How Should Ufology Be Changed?
I recently asked why Ufology exists. It was a negative post, so it should be balanced with something positive, or potentially positive.
First, we look to those on whose shoulders we stand, but have been generally ignored because their ideas cannot be reduced to sound bites, or don’t fit comfortably with the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH.) In the 1960s, Jacques Vallee suggested that the UFO and alien idea had been with us for centuries, except that the lights in the sky used to be called “miracles,” and the denizens who stepped out of them were “angels” or “fairies” or “demons.” John Keel went on another tangent and theorized that the “ultraterrestrials” were playing a cosmic joke on mankind in order to further a hidden and possibly inscrutable agenda. Many others (such as Albert Bender, Meade Layne, and a host of contactees) had suggested some of these same ideas in the 1950s.
These valuable additions to the study of UFOs have generally been ignored because of the mass hallucination that all things in the sky which cannot be explained by normal means MUST be aliens from outer space. Almost all theorizing on the subject has been hamstrung by this assumption. Is it because it’s convenient? Are people just lazy? Are they scared to think about alternate ideas of reality? I believe the answer is “D: All of the above.”
Unfortunately, the only way to get your ideas heard in public is to start from the ETH. Anything else merely gets a dumb stare. I think that Ufologists are looked at by many as a subset of Star Trek fans, or worse, at least by the media and academics who matter in the court of public opinion. Changing this image is a tall order.
The best way to do this may be to get those media people and bearded professors to first accept that there is something other than human that has been communicating with us since before recorded history. Whether it’s “aliens” or something else, it seems that all the rest of the phenomenon follows from this idea. The ETH is so ingrained in the popular consciousness, it will take many years for this to happen.
Multi-millionaire Web pioneer Joe Firmage and real estate magnate Robert Bigelow have both donated many thousands of dollars to a few open-minded scientists who dare to think that science is capable of understanding the UFO phenomena. This was a step in the right direction, since this is a good way to get the NOVA/ Discovery Channel/ high- school-science-hypnotized public to sit up and take notice that this is not merely a subject for middle-aged overweight males. SETI, for all their problems, gives the subject a higher visibility as well.
Since most people routinely ignore the quibbles, squabbles and scribbles of the UFO research community, it doesn’t make much difference in the bigger picture of public awareness, at least any more than it has in the past. I daresay a lot of people readily accept that UFOs exist as a real phenomenon. Therefore, Ufology’s #1 job has been accomplished!
Maybe it’s time to start moving the field in a direction that embraces more than the ET idea. As many researchers have pointed out, the phenomenon includes much more than lights in the sky and abductions. Many of these issues involve concepts of occultism, the paranormal, cryptozoology, psychic functioning, philosophy, religion and the history and origins of the human race. The condensing of these these ideas into something intellectually digestible to most people may be almost impossible, and would involve a sea-change in public opinion and thinking.
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Perhaps Ufology can help foster a new view of the universe and our place in it, acknowledging the idea that all is one, and that we are intimately connected to that which we see as “extraterrestrial,” and indeed, we have always been.
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Mar 06 2007 
March 6th, 2007 at 3:50 am
Hi Greg,
I couldn’t agree more with your summation (and if you’ve checked out that essay I sent, you’d know why). I think a major change needs to be:
a) Opening further to the idea of *some* UFO/alien sightings being boundary phenomena with an origin in what Corbin termed the Imaginal. Note that the ETH, or any other strand of ufology (including skeptical explanations) need not be thrown out because of this subset of cases.
b) Identifying common elements between experiences, in order to give some definition to this obscure, fuzzy thing we call a ‘UFO sighting’.
My 2c anyhow (though I hardly have the credentials to comment).
Kind regards,
Greg
March 6th, 2007 at 9:20 am
The ET hypothesis has its roots, of course, in Science Fiction, beginning most likely, with H.G. Welles and “The War Of The Worlds”, and moving on up in the twentieth century to the pulps like Gernsbach’s “Amazing Stories” and such, and writers like Campbell,Pohl, Leinster,Asimov, etc., etc. And we cannot forget the movies: “Invaders From Mars”, “It came from Outer Space”,
“Forbidden Planet”,”The Day the Earth Stood Still”, “The Thing From Another World”, “Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers”, and ten gazillion more. And from television we have been dosed on “The Outer Limits”, “Star Trek” and still more etceteras.
