This year, like most years, I attended the MUFON International UFO Symposium. The location was Las Vegas and the only way to reach the meeting area was to pass through a casino, after which it was hard to say which scene was more surreal, the earnest and well-received talks about alien visitation or the crowds of people engaged in long, solitary relation-ships with electronic slot machines. But for ufologists their subject is as real as microscopes and mineral specimens. The subtitle for the 2013 convention was “Science, UFOs and the Search for ET,” in keeping with most MUFON proceedings over the past 44 years that have paired science and UFOs as the over-arching conference theme, with “The Emergence of a New Science,” “A Scientific Paradigm,” “A Scientific Enigma,” and “Connecting with the Scientific Community” just a few examples. Make no mistake about it, mainstream ufologists insist on a militant commitment to science by their persistence in laying claim to the status and prestige of scientific knowledge, if not to the methods and strictures of scientific procedure. And by “science” ufologists mean hard science, the type that studies material objects to include, by some stretch of imagination, the technology of extraterrestrial visitors.
UFOs started out as the ideal hard-science anomaly. The flying saucers were shiny metallic aerial vehicles carrying physical beings, and if a saucer landed, you could kick it and it would go “clang” in the night. Saucers represented technology of a sort many science-fiction space operas had anticipated, a technology we could foresee in our own future, a linear descendant of jets and rockets only advanced enough to fly circles around our aircraft and travel between the stars. Even C. G. Jung writing in Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky (1959) accepted that since these objects registered on camera film and radar they had to be physical. He did not care about their physical nature or even if aliens piloted them, only in their archetypal symbolism; and for that purpose whether alien visitation was real or imagined made no difference because observations or visions served the psyche equally well as the collective unconscious healed its imbalance in a time of crisis. He could have his saucers both ways because they belonged to the same psychological myth whatever their ontology s1Jung, C. G. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1959), xi-xiv, 8-11, 14-20, 151-152, 164-166.. Most people interested in UFOs wanted only the machine and cared nothing about the psychology. For them the foregone conclusion held that aliens from space were visiting us in the same way we planned to visit other planets, maybe to help and maybe to harm, and this possibility constituted the most exciting mystery of our time. People who pursued this mystery saw themselves at the vanguard of a wonderful discovery, and looked forward to the imminent resolution of the mystery as the aliens revealed themselves in open landings or the government gave up the truth that they had hidden from the public to prevent mass panic.
The sharp metallic edge of the 1950s began to blur in the 1960s as reports showed a seemingly less technological side to UFOs and ushered in the “high strangeness” era. UFOs became less mechanical and more and more surreal, appearing and disappearing rather than simply traveling. They shape-shifted and emitted beams of light that bent, twisted, and broke off like solid objects. As abductions came to the forefront, ufologists had to deal with the phenomenon of “missing time” and UFO occupants that passed through solid doors like ghosts; sometimes abductees reported that aliens haunted them in ways reminiscent of poltergeist manifestations. Jacques Vallée
recognized the similarities between activities of UFO aliens and traditional fairies in his seminal book, Passport to Magonia (1969). Some ufological apologists defended straightforward materialism by reducing high strangeness to an alien technology that only appeared magical because it was so far advanced, but a new door had opened and through it passed Men in Black, aliens that acted more like traditional poltergeists or demons than respectable spacemen, and encounters that seemed to happen in a parallel universe s2See Jerome Clark’s entry on paranormal and occult theories of UFOs in The UFO Encyclopedia (Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998), 696-708.. The old image of straightforward alien astronauts appeared inadequate and out of date, a relic of 1950s science fiction. Both reports and theories reflected this new wide-open policy, and even concerns like crashed saucers at Roswell that seemed to draw ufology back toward its materialistic roots mutated into a weird miasma of conspiracy theories and gave us speculations that aliens joined with the Illuminati to subvert human freedom and even human genetic integrity s3See “Dark Side” in Clark, UFO Encyclopedia , pp.301-317.. J. Allen Hynek’s ambition to create a scientific ufology took many wild detours through Magonia and then into the paranoid shadowland of conspiracists.
Materialistic ufology holds an attraction for certain types of people. It appeals to engineers, technologists, and those who favor a hard-science view of the world. Anyone looking for an adventuresome quest, especially males, according to one study, favor UFOs or cryptozoology as a pursuit suited to their tastes, while ESP, reincarnation, or other anomalies centered in the inner realm and calling for more static or subtle investigations seldom excite these people. Yet even reputably “physical” anomalies have had a way of following UFOs into the insubstantial twilight. Cryptozoologists of the “tracks-and-turds” school seek out physical evidence for Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest, but he turns up in back yards and on doorsteps all over the country with some of the same supernatural properties attributed to aliens. Psychical research is sometimes drawn out of Dr. Rhine’s laboratory to investigate poltergeists and ghostly manifestations in the everyday world. Many of the happenings collected by Charles Hoy Fort and designated as “Fortean” on his behalf remain isolated and inexplicable without any theoretical structure to understand them. These encounters with things having no place in this world comprise Jerome Clark’s experience anomalies.
