never felt overwhelmed by it, rather welcome it in fact.
Alvin Toffler may be overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technology but let me tell you many of us are from the Tomorrows World generation and are seriously underwhelmed.
I take it your flying car and robot housemaid haven't arrived yet?
Sure. So how do we know if they're increasing, decreasing or staying the same? How do we know if the prevalent use of mobile phones with cameras has made any difference at all. Are there less UFO sightings, have the aliens taken a dislike to the UK, has the nations eyesight degenerated or are people less likely to report a sighting for fear of being jumped on by all the UK rational thinkers
The internet, at first embraced and almost 50% populated by UFO sites*, ended the mania of the 90s. It had never before been so easy to find rebuttals and frequently sordid background details for claims and claimants. Then there was the first serious Adobe Premier fake, showing how well and how easily fooled people could be - the Mexican daylight saucer clip. And the fiasco of the 'autopsy' footage. From there on, nobody was quite as willing to believe their eyes, interest waned and myriad groups withered away.
*May not be entirely accurate, but it sure seemed that way at the time.
The internet, at first embraced and almost 50% populated by UFO sites*, ended the mania of the 90s. It had never before been so easy to find rebuttals and frequently sordid background details for claims and claimants. Then there was the first serious Adobe Premier fake, showing how well and how easily fooled people could be - the Mexican daylight saucer clip. And the fiasco of the 'autopsy' footage. From there on, nobody was quite as willing to believe their eyes, interest waned and myriad groups withered away.
*May not be entirely accurate, but it sure seemed that way at the time.
Well no, my subjective view as a UFO layman is different. I've had internet access since it was first possible to dial in, in a major UK city and I don't remember 50% populated by UFO sites. In fact I don't remember any though I don't doubt they existed. Not many people had Internet access in the nineties anyway. On the other had we had the X files and the "Strange but True" TV series to generate more interest. I do remember "UFO magazine" in the latter nineties which as I recall was rational enough. There were a number of popular books around as well of course.
My memory is of UK UFO mania being consciously more widespread in the sixties and seventies, in the press, popular magazines and books, than the nineties and thousands . I even bumped into and had a chat with an investigator in the early eighties. Faking photos was known about, done and easy enough even then. The autopsy footage was never taken seriously anyway in real life as I recall and Roswell was thoroughly debunked without the aid of the internet in the late nineties. I think it's only popular TV, and the Internet that keep it going.
Not many people had Internet access in the nineties anyway. On the other had we had the X files and the "Strange but True" TV series to generate more interest. I do remember "UFO magazine" in the latter nineties which as I recall was rational enough. There were a number of popular books around as well of course.
My memory is of UK UFO mania being consciously more widespread in the sixties and seventies, in the press, popular magazines and books, than the nineties and thousands . I even bumped into and had a chat with an investigator in the early eighties. Faking photos was known about, done and easy enough even then. The autopsy footage was never taken seriously anyway as I recall and Roswell was thoroughly debunked without the aid of the internet. I think it's only popular TV, and the Internet that keep it going.
There were loads of people online in the 90s!* UFO sites proliferated - the uptake amongst UFO groups was massive, all the 'build your own' webpage sites like Tripod were inundated with ever-expanding acronyms, mirroring 'BUFORA' style monikers. The 90s saw a huge resurgence of interest, in part due to popular culture such as the rave scene where a lot of the music reflected the topic (UFOrb for example) and books like Timothy Good's 'Alien Liason' brought the whole Area 51 angle to a new audience even though it was old hat stateside. BIB (1) UFO magazine - rational? I met them all, the late Graham Birdsall et al. Affable enthusiasts, but as prone to printing nonsense as the rest, highlights included lamp posts from a moving vehicle and stills of a lunar lander from a Polish sci fi film. I actually have every issue...
BIB (2) The autopsy video was taken very seriously indeed. They did sometimes affect an air of 'wait and see' but they also ignored solid technical evidence of it being fake - I know, I told many of them and they still ran with it, as did many others.