In short , for a good century now, the collective “we” have been literally programmed to accept the notion that if there are strange things going on somewhere, or strange lights seen in the sky, or anything conceivably “unearthly” (in our estimation) occurring, then it “MUST” involve aliens from other galaxies and planets. And the speculations in this matter revolve around what conditions would need to exist on other planets for the rise of life and civilizations
and advanced technologies (particularly those that would allow “them” to get here to “us”).
All of this speculation, of course, is “Science”-based and oriented towards what science THINKS it knows about the nature of the cosmos…and of reality.
One thing science THINKS it knows is that things “paranormal” and “unearthly” are just silly offshoots of superstition and religion, and , since both of those notions are equally quaint and antiquated, such things are to be dismissed out of hand.
Don’t even bother to investigate such alternative possibilities because there ARE NO alternative possibilities. Science has all the answers. the other stuff is worthless ranting drivel.
There is no God (capitalized), and there are no gods, no fairies, no trolls,no bigfoots, no chupacabras, no ghosts,no demons, no devils, no manwolves, no Trickster, no ESP, no PK,
no lost advanced civilizations…no NOTHING that doesn’t “make the cut” of Scientific Paradigm (for which read “Dogma”).
There are no UFOs and such, either, HOWEVER…IF there WERE…they would be..would “HAVE” to be…evolutionarily developed beings from other planets/star systems come here on missions of SCIENTIFIC exploration. “There can BE….NO other explanation.” (It could also NOT be conquest, because truly “advanced” cultures…or so the utopian socialists will tell us…will have “gone beyond” all that “crude primitiveness”.)
That is the line. And that is what is drilled into us from childhood onwards. Programmed into us. And with most people that programming “takes”, and stays with them all their lives.
(Relligion works much the same in our psyches, but then, what is Scientism…with all its dogmas…but yet another “I’m right and you’re wrong” kind of religion?)
It is hard for a populace to break free of conditioning. Free-thinkers (such as Forteans and others) are basically renegades from the scientific thought-police and their sneers and jeers. John Keel and RAW and others met that bias head on , basically taking a Martin Luther kind of stand on the issue. But all of us who stand there with them in this have to know that we are in a minority and can only make headway slowly (after all, we have Gort, the United Federation of Planets, and all of Starfleet and more to battle against.)
What will it take to get any widespread acknowledgement that there MIGHT be other explanations for “visitors” than extra-terrestrials?
Quite a bit, I think. And how long will it take to get this new concept on the table with the public at large? Whew! You tell me! We’ve taken more than a
century to get to where we are NOW!
March 6th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Ooh, Greg, I just love it when you come out the closet and get all mean and macho!
The more people like you conspicuously break ranks with those ufologists and cryptozoologist who, in a desperate but futile attempt to be accepted into the ranks of scientific respectability, publicly dissociate themselves from and even denounce the so-called paranormal, then the better says I.
Even in the world of conventional science more and more people are daring to break ranks and point out little things like how Einstein’s* relativity theory has only been able to keep going by plugging up the holes that’ve kept appearing in it with still unproven ‘concepts’ like ‘dark matter’ and now ‘dark energy’.
‘Dark matter’ manages to sound ’scientific’ - which, until PROVEN, it ain’t - but also proves what advertsing agencies’ve known for a century: the power of branding; because if instead of calling it ‘dark matter’ they’d've called it ‘black magic’, then the whole idea’d've been laughed out of court ages ago.
And if that’s true of Einstein*, how much more true is it of Darwin*, whose defenders PROVE Evolution isn’t just a theory with observations like this, “Biologists consider the existence of evolution to be a fact in much the same way that physicists do so for gravity”, apparently unwitting that the EFFECT of Gravity is a fact, but current explanations for it remain theories because the likes of the hypothetical graviton particle still hasn’t been discovered after decades of looking for it.
