Last week SETI’s Seth Shostak let loose in his Space.com column about personal attacks on him by ‘UFO proponents’ after his appearance on a UFO special on Larry King Live (watchable at YouTube – Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4):
Reader warning: I’m taking off the kid gloves. If I seem angry here — a state of emotional discombobulation that seldom seems to be my wont — it’s because people whom I barely know, or in some cases haven’t even heard of, insist on propelling me over the precipice.
Ostensibly, the issue is extraterrestrial intelligence. Not whether it exists, but whether the aliens have come to Earth. This idea, often monikered as “the UFO hypothesis,” is a belief that’s neither fringe nor uncommon. A 2002 Roper poll found that nearly half of all Americans believe that alien craft have visited Earth, and an even larger percentage feel in their heart of hearts that the government is playing dumb about these cosmic callers.
But that’s not what’s causing the bile to marinate my gallbladder. Personally (and as regular readers know), I’m not convinced by the evidence presented so far that aliens are sharing our airspace. But the evidence for the UFO hypothesis isn’t the point here. Rather, it’s the lack of civilized discourse…
…So what’s wrong here? Why is it that so many members of the UFO community feel that they need to be bullies? Yes, I’ll freely admit that many scientists are dismissive of the UFO hypothesis — often to the point of ridicule. I can understand the frustration occasioned by that. “I don’t get no respect” can be a legitimate plaint, and I’m sure that some UFO proponents feel that pain.
There’s no doubt that those who have a deep-seated “extraterrestrials are here” belief can get pretty hot-headed about the topic. I do have to be a little dismissive of Shostak’s claim that “I watched as folks who were there to describe their evidence for extraterrestrial visitation laid into the guests who were skeptical: Bill Nye (the Science Guy) and me”. There was very little “laying in” – no doubt, there were some cheap shots at Bill Nye, although largely an understandable response when he was making patronising (and often plain idiotic) responses to pertinent remarks by military UFO witnesses. In fact, the recent Larry King Live features have shown quite conclusively that Bill Nye has barely read a thing about UFO history and investigations – so Seth Shostak’s argument that “if the only way the investigator can convince others is by insisting that their audience shift careers and start doing their work, then something’s gravely amiss” is a little disingenous…surely they can at least read a little of the documentation before playing skeptic? And I really didn’t see too much “laying into” Shostak by guests on the show – in fact he gave as good as he got with his usual little jokey comments (I don’t think he’s being overly snide, Shostak naturally seems to communicate his ideas in this way – but one can understand how his ‘opposition’ might take it the wrong way). He has more right to be offended by the subsequent emails though.
On the other hand, it’s about time that ufology was represented by someone other than Stanton Friedman. Don’t get me wrong, he’s done some wonderful investigations, and has been around for nearly the duration of the modern phenomenon – but he too is patronising, and a true believer in extraterrestrial contact. And if he says “I used to work on fusion propulsion systems, it’s the energy in the sun” one more time, I think my head will explode.
Phil Plait was quick to welcome Shostak to the club, though in truth the simple matter is that “true believers” in any topic (including skepticism) can be nasty, pedantic and patronising. Yes, ET contact believers can be asses – but then so can skeptics (witness all the jokes in skeptical discussion forums after Rupert Sheldrake was stabbed earlier this year).
The key is to raise the level of discourse (e.g. Bad Astronomy could point out things like the recent Channel Islands report to show how ufology is being done by intelligent people, rather than focusing on the idiots out there, which anyone can do). Conversely, those interested in ufology need to accept that there are very good grounds to doubt a lot of sightings and cases, and not get worked up when someone challenges them about it.
By the way, I discussed the strange relationship between SETI and CSI(COP) way back in Issue 5 of Sub Rosa (free PDF download), which I’ve reposted today here on TDG for your convenience. It’s an interesting topic itself…
