Carl Sagan On UFOs

Many a well-known scientist, because they are well known, often have to venture outside of their area of expertise when say interviewed or pontificating within a broader arena of which their speciality is just a tiny niche. As such, they are on far shakier ground and thus subject to rebuttal by others who are more knowledgeable in that other part of that broader arena than the famous scientist in question. One prime example is the late astronomer Carl Sagan waxing lyrical about but out of his depth on the subject of UFOs.

The following commentaries are on a trilogy of YouTube videos featuring the late astronomer and science populariser Carl Sagan on the subject of UFOs. While these clips doesn’t limit his philosophy on the subject, anyone reading this can easily access the videos relative to finding his books or articles which would be more time intensive. His videos should reflect his points of view as expressed in other forms of media.

INTRODUCTION

With respect to UFOs, in Dr. Sagan’s favour, he admits that advanced extraterrestrial technological civilizations could be vastly more advanced than our own and therefore he doesn’t deny the possibility that extraterrestrials could have or could be visiting Earth. In fact, he’s on record, do to his interest in extraterrestrial life, that he would be delighted if UFOs = Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), except that there is no actual evidence linking the two, or so he claims.

But against that grain that he believes that there are highly advanced technological alien civilizations out there, he frequently reinforces that lack of evidence claim that connects UFOs and those highly advanced technological alien civilizations. In that analysis he makes a cardinal scientific boo-boo (IMHO) by making one of his oft repeated and therefore trademark statements that “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence”.  UFOs that equate to alien spaceships is an extraordinary claim according to Dr. Sagan. So Dr. Sagan demands extraordinary evidence from those making such extraordinary claims.

That seems on the surface to be reasonable, but, if I claim my best friend from high school is sitting on the couch in my living room – that’s an ordinary claim. If I claim a little green ‘man’ from Mars is sitting on the couch in my living room – that, according to Dr. Sagan is an extraordinary claim. Yet, the exact same amount of evidence will confirm or refute either claim equally. That’s why it’s a really significant cardinal scientific boo-boo. The word ‘extraordinary’ is in the emotional mind of the beholder and isn’t a hardcore scientifically valid concept, unlike the word “claim”. However, Dr. Sagan frequently also uses the phrase that’s there “no compelling evidence” (i.e. that UFOs = ETH). That suggests that Dr. Sagan feels there must be at least some evidence, just not compelling evidence, which he acknowledges. In any event, Dr. Sagan should have taken note of another profound saying that “absence of evidence does not of necessity translate into evidence of absence”.

CARL SAGAN 1966 INTERVIEWED ABOUT UFOs [Interview With Walter Cronkite]:

* Commuting Issues: Dr. Sagan doesn’t apparently have any problem in accepting an alien spacecraft arriving in our local neck of the woods, say once every 10,000 years or so. That’s pretty much in keeping with the Fermi Paradox which notes that the time it takes an advanced technological civilization with interstellar space-faring capability to cross interstellar space and hence explore every nook and cranny of our galaxy is but a small fraction of the age of our galaxy. This is akin to saying that the time it takes the human species to explore every nook and cranny of Planet Earth is just a tiny fraction of the age of Planet Earth.

Okay, that’s fine. However Dr. Sagan has a decided problem with aliens from a distant star system visiting our local neck of the woods two or three times a day, which is the case according to “flying saucer cultists”. And admittedly, it’s a bit of a stretch to think a fleet of extraterrestrial UFOs would travel dozens of light years back-and-forth between say Sirius and Sol every day. Except that argument shows a high of illogical thinking in the extreme. Would an astronomer like Dr. Sagan commute back-and-forth every day between Cornell University (New York) to a telescopic site in say Chile, every day-in-and-day-out for weeks on end? - Of course not. He would undergo one long-distance hop-skip-and-jump (Cornell to Chile), set up camp at appropriate facilities cheek-by-jowl with the telescopic site and commute daily the relatively tiny distance between his camp site or hotel or other accommodation and the telescope; two or three times a day even as necessary. When finished, he would then return back to Cornell.