The phenomenology of our anomalies continues to surprise and confuse us. In this realm there is always something new under the sun. Such variety keeps anomalistics an intriguing field of inquiry, but this same looseness clashes with basic scientific requirements and lands our subjects of interest on the wrong side of the scientific wall. The popular image of science as the steady accumulation of accurate knowledge about the natural world oversimplifies the real workings of science almost to caricature. Thomas Kuhn
in his famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, presents a very different picture: What scientists do most of the time is “normal science,” a process of puzzle-solving guided by the accepted theories of a given field and destined to fill out the implications of those theories with findings and understandings that confirm predicted results. A ready example is the periodic table, which anticipated elements not yet discovered and scientists responded in their research by finding the unknown elements to fill those gaps. This body of accepted theories comprises a paradigm, in effect a total understanding that relates a great deal of data to a system of explanations. These explanations provide specific mechanisms that seem to underlie observable nature, simplify its diversity, and prescribe courses for fruitful future research. The paradigm of a scientific field stands as the best understanding of truth available at a given time and backed by a consensus of scientists engaged in the field s4Kuhn, Thomas S.: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 10-11, 17-18, 24, 52-53, 65..
As convincing and unassailable as a paradigm might appear, it often proves to be transient. One of the great strengths of science is that its knowledge grows and changes in response to new discoveries and ideas. Sometimes the conflict between old ideas and new findings grows so irreconcilable that it overthrows an established paradigm in an intellectual revolution that restructures the very foundations of human understanding. The Copernican revolution replaced the Earth with the sun as the center of the celestial bodies, and while subsequent discoveries have continued to decentralize the Earth’s place in the universe, the initial move that Copernicus proposed shows no sign of reverting. The heliocentric system seems here to stay. Few scientific paradigms last so long. The enormous success of Newton’s mechanics determined the course of research for some 300 years but in that time as physicists and astronomers looked beyond the everyday world to events on atomic and cosmic scales, problems began to accumulate that Newton’s formulation could not answer. These problems posed challenges that no patchwork fixes could allay and called for radical rethinking. The revolutionary theories of Einstein and quantum mechanics settled the disarray with esoteric new understandings of issues that ranged from irregularities in the orbit of the planet Mercury to the relation between space and time. Over and over the pursuit of normal science under a given paradigm has led to the discovery of anomalies the paradigm cannot explain. As the anomalies accumulated a crisis gathered, business as usual could not continue, and only the top-to-bottom shakeup of a scientific revolution could institute a new paradigm that met the challenge of emergent facts and theories s5Kuhn, 77-78, 84..
Given their crucial role in fomenting every scientific revolution, it seems only right that scientists would exalt anomalies as a valued part of the research enterprise. In fact just the opposite happens. The course of normal science has no place for anomalies and its practitioners have no use for them. They are annoyances and distractions, matters to distrust, ignore, or assimilate without taking their implications very seriously. The prevailing paradigm serves too well, its successes have been too many, and its followers have too much vested interest, practical, personal, and intellectual, in the status quo for them to spread out the welcome mat for any challenge. Taken one by one anomalies do nothing to slow the train of everyday research, much less stop it. Only when they pile up do they interfere with normal procedures and precipitate a crisis, but most scientific practitioners resist the implicated change with dogged stubbornness until the old paradigm suffers too much damage to save and a viable new paradigm stands ready to take its place.
Another example of the fate of anomalistic ideas within the scientific enterprise is “prematurity” in observational or theoretical discovery. The history of science is littered with instances of ideas now accepted as true but resisted or neglected for considerable time before gaining acceptance. A familiar example is the long dispute and delay over the issue of meteors, recognized by peasants and some scientists early in the 19th century as stones that fell from the sky, while high-ranking establishment scientists (and Thomas Jefferson) denied this proposal in favor of lightning striking stones on the ground. A premature discovery is one that “cannot be connected by a series of simple logical steps to canonical knowledge of the time" s6Hook, Ernest B. “A Background to Prematurity and Resistance to ‘Discovery,’” in Ernest B. Hook, ed. Prematurity in Scientific Discovery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 8.. In terms of Kuhn’s normal science, any observation or idea too far removed from the prevailing paradigm is doomed to rejection or disinterest, and any intellectual bridge from the known to the unknown will have to build step by exacting step to have any chance of acceptance, no leaps allowed.
A striking example of unequal treatments takes shape in the contrasting responses of the scientific community to exobiology and UFOs. The usual starting-point of science is observable data, but exobiology has none. No one has observed life on another planet, leaving exobiologists to postulate the nature of such life and methodologies for studying it, but the whole field remains an exercise in speculation. By contrast ufology is full of observational data, buried in it. Hypotheses and theories about UFOs address these observations in what is usually considered the proper order for understanding scientific subjects. Yet aside from the quibbles of a few purists, exobiology enjoys respect as a legitimate research pursuit and has ample publication outlets for the work of its practitioners, while ufology cannot get so much as a hearing. Exobiology follows directly from the accepted scientific premise that life should arise wherever conditions are suitable; UFOs violate an axiom that extraterrestrial life can’t get here from there. Connection to the prevailing paradigm makes all the difference between acceptance as a scientific subject and rejection as unworthy of interest.
