Jan L. Aldrich is a UFO enthusiast and apparently the main guy behind Project 1947, a research effort funded by CUFOS, FUFOR, and MUFON, to gather information about alleged UFO sightings, personal accounts and material UFO nuts usually take as evidence for extraterrestrial interference with life on Earth, especially from the period up to and including 1947. A resource like this could, of course, be a completely neutral affair, but that doesn’t seem to be the direction in which Aldrich wants to take things (as for instance per his contribution to the Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History workshop edited by Thomas Tulien.) In one sense that’s understandable; the truth of the claims made by UFO enthusiasts are impossible without a major conspiracy, and although a case could be made that Aldrich remains on the less unhinged side of UFO enthusiast efforts, he is still perilously close to donning the tinfoil hat for real. Like so many others, Aldrich appears to take e.g. the absence of declassified US Naval UFO documents and undisclosed O.N.I. UFO investigations as evidence that the government knows stuff they don’t want to share. There are alternative, simpler explanations.
Diagnosis: Again, Aldrich does not appear to be among the more hysterical or incoherent in the UFO crowd, but his research efforts can hardly be classified as unbiased and reality-based either.