Skeptics don't control what science pursues. Science is messy and wild and uncontrolled but it is set up to reward the pursuit of good leads. And that is where UFOlogy falls far far short. The evidence, and therefore the impetus for scientific study, to put it bluntly, is shit. [This paragraph has been edited and the meaning slightly changed-see discussion below].
In the entire canon of UFO "evidence" (99% or which is just witness testimony and this is AFTER throwing out the approx. 95% that even the believers admit is not worth anything) is there anything about which the average scientist (except maybe a historian, anthropologist, sociologist or some other field related to folklore) might say, "Hey, that looks promising...I'm gonna devote a bunch of time to that!"
It would take some new evidence unlike any of the wretched stuff thus far accumulated to get any traction there.
I know this situation is unsatisfactory to the believers, most of whom point to the quantity of UFO evidence without regard to the quality. A big pile of shit is not more convincing in this regard than a small one.
Even a quick look at the many supposed Blue Ribbon, Top 10 UFO case lists should be cause for alarm to anyone imagining that UFO's deserve scientific study. These lists are predominately comprised of cases long ago discredited or containing significant problems. And these are supposed to be the best of the best! As a skeptic who does get into the trenches to discuss this stuff with believers, I find the most cowardly but most common response, after I bring up problems with a celebrated case, is to turn and point to another dubious case: "Yeah, but what about this one?"
In a recent look I had at a classic case, the Tremonton film, I instantly found in just a casual first look at the file that most of what UFO believers say to sell the case is just plain wrong (I may do a blog entry on this). In many ways, the enthusiastic but piously flawed work of amateur UFO buffs has done more harm to the reputation of UFO's as a serious topic than any skeptic could ever do.
Lastly, UFO's have enjoyed scientific study. The US government spent untold amounts on UFO's in the early days in an honest attempt to understand the phenomena. But the evidence (in the form of actual documents) tells a clear story of how the government began to see that UFO's, while interesting, were not worth further pursuit and not likely to be the flying saucers that the general public had come to love. By the 1960's the government wanted out. We see this story told through formerly Secret documents, documents that demonstrate that much of UFO myth must be untrue, particularly the part about the government hiding the good stuff from the public.
The biggest and most well-funded academic study, the Condon study, while leaving a few cases unsolved, identified no avenues worthy of further pursuit. And because of several public relations gaffes, (unrelated to the actual work) UFO believers dismiss the entire study as propaganda. I submit that the same result would follow in any new study that didn't properly genuflect to Saucer Jesus.
The biggest indictment of UFO belief is the large passage of time and the fact that the evidence never coalesces into anything actionable.
So a skeptic, (a real skeptic, many believers now follow a silly trend of identifying themselves as skeptics when they are not--I see some of that above), cannot say that UFO's are absolutely prosaic. But he can say that the evidence for UFO's as something non-prosaic is so weak as be laughable. I can't say that there is a zero percent chance that flying saucers are real but the chance appears to be vanishingly close to that.
Lance