A picture emerges of modern science as extremely conservative. The scientist of fiction may pose as a free-wheeling explorer seeking out random surprises in the realms of the unknown, but this image contrasts as much with reality as the meticulous digging of real-life archaeologists differs from the tomb-robbing adventures of Indiana Jones. This conservatism manifests in a readiness to defend the paradigm at the expense of the anomaly even to the point of killing the messenger, as it were. Jacques Vallée presents a depressing example from 1961 while he worked as a satellite observer at the Paris Observatory and observed unidentified objects:
I saw a satellite brighter than second magnitude. I had time to log a few data points. On another occasion several of us recorded no less than eleven points. The next morning Muller, who behaves like a petty Army officer, simply confiscated the tape and destroyed it, although a similar object had just been tracked by other astronomers…. “Why don’t we send the data to the Americans?” I asked him. Muller just shrugged. “The Americans would laugh at us" s7Vallée, Jacques. Forbidden Science: Journals 1957-1969 (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1992), 41-42..
So important is defense of the status quo that rejection of anomalies doubles as an obligatory act of sav-ing face.
A modern scientist is more likely to question, “Can it happen, and if so, how?” than to ask did it happen, though this issue seems like the true bottom line. This approach reflects a confidence (some would say arrogance) that discounts random observation in favor of established knowledge. Such dismissal was not always the case. Cotton Mather sent reports of a star within the tips of the crescent moon to the Royal Society and the Philosophical Transactions duly printed the account s8“An extract of several letters from Cotton Mather….” Philosophical Transactions 29 (1714), 66.. Throughout the 18th century and much of the 19th , persons with an interest in science or natural history felt duty-bound to report unusual events, and scientific journals to publish such reports, on the grounds that this anomalous data might lead to eventual understanding and discovery. As the scientific enterprise grew, as its theories crystallized, and as professionals replaced gifted amateurs, paradigm-based understanding fenced off scientific fields and excluded the previous free-ranging curiosity that found importance in anecdotal oddities of nature. These unheeded tidbits became the subjects of Charles Fort’s collections. He gathered them out of suspicion that an overconfident scientific orthodoxy really didn't know it all any better than the priests and pontificating wise-men of the past, and championed such reports as factual challenges to the doctrines of established science:
A procession of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded….The power that has said to all these things that they are damned, is Dogmatic Science. But they’ll march s9Fort, Charles. The Books of Charles Fort (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1941), 3.
J. Allen Hynek had confidence that UFOs were one anomaly that would eventually enter the scientific mainstream. He cited the history of meteors as an analogy for the stages of coming acceptance, and ended by observing that there would be a 21st-century science and, for that matter, a 30th-century science, from which perspective the current denial of UFOs would look as embarrassing as the establishment denial of meteoric falls early in the 19th century s10Hynek, J. Allen. “UFOs Merit Scientific Study.” Science n.s.,164 (October 21, 1966), 329.. This optimism overlooked the difference in treatment for anomalies experienced in the pursuit of normal science versus anomalies experienced outside the confines of scientific practice. The anomalies that scientists discover in the course of their work have ties to the prevailing paradigm, in the sense that they arise out of its working theories and bear directly on normal practice. A revolution may overthrow a paradigm, yet that paradigm reaches out from beyond the grave to control much about its replacement. These anomalies acquire their anomalousness only because they contradict the old paradigm, and the new one must embrace the successes and overcome the failures of its predecessor. The conservatism of science manifests itself since even a revolution that introduces radically new theories still bridges the differences with close steps of thought and evidence from old to new. A scientific revolution amounts to a palace coup rather than an uprising that turns the world upside down.
Where ufologists and other anomalists have pinned their hopes on some inevitable day of reckoning and insist that surely our time will come, the basis for this faith is tenuous at best. Our anomalies are not the pressing consequences of conflict between ongoing laboratory discoveries and prevailing paradigms. Our anomalies might be called of the “traditional” or “heritage” type, those mysteries that have puzzled mankind for a long time without making much headway as subjects for immediate scientific consideration. A quote about ghosts from Samuel Johnson sums up the perpetual state of traditional anomalies in general:
It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it s11(From Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson ) Quotes on Ghosts: the Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page..
More than two centuries have passed since Dr. Johnson’s time and nothing has changed. Popular interest continues but expert opinion echoes stock conclusions and the subject attracts negligible scientific examination. Anomalies relevant to active scientific paradigms emerge, receive intensive attention as acute irritants, and provoke rapid change even in fundamental paradigms. These newcomers bypass traditional anomalies that continue to go begging at the gate. A broader paradigm covers the traditional types, a sort of basic rationalism that explains them away without needing to be overly specific or even rigorously rational, just adequate to justify setting them aside as not really important.
The prospect for any traditional anomaly becoming a subject of scientific interest looks dim. Few—negligibly few—establishment scientists hasten to undertake such research, seek funding for it, teach it, publish it, or speak up in its defense as an intriguing possibility. As legitimate topics of science these subjects simply do not exist. Old prejudice and institutionalized habit can account for some of this disinterest, so can the structural constraints that confine research to normal science within accepted paradigms and exclude any possibility not linked by clear steps to sanctioned interests. When a scientist puts traditional anomalies in their perceived place, they belong on the outside, in or beyond the fringes of science and for the bemusement of laymen, but not a part of scientific business. Perhaps a more revealing name, given their status, would be “orphaned” or “exiled” anomalies.