And thus, so logical might suggest, would aliens from Sirius, having travelled light years to Earth, set up camp (say on the Moon) and do their now short distance exploration thing for whatever duration required and when finished, return home. You have your two or three UFO visits a day without the issue of an illogical light years daily commute. 

* Contactees: For the bulk of the interview, Dr. Sagan expounded on the extreme fringe elements of the UFO phenomenon, the Contactees. Contactees are those quasi-religious cultists who claim to have been contacted and befriended by the ‘Space Brothers’, quasi-Nordic or quasi-angelic types of extraterrestrials who give forth cosmic wisdom and give rides in their Flying Saucers on tours of the solar system and their home planets like Venus to the fortunate few Contactees found to be in the good graces of said ‘Space Brothers’. It’s all very akin to New Age philosophy and spiritualism, and Dr. Sagan concludes therefore that the entire UFO field is just a quasi-religious one revolving around the myths spun by the Contactees with ultimately as much solid evidence as there is for anything mythological or religious, which is for all practical purposes, zero. It’s all psychology and theology, not physical science. Now I have little issue with Dr. Sagan giving the verbal middle finger to the extreme fringe elements within the UFO field, except that he by implication and association paints with as broad a brush as you can imagine possible the entire UFO field and UFO investigators as equally part of the lunatic fringe. There was absolutely zero mention of all the solid UFO cases that remained UFO cases after investigation by the United States Air Force and other equally hardcore no nonsense organisations and individuals. That, IMHO, is absolutely an exercise in intellectually dishonesty by focusing on the extremists and ignoring the middle of the road. It’s like bucketing the entire Republican Party via some association of theirs with the Tea Party even though many, even most Republicans aren’t part of the Tea Party movement. It’s called guilt by association. But just because Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Ted Cruz, Bryan Fischer, Cindy Jacobs, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and Pat Robertson (to name just a few on the extreme religious right and/or extreme political right) are a few nickels and a dime short of a dollar doesn’t mean your local congressman or local clergy, pastor, padre, priest or rabbi, etc. is.    

* Terminology: As an interesting aside, I note that Dr. Sagan used exclusively the putdown or mocking or deriding phrase “flying saucers” or “saucers” in the interview. He did not use the more neutral term “UFOs” or the equally neutral phrase “unidentified flying objects” even though these were coined way more than a decade before 1966 and were in common usage. Dr. Sagan was clearly in ridicule mode, something rather unbecoming for a professional scientist IMHO.

Dr. Sagan, were he alive today, should be absolutely and totally ashamed of that interview.

CARL SAGAN ON UFOs:

* Close Encounters of the Third Kind: One YouTube video focuses on the “Cosmos” segment that featured the Betty and Barney Hill Close Encounter of the Third Kind (CE3K). There are a few bones to pick with Dr. Sagan’s overriding commentary while a re-enactment was shown, but at least this time around he does use the term “UFOs” and the phrase “unidentified flying object”.

Firstly, he makes much of the point, several times over, that we have only their word that they saw a UFO and alien beings all close up and personal – as if a mature-aged but interracial couple (this is 1961 remember) would invent such a horrific experience drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. In fact their story didn’t become public until years later so there was no immediate cashing in on their story for financial gain (not that Dr. Sagan implied that – he didn’t. I’m just noting or saying there was no financial incentive for the Hill’s story). Dr. Sagan later notes that “their word” was also recorded while Betty and Barney Hill were separate and apart put under hypnosis and under the direction of a professional psychiatrist. That IMHO, enhances the credibility of “their word”.

Further, this was the first American case of a CE3K (one earlier foreign case was unknown outside of specialist circles) making an invention out of whole cloth by Betty and Barney Hill rather unlikely since there was no general public perception at the time that there even was such a thing as a CE3K or abductions by little grey aliens. 

