Man, the sharks are really circling now.

Look. Roughly –Half- the people who share the surface of the Earth with you, think it’s likely that we’re being visited by extraterrestrials, right now.

Half.

Now, the only profession on the surface of the planet that is qualified or equipped to investigate the issue, is science. But science would rather relegate Half the world to the crackpot/liar/huckster file, than investigate. And where do our leaders look, to help them form opinions and policies on this kind of thing?—to science. So as long as the scientific community maintains the conclusion that there’s nothing to look at, even though they’ve never really looked, then any unexplained event in the sky slips completely under the radar. Sure, a witness can call MUFON or any of half a dozen completely useless reporting centers that at most can record your call, whoopee. But is there any chance of getting any kind of evidence that would make any difference—of course not, because ordinary people can only get photos, footage, and a story—and all of that is disqualified, pre hoc, ad hoc.

So what’s the alternative? It has to start right here, with you, with the science community. All you need to do over the next few years, is to be completely honest, actually. When one of your own profession says that the ETH is not altogether illogical or unfounded--that’s true, admit it. Fermi’s paradox wouldn’t have happened at all, if the ET hypothesis didn’t have scientific merit. You may not personally –believe- that it’s probable, but it’s neither irrational nor even bad science—it’s a possibility. Then one day the Advisor to the President’s Special Subcommittee on Unexplained Aerial Phenomena calls you up and asks ‘Could some of these sightings really be extraterrestrial craft?’ at least say ‘I don’t know.’ That’s honest, because you don’t know. Right? Admitting what we don’t know is the spark of every honest inquiry.

Then a few years later, when the emotional climate around the issue has shifted, and we can all say ‘y’know, we don’t know. People say they’re seeing things up there…tell you what, let’s see if we can puzzle this one out with some good science and some government funding. Dr. X calls Presidential Advisor Y, yadda yadda, a provision on a bill goes through, and suddenly we have a fully equipped and teamed new National Institute for the Investigation of Unexplained Aerial Phenomena. Give ‘em some pull with the Air Force so they can check radar records, and if warranted, send a jet out to take footage/sensor readings/whatever. Move fast, collect facts, adapt to new data, and devise new tests, get busy for a few years and beat this horse to death. We don’t know what we’re going to learn until we do it, so let’s just do it and find out instead of arguing about it.

If we’d had this going for us sooner, we’d have known about ball lighting in short order (which is, even today, fairly cutting-edge -plasma physics- for cryin’ out loud). Instead, the scientific community sat back and proclaimed ‘ahhh, yer a woo-woo, seeing funny lights in the sky. What do you know anyway? You’re mistaken, or you’re lying. Floating orbs of light—hah!’

If things had gone down differently, and scientists had been like ‘Wow, really? Did you get pictures? Tell me everything in detail and I’ll go correlate your observations with the database, and we’ll see if we can figure this out,’ then you guys would have come off like heroes, champions of the people. And you’d have made an amazing scientific advance—who knew plasma could form a self-contained sphere of charge in nothing more complex than normal atmospheric conditions?

It’s all so clear in hindsight—but who knew then? All we had were some stories, a few crappy photos, and some burn marks around Granny’s kitchen drain. All of which –could have been faked-, but weren’t. Oops. So now what are you gonna do? Repeat the same mistake? Continue to alienate Half the world by calling them fools and liars? Or are you gonna be heroes this time out, and take the people at their word, and work –with- them, instead of against them.

We probably won’t find what we expect to find out there, but I bet my shoes we’ll find something extremely interesting, and maybe even something of profound scientific value.

I also think we should pass stiff laws against frauds/hoaxsters/wiseguys. It discredits the majority of the witnesses who are good souls. And once we have a modern new Institute to check out these claims, it’d be easy to reveal the liars and see how much they like a fat fine and a few months in the slammer.


This is how cynics are destroying the nobility of the scientific quest for understanding--if they can’t explain it, you’re a liar, or incompetent. It’s disgusting.

Science is not a tool to rationalize a personal, contemptible level of cynicism. You’re wielding it like a hammer, Johnno. Like any tool, science is abusive in the wrong hands. It’s supposed to be a tool to –increase understanding-, not to destroy it.

Wait—you’re not a scientist; you’re just riding the flame-wagon with the nay-sayers to sound like one. You can’t gauge the speed of an object with merely ‘a point of reference.’ You also need to know the orientation of the object to the point of reference, which is often simply –impossible- without knowing how large the object your looking at, really is.

I haven’t seen a –single, stand-alone- piece of evidence that is completely convincing, but the sum of good photos, stories, and footage, makes for a very compelling case that –something- is moving around the sky, with similar, unexplained, flight characteristics.

Consider this—how many ‘convincing’ shots of experimental military craft have you seen? We –know- those exist…but we’d be hard-pressed to –prove it- if we didn’t already know they existed, right? If the shots aren’t taken by the military, they’re of no better caliber than the ‘ufo’ shots you mention. The quality of the evidence does Not indicate that the objects don’t exist, it indicates how difficult it is to photograph/film fast vehicles in the atmosphere.

Give me a list of people who have a scientific-resolution videocamera with flawless auto-focusing technology and a tripod in their pockets, and I’ll get you that flawless footage you asked for.

And exactly how much of this evidence has even been looked at by qualified people? .01%? .0001%? The work hasn't been done yet, but you guys go on and on about how there's been all this scientific investigation and nothing has been convincing—ahem, newsflash—it hasn't happened yet folks.