As easy as it is to blame this rejection on hubris or hidebound conservatism, such ad hominem explanations provide more consolation than rightful understanding. Science is a human enterprise and subject to the shortcomings that humans bring to high-level, competitive work where egos and agendas get in the way of dispassionate reason. Science builds no pristine holy temple. Its drivers can be funding and career advancement rather than inherent interest or pure curiosity; it fails and takes wrong turns and violates its own standards. Some scientists even fake data and lie in their published papers, under the ongoing pressure to succeed and appear right. But science also cleans up its own mess, and its self-correcting qualities are one of its greatest assets. The pursuit of traditional anomalies may aspire to scientific credentials, in truth as well as in appearance, but most efforts languish at a rudimentary level if they progress even that far. A lot has been said and much done to promote the reality of certain anomalous claims and suppositional causes that underlie them, but much of this effort has produced, even in charitable terms, ineffective and often counterproductive results. Scientists may be guilty as charged of unfair rejection, but for explaining the low status of traditional anomalies, the accusing finger points back just as legitimately toward the anomalies themselves and their proponents.
A look at the public image of anomalies today shows a parade of phony psychics, TV shows exploiting dubious hauntings, and a man in a monkey suit pretending to be Bigfoot. Poltergeist manifestations may resolve into the tricks of a deceiving or self-deceived teenager that nevertheless fool even well-intentioned investigators. Proponents often accept and advocate theories of astounding human powers or explicit alien motives with far more eagerness than they establish adequate evidence to support such claims, in violation of the basic rules of science and in a practice that bemuses outsiders as if they have overheard nonsense discussed in Neverland. Such antics may provide entertainment for the masses but the serious specialists these subjects need most to attract see only ample reason to run in the opposite direction.
Some of the worst offenders among both claimants and proponents flock to ufology. Charlatans, opportunists, and pathological liars compete to tell the most exciting tale then lead their following as far astray as the leash of human credibility will stretch without snapping. Whether the lure has been contactee yarns, exotic conspiracy theories, or alleged “inside scoops,” UFO adherents have demonstrated the remarkable elasticity of their credulity time and again. Ufology draws enthusiastic and committed followers, but much of this energy drives the field in the wrong direction. Ufological discourse rings with the tinny noise of loud but insubstantial claims. Even an honest proponent often seizes on any claim that confirms his or her beliefs and rebuffs any truth that contradicts them—the reaction against the Phoenix flares being but one example. Some of the most visible proponents of UFOs tarnish the reputation of their field by asserting too much and proving too little, with the result that no one with a critical mind would want to join this club.
Though anomalies suffer by the company they keep, inherent shortcomings undercut their scientific credibility in even more harmful ways. A hard-to-study, hard-to-believe characteristic of traditional anomalies is their double-sided nature. Sometimes they seem purely physical, like the UFO that appears on radar and in front of multiple witnesses, or the psi phenomena tested in laboratory experiments. At other times anomalies appear thoroughly strange, completely outside the scope of rational understanding, as when UFOs behave like immaterial objects or objects fly about a room during a poltergeist haunting. To further confound the situation, an anomaly may not appear as either the event kind or as the experience kind; rather it often manifests as both at the same time. In practical terms the same anomaly presents a spectrum of phenomena from one occurrence to another, and even during the course of a single manifestation. Equally trustworthy witness accounts support both descriptions. The scientist who can grasp the physical side will likely shun the extranormal elements as entirely outside the bounds of possibility even when the physical and the strange seem an inseparable part of the same package. The strangeness also reflects badly on the more accessible phenomena and raises suspicions that something is wrong with the whole package. The reasonable course for a sensible scientist, then, is to blame the mercurial accounts on mistaken or dishonest witnesses and drop the entire mess.
An even stronger motivation to avoid entanglement is an engrained sense that the case for traditional anomalies is embarrassingly weak. Much of the evidence is anecdotal, questionable, or contradictory. These anomalies tend to manifest in natural settings at haphazard intervals and so rarely that they are often once-in-a-lifetime occurrences. Such appearances do not lend themselves well to laboratory dissection, instrumental examination, or recurrence and predictability. Researchers have little or no control over the phenomenon and have to work according to its schedule, to grab glimpses of fleeting and unexpected events as best they can. More often the researcher observes nothing and has to work with secondhand data from less-than-ideal sources. A defender of the reality of these phenomena seldom possesses evidence robust enough to stand on its own, but instead resorts to a sort of special pleading that mainstream scientists would not tolerate for any other subject. Hynek spoke of the UFO phenomenon as “elusive,” while the lab work that ESP experiments make possible produces only occasional results and marginally significant statistical positives. The stories of anomalous events are often vivid and striking but the scientific substance is invariably underwhelming, difficult or impossible to verify or duplicate and not of a type to weigh and measure or to demonstrate in the classroom. Scientists want convincing evidence that anomalies are worthy of their attention before they invest time and energy on such claims. What the anomalist offers is disappointment, a case that lacks the force to change the rigorous and doubting minds of busy scientists. They expect the anomalist to bring them proof, while the anomalist wants the scientists to discover the real phenomenon underlying the anecdotal evidence—and so the circle goes round and round to arrive nowhere.
