We’d nearly all be aware that when it comes to the subject of UFOs, most scientists shun away from them like they would a skunk who let fly. Scientists and UFOs tend to party together in much the same way as oil and water mix. Professional sceptics have a field day with the topic by usually picking and choosing to give their middle finger to the easy targets, not the hardcore issues. For example, it’s easy to rubbish someone who says they took a trip in a flying saucer with the ‘space brothers’ to Saturn; it’s much harder to ridicule a military pilot who reports engaging in a dogfight with a UFO. So, is this behaviour rational or are there hidden agendas and double standards?
The UFO Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) can’t be therefore it isn’t; alright it might be but it still isn’t; don’t bother me with facts, my mind is made up; and in any event it’s all pseudoscience and I just deal with real science. Trust me on this – I’m a scientist! And we all know scientists are 100% rational and right 100% of the time!
Many professional scientists, and other sceptics, when and if they think about UFOs at all, have been preconditioned to think of them in terms of the lunatic fringe, nutters who accept any and all pseudoscience associated with the paranormal and therefore not worthy of their attention, or if worthy, then worthy in a negative sense as only something to ridicule. They like to in a sense ‘pour water on a drowning man’ and pat themselves on the back as how superior they are relative to the astrology-minded; the great unwashed set who believe non-avian dinosaurs and humans coexisted together.
Firstly, let’s dispose of the sceptics, professional and otherwise, since their double standard amounts to treating all pseudoscience or all paranormal topics equally. Actually therefore sceptics only have a single standard – no shades of grey. One size fits all. That is to say, no matter what the anomaly, it’s rubbish. Sceptics just lump together all that’s paranormal, and call it pseudoscience as any sceptics’ website or monograph will more than adequately demonstrate – all pseudoscience is nonsense and all = all. However, I suggest that instead of all anomalies being equal; some anomalies are more equal than others. In short, some anomalies are really bovine fertiliser, but hardly all. To lump astrology and UFOs in the same basket is a double standard, since the theoretical and observational evidence for each isn’t really equal. Likewise, there’s more theoretical and actual evidence for the existence of the Sasquatch (Bigfoot) than there is for say telepathy. Since sceptics can’t distinguish serious anomalies from trivial ones, well I can’t treat sceptics seriously since when crunch comes to the crunch, they can’t be bothered to do the proper research and make distinctions.
Scientists on the other hand should take everything on their individual merits, and clearly in any scientific field, not all topics have equal merits. Saying life exists on Mars is not in the same league as saying life exists on Venus. Despite that, some topics do have equal merits, but that doesn’t stop scientists from pretending they don’t. Take SETI for example.
SETI (that’s the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) scientists tend to poo-poo ufology buffs for failing to come up with a UFO ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) smoking gun, or any compelling evidence, especially physical evidence for hardcore UFOs, in over six decades. That’s one topic. Of course they conveniently forget that SETI is entirely based on theory and SETI hasn’t produced a smoking gun conclusive of the existence of ETI either, over a near equal five decades of searching. But that’s another topic. However, both topics are in fact equal in that neither has produced a smoking gun that’s ‘killed’ the alien and provided a corpse for study. In fact, the amount of SETI evidence, including physical evidence, is but a short story compared to the full length UFO novel.
There is one other up-close-and-personal reason SETI scientists dump on the UFO ETH and/or ‘ancient astronauts’ is because they have a vested interest in SETI. They have spent careers, building equipment designed to look for alien intelligence out there, often been made fun of by other scientists (and the American Congress) in their hunt for ‘little green men’. It would be a serious blow to their egos, careers, reputations and an actual downright embarrassment if ET proven to be down here all along. So, it’s almost a natural reaction to rubbish any alternative idea. We’ve seen that any number of times in the history of science – Darwinian evolution vs. Lamarckian evolution; the Big Bang cosmology vs. the Steady State cosmology; catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism in geology. Debates have often been controversial, personal and bitter. So it’s interesting to note that when I communicate some of my unorthodox ideas to a well known SETI scientist, if I get under his skin, at worst I get no response; at best one that starts with “Dear Mr. Prytz”. Now if I say something he considers sensible (by his standards) the reply is “Dear John”. That’s a bit of a double standard too in its own right.
Now when it comes to SETI vs. the UFO ETH, that’s not to say SETI scientists shouldn’t continue to do SETI – they should – nothing ventured, nothing gained. But it gains them nothing to reject out of hand the rival idea that ET is or was down here are well as being up there.
Quite apart from SETI, the majority of scientists, especially physical scientists, usually poo-poo the UFO ETH with a there’s ‘no evidence’ mantra. But such scientists leave themselves wide open to the double standard. Many a scientist will profess a firm belief in something that has absolutely ‘no evidence’ of any kind, conveniently forgetting that they have rubbished other people’s beliefs for having faith in six impossible things that appear on their dining room table prior to breakfast. And so we see here the beginnings of more general double standards.
To be continued...
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