Several times in this segment Dr. Sagan goes back to variations on his “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” philosophy. He then details the ‘extraordinary evidence’ for the Hill’s CE3K, which he cites as the Betty Hill ‘Star Map’, a map the aliens showed her and her alone with lines connecting some of the stars representing alien ‘trade routes’, etc. Dr. Sagan then explains in way more detail than was necessary why the ‘Star Map’ was not extraordinary evidence.

That is one point I do agree with Dr. Sagan on and that’s with respect to the degree of evidence Betty Hill’s ‘Star Map’ provides. I’m not saying the ‘Star Map’ isn’t evidence, or isn’t a bona-fide ‘artefact’ of the CE3K, just that numerous dot points drawn at random can be made to match, given the vastness of space and the numbers of stars out there, with some specific number of them, and that lines connecting the dots can be drawn in vastly numerous ways. It’s interesting, but as evidence, far less proof, it’s meaningless.

Dr. Sagan says there is no collaborating evidence (apart from the ‘Star Map’) which is not quite true since the Hill’s vehicle had strange and unaccounted for markings and magnetic anomalies which Dr. Sagan fails to mention.

* Photographs: Dr. Sagan also comments on UFOs photographs noting how many look like hubcaps and how photos can be faked. There was no mention of UFO photographs (and motion pictures) that have passed muster when examined and analysed by experts in photographic techniques, optics, etc. He does correctly suggest that just because there is an unidentified light in the sky, photographed or otherwise,  doesn’t make it automatically an alien spaceship.

CARL SAGAN TALKS ABOUT GOD, UFOs AND ROSWELL

* Roswell: Dr. Sagan’s Mistake Number One was that the stuff that fell or crashed near Roswell in July 1947 wasn’t collected by “Air Force” personnel. The Air Force hadn’t yet been established as a separate branch of the US defence establishment. In July 1947 it was still the “Army Air Force”.

Dr. Sagan swallowed hook line and sinker the idea that photographs of the Roswell debris made publicly available a day or so after the fact but roughly at the time showed the actual bona-fide debris that was collected, a comment immediately following his acknowledgement that the debris was according to the military just a weather balloon (see next entry)! My comment here is that if an intelligence officer of the then Army Air Force couldn’t tell the difference between a crashed metallic disc and the materials from a common weather balloon, well, translated into our times, such military incompetence suggests America might as well surrender to North Korea now and be done with it.   

Dr. Sagan then parrots the most recent (of several) now USAF explanations for Roswell, a top secret balloon operation to detect clandestine Soviet nuclear testing. I have to note that even if that were the case, it was the purpose of the balloon that was top secret, not the materials it was constructed out of. There was no reason not to call a spade (a balloon) a spade (a balloon) from the get-go instead of a crashed disc. There is really no wriggle room here. It’s on the public record that the Roswell debris was first described as a crashed metallic disc and not as a balloon, secret or otherwise.

* Generalities: Following on from Roswell, Dr. Sagan does quite correctly note the “U” in “UFO” stands for “unidentified” and one shouldn’t therefore leap to a conclusion that unidentified equal’s alien spaceship. He notes, also quite correctly that the bulk of UFO reports end up having prosaic explanations. But then he screws up by saying that only if you can’t identify the UFO sighting in question can you then start thinking outside of the box as in aliens and the ETH. However, Dr. Sagan doesn’t acknowledge that there are UFOs that remain UFOs after having been put under the investigative microscope, and that therefore, the extraterrestrial hypothesis is a valid one.

Of course Dr. Sagan’s love of the word “evidence” or phrase “extraordinary evidence” comes into play again and again in this YouTube segment.

As noted in the beginning, it’s interesting that another common thread in Dr. Sagan’s comments is that he sincerely believes that not only is there a strong probability of extraterrestrial life, but highly technologically advanced alien civilizations exist that are millions of years in advance of our own with technologies we can’t even begin to comprehend. Yet he just can’t seem to make that leap that therefore UFOs could be the very evidence that would validate his scientific judgment or opinion or expectation. He goes out of his way to downplay the possibility and accents the negative instead of embracing the possibility and advocating serious study of the issue.



