Fear of Outcomes: UFOlogy vs Astrobiology Distrust Explained

I think I have deduced why there seems to be so much friction between the people involved in UFOlogy and the people involved with the science of Astrobiology.





As much as the two subjects have in common, ie: they are both looking for evidence of life beyond Earth, they both are multidisciplinary in nature and they both are open to criticism from those who do not understand them they have key differences which drive them apart.

The first is culture.

1. Those involved in astrobiology have pursued an academic path, while credentials in the world of UFOlogy not only do not require any sort of academic achievement but often UFOlogy encourages the opposite: a distrust and disdain for things such as the scientific method as a means to deduce truth from fiction. So while astrobiology is academic in nature, UFOlogy often promotes an anti-establishment/anti-academia stance which serves as a wedge between the two.

The second is public perception due to approach.

2a. UFOlogy has tended to sensationalize its investigations and evidence gathered. And because it is not subject to peer review such evidence is often mishandled and wild conclusions about what it means becomes attached to the subject. This more than anything is what has caused UFOs to remain a non-serious matter which while popular (UFO stories garner lots of pageviews, TV ratings etc) the subject has not fundamentally changed in 35-40 years in terms of hard evidence and standards of conduct in handling/examining evidence in general. The people who are part of the UFO lecture circuit often rush to judgement on their way to rushing for more "face time" on TV.

2b. At the same time most large universities have Astrobiology departments, their research adheres to scientific principals, papers are published or rejected and when papers are published they are of course subject to challenges, rebuttals and further examination. That's a key part of the scientific process. Nothing is sacred if the data you present offers a valid challenge. So in this way, the scientific process is decidedly non-senstational, conservative but due to its methodical, thorough and rational approach it, can seem slow and conservative to those who want to find evidence of aliens now.

The third is due to momentum.

3a. While UFOlogy has its occasional mass sighting, nothing ever seems to connect them to anything of extraterrestrial nature other than supposition from eyewitness testimony: "it looked unearthly", "i know aircraft and I don't know aircraft that can do that", "it seemed to defy the laws of physics". Often these statements come from people who might equate seeing something they aren't familiar with that something being extraterrestrial evidence. It's a leap of logic they don't even realize they've made. Furthermore they're also not necessarily privy to all of the things a military might test and in many cases aren't familiar enough with physics and the possibilities within it to make such statements. The 50s-80s seemingly were they heyday of UFOlogy. So in an absence of current "good cases" old archival ones (Roswell, Rendlesham Forrest, Kecksburg, etc) get regurgitated with regularity. It seems the best cases were all before cameras on phones became ubiquitous. UFOlogy's best researchers (Friedman, Dolan, et. al) tend to look back at historical records for the subject itself is not producing much new data in the form of "good cases".

Furthermore, every hoax or misidentification today which UFOlogists jump up and down over as possible evidence for ET just undermines the fields credibility as it evolved from one which used to stress identification and weeding out false positives to one which now panders to entertainment networks by eschewing any non-alien/non-fantastic explanation entirely regardless of data.

3b. Meanwhile the field of astrobiology has high credibility as new exotic forms of life are being discovered every day on our own planet (extremophiles), new evidence for potential habitable environments comes in from space probes looking at the planets and moons of our Solar System (ie: water found just about everywhere in some form) and telescopic surveys of the stars in our galaxy show that every star just about has a planetary system. Exoplanet science itself a branch of Astrobiology, is by contrast to the above, a field of firsts: first detection of water on an exoplanet, first heat map of an exoplanet, first cloud map of an exoplanet, first visible light from an exoplanet, etc, and perhaps in the not too distant future the first moon around another planet circling another star and later, the first signs of life in the atmosphere of an exoplanet or exomoon and/or first civilization detected on an exoplanet.



In other words the momentum of new, interesting and most importantly scientifically verifiable information about what may be out there is coming from astrobiology. In the 1950s-1980s it seemed that UFO sighting reports if enough were collected could perhaps give us the answers to what might be out there but these days we're learning more about what really may be out there from scientific instruments so UFOlogy's importance in the public eye has diminished as a result which brings us to the fourth point...

