UFO skeptics claim that there’s little or no credible evidence that any UFO event can be interpreted as an alien spaceship doing its alien flying thing, boldly going on Planet Earth where no extraterrestrial has gone before. However, the fact that there exists such a thing as the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), six decades (and then some) on must suggest that there is some really real evidence in support of that UFO ETH belief, belief supported by opinion polls over many, many years.
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
The Actual Evidence
What’s the general evidence for UFOs and by extension the UFO ETH? Well, you have multi-tens of thousands of UFO sightings, probably six figures worth by now, many multi-witness sightings, more than a few multi-independent multi-witness sightings; sightings by people used to the outdoors and aerial phenomena (like pilots), films and photographs that have defied the best experts to explain them in conventional terms, radar returns, physical ground traces, physiological effects on biological tissues, including humans; often more than one of these categories applies per incident.
You have a global phenomena, where countries from Australia, the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, France, Russia, Mexico, etc. have devoted considerable resources to finding answers to what many see as a ‘silly season’ filler with a high ‘giggle’ factor. That makes little logical sense – the ‘giggle’ factor, not the official investigations. There are neither psychological, sociological or cultural reasons to explain the origin of UFOs in general, nor specific UFO reports. It’s all evidence, and grist for the mill. So, what part of the word ‘evidence’ don’t you understand? The crux of the matter is not lack of evidence; it is how that evidence is interpreted. So take the bona-fide UFO residue, that hardcore 5%. Now what is this residue and what happens if you apply Occam’s Razor to it? Well, maybe bona-fide UFOs are just ghosts, or angels, or the work of the devil, or some nation’s secret weapons, or craft from a terrestrial advanced civilization that inhabits our hollow Earth! Or, maybe the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is the most plausible. I think Occam’s Razor would err on the side of the ETH when trying to come to terms with that hardcore unexplainable 5%.
Eyewitness and Evidence
Physical scientists won’t accept eyewitness accounts despite the double standards that entails in that if a physical scientist reports seeing something (like ball lightning or a ‘shooting star’, he or she expects to be believed. But not when it comes to UFOs.
Okay, so multi-tens of thousands of eyewitness accounts count for nothing, especially when many of those sightings were by trained observers, and multi-witness cases at that.
If eyewitnesses were the be-all-and-end all of the evidence, well that itself would be pretty suggestive IMHO. But eyewitness cases are often backed up by a radar tracking or ground traces or physiological effects or (electromagnetic) EM effects or motion pictures or still photographs. Radar, ground traces, EM effects also exist separate from eyewitnesses. UFOs are a global phenomenon that cuts across all age, sex, racial, cultural etc. boundaries. If UFOs were just the province of one country or region, or only witnessed by those with an IQ less than 90, well that would be suspect. But that’s not the case. UFOs have been taken seriously enough to be an official part of government programs from around the world, unlike say poltergeist events which aren’t part of official taxpayer funded investigations. And expert military and scientific analysis can not explain, depending on where and time, between five and ten percent of all UFO reports. Just because 18 or 19 out of 20 UFO events are explainable in prosaic terms, doesn’t automatically translate into accepting that 20 out of 20 are.
Evidence versus Proof
What many of the UFO ETH skeptics or debunkers are confusing here is the concept of ‘evidence’ vs. the concept of ‘proof’. There are massive amounts of evidence for the UFO ETH as noted above. For example, I’d consider as part of legit evidence documents released under the FOI (Freedom of Information) Act that show that in 1947, the then Army Air Force (AAF) requested the FBI to assist in investigating ‘flying disc’ reports all as part of the developing Cold War hysteria at the time. The FBI (Hoover
Sceptics would argue that the burden of proof that extraterrestrials are behind (at least some of) the UFO phenomena lies with the believers – those who claim such is the case. And that’s true. But there’s another side to that coin. Sceptics need to look at what evidence is presented and not have a closed-mind-locked-away-in-a-closet attitude.
Extraordinary Claims
Lastly, something really needs to be said that there’s one set of standards of evidence for one set of phenomena, and another set of standards of evidence for other sets of phenomena. That is to say, if you want to be extraordinarily sceptical about some things, you claim you need extraordinary evidence to make you see the sceptical error of your ways!
There exists a phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”'. I've seen that mantra in numerous books, articles, on the Internet, etc. I understand it originates from the late and great Carl Sagan. Were Dr. Sagan alive today I'd take my comments to him, but seeing as how he's no longer available, this section of the essay will suffice instead.