Evidence and the Twelfth Man: How Much Is Enough? Part Two

A phrase has appeared in many popular science books as well as sceptical books about various aspects of the paranormal and pseudoscience’s, but which has, in classic meme fashion, spread to other subjects as well. That phrase is “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. However, I feel that phrase has well outlived its original purpose, is total nonsense, and has passed it’s ‘use by’ date by several decades at least. 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (ECREE) is often the mantra when it comes to the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH).

 Many ideas or fads, be they in the sciences or the arts, don’t last long – theories come and theories go and actual fashions and fashion in music change yearly. What’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out’ is often pretty fickle. A lot of what was popular in 1947 (the birth year of the modern UFO era) has fallen by the wayside now - but, interestingly enough, not the UFO ETH. The UFO ETH is as popular as ever, maybe even more so now than in 1947, not that popularity equates of necessity to something factual. If a billion people believe a stupid idea – like an invisible friend who art in heaven – it’s still a stupid idea. However, over six decades on, despite all the professional and amateur sceptics and the universal naysayer, the government denials, scientists professing ‘no evidence’, the ‘giggle’ factor and the ‘silly season’ publicity, the UFO ETH is alive and well thank you very much. Something must be driving this. Perhaps, at least as far as many of the great unwashed are concerned, there is some signal in the noise – some sort of evidence (albeit not physical enough to be acceptable to many professional scientists) that’s swaying the general public.

It is suggested, with good reason, that the whole issue of the UFO ETH must be judged on the basis of the evidence. And, it is claimed, that the evidence for visitation is so poor that very few scientists find it convincing. And that is true, at least the part that few scientists, publicly at least, find the UFO ETH somewhat lacking in solid evidence. Thus, the UFO ETH has garnered somewhat of an aura of being a ‘silly season’ subject, unworthy of scientific study. [To be honest, I’d often like to survey academics / scientists for their private opinions!]

UFOs vs. evidence for the 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 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. 

I would ask the question whether by evidence one means a physical artefact that can be put under the microscope, or is human testimony, the sort that would convict someone of a crime and put them on death row enough evidence? I’m 99% convinced scientists would say the former, yet the evidence for the UFO ETH is 99% the latter (plus a few radar returns and films). Actually IMHO it’s ludicrous for UFO ETH sceptics to poo-poo and give the thumbs down to eyewitness testimony. After all, it’s accurate eyewitness testimony that enables the trained investigators to properly identify the vast majority of UFO reports, turning them into identified flying objects. So, when sceptics need eyewitness testimony to be accurate and turn UFO cases into something with ordinary and mundane causes – that’s fine. But when the tables are turned, sceptics turn turncoat as well so as to re-enforce their already-minds-made-up point of view. That is, eyewitness testimony that turns a UFO sighting into an unexplained bona fide UFO case, well then clearly the eyewitness testimony counts for nothing in terms of bona fide evidence.   

Now there are lots of current concepts in science that have absolutely no evidence to support them, yet are taken quite seriously by physical scientists. A partial list would include concepts like the Multiverse, the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics, string theory or its related M-Theory, the Higgs Boson, the possible existence of ten or eleven dimensions, the Ekpyrotic (two branes colliding origin of the) Universe theory, and, shock horror for those interested in SETI, the total lack of any under-the-microscope, hard core evidence whatsoever for any intelligent life forms other than intelligent terrestrial life forms. Yet it is acceptable for scientists to research these areas without being subject to having their sanity questioned. I fail to see why the UFO ETH is an exception to this.

Scientists need more than 20 fingers and toes to list all of the there-is-no-evidence-for- these-way-out-theories in science that ultimately had to wait years, decades, longer even for experimental confirmation. If scientists had put these in the too hard basket, or dismissed them with a ‘I just don’t believe it - it can’t be therefore it isn’t’ attitude, well we’d still all believe that the sun goes around the Earth, black holes would be confined to the pages of science fiction, and as for gravity bending light rays – forget it.