The fourth is probably the most important and the focus of the title of this thread: A fear of the outcome of either field by those in the opposite camp.

4a. Astrobiology would probably both welcome but probably slightly fear any UFO report actually being due to extraterrestrial visitation because it would mean the Earth would be wide open to contamination by alien viruses and that is a legitimate concern of physical contact with an extraterrestrial anything. Also if just one UFO report would turn out to have proof beyond all doubt that it was extraterrestrial in nature, every story ever told at UFO conventions about UFOs, Abductions and Flying Saucers would suddenly be accepted as possibly being true, at face value by, a massive amount of people who do not question such reports. All of which would serve to muddy the waters of whats actually out there furth and plunge their own more methodical alien research into the realm of the tabloid with a resulting loss of credibility.

4b. UFOlogy power brokers fear that due to the loss of momentum since the 1950s-1980s and the fractured nature of their field itself that the better organized, better funded, better educated, Astrobiologists, Exoplanet hunters or SETI people might be the ones who discover and present definitive evidence that we are not alone. The moment this happens, they're out of a job because almost no one will be interested in fanciful stories about beautiful women from the Pleiades or Reptilians "from the constellation Draco" because they will be interested in learning more about the real aliens and in the process may learn enough about astronomy to see why such stories, while fanciful are extremely unlikely.

So both camps eye each other with trepidation due to key differences of both culture, public perception and a fundamental fear of what "success" for one could mean to the other.

What do you think of this assessment?

Just off the top of my head the point about no peer reviewed evidence could be due to no scientist worth his salt having the cojones to put his/her name to a true research effort into the phenomena.

I realise this is only one point, but I am posting so as to come back to the thread.

Much to reflect on here.

Thanks OP

Where does one go to pursue an academic path in UFOlogy?

Everybody wants to be an authority on the subject.

I'd ask it like this:

1. If we identify proof of life on some exoplanet ... are we gonna go have a look?

2. If we had proof positive of an ET craft presence in our solar system ... is it any more likely that we will develop a relationship with the producers of this craft?

The answers to both questions: It's highly doubtful.

a reply to: JadeStar

Naw, you haven't deduced it.

As you should be aware, the experience of being a ufo contactee/abductee is basically mystical/psychic. The artistic temperament is more psychic than the scientific temperament. That's why artists have higher scoring patterns in psi experiments, and that's why the scientific temperament is ill equipped to understand the ufo phenomena. Apples and oranges, Ellie.

We're talking about something that stretches back in history all the way to shamanic initiation, which takes new guises as culture evolves. Not exactly something that's taught in the hard sciences. Disadvantage: yours. Study more of the Humanities and parapsychology, or be ruled by the limitations of your temperament.

👣

Ufology is the study of UFO's, astrobiology is the study of biology in space, so the two are kind of unrelated in a way.

Astrobiology stemming from astronomy and biology? Both are academic sciences taught in schools and both of those fields bashed Ufology from the get go, along with the entire scientific community.

I'm not really sure what the purpose of this thread is other than to give unwarranted praise to Astrobiology?

I personally believe ufology has gone down the drain, and our regular space sciences have surpassed ufology on the hunt for ET. I still think the government has covered up UFO's and alien visitation on the other hand. It's threads like these along with hoax threads that make it extremely hard to research on your own, so you might as well give up and wait for a Ufologist to present something, right? What can we do? Nothing. It's a battle that goes no where due to official denial. Now they deny UFO's completely when before they said UFO's pose no threat. Interesting...

I was kinda hoping Jade Star would make a pro-ufo thread and maybe debunk or qualify the claims of UFO's on radar or seen by pilots moving at un-earthly speeds. That would be cool.

What jadestar has written is simply a whole lot of nonsense.

First of all:
Ufology only exists because mainstream academic science completely failed to even address the issue.
That's the long and short of it.

People who have encountered alien ships, and aliens themselves have been shunned for seventy years by "science".

