The criticisms are essentially these: ufology allegedly refuses to play by the rules of scientific thought, demanding instead special exemptions from time-tested procedures of data verification, theory testing, and the burden of proof. Ufologists assert the existence of some extraordinary stimulus behind a small fraction of the tens of thousands of UFO reports on fil e. The cornerstone of the alleged proof is the undisputed observation that a small residue of such reports cannot at present be explained in terms of prosaic (if rare) phenomena. Yet this claim is invalid: it is clearly not logical to base the existence o f a positive (“true UFOs exist”) on the grounds of a hypothetical negative (“no matter what the effort, some UFO reports cannot be explained”).
Rumors, lies and fraud
This latter fallacy can be called the “residue fallacy”, and it has been addressed b y philosophers of science numerous times in the past, apparently without effect on ufologists. Writing in Science magazine in 1969, Hudson Hoagland expressed it as follows: “The basic difficulty inherent in any investigation of phenomena such as those of. … UFOs is that it is impossible for science ever to prove a universal negative. There will always be cases which remain unexplained because of lack of data, lack of repeatability, false reporting, wishful thinking, deluded observers, rumors, lies, and fraud. A residue of unexplained cases is not a justification for continuing an investigation after overwhelming evidence has disposed of hypotheses of supernormality, such as beings from outer space… Unexplained cases are simply unexplained. They can never constitute evidence for any hypothesis.”
It is not necessary to conjure up visions of blind, drunk and dishonest UFO percipients to cast doubt on UFO reports. The vast majority of UFO witnesses apparently are honest, sober and intelligent people faced with an extraordinary perception. Yet there are amazingly many obvious and subtle ways in which such perceptions can be understandably generated. And there is bound to be an artificial residue of unexplained cases, a residue created purely by bizarre coincidences, by limitations on human perception and memory, or by rare undocumented natural occurrences. Additional sources of unexplained sightings could be human activities which are never publicized due to military security, to the illegality of the a ctivity, or to plain ignorance on the part of the human agents of the activity that they had caused such a fuss. That residue will never be solved, and no extraordinary stimulus need be referred to.
In a similar fashion, the existence of unsolved crimes , unfound missing persons, unexplained aircraft or automobile accidents, and similar all-too- familiar manifestations of our less-than-perfect knowledge of events cannot be taken to prove the need for the existence of some extraordinary criminals, some ex traordinary kidnappers, or some extraordinary traffic saboteurs. “Unexplained cases are simply unexplained,” to repeat Hoagland’s perceptive assertion. “They can never constitute evidence for any hypothesis.”
To dedicated ufologists, such a line of reasoning is denounced as a confusion between IFOs (“identifiable flying objects”) and true UFOs. According to Dr J. Alien Hynek, whose Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois, finds that at least 95 per cent of all UFOs reported to it are in fact IFOs: “Experienced investigators quickly recognize IFOs for what they are … but sometimes it takes hard work to unmask the masquerader.”
Skeptics such as aviation journalist Philip J. Klass take exception to Hynek’s confidence and point to cases published by his own center, cases which were solved only by strokes of unexpected luck on the part of researchers. All too often, these skeptics claim, the “hard work” prescribed by Hynek is absent – and the “sheer luck” which allowed the unmasking of some trick y IFOs masquerading as UFOs is not available. The result is that many (if not, as skeptics claim, all) of the official UFOs on the list of unsolved cases are still camouflaged IFOs.
Such a hazy line between IFOs (which provide only data about the limita tions of the reliability of eyewitness testimony) and UFOs (which are alleged by ufologists to mark a potential breakthrough in human science) is an appallingly weak basis for the foundation of the new would-be science of ufology. That weakness is accentu ated by another highly suspicious and non- scientific feature of ufology, an extremely cavalier attitude towards verification of data.
Advertising tricks
Ufology is still struggling to achieve scientific and popular respectability, so it is perhaps un derstandable that public pronouncements of ufologists would be primarily in the persuasive rather than expository vein. It can thus be observed that all the traditional tricks of the Madison Avenue advertising executive’s trade are followed: appeals t o authority (“Jimmy Carter saw a UFO”; “our heroic astronauts have seen UFOsl”); assertions of the consequent (“the Universe is so large that other civilizations must exist out there!”); the bandwagon appeal ("Most Americans now believe in UFOs’'); the conspiratorial appeal(“The government knows all about it but is hiding the truth”); and the salvation appeal (“The people from space will come to bail us out of our self-indicted miseries”). It is not necessary at first to examine the actual validity of s uch statements. What is important is to recognise them for what they are: tactics of illogical persuasion.
At the same time, most of what is commonly published about ufology is undeniably nonsense. UFO proponents such as Hynek are as adamant in the cri ticism of the media exploitation of UFO stories as any skeptic could be. For the publishing industry and the news media, UFO stories are good business; they combine human interest, comic relief, scary stories, and swipes at government cover-ups and know-i t-all scientists. It is based on such misinformation (and not a little disinformation) that the vast majority of the public has formed its attitudes about UFOs. To say, then, that “most Americans believe in UFOs” is to testify not to the scientific crede ntials of ufology but to the effectiveness of the media mythmakers.
Few choose to look behind the myths. The much-touted “Jimmy Carter UFO”, for example, was never investigated by any of the ufologists who flaunted it or by any of the newsmen who advert ised it – they simply passed it on as a good story, a useful anecdote. Yet when one skeptical young investigator named Robert Sheaffer tracked the case down, he uncovered gross inaccuracies in Carter’s four-year-old recollections of the date and location of the event, and also came up with testimony from other witnesses which helped determine an entirely prosaic solution to the account. Nevertheless, the “Jimmy Carter UFO” is still constantly being referred to by UFO spokesmen who, due to an unconscious media blackout of skeptical work such as Sheaffer’s, probably do not even know or care that it has been investigated and “solved”.
Another glaring example of the total disregard for authenticity of evidence by most ufologists is the oft-repeated asserti on that “astronauts have seen them too”.Dozens of accounts have been collected of space pilots seeing and photographing UFOs; more than 20 such stories were featured in Hynek’s Edge of Reality, a book which was billed as a “progress report” on the state of ufology. Yet not one of these cases has any relevance to “true UFOs”, as they are for the most part frauds and hoaxes conjured up by unscrupulous writers and UFO buffs (several blatant photographic forgeries have been identified in these stories), or misunderstandings by citizens concerning the meaning of ordinary space jargon, or in a few cases, reports of passing satellites which in no way appear to be extraordinary. Yet with selective omission of explanatory data, with exaggeration, misquotation, or even fabrication of alleged “voice transcripts”, and with deliberate accusations of “government cover-up”, such stories form a major pillar of the public’s “belief” in UFOs.
Hynek visited NASA’s Houston space center in July 1976 and was shown the original films and tapes involved in the most publicized space UFO stories. He later told colleagues that he deeply regretted including the UFO stories in his book without verifying them, and that he was satisfied that no “true UFOs” were among them. Ref erring to the astronaut-UFO stories in an interview with Playboy in January 1978, Hynek testified that, “I went to Houston and saw the photographs, and I must confess that I was not impressed”.
The “Carter UFO” and the “astronaut UFOs” underscore a key problem in the acceptance of ufology as a science: ufologists in general have not been as willing as Hynek to retract endorsements of explained cases, and have preferred instead to continually recirculate and embellish the same stories. The authenticity o f UFO reports, as portrayed in the popular press, therefore remains highly questionable --and justly so.