There are other ‘the nature of the evidence’ parallels with UFOs – physical phenomena that don’t stand still; you can’t poke and prod, put under the microscope, examine at your leisure and which are unpredictable in space and in time. Ball lightning comes to mind; ditto Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP); and you can’t rewind the clock and prepare for (instruments at the ready) and witness the one-off Tunguska event. There seems to be a double standard for evidence here. UFOs have a ‘giggle factor’; ball lightning does not, yet both have theoretical underpinnings that make their existence plausible. In the case of UFOs, it’s the Fermi Paradox – if advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exist, they’ve had enough time to colonize the galaxy, so where is everybody?

So, that ultra overused phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is nonsense. Claims of course require evidence, but again 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 that can be applied to the UFO ETH is “absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence”.

Conclusion: If you make a claim, extraordinary or otherwise, you’ve got to be prepared to back it up with your evidence, your whole evidence, and nothing but your evidence. The 12^th man would require no more, and no less.

Evidence and the Twelfth Man: How Much Is Enough? Part One

A phrase has appeared in many popular science books as well as sceptical books about various aspects of the paranormal and pseudoscience’s, but which has, in classic meme fashion, spread to other subjects as well. That phrase is “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. However, I feel that phrase has well outlived its original purpose, is total nonsense, and has passed it’s ‘use by’ date by several decades at least. 

How much evidence does it take to convince someone of something like a jury; a scientist; a ‘professional’ sceptic; the great unwashed? The answer is obviously “Enough”. Any more than that is overkill. Of course what’s enough for any particular scenario will vary depending on the person. So, as per the film “12 Angry Men”, what’s enough evidence to convince 11 men wasn’t enough to convince the 12^th. Still, in theory there would come a point where additional evidence would be enough to sway that 12^th man. But that’s no more than just enough additional amount of evidence that he would require to join the other 11. The 12^th man requires some additional evidence, not extraordinarily more evidence; not overkill.

So why do scientists demand evidence overkill as per the way overused and illogical phrase “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (ECREE). No, claims of any kind require sufficient evidence to convince that 12^th man – no more and no less. ECREE needs to be consigned to the rubbish bin. I can understand the intent behind the phrase, but not the logic.

Sometimes you hear a song once too often and it loses its appeal. Sometimes it never had any appeal in the first place. In this case, it’s somewhere in-between. I didn’t object to the ECREE phrase at first, but after the 1000^th time, and especially upon more sober reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a nonsense phrase.

I gather an original purpose of ECREE was to separate the scientists making scientific claims, backed by independent verification and peer review, from the non-scientists making pseudo-scientific (i.e. – extraordinary) claims. This was all with the view on the grounds scientists don’t have the time and inclination to investigate every pseudo-scientific claim, so if they are to take the great unwashed seriously, a truckload of evidence had better be presented to them – far more than would be required initially from one of their peers. While that makes a bit of sense, it perpetuates an us vs. them dichotomy and makes scientists more elite than they really are, and/or makes the great unwashed even more unwashed than they really are. Anyway, this you’d better dump on me an extraordinary amount of evidence in my lap before I take you seriously (and even then I’ll probably take you with a grain of salt because I doubt I’ll have the right time of day for you because my mind is made up so don’t confuse me with facts or evidence) has become enshrined in the ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ mantra. 

Now at the onset, let me state that claims require evidence. That is not in dispute. That philosophy is an absolutely central concept part and parcel of our modern civilization. The entire foundation of our legal system answers to that principle. The scientific community, peer review, has adopted that principle. Even in everyday personal life, we insist on the viability of that principle. I mean if you claim you have a red dress, some doubting Thomas is perfectly within his rights to make you prove it – provide the evidence. And so you go to your closet, bring out the red dress, and so prove your claim. Now if you claim to have 1000 red dresses, which may seem like an extraordinary claim, but the nature of the evidence is exactly the same. You go to your closet, drag out 1000 red dresses, and dispatch Mr. Doubting Thomas quick-smart.