Hence the likes of Dawkins’ efforts to shut down mavericks like Rupert Sheldrake who freely confess to Biology’s ignorance.
I mean, why would any ufologist or cryptozoologist want to join the elite of “people of good faith and rationality”, if Richard Dawkins, for all his intelligence, is its standard bearer? It makes you wonder what the h*ll passes for ‘bad faith’ and ‘irrationality’ these days?
I always say to my kids, go with what you know, but leave the door open to other possibilities, i.e., if some new idea makes genuine sense to you, go with it, but if in spite of how clever it sounds you don’t actually understand it or, worse, it so contradicts your own experience of reality going with it’d mean pronouncing yourself insane, then to hell with it.
Sure, allow for the possibility somewhere down the line you might realise you were wrong, but otherwise, stick with what you know - not with what someone else ‘KNOWS’, no matter who they are, even me.
For me, everything’s based on personal experience; and personal experience leads me to conclude the key to the revolution in human understanding and the consequent shift to the next stage in human evolution that’ll result from it, is two realisations:
One, the realisation, from the moment we’re born, we’re unrelentingly subject to a bombardment of what’s not so much training as brow-beating into excluding from our consciousness most of what’s REALLY going on around us in order to ensure our contribution to the maintenance of the current collective psychic status quo that presently passes for reality.
Two, the realisation, just how much this particular tiny slice of the totality of all possibilities we currently take for reality is actually dependent on our collective will for both its creation and its continued existence.
Hence the endless debates of humanity over what’s real, what’s imagined, what’s truth, what’s falsehood, what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s fact, what’s opinion.
Hence the endless mutual human bloodshedding over whose’s the One True Faith, whose’s the False God.
Hence the need to root out the witches, and the heretics, and the consigning of them and their works to the bonfire.
Hence the need to medicate and lock up those who don’t see the world the way the rest of us do.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Just to add, the asterixes next to Einstein and Darwin should’ve been followed by this at the foot of my comment:
*When I refer to Einstein and Darwin, I’m strictly referring to the uses others have put their theories too.
Einstein and Darwin would’ve probably acknowledged the holes in their theories, had they lived long enough, and would either’ve provided the missing explanations, or been the first to say their theories’d been superceded by the facts.
Einstein and Darwin were what I call REAL scientists, as opposed to those who merely seek to prop up their theories at all costs, individuals I call scienT*TS.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
You “daresay a lot of people readily accept that UFOs exist as a real phenomenon. Therefore, Ufology’s #1 job has been accomplished!”
I don’t know whether opinion polls are with you on this one.
Belief in UFOs is at an ebb: 34% in 2005, down from 57% in 1978. It spiked after the release of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and seems to have dropped through the floor following the demise of “The X-Files” in 2002. The biggest driver of belief in UFOs doesn’t seem to be personal experience, bearded professors, or UFO blogs - it’s Hollywood.
1966: 46% (Gallup)
1967: 50%+(Tulane)
1971: 54% (National Enquirer)
1973: 51% (Gallup)
1978: 57% (Gallup)
1984: 50% (Psychology Today)
1987: 49% (Gallup)
1990: 47% (Gallup)
1996: 48% (Newsweek, Gallup)
2004: 34% (Fox News)
2005: 34% (Harris Poll)
(Most of these figures are from “Public opinion surveys and unidentified flying objects,” John F. Schuessler, MUFON, 2000. The 2004/5 figures are from the Fox News and Harris Interactive websites respectively.)
March 6th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Greg:
Somewhere Jerry Clark is probably hanging you in effigy, right next to Mac Tonnies.
Paul
March 6th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Greg,
I’ll read the essay now. I apologize!
I never said that I’d throw out the ET explanation, it’s just been done to death with no real progress on exactly where all this stuff comes from. From the beginning, if we’d aasumed that they all emanated from the inner earth, I suppose I’d be arguing against that point of view. There’s just as much evidence for that idea as outer space - two areas about which we know very little.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Bill,
You essentially expanded my piece cataloging all the ideas that I edited out!
Bring on the disbelievers!!
March 6th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Alan,
Same as what I replied to Bill.
