The Roswell incident has been a huge controversy for many years. In 1947 an alleged alien space ship crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. People have come to believe several different stories about the incident. Some believe that it was an actual alien invasion and that the United States government tried to cover up the fact that there were aliens. Others believe it was just a hoax to cause a stir in the media. Based upon previous Air Force experiments, the autopsies, materials recovered from the vicinity, and lack of scientific proof, one may determine that the Roswell incident was simply another Air Force experiment, rather than an alien invasion.
The first sensible explanation for the confusion is that the incident was part of experiments conducted by the Air Force. In 1947, secret experiments were being conducted to eavesdrop on the Soviet Union. Debris from the experiments landed near Roswell (Stover 34). However, not much is known about these experiments. "One incident was a 1959 manned balloon mishap in which two Air Force pilots were injured" ("Closed" 2). The Air Force also used "anthropomorphic test dummies" for scientific research, and some people confused these dummies for "aliens" ("Closed" 1). Firsthand witnesses could have mistaken these dummies for aliens, considering the dummies were seen from a distance. Some witnesses' accounts of the aliens match the physical appearance of the dummies and the type of vehicles used to recover them. These dummies were cold to the touch and looked very badly mangled; this is how the aliens were described in various television documentaries. All of this scientific research could have been mistaken for alien life form.
Other misconceptions may have been caused by confusion. For example, an Air Force accident may have been actually mistaken for an alien autopsy. "Glenn Dennis, who worked at Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, was told by one Nurse Selff that she had walked in on the autopsy of three mangled black little bodies" (Stover 1).