Roswell was still a cause celebre in their circles. They flogged countless videos on it in their mail-order store advertised in each issue. There was always some 'new angle' to update it, and righteous anger when the US published an investigation suggesting the 'bodies' had been test dummies dropped in a secret space programme testing operation. Crazy days.
*Even pre-internet in the BBS days there were many American groups accessible 'online' so to speak, although it was expensive to check them out from here. Once the internet 'happened' they were in the vanguard of networking groups taking advantage of the new reach it gave them, although as I say, it came back to bite them in the end.
RE: The whole Area 51/underground Aliens/conspiracy angle that fed the 90s revival, it's well worth checking out "Mirage Men" - http://www.miragemen.com/
There were loads of people online in the 90s!* UFO sites proliferated - the uptake amongst UFO groups was massive, all the 'build your own' webpage sites like Tripod were inundated with ever-expanding acronyms, mirroring 'BUFORA' style monikers. The 90s saw a huge resurgence of interest, in part due to popular culture such as the rave scene where a lot of the music reflected the topic (UFOrb for example) and books like Timothy Good's 'Alien Liason' brought the whole Area 51 angle to a new audience even though it was old hat stateside. BIB (1) UFO magazine - rational? I met them all, the late Graham Birdsall et al. Affable enthusiasts, but as prone to printing nonsense as the rest, highlights included lamp posts from a moving vehicle and stills of a lunar lander from a Polish sci fi film. I actually have every issue...
BIB (2) The autopsy video was taken very seriously indeed. They did sometimes affect an air of 'wait and see' but they also ignored solid technical evidence of it being fake - I know, I told many of them and they still ran with it, as did many others.
Roswell was still a cause celebre in their circles. They flogged countless videos on it in their mail-order store advertised in each issue. There was always some 'new angle' to update it, and righteous anger when the US published an investigation suggesting the 'bodies' had been test dummies dropped in a secret space programme testing operation. Crazy days.
*Even pre-internet in the BBS days there were many American groups accessible 'online' so to speak, although it was expensive to check them out from here. Once the internet 'happened' they were in the vanguard of networking groups taking advantage of the new reach it gave them, although as I say, it came back to bite them in the end.
RE: The whole Area 51/underground Aliens/conspiracy angle that fed the 90s revival, it's well worth checking out "Mirage Men" - http://www.miragemen.com/
Well like the sixties, UFO wise, I obviously wasn't really there. To my credit though I have met Timothy Good, who is a very nice man, and I do still have some old UFO Magazines in my bottom draw within arms reach. Reminds me I once had the misfortune to listen to Graham Hancock give a talk but the less said about that the better.
Well like the sixties, UFO wise, I obviously wasn't really there. To my credit though I have met Timothy Good, who is a very nice man, and I do still have some old UFO Magazines in my bottom draw within arms reach. Reminds me I once had the misfortune to listen to Graham Hancock give a talk but the less said about that the better.
I'll check the link out... thanks..
As I was involved with BUFORA for many years I have a fair understanding of the peaks and troughs of interest. The 90s were actually a downward trend and by the end of the 90s membership of groups and the number of active UFO magazines were at an all time low and have decreased since.
In the 70s and 80s the group was at its height with up to 1000 members and the major publicity waves that followed big sightings or the release of movies like Close Encounters in 1978 were significant drivers of interest levels.
For the Close Encounters promotion blitz with Columbia pictures BUFORA and Flying Saucer Review jointly worked with the Daily Express to run a UFO bureau for a few weeks. We got over 1000 reports that way and the MoD bureau figures for 1978 were also at a peak.
It took us two or three years to work on those reported cases and there were some classics that came as a result of that promotion that would likely never have been discovered otherwise.
We calculated I recall that at best BUFORA discovered one in ten of all UK sightings - so most of them were never in the public domain. The ease of reporting sightings via the internet has boosted that level significantly. So to a degree what looks like peaks and troughs in reporting numbers may not necessarily involve an actual increase or decrease in sighting numbers but reflect social factors that artificially change the percentage of always occurring case numbers that find their way into the public domain.
