UFO Religions

Posts Tagged ‘science’

Not mainstream scientists, as this article documents.

Contrary to what the “paranormal community” loves to insist (especially the ancient astronaut theorists, whose thinking is anything but clear), there is actually a good deal of peer-reviewed material devoted to testing both paranormal claims and the sorts of subjects with which the paranormal deals.  Humanities scholars and nuts and bolts scientists have devoted a good bit of time to studying claims about parapsychology, Bigfoot, UFOs, PSI, NDEs, etc.  They don’t fear it. Anyone with access to a good journal database could show that paranormal claims do get addressed in just a few minutes.

The problem, though, as I see it, is that very little of that peer-reviewed material ever filters down to the lay person or non-specialist — the person the most likely to be imbibing the wackier claims in all these areas. Scholars and scientists (and I’ll grant there is some merit to the statement, though it becomes an excuse) consider such an exercise as a waste of their time (they could be publishing real research for their peers — and in some case, tenure requirements). And given my own experience with things like the Fantasy Channel (er, History Channel), the media types who pimp the paranormal for DVD purchases and advertising dollars aren’t interested in true rebuttal or confrontational engagement. The Ancient Aliens series is Exhibit A here. They want to produce *a show* (it’s entertainment, people!) and so the producers of these programs *want* to titillate the audience with that sort of nonsense. It sells.

Technorati Tags: paranormal, research, science, scientists, study

Leslie Kean, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (Three Rivers Press, 2011).

I read Leslie Kean’s book a few months ago but haven’t gotten around to a review until now. Readers should not take that delay as a sign of my own reticence or the book’s quality. UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record has earned a place on my (very) short list of books I’d recommend to anyone who is either new to the UFO subject, perhaps thinking it a waste of intellectual time, or those who want to read only serious material. In short, this was a very good read and worth the time invested.

As other reviewers have noted, the content of Kean’s book is restricted to the testimony and opinions of a select group of experienced pilots and high-ranking government officials and military brass whose positions put them at the forefront of official UFO investigations in their airspace. Several also have scientific backgrounds. In a nutshell, if one wanted to arbitrarily assemble a “dream team” of serious, technical witnesses to UFO phenomena, it would look a lot like the panoply of individuals featured in Kean’s book. Examples include Major General Wilfrid de Brouwer (tasked with the military investigation of the Belgian UFO wave of 1989 and 1990) and Captain Julio Miguel Guerra of the Portuguese Air Force, whose testimony of a harrowing experience chasing a UFO that ultimately (and literally) flew circles around his fighter jet in 1982. The episode was also witnessed by another pilot.

Due to the nature of the witnesses involved, Kean’s book is not propelled by speculation, weird theories of alien visitation, overly technical descriptions of UFO aerospace capabilities, or conspiracy theories. The recollections are mercifully void of breathless histrionics and New-Agey pablum about aliens so common in other UFO books. The book features highly credible people telling their stories, part of which involve the inner workings of how real government agencies pursue UFO investigations — collecting evidence and analyzing that evidence. The book is committed to factual reporting, something not surprising given Kean’s background as an investigative journalist.

Beyond the reports of the experiences of her star witnesses, Kean spends several chapters discussing the questions that naturally arise from such material. These chapters feature coherent discussion of the efforts to debunk the events in which the witnesses were involved. This is a strength of the book. The weak point of the book, in my view, is Kean’s chapter outlining an action plan that governments ought to follow if they are serious about investigating the phenomenon with a goal toward some sort of resolution. The points of the plan are, on the whole good ones, but Kean is naively optimistic, especially in respect to the current American administration. If Kean spent a tenth of the time looking at the faux transparency of the current administration, she’d temper her optimism. But that is a minor complaint.

