Philip Klass

Philip J. Klass (1919-2005) was a senior editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology and arguably the most influential UFO skeptic of the twentieth century. For four decades he investigated famous cases and published detailed prosaic explanations, becoming the field's designated adversary and, to believers, its villain.

An electrical engineer by training, Klass covered avionics with distinction (his mainstream reporting won industry awards) and brought an engineer's checkability standard to saucer claims after examining the 1966 wave.

His books (UFOs Identified, UFOs Explained, UFOs: The Public Deceived, and others) worked through the canon: plasma proposals for early cases, the Skyhook solution's popularization for Mantell-era events, the contract-motive case against Travis Walton, the demolition of MJ-12's typography and provenance, and detailed files on Socorro, the RB-47, and abduction claims. He co-founded CSICOP (now CSI), ran a standing $10,000 challenge for proof of extraterrestrial visitation, and wrote the SUN newsletter into his final years.

Klass's principle: every famous case dissolves under enough checking, and investigators' will to believe is the phenomenon. His contribution, granted even by opponents, is that unexamined cases stopped surviving; his files forced the field's best evidence to sharpen.

His methods drew real criticism: opponents documented aggressive letters to witnesses' employers and funders (the McDonald affair most notoriously), explanations that shifted when demolished (Socorro), and a prosecutorial certainty mirroring the believers he mocked. Ufologists called it harassment; he called it accountability. The bitterness he generated still shapes the field's allergy to skeptics.

Klass died in 2005. CSI's skeptical tradition and the Metabunk era descend directly from his practice, minus, mostly, the letters.