Oh, there is one great exception to the ‘claims require evidence’ principle – religion. When it comes to religious claims, however outrageous and illogical then may seem, you don’t have to provide any evidence, extraordinary or otherwise. It’s all about blind faith – faith is the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to believing in – to be honest – unsubstantiated claims.

Now the problem is that the work ‘extraordinary’ is in the mind of the beholder. What’s extraordinary to one individual isn’t even remotely extraordinary to another. It’s an emotive, personally judgmental word.

If I claim there’s a blue sedan parked in my driveway, that’s an ordinary claim.

If I claim there’s a ‘flying saucer’ parked in my driveway, you’d say that’s an extraordinary claim. However, both claims, ordinary or extraordinary, require the exact same amount of evidence. 

In the no-nonsense legal world, there’s no need for extraordinary evidence. You don’t require twice or thrice the number of witnesses to convict in the case of murder vis-à-vis shoplifting, even though murder is a far rarer and more extraordinary crime than shoplifting.

You go to the bank. Whether you withdraw an ordinary $1 or an extraordinary $10,000, you will be required to produce evidence that you are who you say you are – your signature, and perhaps photographic identification. But, in either case, it’s the same evidence.

Okay, we have to come to terms with the fact that lots of extraordinary claims have in fact come to pass, with rather ordinary evidence. Let’s list just a few once-upon-a-time scientific impossibilities (extraordinary claims) that have proved (via ordinary evidence) to be anything but.

It used to be quite obvious that the Sun went around the Earth – any other extraordinary claim of another configuration was considered impossible.

Once upon a time, our Universe could not be anything but static – neither expanding nor contracting. Einstein however knew the Universe should be contracting because of the attractive force of gravity. To counter that, and keep the static Universe he and the science of the times believed in, he invented his ‘cosmological constant’, a repulsive force to exactly counter gravity’s pull. That was his extraordinary claim. He later called that his greatest blunder. However, that ‘cosmological constant’ has recently resurfaced in the form of ‘dark energy’, so Einstein might have been right after all!

Those extraordinary Black Holes, while existing on paper in relativity theory, could not actually exist in reality - in practice they were quite the impossible object. There’s massive evidence now that they do indeed exist.

No one in their right Biblical mind would believe that it was extraordinarily possible that mankind had any actual evolutionary relationship with ‘lower’ life forms. Evolutionary biologists can give you lots of ordinary evidence to the contrary.

That matter actually consisted of rather extraordinary indivisible bits called atoms - the atomic theory was nonsense. The atomic theory was an extraordinary claim. Particle physicists can give you ordinary evidence to the contrary.

That ‘island universes’ were actually independent conglomerations of stars and not nebulous entities part and parcel of our own Milky Way Galaxy was deemed extraordinarily impossible by experts. Ordinary observational evidence eventually proved otherwise.  

Catastrophism in geology was considered an extraordinary no-no for much of the time since it began as a legit part of earth science. All geology (especially landforms) could be explained as a gradual softly-softly, slowly-slowly, process. Violent events need not apply to explain things. Tell that to the dinosaurs! Of course we know better today. Ordinary evidence shows that Catastrophism has taken its place and role playing in the geologic scheme of things.

Speaking of geology, the idea of continental drift was once considered extraordinarily preposterous pie-in-the-sky stuff. How dare a meteorologist (Alfred Wegener in 1912) tell geologists what should have been bleeding obvious! Geologists of course countered that there was no physical mechanism that could push continents around. Well, there was as it turned out, only we may no longer call it continental drift but rather plate tectonics. The ordinary evidence is in; geologists accept it.

Once upon a time, the concept of nuclear energy was extraordinary pie in the sky – a subject no scientist would take seriously. Does anyone dispute the evidence for it today?

