A Partial Answer to His Question About UFOs

UFOs are a baffling phenoenon. You might ask many questions about UFOs that I could not answer. But I think I have a partial answer to one question about UFOs recently posed at the NBC News web site.site. The question (posed by Rizwan Virk) was "The U.S. military takes UFOs seriously. Why doesn't Silicon Valley or academia?"

I can't answer the part about Silicon Valley. Although I very long worked as a software developer in high-tech teams, I don't claim to know much about what people in Silicon Valley firms are thinking these days, and I am not sure why anyone would even expect such firms to pay attention to UFOs. But I do know a bit about the behavior of the science professors of academia.  So I can give a partial answer to Virk's question by saying this: those in scientific academia pay no attention to UFOs because their behavior conforms  to a strange set of customs and habits that include pretending to know very big things they don't really know, and deliberately ignoring evidence that conflicts with their pretensions of knowledge. 

The great majority of tenured science professors are white males (the source here tells us in the sciences 81% of full professors are male). Male science professors are above all Men of Custom, just as Catholic priests are Men of Custom. The habits of science professors include the following not-very-logical customs when writing science papers:

• The custom of almost always describing observations in the passive voice, saying something like, "The mice were weighed and had their length measured," rather than using the active voice and saying something like "John Davis weighed the mice and measured their length."
• The custom of almost never mentioning the specific person who made a measurement (which is very convenient for concealing  the use of possibly incompetent trainee scientists and students to make measurements).
• The custom of failing to mention the day when a particular measurement was made (making it harder for people to sort out the chronology involved in an experiment, such as whether it was preceded or followed by failing experiments that did not find the reported effect). 
• The custom of almost always failing to mention the exact location and piece of equipment that was used to make a particular measurement (useful for avoiding challenges to a measurement based on the use of inferior or faulty or outdated equipment).
• The custom of failing to publish in advance of  experiments a research plan discussing which hypothesis will be tested, exactly how measurements will be done, and exactly how measurements will be analyzed (making it easy for experimenters to play around with data and observations in a hundred different ways until something is reported as a discovered effect, often something that was not originally being tested for).
• The custom of writing scientific papers as if you were paid five dollars for each piece of jargon you use, and rather as if your likelihood of getting published was proportional to how opague and obscure your writing was. 
• The custom of often cluttering up scientific papers with mathematical equations that no one would ever write when trying to clearly communicate mathematical reasoning, but which someone might write if he were trying to be deliberately obscure, like some priest speaking in Latin. 
• The custom of failing to have (in a paper having a report of some positive result) a discussion of all similar experiments done by the same researchers that failed to produce such a result. So under the conventions of modern science, a scientist who does 14 weeks of experiments failing to show evidence for Effect X (and 1 week showing marginal evidence of such an effect) can publish a paper mentioning only the one successful week, without mentioning all the unsuccessful weeks. 

These Men of Custom that are male science professors also have the following strange habits:

• The strange pre-pandemic custom of jetting great distances to attend scientific conferences that have not been really needed since the invention of a high-speed Internet, while at the same time frequently scolding those who have too high a carbon footprint because of things such as jetting around unnecessarily.
• The strange pre-pandemic custom of teaching classes in pretty much the same way that classes were taught two thousand years ago, by having groups of people listen to lectures by a teacher standing in front of them, despite innumerable more modern possibilities by which students might learn more effectively. 
• The custom of almost always using the phrase "Materials and Methods" as a section title in their experimental scientific papers, even when no materials were used and even when the experimenters seem to have no method other than gather data and slice and dice it until something "statistically significant" could be reported. 
• The custom of describing scientist activity in some romanticized idealized way, as if it were some pristine and impartial Quest for Truth, without discussing all of the sociological and careerist and monetary reasons why it is very often something much less grand and noble (such as a Quest for Paper Citations or a Quest for Tenure or a Quest for Consulting Fees or a Quest for Grant Money or a Quest for Greater Paper Counts or a Quest for Speaker Fees or a Quest for Lucrative Book Contracts). 

When it comes to making statements about human beings, these Men of Custom that are male science professors have certain speech customs that they follow with great regularity, like monks praying at the same time every day.  Our Men of Custom generally claim that their tribe understands the origin of the human race.  Like rabbis telling us the story that Moses carried down from Mount Sinai tablets written by the finger of God, the Men of Custom who serve as science professors reverently recite the legend that Charles Darwin discovered how mankind originated, long before scientists even understood a hundredth of what they now know about the complexity and organization of cells and protein molecules and biochemistry.  The same Men of Custom have the tradition of  claiming that mental phenomena such as memory and thinking are mere products of the brain. 

There are very many facts and observations that conflict with such claims.  The Men of Custom that are male science professors have a custom to help them be bothered little by such a difficulty. The custom is: simply avoid paying attention to evidence that conflicts with anything that you have proclaimed to be true.  We might call this senseless custom the Rule of Inattention, and define it like this:  do not seriously study any evidence that might conflict with boasts of knowledge you have previously made. 