Kean’s book is also a very good illustration of why I don’t think that the case for an ET presence is a slam dunk for the UFO phenomenon, even with this cadre of witnesses. That may sound odd. Time and again, those witnesses who come down on the side of the ET explanation do so on the basis of one, and only one, argument: the technology they have witnessed. Since these witnesses know of no analogy to the technology in their own military hardware, or that of other nations they have witnessed, they feel compelled to opt for the ET explanation. I find this understandable, but not coherent or compelling.

Ultimately, the technology argument requires omniscience of the witnesses. Those of us who listen to them and take them as truth-tellers (and I do) are required to believe that since they know of no human analogy for the technology, then none must exist. That is an argument from silence. That argument also cannot be used as proof for ETs since that would mean it seeks to prove something on the basis of what it is assuming. In other words, it is circular (“There must be aliens because the UFOs I’ve seen must be using alien and not human technology”). This is, bluntly, bogus logic. But it’s a genuine, natural response. I seek only to point out its ultimate inefficacy, not to criticize it for its own sake.  And that is where we are. We cannot know for sure (and neither can these witnesses) that if human technology of this sort existed, they would surely know about it. That’s just a guess, and one with a tiny bit of ego infused. We also cannot be sure that nations would share such technology if they had it with their allies. History is filled with such inconsistencies, as military-industrial complexes habitually want to maintain advantages.

So what does Kean’s book give us beyond lots of credible witness testimony? In sum, while it cannot prove the ET hypothesis, it at least informs the reader that, while an explanation for them is not immediately forthcoming and satisfactory, UFOs are demonstrably real and deserving of serious study.

Technorati Tags: government, Kean, military, pilots, science, UFOs

Interesting post over at Uncommon Descent on this; decide for yourself.

Technorati Tags: ET Life, extraterrestrial, science, SETI, speculation

Readers of this blog and those who have listened to various interviews I have done this year know that I think the request by Zecharia Sitchin to have Sumerian Queen Puabi ‘s remains genetically tested to prove her alien heritage is silly. One of the primary problems is that we don’t have (and have never seen) alien biological DNA — so this sort of testing makes the following demand of the geneticist: “Go find that alien DNA we’re looking for even though we don’t know what it would look like since no one has ever seen a specimen since we have no proof aliens exist anyway.” Junk human DNA doesn’t qualify since it’s … human (and the more geneticists learn about the human genome the less they are sure that stuff is junk).

This post over at Uncommon Descent throws another wrench in any such “testing” — and in the oft-repeated claims about human evolution. Readers know that I really don’t care about evolution. As my blogs about Genesis over on Naked Bible make clear, I don’t think the Bible is a science book, and so it’s insipid for biblical critics to criticize it for not being a science book. It’s a little like criticizing a dog for not being a cat. I’m not a geneticist, so I have to pay attention to people who are.  And it’s even better when the people who are aren’t bought-and-paid-for by the scientific establishment. In other words, they have the courage to point out the flaws in “accepted theory.” In this case, the post shows how uncertain the “humans are 99% genetically identical to chimps” claim really is. Don’t read it if you fear unfiltered science, or if evolution is your religion, or if you think panspermia would actually provide proof for intelligent ET life. Here is the concluding paragraph:

We have seen that in a genome comparison, the only thing that matters is the degree of similarity. However, once we put the concept of similarity between two text strings on the table we open a can of worms. Many different measures of the similarity between two strings are possible, and different methods of comparing two genomes can result in wildly different estimates of the similarity between them. The assumptions that drive the methods used also drive the results obtained, as well as their interpretation. A simple layman’s statistical test, such as the 30-BPM, shows that the “95% claim” described above is a highly controversial one. It is worth noting that as more information comparing the two genomes is published, the differences between them will appear more profound than they were originally thought to be. The big question that still remains is: what should one conclude from the similarities and differences between the genomes of humans and chimpanzees? Commonly reported evolutionary statistics that should provide an informative answer to this question may actually obscure the true answer.

Technorati Tags: alien, bogus, chimps, evolution, flaws, human, science