Rational Skeptics Buried in Data
This places an enormous burden on the rational skeptics’ case. The Mutual UFO Network logs dozens of sightings every month on its web site, mufon.com. While many of these are the routine “lights in the sky” variety of sightings – the size and shape of the object remains indistinct – many sightings occur in daylight. Many occur in situations where witnesses have good views, and are often reinforced by video or photographic evidence. Most sightings involve objects that could not reasonably be mistaken for aircraft or other conventional objects. The most common types of UFOs are disc-type craft (the classic flying saucers), triangular-shaped craft – often very large in size – and cigar-shaped craft of various sizes, some as large as a mile in length (!). Daytime sightings, of course, could not possibly be misperceptions of stars. Stars are not visible in daylight.
This continuous avalanche of UFO sightings places an enormous burden on the rational skeptics. In order to sustain their case – that all UFO sightings are either misperceptions or lies – they would have to investigate every sighting in detail, and debunk it. No one has the resources to do this. Even MUFON, the most active organization involved in investigating UFOs, has the resources to investigate only a small fraction of UFO sightings. It simply catalogues the rest.
And the rational skeptics have another great weakness in their approach: they often try to twist and distort the eyewitness testimony. In order to sustain their belief that all UFOs are misperceptions or lies, they must coach or coerce witnesses into recanting their original reports. A few witnesses have done so, but the overwhelming majority of UFO witnesses refuse to endorse the alternative explanations offered by the rational skeptics. The classic response by UFO witnesses to the distortions of the rational skeptics is “I know what I saw, and I’m damn sure it wasn’t an airplane. Or the planet Venus.”
Head in the Sand
Faced with hostile witnesses and the need to debunk every single UFO sighting without exception, the rational skeptics generally choose to ignore the subject entirely. Most rationalists refuse to even discuss UFOs. They don’t want to think about it. And since the “rational skeptics” camp includes almost all of our scientific elite, the subject of UFOs receives very little serious scientific attention.
This has always seemed like a great pity to me, because UFOs are clearly one of the two or three most important subjects in the world.
Aliens? Not on My Watch
If some UFOs turn out to be alien spacecraft – as most UFOlogists suspect – that’s huge news. We should all want to know more about that possibility. What can we learn from creatures that are obviously far more advanced than we in science and technology? Many things, but perhaps the first thing we would learn is how to reconcile our empiricists with our rationalists.
Better yet, perhaps we could learn how to bake a delicious apple pie with no more calories than a stick of celery. Now that would be a real contribution to human civilization.
But there is almost no good evidence that UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin. For more than 60 years, UFOlogists have assumed this, and it is logical to assume, but facts have yet to support the assertion. Whoever or whatever is inside the UFOs, these creatures never stop and chat about their planet(s) of origin. In quite a few cases some sort of “alien writing" has been seen on pieces of crashed UFOs – at the famous Roswell crash and at the famous Kecksburg, Pennsylvania crash, for example -- but this is hardly definitive.
After 60 years of collecting vast amounts of information, all the empiricists can say about the UFOs and UFO occupants is that they are "not of this Earth.” The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis remains the most popular explanation for the origins of UFOs among serious UFO researchers in spite of the fact that it has remained unproved for so long.
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