Another strike against traditional anomalies comes from some ready conventional escapes available to the doubter. Folklorists have a cultural model to explain extranormal encounters—prior exposure to folk narratives predisposes an individual to associate, for example, ghosts with graveyards. Once in that situation a triggering event, like a beam of moonlight on a wisp of fog, leads the witness to imagine a ghost while the resulting fear stamps an emotional verisi-militude on the experience. The witness shapes a story based on cultural patterns and confirms the traditional belief by describing another incident of the expected type s12Honko, Lauri. “Memorates and the Study of Folk Belief.” Journal of the Folklore Institute 1 (1969), 5-19.. Psychologists have a battery of explanations for seemingly strange events, like confabulation and false memories to account for alien-abduction experiences s13See Steven Jay Lynn et al., “Rendering the Implausible Plausible: Narrative Construction, Suggestion, and Memory.” Joseph de Rivera and Theodore R. Sarbin, eds. Believed-In Imaginings:The Narrative Construction of Reality (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1998), 123-143.. An organized skeptical movement attacks efforts to promote traditional anomalies, the foolish and the scholarly alike, as examples of pseudoscience misleading the public. As their criticism of UFO cases has shown, the skeptics have honed their skills over the years and their explanations offer a plausible means to empty the strangeness out of the anomaly and return it to line as just another conventional occurrence. Besides exploding prominent UFO cases, writers for Skeptical Inquirer routinely discredit psychics, find fault with ESP experiments, and offer plausible explanations for the creatures of cryptozoology, most recently identifying many sightings of sasquatch/Bigfoot as the result of witnesses seeing a bear on its hind legs s14Nickell, Joe. “Bigfoot Lookalikes: Tracking Hairy Man-Beasts.” Skeptical Inquirer 37/5 (Sept.-Oct. 2013), 12-15.. Scientists seldom need to break their intellectual stride to account for traditional anomalies because these ready-made explanations do the job for them. The answers match scientists’ own predispositions and sound plausible; and even if one answer proves wrong, as in the Exeter case, the skeptics score more hits than misses and pile up a record of successes to reinforce the belief that all the answers to traditional anomalies have already been written, with no mysteries left over to obligate further attention.
The laboratory scientist finds traditional anomalies uncongenial because they are rare and unexpected occurrences in the real world, where variables multiply beyond control and much can happen out-side the researcher’s expertise. Even the wisest experts within their own fields can become babes in the woods when confronted with the complexities of reality. One classic example is the case of Clever Hans, the horse with the ability to add. His owner honestly thought the horse could tap out the sums and other witnesses agreed, until the right investigator understood that not arithmetical ability but the unconscious nodding of the owner guided Hans to the right answers. In other instances a psychic may have abilities that baffle the researcher but prove transparent to a professional magician. One cautionary example of how labyrinthine a real-world investigation can become concerns the advanced scientific knowledge of the star Sirius supposedly held by the Dogon people of western Africa. Marcel Griaule, a respected anthropologist, studied the Dogon for many years and learned that their traditional mythology attributed a heavy companion star to Sirius, even though Western astronomers did not discover this companion till the 19th century, or understand that it was a dense dwarf star until still later. Here seemed to be the perfect smoking gun for ancient-astronaut contact, and Griaule’s findings appeared as such in the UFO literature. The reality turned out to be far less clear-cut. No other anthropologist could confirm Griaule’s findings, and a probable explanation emerged that Griaule became friendly with his main informant and shared newspaper reports about astronomers’ knowledge of Sirius with him. This informant internalized the new information and returned it to the anthropologist as part of traditional lore. A new myth supplemented the old and Griaule jumped to the conclusion that this knowledge originated in the distant past rather than through his own conversations. In the give and take of two friends talking the anthropologist stepped out of his shell of scientific reserve and contaminated his findings unawares. On this error another proof of ancient astronauts lived and died s15Temple, Robert K. G. The Sirius Mystery (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976); Walter E. A. van Beek, “Dogon Restudied.” Current Anthropology 12 (1992), 139-158..
Almost everything scientists see and hear about traditional anomalies, and certainly the most relied-upon sources, tell the same story: These anomalies are not reputable; in fact they are not even factual. A congenial belief becomes received wisdom after enough repetitions, so that scientists now take for granted that anomalies lack basic credibility without even needing to investigate the issue. Long and deep familiarity with anomalous subjects may reveal the possibility of something genuinely puzzling, but only to those of us who have invested the effort to find it, and who are willing to accept the degree of uncertainty inherent in anecdotal evidence. For the scientist used to black and white and suspicious of any shade of gray, the disreputable proponents, weak evidence, impossible strangeness, and alternative explanations for anomalistic claims answer enough questions to close the book on these mysteries. Perhaps scientists need a step of faith to accept their truths, but anomalists need, if not a leap, at least a broader stretch; and the odds of hard reasoning favor the smaller commitment of faith to the larger.
Can traditional anomalies find a future within scientific inquiry? A negative answer seems hard to avoid, yet at the same time, where else is there to go? Philosophy, theology, or humanistic scholarship answers some questions but mainly about metaphysics or means of human thought and representation. Psychology and sociology address human participation in anomalies but largely in reductive ways that stress individual and collective behavior yet say nothing about the anomaly itself. Some explanations for anomalistic phenomena may rely on unconventional mental processes, but answers of this sort still bring the question back to the anomaly as phenomenon. The anomalist starts with a basic tenet that a phenomenon exists and wants to know what causes it. The phenomenon may not be materialistic but we expect a good substitute, something unknown and remarkable unto itself and not just some variant of garden-variety physical or mental activity. I think most of us expect traditional anomalies to have an independent reality of their own, as matter, energy, extraordinary manifestation of mind, or some as-yet unrecognized but equally significant facet of the experiential world. The anomalist cannot rest until that belief or hypothesis achieves its proof, but that proof requires the imprimatur of science, the most successful by far of all of humankind’s means for under-standing the natural world.