See here, I don’t dislike scientists, ufologists, relgious types, etc. I can’t stand DOGMATISM. That’s what I rail against over and over in this blog. Models are MODELS, and not what is “really” outside our skulls, whatever that may be.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Paul,
That’s one of the nicest compliments that has appeared on this blog so far.
I wonder why people don’t leave many negative comments? Contrary to what some might think, I LIKE debate. Perhaps someone can change my mind on a few things, or show me where I’ve gotten a fact wrong (like one of the commenters did on the SERPO posts.)
March 6th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Greg:
I’ll leave a negative comment when I notice that you’ve written something that I disagree with - no worries there, my friend!
Paul
March 7th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Thank goodness. That’s the main thing I want to say about this post.
The secondary thing is: if you did have a look/listen to my recent BBC interview:
http://laura-knight-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2007/02/laura-knight-jadczyk-interview-on-bbc.html
then you’ll know why I say “Thank goodness.”
As I mention in the interview, because my husband is a physicist and one of the world’s living experts on hyperdimensional physics (Riemannian Geometry, Kaluza-Klein Theories, etc), you could say that this subject is the main topic of dinner table conversation in our house. It gets very interesting when my husband’s colleagues are present. When I attend scientific conferences with him, I always manage to end up in a circle of scientists who are totally fascinated by the subject, but so afraid to express their interest publicly that it almost makes me cry. I’m not talking lightweights, either. They ask question after question that they would never risk asking “officially.” Their ignorance about the data is amazing. It is also amazing to seen the wheels start turning and hear some of the fascinating speculations when I provide them with some of that missing data.
What kind of world do we live in where our best and brightest, the ones with the training and tools to help solve this mystery, are terrified of touching it?
Lastly, I also want to offer a review copy of my book “The Secret History of the World” (subject of the interview) which is a primitive attempt to do exactly what you have described: “The condensing of these ideas into something intellectually digestible to most people…” I think the Sea change is already here because this book is striking a chord of resonance; with almost no advertising, and a whole lot of flaming and defaming in an effort to bury it, the book is now in it’s fourth printing. You can contact me for a copy via the email addy posted on my blog.
March 7th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Greg…
I would submit that the comment just made by Paul, above, pretty much gives you your reason why you get so little argumentative feedback. Most of the people who come to this site are those who think with a like mind to yourself and Nick. That’s why you’re only getting debate on technical points or some historical fact now and again, but not on the core philosophy you’re putting forward.
Me, I’m not gonna get into any heated debates on a site I regard as a breath of genuine intellectual fresh air and common sense.
…Bill
March 7th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Greg:
There is a saying, which I can’t remember exactly so I will paraphrase - RUN TOWARDS THOSE WHO SAY THEY ARE SEEKING THE TRUTH, RUN AWAY FROM THOSE WHO SAY THEY HAVE FOUND THE TRUTH. As both you and Nick are seekers I think that is why most (if not all) of us visit this site and why you get so little debate.
March 7th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Greg:
Here’s the thing - I think you and Nick are wrong about a lot of things (just ask Nicky about my views on his Roswell book). But I like the cut of your proverbial jib, as the saying goes, in that you guys keep an open mind (but never so open that it falls out), unlike so many of the elder statesmen of ufology (I’d say statespersons, but they’re almost all men), who have created their own ivory towers over the years, and refuse to come down from the parapets (or something like that). Jerry Clark is a prime example, dismissing Mac’s crypto hypothesis without ever having read the book: again, ask Nicky about the reaction to his Roswell book from people who hadn’t even read it (which is something I made sure I did before I critiqued it). Or Project Beta, which I’ll still hear people criticise, despite the fact they’ve never read a single word in it.
Which is why, of all the radio appearances I’ve done, the one with you and Mac on Radio Mysterioso was by far the most fun, because we just let loose on everything, with no boundaries. A free exchange of ideas, and an open dialogue by people who, even when they disagree, can manage to remain friends.