Also it is worth recalling that BUFORA was in no way an alien/cover up/secret bases type of organisation of the type more prevalent through the newsstand magazines or even at times FSR. It tried to be scientific in approach and so was not aiming to either attract mass membership or to collate every UFO ever seen. Indeed there were frequent discussions throughout the 70s/80s/90s about the right way to balance the popular image of UFOs as reflected by The X Files and the perceived more analytical reality where most sightings were resolved (though by no means all) as the reality within BUFORA demonstrated. There was never an easy answer to this schizophrenia we lived with throughout most of the organisations active years.
Oh, and the alien autopsy twaddle was a bit of a crisis within BUFORA from which I think it never really recovered. Most of us who were in on this from the start realised that no reputations should be staked on this dodgy case. But some saw the opportunities it presented for media interest. This was always a risky alliance but one that I think tempted some people to lose perspective. However, those of us in BUFORA who could see the problems certainly made sure we aired these feelings through the national media at the time. So it is not true that UFOlogy fell for this in totality. It really didn't. Check the media and you will see UFO researchers expressing why they felt this way,
In fact I was working on Strange But True? at the time and we attended an early screening of the footage that I think was set up to testbed media interest (it was parodied in the Ant and Dec movie on the affair as I recall) . SBT was there to evaluate interest in covering this case for the series. We chose to stay away from it after seeing the facts as we had serious reservations about it from both a technical and a UFOlogical perspective.
These days BUFORA mostly exists via an on line presence - though there was a conference in London a couple of years ago. It is trying to return to its roots and has published a lot of its data via DVDs that you can purchase. So at least all those decades of our hard work has been preserved. The internet age has ensured that.
Comments
Spot on Jase.
Hardly likely as the rules seem to insist on no negativity in them.
The trouble is blueblade there are those (on both sides) with such entrenched views that you just know a report will be put in and the banhammer swung because someone can't handle another with an opposing view.
Really? It must be so long ago I've forgotten about it. Though, sadly, these days that happens within the hour. Thank you for caring enough to search, though.
I hope there's always mutual respect between me and anyone I debate with, but that still leaves us in disagreement. Which is against the rules of an appreciation thread.
Daily Wail -
"Man reports getting huge spike up jacksie in public loos, authorities say he must have been imagining it..."
No UFO sightings have shown a marked decline, the same way that more now have access to better cameras. People have cameras on their phones etc. now the blurred smudge can be seen as an aircraft, seagull, balloon etc. With much higher quality cameras available you would expect more evidence, when in fact the opposite is true.
I got the impression sightings had exploded since the nineties and before. I had a quick google and there's a lot of graphs out there that support that view.
I think the aliens just got fed up with Britain and left. The rest of the world seems to have increased sightings.
I think that's just a phenomenon (sic) of the Internet Age; it makes collating data far easier, and allows people here in Britian to hear about clusters like the Mexico City Cluster, the Brazilian cluster of reports etc. Prior to that...it was wait until someone made a telly documentary about it....if ever...or hope that it was mentioned in some of the "specialist" publications..
So easy I can do this in 60 secs:
"MUFON reports that UFO sightings to their offices have increased by 67% in the previous three years as of 2011. According to MUFON international director Clifford Clift in 2011, "Over the past year, we've been averaging 500 sighting reports a month, compared to about 300 three years ago [67 percent]." wiki
"According to the annual survey of reports conducted by Canadian based UFO research group Ufology Research, reported UFO sightings doubled in Canada from 2011-2012" wiki
"In 2013 the Peruvian government's Departamento de Investigación de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos (Anomalous Aerial Phenomena Research Department), or “DIFAA”, was officially reactivated due to an increase in reported sightings. According to Colonel Julio Vucetich, head of the air force's aerospace interests division who himself claims to have seen an "anomalous aerial object", "On a personal basis, it's evident to me that we are not alone in this world or universe" wiki
If you get the National Geographic or Discovery channels there are plenty of documentaries. Avoid the ones on the "History" channels though - they are dire.
