The Great UFO Debate

The good news is that polls continue to show that between one and two-thirds of the public thinks that extraterrestrial life exists. The weird news is that a similar fraction thinks that some of it is visiting Earth.

Several recent television shows have soberly addressed the possibility that alien craft are violating our air space, occasionally touching down long enough to allow their crews to conduct bizarre (and, in most states, illegal) experiments on hapless citizens. While these shows tantalize viewers by suggesting that they are finally going to get to the bottom of the so-called "UFO debate", they never do. That bottom seems perennially out of reach.

So what are the contentious issues here? First off, despite heated discussion by all concerned, let’s admit that interstellar travel doesn’t violate physics. It’s possible. After all, the Pioneer and Voyager probes are nearly three decades into an inadvertent interstellar journey right now. The kicker, of course, is that these craft will take 70,000 years to cover the distance to even the nearest stars (and they’re not aimed that way). With the physics we know, it’s extremely difficult to substantially, and safely, shorten that travel time. Sure, it might be theoretically possible to create wormholes or some other exotic facility for high-speed cosmic cruising; but that approach is entirely speculative.

And it’s not really the point. The problem I have with the claim that strange craft are prowling our planet is not with the transportation mode, but with the evidence. I’ll worry about how they got here once I’m convinced that they’ve really made the scene.

Well, have they? How good is the evidence? In the course of a recent TV broadcast in which I participated, guest experts who have long studied UFOs argued the case for their alien nature by showing photographs of putative saucers hovering at low altitudes. Some of these objects appeared as out-of-focus lights, while others resembled hubcap-shaped Frisbees caught in mid-trajectory.

Since the former are perforce ambiguous, the latter commanded more of my attention. How can we know they’re NOT hubcaps, tossed into the air by a hoaxer with a camera? The reply from one expert: "these photographs pass muster." When quizzed on exactly which muster was mastered, the response was that "atmospheric effects give us a limit on the distance, and careful examination has ruled out photographic trickery." Well, the former is pretty chancy, and relies on some assumption about atmospheric conditions (was it a smoggy day in Los Angeles?), and the latter proves nothing. A real shot of an airborne hubcap would, after all, be free of photographic trickery.

Additional evidence that is endlessly cited is "expert testimony." Pilots, astronauts, and others with experienced eyes and impressive credentials have all claimed to see odd craft in the skies. It’s safe to say that these witnesses have seen something. But just because you don’t recognize an aerial phenomenon doesn’t mean that it’s an extraterrestrial visitor. That requires additional evidence that, so far, seems to be as unconvincing as the trickery-free saucer snaps.

What about those folks who have experienced alien beings first-hand? Abduction stories are an entirely separate field of study and one which I won’t address here, although I must confess that it’s intriguing to see photos of scoop marks on the flesh of human subjects, coupled with the claim that these minor disfigurements are due to alien malfeasance. But even aside from the puzzling question of why beings from distant suns would come to Earth to melon-ball the locals, this evidence is, once again, ambiguous. The scoops might be due to aliens, and then again, they could be the consequence of spousal abuse or many other causes.

When push came to shove, and when pressed as to whether there’s real proof of extraterrestrial visitation, the experts on this show backed off by saying that "well, we don’t know where they come from. But something is definitely going on." The latter statement is hardly controversial. The former is merely goofy. If the saucers and scoopers are not from outer space, where, exactly, are they from? Belgium?

The bottom line is that the evidence for extraterrestrial visitors has not convinced many scientists. Very few academics are writing papers for refereed journals about alien craft or their occupants. Confronted with this, the UFO experts usually take refuge in two possible explanations:

* The material that would be convincing proof has been collected and secreted away by the U.S. government. While endlessly appealing, this is an argument from ignorance (tantamount to saying "we can’t show you good evidence because we haven’t got it"), and perforce implies that every government in the world has efficiently squirreled away all alien artifacts. Unless, of course, the extraterrestrials only visit the U.S., where retrieval of material that falls to Earth is supposedly a perfected art form.

* Scientists have simply refused to look carefully at this phenomenon. In other words, the scientists should blame themselves for the fact that the visitation hypothesis has failed to sway them.

Not only is this unfair, it’s misguided. Sure, rather few researchers have themselves gone into the field to sift through the stories, the videos, and the odd photos that comprise the evidence for alien presence. But they don’t have to. This complaint is akin to telling movie critics that films would be better if only they would pitch in and get behind the camera. But critics can compose excellent and accurate evaluations of a movie without being participants in the business of making films.