Prior to the initial test, there were ‘experts in explosives’ who said that the A-bomb would never work. That it would would have been an extraordinary claim to the contrary. The evidence that it did work is evident now. 

Powered flight was once considered extraordinarily impossible – balloons were the only feasible means of air travel. Today, the verdict is in.

Rocket travel was utter extraordinary bilge as there was nothing in space for the rocket’s exhaust to push against. Yet the moon landings became so ordinary that the public quickly got bored with them.

It was impossible for the human body to travel faster than the speed of a (fill in the blank) without suffering fatal physiological consequences. Any person suggesting the contrary would have been forced to provide extraordinary proof.  Of course quite ordinary proof proved most satisfactory to counter the claim.

The sound barrier would never be broken; to suggest otherwise was an extraordinary claim. Again, it’s now quite ordinary to break the sound barrier; no extraordinary evidence was required, just the sound of a sonic boom.    

It was considered impossible for stones to fall from the sky – witnesses to the contrary be damned. Today, we incorrectly call them ‘shooting stars’; more correctly meteors, and when then hit the ground, meteorites. Picking up a meteorite is ordinary; although claiming it fell from the sky was once upon a time an extraordinary claim.  

The RMS Titanic was ‘unsinkable’. To suggest otherwise would have been extraordinary. The very ordinary evidence now rests at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.

The city of Troy was ordinary mythology, pure and simple. There was no such place in reality. To suggest the contrary was an extraordinary claim. Today, nobody doubts the ordinary evidence backing up the city’s reality.  

To be continued…

The UFO ETH: Pro and Con: It Can’t Be Therefore It Isn’t

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena, this time the endless stalemate between those supporting the UFO ETH, and those sceptical debunkers of the UFO ETH starting with the most basic of all arguments, UFOs can not be extraterrestrial because I say so and I’m an expert!

OBJECTION #12: The Final Fallback Objection: The UFO 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!

FINAL ANSWER: 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?

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 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 spend 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.

A prime example of how some scientists have their lack of evidence and belief too is with respect to religion. Even as recently as 2009, a public opinion poll found that a significant (albeit minority) percentage of scientists had a belief in a God that was up close and personal in their lives. There’s not the slightest bit of evidence, physical or otherwise, that God exists. There’s absolutely no evidence for any deity (monotheistic or polytheistic), yet many scientists have no trouble accepting on faith and having a belief in a deity (or deities) sight unseen by anyone and everyone. No one verifiable has seen the monotheistic deity God and all the polytheistic deities are apparently, according to scholars, entirely mythological. Go figure. This essay could just as easily been constructed around a theme of double standards with respect to God: Show Me the Evidence!’ There just isn’t any.

That reminds me of God’s double standard of ‘do as I say, not as I do’. It’s just like God (of the Old Testament) to command “Thou shall not kill” while He goes off and nearly exterminates the entire terrestrial human and animal population vis-à-vis the universal deluge. Anyway, back to the scientist.

There are valid cases within science itself of scientists not only ‘having a lack of evidence for X’s reality but never-the-less a belief in X’s reality too’. Now without meaning to accuse scientists of pure hypocrisy, there are lots of current concepts in science that have absolutely no evidence of any sort apart from the purely theoretical to support them, yet are taken quite seriously by physical scientists. A partial list would include concepts like the Multiverse (there is more than one universe – ours - within the overriding cosmos); the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics; particle physic’s string theory; the Higgs Boson; the possible existence of ten or eleven dimensions; the Ekpyrotic (two string theory [mem]branes colliding and accounting for the origin of our) Universe theory; and, shock-horror for those interested in SETI , the total lack of any under-the-microscope, hardcore evidence whatsoever for any intelligent life forms anywhere out there other than intelligent terrestrial life forms (humans). Yet it is acceptable for scientists to research these areas without being subjected to having their sanity questioned. I fail to see why the UFO ETH is an exception to this. Even forget the UFO ETH – just the UFO phenomena full-stop is off limits. Be that as it may, it is.