These people have been ignored, ridiculed, and explained away at every turn by her vaunted scientists. And these people number in the millions, from all walks of life, from Presidents and astronauts, pilots and police officers, from high ranking military personnel down to the rest of us.

Scientists somehow ignored what these millions of people have had to say, yet jade would have you believe that they will find the answers.
Pure manure. They won't even ask the questions.

The few scientists who did look into UFOs were all on the government payroll, and were hired to essentially lie about the situation to the public.

The rest of the scientists got the message and kept their mouths shut, and stayed as far away from UFOs as they could, rather than risk losing government contracts, tenure, their jobs, and academic standing.
They knew that was the official position, and it has been treated like the third rail ever since.

Scientists have run from the subject of UFOs and alien abductions like cowards.
And not because they think there is nothing to it, but because they know how very seriously the military and intelligence community take the issue.

As a result, everyday people have had to step in to fill the void, and that's the only reason ufology exists at all.

All this talk of "astrobiology" is a joke.
Show me one astrobiologist who understands grey aliens as well as Budd Hopkins did. And he was an abstract artist by profession, for god's sake.

Jadestar's "science" has failed. It has failed us all, in fact. Badly. Perhaps irreparably.

We live in an era of alien contact. Some know this, some don't.

Jade and her scientists don't even WANT to know.

originally posted by: Jonjonj
Just off the top of my head the point about no peer reviewed evidence could be due to no scientist worth his salt having the cojones to put his/her name to a true research effort into the phenomena.

You'd be highly wrong in that statement. I'd suggest you check out the work of....


Dr. James E. McDonald
Dr. James Harder
Dr. J. Allen Hynek
Dr. Donald Menzel
Dr. Jacques Vallee
Dr. Peter A. Sturrock
Dr. Paul Davies
Dr. Susan Clancy
Dr. Carl Sagan
Dr. Daniel H. Harris
Ms. Marjorie Fish
Jean-Pierre Petit
Dr. Bruce Maccabe
Dr. Paul Hill
Alan C. Holt
Terrence Dickenson
Dr. Kip Thorne
Dr. Hal Putoff
Dr. Eric W. Davis
Dr. Kathryn Denning
Robert Louis Schroeder
Jeffrey Bennet
Dr. Allen Tough
Prof. H. Paul Shuch


These people were all scientists of various types who have at one time or another looked into the UFO subject. I could probably list 20 more if I really got down to it.

originally posted by: VoidHawk
Where does one go to pursue an academic path in UFOlogy?

This is an excellent question. If you look at the 2nd chart in the OP you will see that UFOlogy is multidisciplinary in nature so it would depend on what specific part of UFOlogy interested someone.

For instance, Richard Dolan came to UFOlogy from a history and poli-sci background while Stanton Friedman came to it from a nuclear physics and engineering background.

There was no science of Astrobiology nor astrobiology departments in the 1970s those only came about when a coherent, coordinated umbrella drawing on various sciences was defined.

So while people were conducting the science of Astrobiology in the 1970s, it wasn't called that.


Therefore, pursuing an academic path in UFOlogy might come down to which circles in the 2nd chart above someone was most interested in.

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: Jonjonj
Just off the top of my head the point about no peer reviewed evidence could be due to no scientist worth his salt having the cojones to put his/her name to a true research effort into the phenomena.

You'd be highly wrong in that statement. I'd suggest you check out the work of....


Dr. James E. McDonald
Dr. James Harder
Dr. J. Allen Hynek
Dr. Donald Menzel
Dr. Jacques Vallee
Dr. Peter A. Sturrock
Dr. Paul Davies
Dr. Susan Clancy
Dr. Carl Sagan
Dr. Daniel H. Harris
Ms. Marjorie Fish
Jean-Pierre Petit
Dr. Bruce Maccabe
Dr. Paul Hill
Alan C. Holt
Terrence Dickenson
Dr. Kip Thorne
Dr. Hal Putoff
Dr. Eric W. Davis
Dr. Kathryn Denning
Robert Louis Schroeder
Jeffrey Bennet
Dr. Allen Tough
Prof. H. Paul Shuch


These people were all scientists of various types who have at one time or another looked into the UFO subject. I could probably list 20 more if I really got down to it.