The burden of proof is on those making the claims, not those who find the data dubious. If there are investigators who are convinced that craft from other worlds are buzzing ours, then they should present the absolute best evidence they have, and not resort to explanations that appeal to conspiratorial cover-ups or the failure of others to be open to the idea. The UFO advocates are not asking us to believe something either trivial or peripheral, for after all, there could hardly be any discovery more dramatic or important than visitors from other worlds. If we could prove that the aliens are here, I would be as awestruck as anyone, however, I await a compelling Exhibit A.

Because it's easy to find things in the sky if you just ignore the things which don't fit. This article on the "star map" was published back in 1974, after Marjorie Fish first made her claim for its accuracy.

Pattern Recognition & Zeta Reticuli

by Carl Sagan & Steven Soter

"The Zeta Reticuli Incident" is very provocative. It claims that a map, allegedly shown on board a landed extraterrestrial spacecraft to Betty Hill in 1961, later drawn by her from memory and published in 1966, corresponds well to similar maps of the closest stars resembling the sun based on stellar positions in the 1969 Gliese Catalog of Nearby Stars. The comparison maps were made by Marjorie Fish using a three dimensional physical model and later by a group of Ohio State University students using a presumably more accurate (i.e., less subjective) computer generated projection. The argument rests on how well the maps agree and on the statistical significance of the comparison.

Figure 1 [not available here] show the Hill map and the Ohio State computer map with connecting lines as given in the ASTRONOMY article. The inclusion of these lines (said to represent trade or navigation routes) to establish a resemblance between the maps is what a lawyer would call "leading the witness". We could just as well have drawn lines as in the bottom of Figure 1 to lead the other way. A less biased comparison of the two data sets, without connecting lines as in Figure 2, shows little similarity. Any residual resemblance is enhanced by there being the same number of points in each map, and can be accounted for by the manner in which these points were selected.

The computer star map includes the sun and 14 stars selected from a list of the 46 nearest stars similar to the sun, derived from the Gliese catalog. It is not clear what criteria were used to select precisely these 14 stars from the list, other than the desire to find a resemblance to the Hill map. However, we can always pick and choose from a large random data set some subset that resembles a preconceived pattern. If we are free also to select the vantage point (from all possible directions for viewing the projection of a three dimensional pattern), it is a simple matter to optimize the desired resemblance. Of course such a resemblance in the case of selection from a random set is a contrivance -- an example of the statistical fallacy known as "the enumeration of favorable circumstances".

The presence of such a fallacy in this case appears even more likely when we examine the original Hill drawing, published in The Interrupted Journey by John Fuller. In addition to the prominent points that Betty Hill connected by lines, her map also includes a number of apparently random dots scattered about -- evidently to represent the presence of background stars but not meant to suggest actual positions. However, three of these dots appear in the version of the Hill map used in the comparison, while the others are absent. Thus some selection was made even from the original Hill map, although not to the same extent as from the Gliese catalog. This allow even greater freedom to contrive a resemblance.

Finally, we lear from The Interrupted Journey that Betty Hill first thought she saw a remarkable similarity between her UFO star map and a map of the constellation Pegasus published in the New York Times in 1965 to show the position of the quasar CTA-102. How many star maps, derived from the Gliese catalog or elsewhere, have been compared with Betty Hill's before a supposed agreement was found? If we suppress information on such comparisons we also overestimate the significance of the result.

The argument on "The Zeta Reticuli Incident" demonstrates only that if we set out to find a pattern correlation between two nearly random data sets by selecting at will certain elements from each and ignoring others, we will always be successful. The argument cannot serve even to suggest a verification of the Hill story -- which in any case is well known to be riddled with internal and external contradictions, and which is amenable to interpretations which do not invoke extraterrestrial intelligence. Those of us concerned with the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence must take care to demand adequately rigorous standards of evidence. It is all too easy, as the old Chinese proverb says, for the imprisoned maiden to mistake the beating of her own heart for the hoof beats of her rescuer's horse.

Steven Soter is a research associate working under the advisement of Carl Sagan, director of Cornell University's laboratory for Planetary Studies.

Why wouldnt that be realistic? Actually that makes sense. The one thing they dont need is to have you earth people turn our their visits into a circus.

It would be realistic only if we assume that the alien life form is benign and non aggressive,which with the multitude of life forms here on Earth is very hard to find regardless of their level of development.Add to that the necessary organizational component of an alien society that would be interested in space exploration and there would be no evidence of commerce or colonization?
I am not interested in a long debate into the deep hours of the night but is it realistic to think that if we had visitors from other worlds with the technology to make the trip through the vastness of space,that there would be no evil or aggression which would manifest itself through the easy conquest and exploitation of a inferior population?
This may be possible if there was only one other life form outside of our own but presumably our "visitors" represent a multitude of life forms.

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