Understandably for scientists, there is one very big and fundamental problem with UFOs. They tend to be unpredictable in time and space, and when they do show up; they don’t stand still and grant you an interview and allow you the leisure of taking out your yardstick or whatever other scientific instrument you care to name and measuring them.

But there are other case histories from the annals of science regarding ‘the nature of the evidence’ that have parallels with UFOs – physical phenomena that are unpredictable in time and space, that don’t stand still; that you can’t poke and prod, and that you can not put under the microscope and , examine at your leisure. These various phenomena; well ball lightning comes to mind; ditto Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP); and you can’t rewind the clock and prepare for (instruments at the ready) and witness the one-off Tunguska event are akin to UFOs in that scientists lack the means to lock them down, isolate them, and study the unfolding event at their leisure. Yet, it is one rule for one (ball lightning, TLP, Tunguska); one rule for another (UFOs).

So there seems to be a double standard for acceptable evidence here. UFOs have apparently no verifiable evidence and a ‘giggle factor’; ball lightning and TLP have unverifiable evidence but no ‘giggle factor’, yet all of these have theoretical underpinnings that make their existence plausible. In the case of the UFO ETH, it’s the Fermi Paradox – that’s the ‘where are they, if they exist they should be here’ observation.

Ultimately the question here boils down to finding an answer (a smoking gun) to the question that humans have asked and speculated on for thousands of years – are we alone in the universe? There shouldn’t be any double standards employed when it comes down to addressing this issue. There are ultimately four choices: 1) We can choose not to answer the question because the world has bigger priorities than proving the existence of ‘little green men’; 2) we can, as SETI does, search out there, which obviously is a very logical thing to do even though it’s a proverbial ‘needle in the haystack’ search; 3) we can search down here – ancient astronauts and UFOs – which is a positive in that it restricts the haystack’s geography required to be examined, but on probability is less likely statistically that the needle will be there (another parallel being someone looking for a lost key underneath the lamppost just because the light’s better there); 4) or we can do both – search out there AND search down here and not put our quest for the ‘little green men’ into an either/or basket. Unfortunately, that’s way too idealistic a position to have accepted given the historical double standard already taken.

In conclusion, when it comes to the scientific community and evidence, there is often a double standard employed.  There’s not one shred of physical evidence for string theory, yet it’s an accepted area of funded academic research and has been for decades. On the UFO issue, many scientists while happy to accept the accuracy of eyewitness testimony when it provides data that turns a UFO event into an IFO, for some strange reason reject eyewitness testimony when it reinforces the unidentified or unknown status of the UFO event. That’s another double standard. Go figure!

Of course the ultimate conclusion to be drawn is that scientists are human too and have their own agendas, backgrounds and personalities which can and do colour their belief systems. Apart from the ever logical Mr. Spock, is there any human, past or present (and probably future) who hasn’t at one time or other employed a double standard? Not that that makes the double standard acceptable of course, but theoretical idealism and practical reality is two very separate things.

So, IMHO, the twelfth objection fails because though sceptics and scientists rally against the UFO ETH, and perhaps they are right in their conclusions, skeptics and scientists aren’t all-knowing and often base their conclusions on faith or belief. They too are human with all the accompanying baggage that implies and they can, and do, make mistakes, and such is the case I believe when it comes to labeling the pro UFO ETH a pseudoscience. Once upon a time Galileo Galilei and Nicolaus Copernicus would have been considered pseudo-astronomers; Heinrich Schliemann (of Troy fame) someone who dabbled in pseudo-archaeology; Charles Darwin was a pseudo-naturalist; and Alfred Wegener, obviously put forth a theory (continental drift) that could only be described as pseudo-geology at the time. Even originally Albert Einstein was so far out in left field that his scientific seniors and superiors could easily have described his physics as pseudo-physics. Only time and history will be the judge whether or not the UFO ETH is or was pseudoscience or real science. The jury IMHO is still out on that issue.