This situation leaves anomalists mired in a dilemma: We need science to make any headway toward removing traditional anomalies from long-standing tradition and popular belief into acceptance and high-powered investigation. At the same time science is dead set against these anomalies, for reasons that range from prejudicial misunderstanding to sound rational judgment. No end of this stalemate seems anywhere in sight. At a very minimum we need a scientific study of anomalies to weed out unusual conventional events, mistaken identities, and hoaxes so that we can escape the confusion of false leads and distinguish the core anomalous phenomena, if any exist. Then the real study process can begin, but science will not oblige except to issue blanket denials, and we should entertain no illusions that any event or change of heart is likely to end the current stagnation. Anomalists are left pretty much on their own to eke out what little research they can manage, most of it on their own time and resources, with little hope for breakthroughs, rewards, respect, or even tolerance. The picture is bleak; yet it is not entirely gloomy.
One point we need to remember and emphasize: Human experiential testimony is not worthless. Over the years meteors or space-junk reentries have inspired lurid tales of spaceships with lighted windows flying at treetop level, and skeptics have jumped on these examples as proof positive that eyewitnesses are unreliable. These examples warn of a real problem. Witness reports are often full of misperceptions, errors, and distortions; subject to social, media, and cultural influences; prone to rethinking and reshaping to satisfy social expectations and personal desires. Human observation, memory, and description are fallible instruments for conveying the truth about an event, and the extreme examples of error can be truly extreme. Yet those same reentry cases so popular with the skeptics actually show a surprisingly positive image of witness capabilities when taken as a whole. The Air Force received 78 reports of the Zond-IV space probe reentry in 1968. Most informants gave accurate descriptions of the event, and when distortions crept in they were usually minor and predictable, like the misuse of the term “formation” for the lights, or inaccurate estimates of distance and speed. Only a few witnesses submitted extreme accounts that bore little resemblance to the actual stimulus of several burning lights a hundred miles high over the earth. The observers who adhered to the truth or committed minor deviations far outnumbered the small minority that turned a conventional event into a spectacular “UFO” sighting s16Hartmann, William K. “Processes of Perception, Conception, and Reporting,” in Condon, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects , 571-577; Donald H. Menzel. “UFOs—The Modern Myth,” in UFOs: A Scientific Debate , ed. Carl Sagan and Thornton Page (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), 155-156..
pA striking example of witness fidelity to truth appears in the chronicle of John of Worcester for a February night in 1130 or 1131 A.D. A little after midnight two priests and two clerks were leaving church when they saw a bright light.
The object from which the bright light came was covered with a white cloud. For short periods it would emerge from the cloud as though it was moving upwards, and then after a short interval it would reenter the cloud to the fear and amazement of the observers. Its colour was a blend of those of a full moon and of bright flames. In shape and size it was like a small pyramid, broad at the bottom and narrow at the top. The witnesses… declared that a fairly small plank, stretching upwards a long-way was seen to stand on the cloud in which the brilliant object had been….
Other people arrived in response to the outcries of the witnesses but saw only the fading remnants. The writer heard from a number of other witnesses to this event s17Chronicle of John of Worcester . Transl. P. McGurk (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 199..
A large meteor, generating its own cloud as it disintegrates or alternately lighting and being hidden behind broken ordinary clouds, creates just such a sight as the chronicler describes. His medieval world-view contained no modern concept of meteors and provided him with no ready vocabulary to draw on, yet he detailed the observation with such accuracy that the modern reader recognizes the object for what it was. The text is plain and spare, devoid of beliefs and interpretations. Some of the description is clumsy in its struggle to convey an unfamiliar and amazing sight, but what stands out is how factual the account reads. Here and in other examples a witness confronted with spectacular and strange events drops all attempts to force the observation into a prefigured belief or theory. The strangest sights seem most likely to “clear the mind wonderfully” of preconceptions and compel a careful, factual account.
David Hufford has led an effort to appreciate the value of experiential accounts through his advocacy of an experience-centered approach to their study. In The Terror That Comes in the Night (1982) he builds a convincing case that not all extranormal experiences originate in a culture-mediated misinterpretation of conventional events. His research on the Old Hag experience in Newfoundland and other cases of supernatural assault around the world demonstrates that the phenomenology of Mara attack, the sense of paralysis and suffocation by a malevolent entity, is universal and not attributable to ideas gleaned from tradition. A genuine experience gave rise to the tradition, rather than the other way around. The most likely basis is sleep paralysis accompanied by hallucination, but while local traditions interpret the experience, the genesis of many phenomenological particulars remains uncertain s18Hufford, David J. The Terror That Comes in the Night (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), x, xvi-xix, 1-11, 15, 25, 48-53, 248-249.. A considerable literature has followed Hufford’s pioneering work in tracing traditions to experiential foundations. For instance some monsters of mythology may owe their origin to ancient peoples discovering fossil skeletons, while religious traditions of visits to heaven echo the descriptions of near-death experiences. Experiences of sleep paralysis and Mara attack appear to inform some, perhaps many cases of UFO abduction s19Mayor, Adrienne. The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Gregory Shushan. Conceptions of the Afterlife in Early Civilizations: Universalism, Constructivism and Near-Death Experience (New York: Continuum International, 2009); Susan A. Clancy. Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 35-36..