Following the Rule of Inattention, the Men of Custom who serve as science professors mostly avoid seriously studying a great number of important things, including the following:

• Many decades of compelling laboratory experimental evidence that humans have extrasensory perception (ESP) that cannot be explained by any neural hypothesis. 
• Abundant anecdotal testimonies that humans have such ESP. 
• Two hundred years of very carefully written published testimony that some humans have had the power of clairvoyance, much of it written by doctors and scientists who carefully observed such powers.
• Well over a hundred years of  published testimony (often written by scientists) that inexplicable paranormal events occur in the presence of mediums. 
• Abundant testimony of inexplicable apparitions, deathbed visions and near-death experiences.
• Abundant low-level neuroscience evidence that brains are too slow, too noisy and too unstable to be the source of regular human abilities such as instant recall, very fast thinking, and the retention of memories for 50 years or more. 
• Abundant evidence that humans can think well and remember well even after losing most or half of their brains due to surgery or disease.
• Very many fantastically organized biological systems that are too complex and functionally fine-tuned to be credibly explained by any Darwinian explanation of accumulation of random mutations.
• Dreams that seemed to foretell a death. 
• Out-of-body experiences, many in which people seemed to perceive details they should not have been able to perceive given the physical position of their bodies. 
• Many examples of very precise fine-tuning in the laws and fundamental constants of the universe, things that conflict with commonly stated scientist claims that beings such as humans arose merely because of lucky accidents. 
• Abundant testimony of inexplicable phenomena in the sky. 

It is clear why the first several of such things are ignored by our Men of Custom under their Rule of Inattention. The reason is that such phenomena conflict with their claims that the human mind is merely the product of the brain, and also conflict with claims that humans understand the origin of the human race.  If humans have souls with mysterious powers, such a reality discredits any claim that we understand the origin of the human race by means of simple ideas such as Darwinian evolution. 

It is rather less clear why the Men of Custom who sit in science professor  chairs would pay almost no attention to abundant testimony of inexplicable phenomena in the sky. One possible reason is that once someone starts exploring one type of very unexplained spooky phenomena, he may become more likely to start investigating many other types of very unexplained spooky phenomena. The Men of Custom who sit in professors chairs would very much prefer that you not do that, because the more you read up on such phenomena, the less confidence you will have in their boastful flimsy claims to understand how minds arise and how humans arose. Or perhaps our Men of Custom are afraid that once a person starts believing in mysterious powers producing manifestations in the sky, he may be much more likely to doubt scientist claims that they understand the origin of humans, claims based on an assumption of no interference by any higher power. 

It should be noted that this Rule of Inattention only prohibits seriously and thoroughly studying the many topics on a kind of informal List of Forbidden Topics. It does not prohibit speaking or writing about such things. So our Men of Custom manning professorial chairs feel no hesitation about speaking or writing about many things that they have not seriously studied,  making negative comments that are not matched by any real scholarship on their part. 

Postscript: My point about the Rule of Inattention not prohibiting professors from writing about things they haven't studied is well illustrated by this post in which astronomer Jason Wright gives us wrong information about UFOs, while at the same haughtily bragging that he has not studied UFOs.  Contradicting himself, Wright says in his title "I Look for Aliens for a Living, and No, I Don't Study UFOs," but then says in his text "I have seen the videos" claiming to show UFOs, and also videos debunking such videos. Wright makes various wrong claims about UFOs: that reports tend to be of things violating the laws of physics, that UFOs are "mostly a very recent and very American phenomenon." No, UFO reports have occurred at about the same intervals in each of the past seven decades, and UFO sightings have often been reported in Canada and Europe and Australia.  The fact that UFOs are often reported as moving fast without making a sound does not violate any law of physics, as Wright attempts to insinuate. There is no law of physics that fast moving things have to make sonic booms, and fast-moving meteors often fail to make sonic booms.  

6 Myths About Science, Scientists and Scientific Theory

People often toss around misconceived ideas about science, scientists, and the nature of scientific theories, whenever such an idea may serve whatever point they are trying to make. Below is a look at some of the more common examples of such misconceptions.

Myth #1: Any good scientific theory is falsifiable

This idea was advanced by the philosopher Karl Popper, and has been repeated by many others. The idea is that we can distinguish between a scientific theory and an unscientific theory or idea by asking whether or not the theory can be proven wrong, or falsified. It is argued that whenever you have a good scientific theory, you can always imagine observations that might disprove that theory, or falsify it.

But it is easy to imagine some examples of perfectly good scientific theories that are not falsifiable. The best example is the theory that extraterrestrial life exists. There is no way to falsify such a theory, because we can imagine no series of observations that would prove it wrong.

Imagine what it would take to disprove the existence of extraterrestrial life. You might think that this could be accomplished by making a survey of all planets in the universe. But there is no way that any civilization (even a civilization millions of years more advanced than ours) could make such a survey. Because of the limit of the speed of light, it would take eons to survey the planets in an entire galaxy of billions of stars. Once such a survey had been completed, there would still be billions of other galaxies to check. Surveying them all would take billions of years.

