A long article in the leading US science journal Science is a senseless piece of scolding. It seems that Science is very, very concerned that an astronomer trying to study UFOs is actually talking to a few people who are scholars of UFOs. The article discusses an astronomer (Avi Loeb) who plans to set up fancy new telescopic cameras looking for UFOs.
The article has a subtitle of "Why is Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb working with ardent UFO believers?" It seems that anyone who believes in UFOs is part of a very large group of people kind of deemed "untouchables" by the journal Science: a vast group of "thought deviants" who have ideas differing from some alleged academia norm of "orthodox thinking" advocated by the journal. And just as many in India still encourage a caste system in which those in a particular caste are deemed "untouchables" who must be avoided, it seems that the journal Science wants to enforce some system by which contact with heretical "thought deviants" must be avoided, lest the "orthodox minds" of the pure be sullied by contrarian opinions and upsetting evidence.
Of course, once some group of people have been branded and stigmatized as thought deviants, there are all kinds of gaslighting techniques and mudslinging techniques that can be used to smear them and marginalize them. The Science article uses such techniques in several ways:
- It uses the term "ardent believers" for people suspecting UFOs exists, thereby suggesting some element of fanaticism.
- It quotes one person referring to UFO believers or UFO scholars as "fringy people."
- It refers to "UFO zealots."
- It quotes another person referring to UFO believers or UFO scholars as "these fringe people" who you "lose far more" by contacting.
- It uses the term "notorious" for UFO believers or UFO scholars, thereby trying to insinuate they are scoundrels.
- It approvingly quotes a scientist saying that those who are looking for UFO's are like "those who are hoping to find mermaids or unicorns."
These are standard tactics for those trying to sweep the paranormal under the rug. The playbook is basically: shame, blame and defame the witnesses, and shame, blame and defame anyone who becomes a scholar of the phenomena under investigation. None of the statements above is supported by any facts in the Science article, and we have no quotes showing zealotry in any of the UFO experts mentioned (some of whom I have watched on TV at length without detecting zealotry or ardent dogmatism).
The underlying principle that seems to be advocated in the article is: when studying some anomalous phenomena, avoid contact with anyone who believes in the phenomena. This is an unscholarly and unscientific principle that no science journal should be promoting. In general, the best evidence for any phenomena will tend to be found in the testimony of those who witnessed something compelling enough to persuade them to believe that the phenomena is real and not illusory. By avoiding contact with such people, you are in effect establishing a principle of "investigate the phenomena but avoid the best evidence for it." Such a principle makes no sense at all. For example, if it were 1968 in America and you were investigating then-unconfirmed reports that some American soldiers had committed war crimes in Vietnam, it would make no sense at all to follow a principle of "avoid contact with those who believe that some Americans have committed war crimes in Vietnam."
Here are some good principles of investigating claims of an anomalous phenomena, principles quite the opposite of the faulty principle discussed above:
(1) Study all of the most important works previously written on the topic, focusing as much as possible on original source material and first-hand accounts.
(2) Try to get direct testimony (either in person or video testimony) from witnesses who publicly identify themselves.
(3) Study carefully all existing photographic and video evidence for the alleged phenomenon.
(4) If possible, try to get new photographic or eyewitness testimony for the alleged phenomenon, ideally under conditions that rule out fraud or error.
Unfortunately, Avi Loeb's new project (which he has christened the Galileo Project) won't be following any of these principles, except that it will half-follow the last one. Loeb has made it clear that he won't look into any eyewitness accounts of UFOs, and won't look at previously gathered photographic evidence for UFOs. Loeb is only interested in evidence that appears in some fancy new machines that his project will set up. So it rather seems his Galileo Project will be kind of mainly an Avi Loeb glory show, perhaps so that Loeb can be crowned as the new Galileo who first proved that UFOs are real. I wish him luck, but I don't rank his odds of success as being very high. But at least he has enough sense to be in contact with some people who have spent many years studying UFOs, rather than senselessly ignoring them, as the journal Science would have him do.