An experience-centered approach offers a valuable foundation for the methodology to explore traditional anomalies. The success of the approach further affirms that witness testimony can provide reliable data for study. At least we have a starting-place, but where do we go from here? Solitude and isolation inside or outside of the academic community limits the chances an anomalist has for making any progress. The opportunity to share findings, discuss ideas, and participate in a communal effort provides the sort of nurturing environment essential for success and long-term engagement in any field of study; otherwise effort and interest are pretty likely to wither and die.
No institutional berths will open up for anomalists, but another possibility is to establish a separate, parallel scientific discipline with the high standards of recognized science but without its inhospitable negativity. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée proposed the creation of an “invisible college” in the wake of the Condon Committee fiasco of the late 1960s. This government-funded investigation of UFOs at the University of Colorado raised high hopes for a fair and objective study but collapsed as the leadership ignored evidence to arrive at a preordained conclusion. Ufologists were left to pick up the pieces, but the idea of establishing a network of able and interested individuals to carry out quality research offered a new hope to fulfill the promise that the Condon study betrayed. The outcome was disappointing on the whole, but the plan remains a good one and even now not all is lost. The National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP) exemplifies an oasis of excellence amid the desert of mediocrity and scientific mirages that surround current ufology. NARCAP brings together associates with extensive expertise to study hard data and restrict their conclusions to the available evidence, without any commitment to an explanatory agenda s20(NARCAP website). This organization establishes a model that could benefit the study of any anomaly.
Recruiting participants might not be the mission impossible it appears at first glance. In my own experience I have found over the years that a surprising number of academic faculty members have a personal UFO story to tell. I heard those stories because they knew of my interest; otherwise they had seldom confided these experiences to anyone. Such experiences remain compartmentalized and hidden, but might motivate active participation given a safe and friendly outlet to peers with similar interests. My small sample of academics with anomalous experiences may extrapolate into significant numbers if all such secrets come into the open, and suggests a latent curiosity that may recruit the staff for an invisible college some day. Most of these academics have not been scientists but anomalies still attract even high-profile scientists. The stellar roster of the Society for Psychical Research will not likely repeat itself, while Hynek’s position as the Blue Book consultant on UFOs during the 1950s and 1960s was unique. Yet Harvard psychiatrist John Mack took an intensive interest in abductions, and Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize in 1993 for inventing the polymerase chain reaction process, has gone public about having an abduction-like experience of his own:
Some people have experiences that are so strange, they attribute them to alien intervention of some kind…. I had one of those experiences myself. To say it was alien is to assume a lot. But to say it was weird is to understate it. It was extraordinarily weird…. I wouldn't try to publish a scientific paper about these things because I can’t do any experiments…. It’s what science calls anecdotal, because it only happened in a way that you can’t reproduce. But it happened s2145 Mullis, Kary. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 131, 136..
He did not accept the alien interpretation but his statements about the factuality of the experience and the inability of conventional science to address it ring true for the anomaly experience in general.
Accepting the possibility of an invisible college, some desirable contributions from its members come to mind. If the anomalist must work with anecdotal testimony as primary data, that testimony needs to be of the highest possible quality. The witness of an anomaly is most likely to be a layman with no special training as an observer but perhaps a great deal to say in terms of cultural interpretations and beliefs. Much trouble often results from this mixture. The accurate reports will likely mingle with the distorted ones, and one of the great dangers in collecting anomaly reports is a selection bias that favors the collector’s expectations. A ufologist takes an interest only when observers categorize an object in the sky as a UFO, or allow the ufologist to interpret the object in those terms. This bias can lead to a concentration of distorted cases in the file to the exclusion of more conventional descriptions; so for example, hearing only the extreme “UFO” reports from the Zond reentry gives a very different—and very wrong—impression than the more accurate reports. A lack of training handicaps many UFO investigators and leads them into errors. Basic forensic skills would improve interviews with witnesses and guarantee the gathering of necessary basic data. An anthropologist’s training in ethnographic fieldwork would prepare the investigator to gather a thorough account but also to be aware of the cultural background and recognize the narrator’s personal slant in relating the events.
A further need is awareness of the mythology surrounding anomalies. UFOs fly in an especially dense matrix of beliefs, assumptions, and suppositions that influence observation, conception, interpretation, communication, and reception. In short, eyewitness testimony passes through too many prisms of cultural expectation to ever allow a direct view of the event, with even more distorting twists and turns to follow as the report passes from person to person. How the witness understands the event is a matter valuable in its own right, but investigators familiar with the concepts, explanatory traditions, and stylized vocabulary used to speak of the subject possess some insight to distinguish cultural elements imposed on the phenomenon and separate them from the properties of the phenomenon itself.
The college would benefit if its scope expanded to include the greatest possible breadth and depth of expertise. As the earlier examples demonstrated, the answer to a problem often hinges on one individual whose knowledge serves as the key that fits where all others fail. A real-world problem in all its prickly complexity demands a maximum variety of approaches, perspectives, and insights. We anomalists may not like those experts or agree with their conclusions, but we need to swallow our pride and invite their help. They may have, or have access to, the very expertise that can solve a problem that baffles the rest of us.
Beyond these few rather obvious preliminaries must follow a meaningful research program if the field of “anomalistics” is to make any progress. This research may fare better on the “field science” model rather than the “laboratory science” model, given that data-gathering for anomalies is opportunistic, but at least the study of anomalies within a conventional framework would not have to be the complete abandonment of scientific integrity that some critics would undoubtedly brand it. The means and methods and goals of such studies go beyond the scope of this paper, and I have already wandered too far. All I mean to suggest is a scientific future for research on traditional anomalies stands a fighting chance, if enough people have the interest and the organization to give it a chance.