Paul
March 8th, 2007 at 2:06 am
My biggest problem with UFO-logy is that it’s relying mostly on human observation alone rather than the much harder to fool data recording devices we have available today. Thermal imaging digital cameras are well within the budgets of some UFO researchers and teams. How about super sensitive listen devices and lidar detecting devices, it wouldn’t take much engineering to slave several devices together and link them to a laptop for field work. Speaking of computers, how about intercepting and decrypting raw satellite images? Some of these giant triangle are supposed to be several hundred meters in size and if I can pick out my house from space those same super-sized UFO’s should stand out like a sore thumb. Seperating our own supersecret military aircraft from genuine UFO’s should be a simple matter as such aircraft will always be able to be tracked by a network of devices back to military bases. All airliners are on a set course and speed and privately owned aircraft operate with fairly predictable parameters. They won’t reach supersonic speeds or descend from 100,000 feet. Once, we know where the secret military aircraft(SMA) tend to operate at, you look for the anomalies operating in the detection network. Any UFO that is fairly predictable egressing/ingressing restricted military airspace is more than likely one of ours. With computer analysis, we can probably eliminate most of our misidentified SMA’s and find the real aerial phenomena that are out there.
March 8th, 2007 at 3:32 am
crgintx:
Valid questions / points. I would direct you to the RB47 case, which answers most of them. I would also counter that, if these beings really do exist, and are more advanced than we are, then we may be no more able to detect them, even with our most sophisticated equipment, than your average villager in Chad is able to detect a U-2 flying overhead. The final problem is that UFOs appear on their schedule, not ours, so while government, i.e. the military, may be able to track them, civilian investigation teams, no matter how well equipped, would be searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack - without even knowing where the haystack was going to be.
Paul
March 8th, 2007 at 3:34 am
I should have added that these would be the typical ufologist’s answers. I tend to agree with you, at least in most cases, although if one could easily detect secret military aircraft, then everyone would be doing it, and yet most of our enemies, with greater resources than civilian UFO researchers will ever have, seem to have a pretty difficult go of it.
Paul
March 8th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Paul, I’m a retired USAF NCO and can tell much of what’s reported by the mainstream press about military high tech is pure bunk. The technology in the B2 is nearly 20 years old. The F-22 and F-35 are really just updated versions the F-15 and F-16 respectively with stealth feature and upgradeable avionics suites thrown-in. All of the current military fighter aircraft in the US are nearly 20 years
old and they’re ’60’s era design technology. I believe much of the high cost of the B2, F22 and F35 aircraft programs are merely laundered funds for SMA projects. I take a very dim view of the military acquisition and procurement system. As Greg has stated many times, UFO reports are great cover stories for SMA’s. Until I see a serious survey of UFO activity on or near military installations, the UFOology community isn’t being very scientific at very basic level. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, when you’ve eliminated the mundane, the extraordinary is usually the right answer.
March 8th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
“Until I see a serious survey of UFO activity on or near military installations, the UFOology community isn’t being very scientific at very basic level. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, when you’ve eliminated the mundane, the extraordinary is usually the right answer.”
Well, with this statement I couldn’t agree more.
Paul
March 8th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
I’m amused that when the point is made that we should be able to detect UFOs by instruments, the reader is directed to a case from the 1950s in which just that is supposed to have happened, but at the same time is told that current technology may be too primitive to detect UFOs. If that hedge were any larger, it would be a garden maze.
Knowing where they operate is just the point. Sixty years after Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, UFOlogy can’t tell us where and when to point a camera to get definitive evidence of its subject matter, any more than cryptozoology can bag a Bigfoot. Do you think maybe what UFOlogical research lacks isn’t cryptozoology, or suggestions of angels, or more speculation, but instead, knowledge?
That’s assuming, of course, that the purpose of UFOlogy is to solve the mystery of UFOs. I don’t think it is. I think UFOlogy exists to provide a community for those who like to think about, talk about, and argue about UFOs. And I think it’s going to go on doing just that.
Maybe the sixtieth anniversary of Kenneth Arnold’s sighting this June would be a good time to celebrate just what UFOlogy provides: community.
March 8th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
legalalien,
Thanks for pointing this out. I guess living in California gives me a skewed view of who believes what. Perhaps cryptozoology will get a big boost if the deal for Nick’s book gets through the Hollywood movie mill!