Scientists do not in general follow any principle such as "do not become involved with people who believe in some phenomena when investigating whether that phenomenon is real." To the contrary, the scientists who investigate unproven claims popular in academia very often tend to be enthusiastic believers in such claims. So, for example, the physicists who write papers on string theory or supersymmetry or primordial cosmic inflation tend to be believers in such unproven ideas; and biologists investigating unproven ideas about brains or unproven claims of natural abiogenesis tend to believe in such ideas; and astronomers looking for signs of distant extraterrestrial life tend to believe such life exists. There is no evidence that UFO believers are more ardent believers of the unproven than mainstream theoretical scientists are ardent believers of the unproven.
It is puzzling that so many scientists treat UFO witnesses or UFO photographers or UFO believers as pariahs. We can understand why such professors might hate people who report out-of-body experiences or near-death experiences, or hate scholars of psychic phenomena. Such people often report things that contradict or discredit the core belief dogmas of many a science professor. But a UFO witness does not do such a thing. A believer in UFOs may think that intelligent life appeared on some other planet through some Darwinian process, and eventually got around to traveling to Earth. There's nothing in such an idea that challenges any core belief dogmas of the modern science professor. So why all the hostility? We can only speculate. One possible reason is that the science professor establishment wishes to keep people thinking that no one shall learn important truths of nature except through their elite priesthood. Maybe their thinking is: we cannot learn important truths about space from billions of people holding smartphone cameras; we can only learn important space truths from the world's 10,000 professional astronomers. So they senselessly ignore the observations of the billions, and pay attention only to the observations of the 10,000.
What would make more sense than Loeb's scheme would be a scientific effort to organize, classify and analyze anomalous sky videos and sky photos produced by ordinary people, with some web site encouraging people to upload any photos or videos that might show a UFO, and requiring them to fill out a "give all the relevant details" form preventing anonymity, with the videos and photos being quality-ranked by expert judges. Rather than trying to build a few fancy automated cameras and hope they find something that isn't showing up in the photos and videos of billions of smartphone owners, the idea would be: let's get the most out of the sky photography from all of those billions of smartphones. But you won't hear astronomers proposing that. Their attitude seems to be rather like this: "no one shall learn important space truths but through our instruments."
One of the many unsound statements in the article is when Loeb states, "We will not entertain fringe ideas that are outside the boundaries of the standard model of physics." There are two reasons why this statement is rather laughable. The first is that theoretical physicists and cosmologists nowadays are almost constantly asserting "ideas that are outside the boundaries of the standard model of physics." Such scientists are constantly talking about dark matter, dark energy, supersymmetry, string theory, and a primordial "inflaton" field, none of which has any place in what is called the Standard Model of Physics. The second reason the statement makes no sense is that if extraterrestrials are visiting us (beings that might be millions of years more advanced than us), we can reasonably suspect they will make use of principles far beyond the standard model of today's physicists. So it makes no sense to expect that such beings would conform to physics-as-we-know-it.
People involved in this Galileo Project seem to think that AI can be used to take the human element out of sky photography analysis, and to improve such analysis so that UFOs can be found. Although AI stands for artificial intelligence, AI systems have no actual intelligence. AI is just a hype term for fancy computer programming. All computer programming (including AI) reflects the values and assumptions of human computer programmers. So you don't really get humans out of the picture by using automated AI systems.
AI systems have had some success training on large data sets. So, for example, if you let an AI system train on 100,000 male faces and 100,000 female faces, the system might be able to later tell whether a random face is male or female. But there's no way to train an AI system using lots of examples of actual extraterrestrial spacecraft appearing in our skies. So the idea that some AI system will be able to automatically distinguish a real extraterrestrial spaceship from a meteor or a satellite or an aircraft is not very sound.
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