When I was a boy reading
about the prospects of intelligent life on other planets, I came to
the conclusion that it was likely that within a few decades mankind
would receive radio signals from other worlds. I thought this was
quite likely to occur before the end of the twentieth century.
Authors such as Carl Sagan were making it sound like we could expect
to pick up extraterrestrial radio signals before very long. Sagan
kept telling people that there were a million extraterrestrial
civilizations in our galaxy alone. With so many civilizations, how
long could it be before we picked up a radio signal from one of them?
SETI scientists use radio telescopes like this one
But it is now the year
2016, and no such radio signal has been received. SETI (which stands
for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is the term used for
the scientific quest to detect extraterrestrials by looking for radio
signals. SETI has been a flop thus far, a failed enterprise. So we
don't often see SETI experts on our television screens. When we do
see our SETI experts on television, it is often on television shows
discussing UFO sightings. But this doesn't make sense, because there
are several reasons why SETI experts make lousy commentators on UFO
sightings.
The first reason is that
being a SETI expert is in no way a qualification for saying anything
about a UFO sighting. You might think otherwise, on the grounds that
SETI experts “know extraterrestrials.” But they don't. If SETI
ever pays off, and radio signals are received from some
extraterrestrial civilization, then (after what may be a long period
of deciphering and analysis) it may become true that SETI experts
know something about extraterrestrials. But right now our SETI
experts don't know a thing about extraterrestrials.
The radio search for
extraterrestrials (SETI) involves a set of things that has nothing
to do with UFO sightings. SETI experts know things such as big radio
telescopes, computer search algorithms, which planets might be
habitable, and natural and artificial radio sources. No such things
come into play in UFO sightings. So a SETI expert is no more
qualified to pontificate about a UFO sighting than your plumber or
your hairdresser.
A second reason why SETI
experts make lousy UFO commentators is that it seems whenever SETI
experts talk about UFO sightings, they seem to show no evidence of
having researched the facts about the sightings, and resort instead
to lazy armchair reasoning that might occur to anyone. In this way
they follow a kind of rule of laziness typically followed by
scientists trying to debunk ideas that may be taboo in their little
tribe of scientists. Similarly, 95% of scientists making dismissive
comments about extrasensory perception (ESP) or life after death show
no sign of having researched the evidence for such things.
The armchair arguments
made by such SETI experts are extremely weak. One of their arguments
is that if extraterrestrials were to ever arrive, we would see a
spaceship the size of Manhattan orbiting our planet, or a UFO landing
on the White House lawn. Such arguments are not valid, because such
possibilities are merely two of a million possible ways in which
extraterrestrials might interact with us.
Another armchair argument
I recently heard by a SETI expert is that sightings of UFOs should be
dismissed because they are merely eyewitness testimony, and don't
involve permanent physical evidence. Using similar reasoning, we
would have to let half of the murderers in prison walk free, because
their convictions were based only on eyewitness testimony.
A third reason why SETI
experts make lousy UFO commentators is that within this little tribe
of scientists there seems to be some weird strategy that goes rather
like this: SETI experts think that they can make themselves look like
discerning, “no nonsense” scientists by dismissing all evidence
of extraterrestrials except for the type of radio evidence
they are looking for. This thought process is very weird. We can
imagine a similar thing going on in the mind of a scientist
researching Bigfoot.
Scientist: So I
have asked the National Science Foundation for 10 million dollars in
research money. I will use the money to fund a team of scientists who
will go into the deep forests of northern Canada, and look for
infrared heat signatures coming from Bigfoot creatures.
Reporter:
Interesting. Do you believe any of those people who claim to have
seen Bigfoot?
Scientist: Seeing
Bigfoot ?!? Why, I don't believe in that type of nonsense.
It makes no sense for SETI
experts to follow such a strategy. The more evidence there is for
extraterrestrial visitations on our planet, the more likely it is
that some SETI radio search for extraterrestrials will pay off. So
why should SETI experts have a predisposition to reject UFO
sightings? Perhaps it is some kind of “no one shall come to the
extraterrestrials but through my path” thinking on the part of the
SETI expert, similar to the “no one can come to God but through our
path” thinking of narrow-minded theologians.
A fourth reason why SETI
experts make lousy UFO commentators is a psychological reason. UFO
sightings may act as a kind of “salt in the wound” for scientists
who have invested decades of their life in a failed search for
extraterrestrial signals.
Let's imagine you tell a
person there are two investment options: Investment 1 and Investment
2. The man invests $20,000 in Investment 1, and loses all his
money. Now suppose you say to this person after he had lost all his
money: you would have made a million dollars if you had invested in
Investment 2. Will this person tend to accept such an idea? No, he
will never believe it. The man's loss of his $20,000 is his wound,
and telling him that he would have become rich if he had invested in
the other option is like rubbing salt in his wound.
Now consider a senior SETI
researcher who has spent decades in a fruitless search for
extraterrestrial radio signals. The failure of this quest is like
his wound. If that person accepts that UFO sightings are good
evidence for extraterrestrials, that is like salt in the wound. For
now the SETI researcher has to have thoughts like this:
How foolish of me. I
bet my money on the wrong horse! Rather than spending decades in a
fruitless search for radio signals from extraterrestrials, I should
have been investigating UFOs. Think of what I could have
accomplished if I had gone down that path.
But such thoughts are too
psychologically painful. So the empty-handed SETI researcher is
someone we can always expect to speak dismissively of UFO sightings.
Even when they are as dramatic as the Hudson Valley UFO sightings of
the 1980's, in which thousands of people reported seeing UFOs the size of a football field (according to a report in the New York Times).
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