Isn't it curious then that those who professed a profound belief in the ufo phenomena as extraterrestrial were belittled whereas those who chose "prosaic" or more mundane ideas where promoted?

Maybe you should be the one to impartially investigate the issue. I bet if you did you would change your mind.

nother beer, my round

Added: I would love to read Kip Thorne's evidence, as probably one of my favourite physicists I was completely unaware of his work in this field.

When you have the time could you give me a link to that? This is not me being an ass, I truly want to read it.

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: Jonjonj
Just off the top of my head the point about no peer reviewed evidence could be due to no scientist worth his salt having the cojones to put his/her name to a true research effort into the phenomena.

You'd be highly wrong in that statement. I'd suggest you check out the work of....


Dr. James E. McDonald
Dr. James Harder
Dr. J. Allen Hynek
Dr. Donald Menzel
Dr. Jacques Vallee
Dr. Peter A. Sturrock
Dr. Paul Davies
Dr. Susan Clancy
Dr. Carl Sagan
Dr. Daniel H. Harris
Ms. Marjorie Fish
Jean-Pierre Petit
Dr. Bruce Maccabe
Dr. Paul Hill
Alan C. Holt
Terrence Dickenson
Dr. Kip Thorne
Dr. Hal Putoff
Dr. Eric W. Davis
Dr. Kathryn Denning
Robert Louis Schroeder
Jeffrey Bennet
Dr. Allen Tough
Prof. H. Paul Shuch


These people were all scientists of various types who have at one time or another looked into the UFO subject. I could probably list 20 more if I really got down to it.

What a joke.

Mendel? Disinformation

Sagan? Disinformation

Vallee? Disinformation

Hyneck? Admitted to disinformation. In fact, Hyneck wrote in his book that he ENJOYED covering up valid UFO reports under orders from the Air Force!

Don't make me go through this whole list.

a reply to: Jonjonj

Isn't it curious then that those who professed a profound belief in the ufo phenomena as extraterrestrial were belittled whereas those who chose "prosaic" or more mundane ideas where promoted? Maybe you should be the one to impartially investigate the issue. I bet if you did you would change your mind

Don't take that bet. Disinformation is not limited to old men.

originally posted by: Snarl
Everybody wants to be an authority on the subject.

I'd ask it like this:

1. If we identify proof of life on some exoplanet ... are we gonna go have a look?

Maybe not the very next day but eventually. It would be too enticing not to.

a reply to: JadeStar

I don't see a whole lot of validity to most of those points. UFOs have been taboo to science since day 1. Even a casual reading of the official history should make that pretty clear. The subject was taboo because of human ego, anthropocentrism, and fear. A small portion of which was probably reasonable, if not necessary... but the remainder of it persisting even after their presence was highlighted and warned against.

Sadly, I think mainstream scientists who've ignored or ridiculed the UFO issue -- especially those involved in the kinds of space sciences to which you refer -- will probably one day have quite a lot of explaining to do. And that's not something that makes me at all happy. I'd prefer that more of them just be honest about the topic right now. Because yes, it's indisputable that most are not. See Sturrock's data... or just go listen to a Seth Shostack interview where he has to dance around questions regarding UFO radar-visual or trace cases. It's sad and alarming to hear an intelligent man intellectually crumble like that.

Your thread could be an interesting one. But I think you'd be closer to the truth in all this if you:
1) simply acknowledged that mainstream science never really gave the topic a fair shake. (Another claim that is remarkably difficult to refute.)
2) more thoroughly addressed the role that scientific provincialism has played in this conflict. The type of provincialism that Hynek referred to. (See the quote in my signature, for example.)

originally posted by: Jonjonj

Added: I would love to read Kip Thorne's evidence, as probably one of my favourite physicists I was completely unaware of his work in this field.