Suppose we imagine some civilization with some warp-drive that allows instantaneous travel. Even with a large fleet of warp-drive starships traveling instantaneously, it would take many millions of years to check all the planets in a universe such as ours with more than 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. After such a survey, could you then say that extraterrestrial life doesn't exist? No, because there would always be the possibility that life could have started somewhere during the eons it took to do the survey, on one of the planets that had already been checked.

So while it may be true that most scientific theories are falsifiable, it is not at all true that all scientific theories are falsifiable. The theory that life exists on other planets is a top-notch scientific theory that is not falsifiable.

Myth #2: Scientists are almost all unbiased and impartial judges of truth


I'm sure that many scientists are unbiased and impartial judges of truth, but there are reasons why many scientists far fall short of such a standard. First, let's consider sociological factors. A modern scientist belongs to a relatively small subculture subject to sociological factors such as peer pressure, group taboos, and group norms. When a scientists deviates from those group norms and group taboos, he may be subject to punishing sanctions from his peers, which may include ridicule, non-publication of papers, or denial of promotions. In some sciences we see a strong herd mentality, in which scientists tend to jump on some bandwagon which may or may not make sense to jump on. In some cases there may be a financial reward or incentive to jump on that bandwagon, and a financial penalty or sociological penalty for “running against the herd” and rejecting it. Can we suppose that in such cases our scientists act as unbiased and impartial judges of truth? Often they do not. We should not assume that scientists are more likely to be unbiased and impartial judges of truth than people in most other professions.

Consider also the case of a scientist who specializes in some theoretical area such as inflation theory or string theory or some flavor of quantum gravity. Early in his career, such a scientist is almost “betting the farm” on that theory, by taking years to study its intricacies. Once such an investment is made, that scientist becomes a vested interest. He will flourish if that theory gains support, and may flounder if the theory loses support. Is such a person going to be an objective judge about whether the theory is probably true? No, not any more than someone holding 100,000 shares of a particular company will be an objective analyst of the company's future prospects.

Myth #3: Science is whatever scientists think or assert

A good definition of science is observations and experimental data accumulated through methodical investigation, and theories that have been conclusively proven from such observations and data. Are the assertions of scientists limited to such a thing? Not at all. Scientists are people who have opinions, and those opinions are often group norms enforced by their subculture. Such norms may or may not be anything verified by observations or data.

We must distinguish between two different things: science and the opinions of scientific academia. The relation is illustrated in the Venn diagram below. Since there is too much in science to be understood by the average scientist, there is a red area outside of the purple area.

An example of an item in the blue area but not in the purple or red area is the opinion of many scientists that life arose billions of years purely because of chance chemical combinations. Such an opinion does not correspond to an observation or experiment. It's an opinion.

In quite a few cases, writers will misspeak, speaking as if things in the blue area of the diagram are things that are part of science. A writer will maintain that such and such gloomy opinion is science, because most scientists think it. But a scientist's opinions are a mixture of science, his own inclinations, and most likely the ideological norms of his particular subculture. Such norms may or may not correspond to anything that has been actually proven by facts or experiments.

Myth #4: Science is only produced by scientists, or is only what is published in scientific journals

As I stated before, science can be defined as observations and experimental data accumulated through methodical investigation, and theories that have been conclusively proven from such observations and data. Anyone today can methodically collect observations by using a camera and carefully noting facts relevant to the photos. This means that any average Joe can contribute to science, without having a science degree. 90% of the facts accumulated in a biology textbook (such as the basic facts of internal anatomy) were originated by people who did not have degrees in science, but who merely made observations and systematically recorded such observations.

Consequently, appalling as such an idea may be to some scientists, anyone who at length methodically investigates a phenomenon with sufficient diligence and honesty produces work that is as much science as some result from some fancy expensive particle accelerator, regardless of whether the phenomenon is considered paranormal. There is no sound basis for the claim that only work published in scientific journals is science. If such a standard were applied, we would have to throw out half of the facts in our science textbooks, which were originally established by researchers long ago who did not publish in scientific journals.

Myth #5: A theory that makes predictions is more worthy of respect

Science writers often claim that when a theory makes predictions, it is more worthy of respect than some other theory that does not make predictions. But this is not correct. The fact that a theory may make predictions does not mean that it is more likely to be correct than some other theory that does not make predictions. 

Consider the following example. A car strikes a pedestrian walking on the outer edge of the road. The first theory is that this was due to pure bad luck, that the driver just failed to notice the person walking on the side of the road. The second theory is that the driver was intentionally trying to kill a random victim. The first theory makes no prediction. But the second theory predicts that the driver will try such a thing again, given his homicidal nature.  Does this mean the second theory is more likely to be true? No, it doesn't. It fact, the second theory is less worthy of belief than the first theory, given that careless people are much more common than homicidal people. 

Myth #6: If scientists spend lots of time on something, then it's science

Because their small subculture is strongly subject to herd effects and groupthink, scientists may jump on a bandwagon and waste millions of taxpayer dollars and countless man-years pursuing some dubious enthusiasm, the popularity of which may persist for decades. But such activity does not necessarily mean that the underlying theory is actually science. Science is not automatically what scientists have long labored on – it is only what they have proven.