Claims require evidence. That's not in dispute. However, the word 'extraordinary' is in the mind of the beholder. What might be an extraordinary claim to you might not be an extraordinary claim to me, and vice versa. Murder is a more extraordinary crime than littering, yet the same evidence (say a security camera film) will convict in both cases. You don't need twice the amount of evidence in a murder trial vis-à-vis being convicted of littering. So, claims, of any kind, require enough evidence to convince anyone with an open mind - no more; no less.
If I, one of the vast majority of laymen, were to make a claim that the double slit experiment beloved in quantum physics provides evidence for the existence of parallel universes, or that a positron (an anti-electron) was actually nothing more than an electron going backwards in time, that would be extraordinary. If a professional scientist, a physicist, were to make those same claims, it’s not extraordinary presumably because physicists know what they are talking about. Yet it’s the same set of claims. They can’t be both extraordinary and ordinary at the same time!
Many of the greatest and now accepted parts of science started out as an extraordinary claim - like quantum mechanics or relativity theory or the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun. But did these claims really need extraordinary (like double the experimental) evidence vis-à-vis other claims that are now equally parts of the accepted science we find in the textbooks? For open-minded people, especially scientists, such claims probably did not require extraordinary evidence. And how in fact do you quantify extraordinary over ordinary evidence? Is twice as much extraordinary or three times or ten times? If someone is really a true-blue skeptic, it might not make the slightest difference, they would always demand more. No amount of evidence is extraordinary enough for them.
Few scientists now dispute the (initially extraordinary) claim of the reality of ball lightning, yet not only is it far rarer than UFO sightings, it has less of a theoretical underpinning than the proposal that some UFOs have an extraterrestrial intelligence behind them. Ball lightning hasn’t been put under a laboratory microscope any more than UFOs have. There are lots of parallels between ball lightning and UFOs for the sociologists of science to ponder. Yet one has credibility, one doesn’t. Why? It makes relatively little sense.
It is said, and there is truth in this, that science and scientists do not have the time and resources to investigate every claim ever made about the natural world. There must be some ways and means of distinguishing reasonable from unreasonable (i.e. – extraordinary) claims. While I don’t have an easy answer to that – though I’ll give one immediately below – I’ll just initially observe that there’s been a lot of seemingly reasonable claims that are now only footnotes in the history of science, and a fair few unreasonable claims that are now part of the bedrock on which our sciences, technology and civilization rests.
However, instead of ordinary vs. extraordinary distinctions, I’d suggest important vs. relatively unimportant claims. Lots of claims, whether proven or unproven, aren’t going to set the world on fire. Others have the potential to make for paradigm shifts in our understanding of the world and the cosmos. The equation UFOs = evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence is such an example. The claim needs to be investigated, yet not requiring massive more investigations than any other sort of scientific puzzle would require.
So, we desire evidence for the extraterrestrial nature of UFOs, not extraordinary evidence since that word ‘extraordinary’ has too much philosophical baggage attached to be meaningful.
To sum up this section, that ultra overused phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is nonsense. Claims of course require evidence, but the word ‘extraordinary’ is in the mind of the beholder. What’s extraordinary to one is routine, boring, commonplace and downright bloody obvious to another. And speaking of the common phrase, another one is ‘absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence’, or in this context, absence of evidence for the UFO ETH (which I dispute) is not the same thing as evidence of absence of the UFO related alien here on Earth.
Summary & Conclusions
UFOs vs. evidence for the UFO ETH – there is no absolute smoking gun - yet. I’d be the first to acknowledge that. I’d suggest however that this is a case of where there’s smoke, there’s smoke. The fire has yet to be seen through the smoke. There however has got to be something suggestive about the nature of that smoke to drive lots of people, even some quite intelligent people, to accept the possibility, some say probability, of the UFO ETH. I mean the idea just didn’t pop out of the ether – out of thin air. Something very suggestive is driving it.
But there is a reason. There’s more than enough eyewitness testimony and physical evidence that would satisfy any court of law; any judge; any jury in just about any other set of circumstances to render a verdict of guilty. But the UFO ETH can not yet be rendered guilty, because though there’s not yet to date that smoking gun. There’s lots of evidence – no proof. There’s no absolute under-the-microscope, on the lab’s slab, proof positive of the UFO ETH. If any UFO ETH buff says they have proof, skeptics should tell them to ‘put up or shut up’. If however they say they have evidence in favor of the UFO ETH, ask them politely what it is.
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