March 8th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Laura,
Very interesting observations! It seems that scientists may become guardians of the “truth” when they get to a level of power in the community that determines who gets published and who gets research funds and who doesn’t.
March 8th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Bill,
The intellectual fresh air and common sense come just as much from the commenters on this site. I read somewhere that people who have a different view of things need support from like-minded groups to get anywhere in the larger world. Lone nuts get 15 minutes like everyone else.
March 8th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
seein’,
Dogmatism is one of the main poisons of free-wheeling discussion and thought. If someone can say “Maybe I was wrong” once in awhile, we should have much more respect for them, not less.
March 8th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Paul,
You’re so open to other viewpoints that sometimes I don’t realize that we disagree. That’s what makes a real civilized discussion, and where we learn things from each other. Contrast that with a debate where people are thinking of their next argument while the other person is still speaking, and it’s no wonder that we don’t often learn anything from people with differing views from our own.
March 9th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Greg:
Absolutely. There is nothing wrong in stating what one THINKS the answers to this mystery could be. Ufologist have to speculate in order to get any where. But at the same time they must be prepared to be proven wrong. We also have to realize that if ufos are actually a mega-phenomenon, encompassing everything from apparitions to Bigfoot then it may be a very long time before anybody actually figures out what is really going on.
March 10th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Legal Alien:
No “hedge” - the technology used in the RB47 case was state-of-the-art military ECM equipment, triangulated with military ground radar and radar on the plane, which the UFO followed. There was also a visual sighting by the pilot and co-pilot, both of whom were among the best the USAF had at the time. The RB-47 was a spy plane, uniquesly designed to monitor all sorts of stuff. It was also an unexpected incident - they were not up there looking for a UFO; rather, one found them. Similar cases with RB-47s are less well-known, or unknown other than by a few researchers.
That is significantly different than saying Joe Q. Public can whip up some technological gear, even today, and go out and find and track UFOs.
Paul
March 10th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Legal Alien:
An addendum - I can’t stress enough that what makes the RB47 case truly special, even 50 years later, is that the UFO seemed to seek out the plane, and sent out signals to it, which is unique in UFO history (at least that which is publicly known) - when you hear of other radar cases, it’s always something getting tracked by radar, but never actually emitting signals to us.
Finally, I wasn’t saying we couldn’t track UFOs, just that it is beyond the capabilities of small groups of UFO investigators, for a host of reasons. There’s enough quality military radar cases out there to show that sometimes these things, whatever they are, can be picked up on radar.
Paul
March 10th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Greg:
Indeed. I remember the panel at the New Frontiers Symposium, when the guy asked the question about remote viewing, and you and I politely disagreed (you place far more stock in its potential than I do). Still, I keep an open mind about it, and would be willing to be shown that it’s something more than I believe it to be. Frankly, I can’t imagine any other way to approach any topic.
Paul
March 11th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Paul
You might be interested to know that some time ago I acquired from the FBI a whole batch of files from the early 50s (yes way before the 1970s RV mania took off) to the late 50s when the FBI had tried to determine if psychics could use their RV powers to spy on the Russians (penetrate Russian embassies, brief-cases carrying Top Secret documents etc).
The FBI secretly looked at all this for years and, as per the NF Symposium ironically enough, was split as to whether or not there was something valid here or it was all nonsense.
March 12th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Nick:
Figures. I think the “data” on RV is so open to interpretation (i.e. it doesn’t prove anything), that people will go with their gut instinct on whether it works. However, the burden of proof is on the proponents of RV, and given that I don’t think there has been anywhere near enough evidence presented to support the RV proposition, even from a balance of prababilities standard of proof.
Paul
March 12th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Paul,
The reason I think that you don’t take much stock in it is that you haven’t read up on the literature. In my opinion, there is very good evidence that it works at least some of the time. The other reason I have a positive opinion is that it has worked for me on at least two occasions in a way that I cannot assign to “chance.” I suppose that’s part of the difference between “thinking” and “knowing” that I have written about in another post.