It is a capital mistake to theorize before
one has data.
Insensibly one begins to twist facts to
suit theories,
instead of theories to suit facts.
Sherlock Holmes, via Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle
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Not all reported UFOs can be
extraterrestrial spacecraft, and no one pretends they are. Even
UFO believers agree that at least nine reports out of every ten
are readily explicable in known terms. The main culprits are
bright stars and planets, aircraft, meteors, and satellites
– although a complete list of misidentifications would be
almost endless. UFO proponents often point to the residue of
unexplained cases as proof that there must be something to UFOs
after all, but that’s not so. An unsolved case is not
evidence for any theory. If even the most credible and honest
witnesses turn out to be demonstrably wrong nine times out of
ten it is not unreasonable to suppose that all cases would be
soluble if we had sufficient information.
A cornerstone of the UFO believers’
case is that UFOs are reported by trained observers such as
pilots whose eye witness testimony would readily be accepted in
a court of law. However, J. Allen Hynek, the pro-UFO astronomer
who coined the famous term Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
wrote in his book The Hynek UFO
Report (p.271 of the paperback
edition) that “commercial and military pilots appear to
make relatively poor witnesses”. As it turned out, Hynek
found that the majority of pilot misidentifications were of
astronomical objects, just as they are for other UFO witnesses.
Only slightly better results were found by Allan Hendry, who
investigated over 1,300 cases reported to the Center for UFO
Studies in the US during the course of a year. Hendry found
that he could explain 75% of the sightings from pilots. In the
case of sightings by police officers, the clear-up rate rose to
94%.
Another favourite claim is that the
unidentified sightings are somehow qualitatively different from
the ones that are identified, but again Hendry’s
experience offers little comfort. Reporting on his findings in The UFO Handbook,
Hendry pondered (p.284): “How can I be sure if my
remaining “UFOs” aren’t simply IFOs [i.e.
identifieds] misperceived to the point of fantasy?”
There is an effect at work which I term the
UFO Uncertainty Principle which states that one cannot have a
UFO sighting which is both highly reliable and highly specific.
By a reliable sighting I mean one with many independent
witnesses who all agree on what they have seen. When these
occur the object is usually something unspecific like a light
in the sky and quickly becomes identified as a natural or
man-made object. By specific sightings, I mean ones that speak
of silvery craft, alien occupants and even abductions –
but these are supported by only limited testimony and are
highly unreliable. After more than half a century of world-wide
investigation by those who have dedicated themselves to proving
the reality of UFOs, there are still no Identified Alien
Spaceships.
It is a favourite cry of UFOlogists that
there is some great government conspiracy to prevent them
– and us – from getting at the truth about UFOs. As
more government files relating to UFOs are released in response
to public pressure, the less convincing these claims become
(see, for example, The UK’s Real X
Files by David Clarke and
Andy Roberts). On the other hand, what has become clear to
experienced researchers is the existence of a different sort of
UFO cover-up, operated by UFO believers themselves who
regularly fail to acknowledge inconvenient evidence which
undermines their most cherished cases. Evidence to substantiate
this statement can be found on this web site and in the links
below.
It seems to me that the truth about UFOs is
quite simple: it is rooted in human misperception, human
self-delusion, and the quite natural human tendency to delude
others. In other words, UFOs are a terrestrial phenomenon, not
an extraterrestrial one. By studying UFOs we learn not about
extraterrestrial life or interstellar travel but about human
nature.
There are those who will be profoundly
dissatisfied with this conclusion. I do not agree. For if
searches for alien spacecraft and extraterrestrial radio
signals both fail, there is an even more exciting conclusion to
be drawn: there is only one high-tech civilization in the
Galaxy at present, and we are it. What could be more elevating
than the possibility that the stars are the birthright of the
inhabitants of planet Earth?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Government attitudes:
n Click here to read the formerly
classified report of a UK government working party on flying
saucers, completed in 1951 but not
published for another 50 years, which concluded: “We
accordingly recommend very strongly that no further
investigation of reported mysterious aerial phenomena be
undertaken, unless and until some material evidence becomes
available.”
n Click here to read The Condign Report, a formerly secret study of UFO reports
collected by the UK’s Ministry of Defence, completed in
2000 and released in 2006 under the Freedom of Information Act.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Skeptical links:
Further skeptical views on the subject of
UFOs, with many links to illuminating information not normally
encountered in pro-UFO publications, can be found below.
Research by David Clarke and Andy Roberts
into the British government’s UFO files
A collection of articles by James Oberg
Robert Sheaffer’s UFO skeptic pages
(from where I borrowed the ‘flying
saucer’ image at the top of this page)
Tim Printy’s skeptical views on UFOs
Rory Coker’s potted history of UFO
belief:
R.V. Jones The Natural Philosophy of
Flying Saucers (an insightful essay by one of
Britain’s most brilliant physicists).
© Ian Ridpath
Content last updated 2007 October
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