For and Against

• An Autopsy was carried out on a supposedly alien life form.

• There are lots of reasons for and against this being a real alien…

• Ed Uthman explained what he thought…

Evidence Against

• 1. I agree with the cinematographer whose suspicion was raised when the close-up shots were out of focus. Clearly the camera could focus closely, as in the external shots and shots of the excised "organs" on the table, but where you really needed resolution to figure out the anatomy (the in situ shots), the film was conveniently fuzzy.

• 2. Any pathologist involved in such a case would be obsessed with documenting the findings. He would be systematically demonstrating findings every step of the way, such as showing how the joints worked, whether the eyelids closed, etc. He should be ordering the cameraman all over the place, but instead the cameraman was totally ignored, like he wasn't there at all. The pathologist acted more like an actor in front of a camera than someone who was cooperating in a photographic documentation session.

More evidence

• 3. The prosector used scissors like a tailor, not like a pathologist or surgeon. He held the scissors with thumb and forefinger, whereas pathologists and surgeons put the thumb in one scissors hole and the middle or ring finger in the other. The forefinger is used to steady the scissors further up toward the blades.

• 4. The way the initial cuts in the skin were made a little too Hollywood-like, too gingerly, like operating on a living patient. Autopsy cuts are deeper and faster.

• 5. I would expect the skin of a species with a jointed endoskeleton to be elastic, so it could move with and glide over moving joints. When cuts were made in the "alien's" skin, the edges of the skin did not retract from the blade.

Even More Evidence

• 6. The most implausible thing of all is that the "alien" just had amorphous lumps of tissue in "her" body cavities. I cannot fathom that an alien who had external organs so much like ours could not have some sort of definitive structural organs internally. And again, the prosectors did not make any attempt to arrange the organs for demonstration to the camera.

• 7. This of course is outside my area of expertise, but the whole production just did not "look right" for a military documentary of the 1940's. I'm sure an expert in lighting, cinematography, etc. could be a bit more specific. Maybe they should have hired the guy who did Woody Allen's Zelig to give the production a little more technical verisimilitude.

And just to prove it...

• 8. And the "period pieces," the wall phone and electric wall clock were just a little too glib, IMHO.

• 9. Oh, yeah. The body was not propped up on a body block (which goes under the back during the examination of the trunk and under the head for removal of the brain). This is a very basic piece of autopsy equipment, and all pathologists use it.

• So, I think it was a really fine effort, worthy even of a Cal Tech prank, but not quite good enough to be believable.

But then again...

• On the other hand, perhaps life doesn't need random chemical reactions to get started as much as we think. Maybe the chemical reactions life are based on are inevitable, given a planet such as the Earth to work with. A few decades ago we discovered in experiments that when we recreate the conditions of Earth (as much as possible) as it was in its early pre-life years, the formation of amino acids and some other organic molecules are inevitable and in abundance. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, an important part of the machinery of life. This discovery and many others are making the genesis of life seem more and more likely. Perhaps, partial strands of DNA had a quasi-life function before the creation of the "Genesis DNA".