by Don Beman

The international Society for Scientific Exploration announced that it will present its 2008 Dinsdale Award to Jerry Clark of Canby.
The award and honorarium will be presented to Clark during the society’s annual meeting June 25-28 in Boulder, Colo. Clark will also be a key speaker for the meeting and conference, entitled “Emerging Paradigms at the Frontiers of Consciousness and UFO Research.”
Clark provided an abstract of his presentation to the society:
“The long debate about the existence of extraordinary phenomena, from supernatural entities and fantastic monsters to mystery airships and UFOs, has long been predicated on an unexamined literalism. Either these things exist, it is presumed, or they are the products of error and deception. To a degree, this is a defensible approach. Beyond that, however, the frame of reference is woefully inadequate, failing to explain vividly felt encounters with otherworldly beings and beasts which over all of history human beings have experienced, even as no compelling evidence of their presence in consensus reality has ever emerged. Clark’s lecture discusses anomalous events versus experience anomalies, which — though epistemologically unrelated — have a curiously parasitic relationship, and calls for a radical new understanding of the strange occurrences that have plagued, infuriated, and fascinated human beings in all times and places.”
The Society for Scientific Exploration is a multidisciplinary professional organization of scientists and other scholars committed to the study of unusual and explained phenomena that cross traditional scientific boundaries. It was founded in 1982 by 14 scientists and scholars and today has about 800 members in 45 countries around the world.
The Dinsdale award is presented by the society every two years since 1992 for “significant contributions to the expansion of human understanding through the study of unexplained phenomena,” according to Garrett Moddell of the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Colorado and president of the society.
The award was founded by Prof. Henry Bauer to recognize “significant contributions to the expansion of human understanding through the study of unexplained phenomena” and was named in memory of Tim Dinsdale, an engineer by profession who in 1960 came up with what remains the most striking evidence of unexplained animals in Loch Ness.
“Through the Dinsdale award, our society endeavors to identify, publicize and reward senior scholars who have made similarly substantial contributions to the understanding of anomalous physical, biological and psychological events in the spirit of meticulous research, exemplary methodology and proper scholarly attitude,” said Robert G. Jahn of Princeton University in introducing the 2002 recipient, Dr. William G. Roll, a researcher at the J. B. Rhines Laboratory at Duke University, Parapsychology Laboratory in Durham, N.C., Psychical Research Foundation in New York City, Oxford University, Utrecht University and a professor at West Georgia State University.
“I was basically stupefied,” Clark said when asked what his reaction was when he learned he had been selected.
“I kept thinking that some mistake had been made and if there hadn’t, somebody was exercising very poor judgment,” he said.
Clark said he felt overwhelmed at the company he joins on the list of award winners as well as the speakers for this year’s society meeting. Among the speakers is a former Canadian secretary of defense, Paul Hellyer, and Satya Dev Negi, representative of the Dalai Lama.
The subjects to be discussed range from functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalograph evidence of correlated brain signals, evidence of water and life on Mars, and implications of Buddhism on consciousness research.
The award, said Moddel, recognizes Clark’s work through the years as a historian of unusual phenomena and a student of it.
“The awards committee noted that you are perhaps the finest wordsmith in ufology and was impressed with the consistent accuracy and clear thinking in your writing over a period of nearly 40 years,” Moddel said.
He said Clark is recognized as an international resource in the field,
“Your UFO Encyclopedia has become the standard reference for work in the field,” Moddel said. “Your longtime editorship of the International UFO Reporter has had a substantial positive impact on the field.”
Wikipedia encyclopedia, in its biographical entry on Clark, described his standing this way:
“Clark is one of the most prominent UFO historians and researchers active today. Although Clark’s works have sometimes generated spirited debate, he is widely regarded as one of the most reputable writers in the field and has earned the praise of many skeptics.”
Besides work on UFOs, Moddel said, “you have chronicled other scientific anomalies in highly regarded books, such as “Unnatural Phenomenon,” “Unexplained,” and “Crytozoology A to Z.”
Clark has written 10 books since 1990, including the UFO Encyclopedia, “Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North America,” and “Encyclopedia of Strange and Unexplained Phenomena.” From 1976 to 1989, he was the editor of Fate magazine and beginning in 1985 also served as editor of the CUFOS Journal, International UFO Reporter” and has also been the editor of Journal of UFO Studies.
There have also been numerous papers and essays and Clark has been featured on television. However, Clark said it is best to approach cable television programs on UFOs and other phenomena with skepticism.
“I want to caution people about what they see on television,” he said. “They are many times presenting hoaxes as true mysteries.”
He said he rated 90 percent of such material as useless. Clark said he is currently working with Canadian David Cherniack on what promises to be a factual program to be aired on the History Channel.
But the written word, Clark said, is his favorite.
“I have an enormous respect for books — a book can change your life,” he said, adding “I’m also impressed that there are kids who still read books.”
How he knows about his readership, Clark said, is through the internet.
“I hear from people all the time and I take special care to respond to young readers,” he said.
Books, particularly science fiction, got him interested as a kid growing up in Canby in the field he refers to as his vocation.
The ideas, particularly about space travel, were fascinating and formed the beginning of a career that he carried with him to college at Moorehead State, then on to Chicago as a writer and editor and finally back to Canby.
His thinking has changed through the years and is now based more on a serious discussion of possibilities and probabilities.
“I look at these things at a cool intellectual level — fitting together the pieces of the puzzle,” Clark said.
That ranges from the possibilities of visitors from another place to the simple, like something seen that cannot be explained.
On visitors from another planet, Clark said the chances are more likely that other civilizations on other planets do exist because the universe contains billions of habitable spheres.
“It would be more surprising, on an intellectual level, to think that they aren’t there,” he said.
The other category is the unexplained things that happen — anomalies.
“It happens and its gone, but you know in your heart that it happened,” Clark said. “There’s no moral, no point. It just happened and then was gone.
What’s more, no physical evidence was left behind.
Clark talked about that in a 2005 essay for the Journal of Scientific Exploration in which he related one of his own experiences.
Recorded history is full of such accounts and most people have had them even if they don’t talk about them.
“Ridicule enforces silence,” Clark said.
He supports the quest for explanation and exploration rather than suppression. The problem with that approach, he said, is a simple one.
“There isn’t a vocabulary we can use,” Clark said.
A growing number of people are working on coming up with one, not as a subject to be covered on late night television for entertainment purposes, but as a practical approach to a greater understanding of the essence of life.
To be included in that group of people to the extent that he has been and now to be placed at the forefront with the award he will be accepting is what Clark said he finds mind boggling.
There’s also another side to Clark, which he describes as his passion — music — and he loves to talk about it.
He has written songs which have been recorded and performed by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Mary Carpenter and Tom T. Hall. He has often collaborated with Robin and Linda Williams. His reviews of American folk music albums appear in Rambles magazine. His list of reviews is lengthy and can be found on the rambles.net web site, ranging from one on “Blue Rain” by Eric Anderson to “Wagonmaster” by Porter Wagoner.