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UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: Stan Friedman <fsphys@brunnet.net>
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 07:42:38 -0400
Fwd Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 17:33:52 -0500
Subject: Re: SETI Scientists Petition White House


>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark@frontiernet.net>
>Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: Re: SETI Scientists Petition White House
>Date: Fri, 27 Nov 98 16:43:23 PST

>>From: Roger Evans <moviestuff@cyberjunkie.com>
>>Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 14:14:42 +0000
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>>Subject: SETI Scientists Petition White House

>>>From: Serge Salvaille <sergesa@connectmmic.net>
>>>Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 21:37:02 -0500
>>>Fwd Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 13:30:54 -0500
>>>Subject: Re: SETI Scientists Petition White House

>Howdy, listfolk,

>>Previously Larry Hatch offered:

>>>>For the life of me, I cannot understand some of the anti-SETI
>>>>messages recently.

>>Serge's rather rude response was:

>>>Then I suggest you read the posts more carefully and try to
>>>understand the situation.

>>>Any 30 years $100-million flopped project supported by
>>>mainstream science on the hypothesis of extra-terrestrial life
>>>must be questioned by people involved in a 50 years $0.00
>>>research who came up with evidence - people who are still
>>>laughed at by the same SOBs who support the fore-mentioned
>>>project.

>>Time out, Serge.

>>You make a pretty strong accusation. Please give us names of any
>>SETI supporters that laugh at terrestrial based UFO research. My
>>money is on the bet that you can't. In fact, I'd go so far as to
>>say that everyone I know that supports SETI also supports the
>>investigation of UFO sightings and encounters. True, SETI has
>>received the lion's share of the funding, but $100 million is
>>squat for 30 years work. No one, including SETI members, is
>>saying that terrestrial based UFO research doesn't deserve
>>funding, also. The fact that UFO researchers don't get it is not
>>SETI's fault. Your grudge is with the wrong people. Grow up.

>Wow.  I am at a loss to understand any of the above paragraph.
>I've read a reasonable amount of the SETI literature, and
>overwhelmingly, the attitude toward UFOs and UFO research is (a)
>ignorant and (b) hostile.  A rare exception is the British
>popular science writer Edward Ashpole, who has done books on
>SETI and one (sympathetic to the ETH) on the UFO phenomenon.
>There is, in fairness, astronomer/SETI historian Steven Dick,
>who while more or less skeptical is not notably hostile toward
>ufology, and he does know the subject.  Far more typical,
>however, is Jill Tartar's boast of close- mindedness where UFO
>reports are concerned, or Carl Sagan's many and tiresome
>fulminations.

>A wonderful paper on the possible sources of SETIans'
>consistent hostility to UFO research is "The Effect of
>Conscious and Unconscious Attitudes About UFO Evidence
>on Scientific Acceptance of the Extraterrestrial
>Hypothesis," by D. C. Donderi.  (Donderi is a psychologist
>at McGill University in Montreal.)  Prof. Donderi speculates:

>"[T]he intense scientific interest in communicating with
>extraterrestrial intelligence is behavior which draws in part on
>experience of UFO evidence for its motivation, while allowing
>the interested scientist to refuse to consciously acknowledge
>that source. The `scientific' ETI interest is in part a rational
>but unrealistic attempt to deal with the problems presented by
>the overwhelming UFO evidence in ways which are acceptable
>in current scientific understanding.... This behavior recognizes
>the anxiety which would be caused by accepting the reality,
>and the possible extraterrestrial origin, of the UFO phenomenon.
>... An interest in communicating with ETI is certainly not
>scientific behavior which can be justified on the basis of its
>results; as one critic (equally critical of UFOs) noted:
>`Exobiology is still a "science" without any data, therefore no
>science'." (From JUFOS 1 [old series, 1979], pp. 38-39)

>SETI has many critics within mainstream science, though
>you'd not know that from the breathlessly uncritical accounts
>you'll find in popular media treatments of the subject.  One
>clear reason, it seems to me, that SETIans are unfriendly
>to UFO research is that, in the grand tradition of "anomaly
>snobbism" (William Corliss's phrase), they're seeking to
>establish their legitimacy by dissing another, possibly
>related subject which like SETI is often seen as fringish.
>In other words: Yes, I believe there are friendly space
>people out there, but I'm not crazy enough to believe
>they're coming here in UFOs.  Sort of like the cryptozoologists
>who habitually assure us that while they believe in Bigfoot
>or the Loch Ness monster, they aren't among those
>deluded souls who deem UFOs also worth investigating.

>Jerry Clark


It makes me feel old to admit it, but my 1973 MUFON Symposium
paper "Ufology and the Search for ET Intelligent Life " dealt
with many of the false arguments made by SETI cultists against
UFOs. It was p.40-61 in the Symposium Proceedings. I do have
some copies available. There are 73 references.

Stan Friedman