When you have the time could you give me a link to that? This is not me being an ass, I truly want to read it.

Noted.

I will see about doing that sometime this weekend. Of course most of it revolves around wormholes as you might expect. The detectability of natural or artificial wormholes is a subject I am very interested in and have studied quite a lot about outside of my normal university coursework.

Basically, I believe it had to do with defining what a UFO using wormhole type travel would look like and what might be detectable.

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: Jonjonj

Added: I would love to read Kip Thorne's evidence, as probably one of my favourite physicists I was completely unaware of his work in this field.

When you have the time could you give me a link to that? This is not me being an ass, I truly want to read it.

Noted.

I will see about doing that sometime this weekend. Of course most of it revolves around wormholes as you might expect. The detectability of natural or artificial wormholes is a subject I am very interested in and have studied quite a lot about outside of my normal university coursework.

Indeed and thank you for taking the time to do that if you find the time. If not that is also ok but remember, the study of UFO's actually needs real study now, what with the belief that wormholes or warp fields are becoming quite the phenomenon to be researched...and this is only the beginning.

originally posted by: [post=19296790]T
Your thread could be an interesting one. But I think you'd be closer to the truth in all this if you:
1) simply acknowledged that mainstream science never really gave the topic a fair shake. (Another claim that is remarkably difficult to refute.)

I would say in that from all that I have read, and I have read a lot the subject of extraterrestrial life in general was not given a fair shake at the 1950s-1960s.

There was a time between 1950 and 1969 that UFOlogy and Astrobiology/SETI were both considered ridiculous.

One field became credible, and branched out to embrace other disciplines.

The other stayed pretty much where it was.

The study of what that happened was outlined in Chapter 6 And 7 of this report: Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports:
The Proceedings of a Workshop Held at the Pocantico
Conference Center, Tarrytown, New York,
September 29 - October 4,1997 - Peter A. Sturrock et al.

2) more thoroughly addressed the role that scientific provincialism has played in this conflict. The type of provincialism that Hynek referred to. (See the quote in my signature, for example.)

This would not be complete with describing the highly provincial field of UFOlogy which rather than openly shares evidence seems to covet it often for commercial purposes. The latest of these is the supposed Roswell slides.

originally posted by: Scdfa
What jadestar has written is simply a whole lot of nonsense.

First of all:
Ufology only exists because mainstream academic science completely failed to even address the issue.
That's the long and short of it.

People who have encountered alien ships, and aliens themselves have been shunned for seventy years by "science".

Seth Shostak has listened to many people who have had such stories and listened to them at length. The question is, fine, you have a story. what would you want Seth or me or anyone else to do about it?

What can be tested here other than you?

originally posted by: TeaAndStrumpets
a reply to: JadeStar

Sadly, I think mainstream scientists who've ignored or ridiculed the UFO issue -- especially those involved in the kinds of space sciences to which you refer -- will probably one day have quite a lot of explaining to do. And that's not something that makes me at all happy. I'd prefer that more of them just be honest about the topic right now. Because yes, it's indisputable that most are not. See Sturrock's data... or just go listen to a Seth Shostack interview where he has to dance around questions regarding UFO radar-visual or trace cases. It's sad and alarming to hear an intelligent man intellectually crumble like that.

What did Seth say about radar-visual and trace cases?

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: Scdfa
What jadestar has written is simply a whole lot of nonsense.

First of all:
Ufology only exists because mainstream academic science completely failed to even address the issue.
That's the long and short of it.

People who have encountered alien ships, and aliens themselves have been shunned for seventy years by "science".

Seth Shostak has listened to many people who have had such stories and listened to them at length. The question is, fine, you have a story. what would you want Seth or me or anyone else to do about it?
What can be tested here other than you?

You could start with examining ground samples from where the alien ships landed when they abducted us, for one. But you guys are the scientists, shouldn't you have thought of that?

Tell you what, why don't you and Shostak just keep doing what you scientists have always done about UFOs and alien contact:

Absolutely nothing.