When you see locals using mobile fones or smartfones in Central Africa, or up an Ande somewhere...you realise that they have the ability to reach out and touch the world, not just them having data coming the other way.
What we're seeing is a spike in REPORTED phenomena....that's the real difference - the fact that more can be reported, not necessarily that more are happening.
...known by default on history forums as the "Mythtory Channels"...:D
If you try to find different reports of an incident, you notice that virtually every single account begins with the same two or three sentences. It's the same report appearing on different websites, and there's no easy way to find the original.
As for graphs : they're the easiest way of misrepresenting statistics. Change the relative scales of the x and y axes, and you can have a slope at any angle you wish, or have the baseline high up on the vertical axis.
The resulting graph is accurate and true : and completely misleading.
Sure. So how do we know if they're increasing, decreasing or staying the same? How do we know if the prevalent use of mobile phones with cameras has made any difference at all. Are there less UFO sightings, have the aliens taken a dislike to the UK, has the nations eyesight degenerated or are people less likely to report a sighting for fear of being jumped on by all the UK rational thinkers
That must have been a few years ago. It's the hard core pawn channel now.
Giorgio Tsoukalos on H2...:D
A similar thing happened in the mid 19th century with the huge interest in spiritualism at a time when the world was being described in more rational, scientific terms, culminating in the theory of evolution.
Alvin Toffler may be overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technology but let me tell you many of us are from the Tomorrows World generation and are seriously underwhelmed.
Nope never felt overwhelmed by it, rather welcome it in fact.
I take it your flying car and robot housemaid haven't arrived yet?
The internet, at first embraced and almost 50% populated by UFO sites*, ended the mania of the 90s. It had never before been so easy to find rebuttals and frequently sordid background details for claims and claimants. Then there was the first serious Adobe Premier fake, showing how well and how easily fooled people could be - the Mexican daylight saucer clip. And the fiasco of the 'autopsy' footage. From there on, nobody was quite as willing to believe their eyes, interest waned and myriad groups withered away.
*May not be entirely accurate, but it sure seemed that way at the time.
Well no, my subjective view as a UFO layman is different. I've had internet access since it was first possible to dial in, in a major UK city and I don't remember 50% populated by UFO sites. In fact I don't remember any though I don't doubt they existed. Not many people had Internet access in the nineties anyway. On the other had we had the X files and the "Strange but True" TV series to generate more interest. I do remember "UFO magazine" in the latter nineties which as I recall was rational enough. There were a number of popular books around as well of course.
My memory is of UK UFO mania being consciously more widespread in the sixties and seventies, in the press, popular magazines and books, than the nineties and thousands . I even bumped into and had a chat with an investigator in the early eighties. Faking photos was known about, done and easy enough even then. The autopsy footage was never taken seriously anyway in real life as I recall and Roswell was thoroughly debunked without the aid of the internet in the late nineties. I think it's only popular TV, and the Internet that keep it going.
There were loads of people online in the 90s!* UFO sites proliferated - the uptake amongst UFO groups was massive, all the 'build your own' webpage sites like Tripod were inundated with ever-expanding acronyms, mirroring 'BUFORA' style monikers. The 90s saw a huge resurgence of interest, in part due to popular culture such as the rave scene where a lot of the music reflected the topic (UFOrb for example) and books like Timothy Good's 'Alien Liason' brought the whole Area 51 angle to a new audience even though it was old hat stateside. BIB (1) UFO magazine - rational? I met them all, the late Graham Birdsall et al. Affable enthusiasts, but as prone to printing nonsense as the rest, highlights included lamp posts from a moving vehicle and stills of a lunar lander from a Polish sci fi film. I actually have every issue...
BIB (2) The autopsy video was taken very seriously indeed. They did sometimes affect an air of 'wait and see' but they also ignored solid technical evidence of it being fake - I know, I told many of them and they still ran with it, as did many others.
