Raining On Sagan's Parade/Skeptical of the Skeptics  by  Bruce Maccabee


Raining on Sagan's Parade/Skeptical of the Skeptics by Bruce Maccabee
From the January 1996 edition of MUFON Journal - Subscription information and
Web Page Address below.

Dr. Carl Sagan has written yet another article in Parade Magazine (Dec. 3, 1995)
regarding UFO sightings and aliens.  "What's the evidence." he asks.  "On so
important a question as UFOs, the evidence must be airtight.  People make
mistakes.  People play practical jokes.  People stretch the truth for money,
attention or fame.  People occasionally misunderstand what they're seeing.  And
sometimes even see things that aren't there."  According to Dr. Sagan, there is
no convincing evidence that UFOs are real.

Methinks Carl doth protest too much for a person who, as a young man, was at
least favorable toward, if not totally convinced by, the early UFO sightings:
"It seemed pretty believable to me...apart from a few harrumphs and giggles--I
couldn't find any counterarguments.  How could all these eyewitnesses by
mistaken?"

After all, he is a proponent of listening via radio to the universe in order to
detect signs of intelligent life "out there."  Hence he must be a believer in
life out there...enough of a believer to commit his and other people's time and
money to hours and hours of "listening."  Is there any evidence of life out
there to listen for?  Only probabilistic arguments based on the existence of
intelligent life here.  There are no observational data.  This is in stark
contrast to the situation regarding UFO sightings for which there is a lot of
observational data, whether or not Dr. Sagan considers it "airtight."

Dr. Sagan points out that as he grew up and learned "how science works--the
secrets of its great success," he became skeptical of UFO reports.  He decided
that "Essentially all UFO cases were anecdotes," just stories, by people "who
reported what they saw."  Some saw "natural--if unfamiliar
phenomena...unconventional aircraft...conventional aircraft with unusual
lighting patterns, high altitude balloons, luminescent insects; planets seen
under unusual atmospheric conditions; optical mirages and loomings; lenticular
clouds; ball lightning; sun dogs; meteors, including green fireballs; and
artificial satellites, nose cones and rocket boosters spectacularly reentering
the atmosphere."  He also points out that "the field attracted rogues and
charlatans," that "many UFO photos turned out to be fakes" and at least in one
case a mass UFO sighting was of a hot air balloon with candles.  In other words,
in Dr. Sagan's opinion, because some or many UFO sightings can be explained as
he has suggested, then all UFO sightings can be explained as he has suggested
and hence there is no "airtight" evidence.

At the end of his article (in which he also discussed crop circles) he appeals
to skepticism as a counter to credulity and laments that the "tools of
skepticism are generally unavailable to the citizens of our society."  The
implications is that anyone who "believes" in the UFO reality is not being
properly skeptical but, rather, credulous (willing to believe in "anything").
Again methings that Carl protests too much, for it was by using the "tools of
skepticism" that I arrived at the conclusion that UFOs are real.

My "conversion" to "belief" (really, acceptance) of UFO reality was a result of
considering and analyzing explanations for UFO sightings.  I analyzed a number
of the classic (read, "older") sightings and the explanations for them and
realized that the explanations were unconvincing, at best, and just plain wrong,
at worst.  It was at this time that I became skeptical of the skeptics.  I also
discovered that some of the more vocal skeptics act as if they have a desire to
disbelieve, and some go so far as to become "debunkers" who discount UFO
sightings without so much as a sideways glance at them.  Sometimes these
debunkers disparage or make fun of people who report such sightings.

Consider, for example, Dr. Sagan's suggestion that some sightings were actually
of high altitude balloons.  Is he aware that some of the earliest flying
saucer/UFO sightings were made in clear daylight by the scientists who launched
those balloons?  Is he aware that these scientists saw their own balloons and
strange, circular shiny objects flying past or around the balloons?  These men
were trained observers of things in the sky, not to be tricked by any of the
natural or manmade phenomena regarded by Sagan as ""the" solutions to UFO
sightings.  

So what if "many UFO photos" turned out to be fakes; not all are.  Does Sr.
Sagan know about the cinetheodolite films shot on April 27, 1950 by technicians
at the White Sand Proving Ground?  According to mathematician Wilber Mitchell,
triangulation showed that the objects were traveling at a high rate of speed
over the Holloman Range at an altitude of about 150,000 ft.  The objects were
about 30 feet in diameter.  Several films of unidentified objects flying over
White Sands were taken in the late spring of 1950.

So what if many sightings could be explained by natural phenomena, as Dr. Sagan
suggested.  There are also many which can't, such as the first widely reported
sighting, that of Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947.  Many people have tried to
explain Arnold's sighting; none has succeeded.  The late Dr. J. Allen Hynek,
astronomer and consultant to the Air Force Project Blue Book, was initially a
severe skeptic of flying saucer reports.  He was the first scientist to analyze
Arnold's report to the (Army) Air Force and attempt to explain it, in 1948.  By
25 years later he had reversed his opinion about UFO reports and realized that
he hadn't explained Arnold's sighting.

In November 1986, the Japanese pilot and two man crew of a jumbo jet freighter
flying over Alaska witnessed a series of sighting events, including radar
detections, which was investigated by the Federal Aeronautics Administration.
In March 1987, the FAA released a package of information of the sighting to the
public and announced its "solution": the ground radar had been fooled by
malfunctions that occurred just as the crew was reporting objects/lights near
the aircraft.  The FAA had "no comment" on the visual sighting and no comment
about the object detected on the airplane radar.  The Committee for Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) publicized its explanation
for the sighting--misidentifications of Mars and Jupiter--before the FAA
released its reports.  A month or so later, when it became apparent from the FAA
released information that the visual sighting direction was not in the direction
of these planets the skeptics revised their explanation to moonlight reflected
from clouds.  Neither explanation was satisfactory in view of the descriptions
given by the three witnesses on the plane.

Try as he may, Dr. Sagan cannot get away from the fact that UFO sightings have
been reported under "unimpeachable" conditions, including multiple witnessed
daylight sightings of structured objects (seen well enough so that
identification would be immediately obvious if it were possible), multiple
radar/visual sightings, multiple witnessed photographic and video sightings and
sightings that involved landing traces (several thousand of these on record).
It is true that we, the civilian community of UFO investigators, do not have
something which we are positive is a piece of a flying saucer.  However, there
is a mass of circumstantial evidence of the type which, if this were tried in a
court of law, would be sufficient to prove the case.

If Dr. Sagan wishes to ignore all this, that is his choice.  He can go back to
listening for aliens.  But he should leave the ufologists alone.  We have enough
inborn healthy skepticism to keep us from being overly credulous, while not
throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  Furthermore, contrary to Dr. Sagan's
stated opinion that we might "have a vested interest in discouraging
skepticism," we encourage skepticism on 'both' sides of this issue.

From the MUFON UFO Journal - January 1996.  The MUFON UFO Journal is published
monthly by the Mutual UFO Network, Inc.
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