Roswell was still a cause celebre in their circles. They flogged countless videos on it in their mail-order store advertised in each issue. There was always some 'new angle' to update it, and righteous anger when the US published an investigation suggesting the 'bodies' had been test dummies dropped in a secret space programme testing operation. Crazy days.
*Even pre-internet in the BBS days there were many American groups accessible 'online' so to speak, although it was expensive to check them out from here. Once the internet 'happened' they were in the vanguard of networking groups taking advantage of the new reach it gave them, although as I say, it came back to bite them in the end.
RE: The whole Area 51/underground Aliens/conspiracy angle that fed the 90s revival, it's well worth checking out "Mirage Men" -
http://www.miragemen.com/
Well like the sixties, UFO wise, I obviously wasn't really there. To my credit though I have met Timothy Good, who is a very nice man, and I do still have some old UFO Magazines in my bottom draw within arms reach. Reminds me I once had the misfortune to listen to Graham Hancock give a talk but the less said about that the better.
I'll check the link out... thanks..
Remember the 12 months in the run up to the end of the world, that didn't happen?
Strange noises, heard all over the world
Strange sounds heard worldwide 2012 - Something is definitely wrong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZQwyV7wHzM
As I was involved with BUFORA for many years I have a fair understanding of the peaks and troughs of interest. The 90s were actually a downward trend and by the end of the 90s membership of groups and the number of active UFO magazines were at an all time low and have decreased since.
In the 70s and 80s the group was at its height with up to 1000 members and the major publicity waves that followed big sightings or the release of movies like Close Encounters in 1978 were significant drivers of interest levels.
For the Close Encounters promotion blitz with Columbia pictures BUFORA and Flying Saucer Review jointly worked with the Daily Express to run a UFO bureau for a few weeks. We got over 1000 reports that way and the MoD bureau figures for 1978 were also at a peak.
It took us two or three years to work on those reported cases and there were some classics that came as a result of that promotion that would likely never have been discovered otherwise.
We calculated I recall that at best BUFORA discovered one in ten of all UK sightings - so most of them were never in the public domain. The ease of reporting sightings via the internet has boosted that level significantly. So to a degree what looks like peaks and troughs in reporting numbers may not necessarily involve an actual increase or decrease in sighting numbers but reflect social factors that artificially change the percentage of always occurring case numbers that find their way into the public domain.
Also it is worth recalling that BUFORA was in no way an alien/cover up/secret bases type of organisation of the type more prevalent through the newsstand magazines or even at times FSR. It tried to be scientific in approach and so was not aiming to either attract mass membership or to collate every UFO ever seen. Indeed there were frequent discussions throughout the 70s/80s/90s about the right way to balance the popular image of UFOs as reflected by The X Files and the perceived more analytical reality where most sightings were resolved (though by no means all) as the reality within BUFORA demonstrated. There was never an easy answer to this schizophrenia we lived with throughout most of the organisations active years.
Oh, and the alien autopsy twaddle was a bit of a crisis within BUFORA from which I think it never really recovered. Most of us who were in on this from the start realised that no reputations should be staked on this dodgy case. But some saw the opportunities it presented for media interest. This was always a risky alliance but one that I think tempted some people to lose perspective. However, those of us in BUFORA who could see the problems certainly made sure we aired these feelings through the national media at the time. So it is not true that UFOlogy fell for this in totality. It really didn't. Check the media and you will see UFO researchers expressing why they felt this way,
In fact I was working on Strange But True? at the time and we attended an early screening of the footage that I think was set up to testbed media interest (it was parodied in the Ant and Dec movie on the affair as I recall) . SBT was there to evaluate interest in covering this case for the series. We chose to stay away from it after seeing the facts as we had serious reservations about it from both a technical and a UFOlogical perspective.
These days BUFORA mostly exists via an on line presence - though there was a conference in London a couple of years ago. It is trying to return to its roots and has published a lot of its data via DVDs that you can purchase. So at least all those decades of our hard work has been preserved. The internet age has ensured that.