This discussion has so far skirted the deepest problems posed by the experience anomaly. Its high-strangeness aspect is the least congenial to conventional science yet the essence of interest for anomalists. The puzzlement this strangeness begets, how far removed it seems from conventional phenomena, raises questions of whether science with its materialistic and Cartesian bias can provide meaningful answers to manifestations that may transcend accepted physics or understandings of mind. Quite a few investigators have agreed and turned off the scientific road onto unconventional paths. John Mack accepted that UFO abductions were physical events but paid limited attention to that aspect of the experience. He focused his interest on the messages that abductees reported, messages of peace, environmental concern, and a possible future apocalypse that Mack, like Jung, interpreted as a transformational signal redirecting human materialism toward a new age of harmony for man, nature, and whatever Other the aliens represented s22Bullard, The Myth and Mystery of UFOs, 48, 179, 214..
In this case the scientist ufologists got was not the scientist they wanted. Their interests in machinery and spacemen were disappointed by Mack’s turn toward “mysticism,” but he was not the first or the only thinker in this vein. UFOs have inspired many considerations that the purpose or earthly effect of the phenomenon has more importance than the nature of the phenomenon itself. Jacques Vallée speculated that some unknown intelligence—extraterrestrial, chthonic, interdimensional—or perhaps some mind-less power, presented anomalous visions as a kind of cosmic thermostat to regulate the course of human development. John Keel introduced ultraterrestrials existing on different wavelengths from the everyday world but able to modulate in and out of this world for motives that appeared primarily demonic, and methods that alternately lured and frightened off, led to wisdom or drove to madness the people with whom these entities interacted. Others have noted the relation between abductions and shamanic initiations and proposed that abductions serve to “shamanize” the planet. Whether the instigator is outside or inside our minds, the process initiates growing numbers of people to new patterns of thought and promises to correct the destructive tendencies of humanity worldwide s23Bullard, 48..
An approach that overleaps the physical mystery to address its meaning re-centers the inquiry on the human condition. Perhaps more people find that issue compelling than where aliens come from, what they want, and how they conspire with the government, matters that so preoccupy materialistic ufologists. Another objection argues that UFOs can’t really be a scientific issue because science has already concluded that aliens have no possibility of traveling here over interstellar distances, and UFOs as space vehicles work only in a science-fiction realm where the hard facts of physics do not apply. UFOs have a reality or at least an effect, but since they lie fundamentally outside of science, the argument implies, only some alternative approach can study them.
I will not belittle efforts to find meanings in anomalistic events, or the argument that UFOs make poor sense as alien vehicles, but I think both approaches suffer from similar faults. Both impose an ornate structure of suppositions onto limited and selective evidence. When meanings matter foremost, the goal is to develop a system of thoughts and symbols that associate as many facts and ideas as possible, while the initial stimulus gets left behind as a lowly pretext. The anomaly consequently provides little support to the system but no matter—the system counts because it offers solutions for human problems and comes to stand on its own, a thing to discuss and dispute with little reference to the aliens who supposedly introduced the message. The witchcraft theory of disease succeeds because it draws together many seemingly unrelated observations and suspicions, explains everything in a coherent system, and provides a plan of action to solve genuine problems—stop the witch, stop the sickness. What works in social and psychological terms does not, in this case, work in natural terms where infectious microorganisms are the cause. Systems of meaning become an exercise in magical thinking, coherent and rich with answers, but self-referencing and largely cut off from factual roots that may differ markedly from the accepted terms of the system. The same can be said for searching out parallel phenomena like fairies, demons, and apparitions, then unifying them with UFOs to conclude that some yet larger mystery encompasses all things strange. This unified-field theory may be correct. It solves some problems and should not be dismissed out of hand, but the same structural flaw besets it. Its solution for one mystery becomes other mysteries drawn into a system of meanings where one part confirms another, but no outside evidence confirms the parts. Such speculative theories move the discussion sideways, not upward.
The argument against treating an anomaly scientifically because it manifests unscientific properties confuses the phenomenon with its interpretation. In the case of UFOs almost everyone understands them as alien spaceships. This meaning seems right, but it imposes a mythology onto the phenomenon that is not inevitably true. An attack on UFOs as unscientific is really an objection to the extraterrestrial hypothesis and says nothing about the phenomenon. Much of the discourse about UFOs, whether from the materialists or the mystics, the scientific hawks or the anti-science doves, takes place within the framework of an explanatory system that grows, controls the course of much debate, and often exceeds its evidential basis. All too often one speculation builds on another and beliefs have no more support than other beliefs, in a process that truly steers the subject into unscientific territory; but the fault does not necessarily belong to the phenomenon. The example of ufology should serve as a cautionary tale against too much meaning derived from too little fact, and a warning that in theory-making it is better not to pick a winner too soon.
Jerome Clark has said that unless we find radically new ways to study anomalies, we will continue to spin our wheels for decades to come as we have for decades past. To that thought I nod a solemn “amen.” The study of anomalies has to contend with many obstacles imposed from without, but much of the trouble comes from within, and a reformed approach may overcome some of the self-defeating practices of the field:
We need to make a right beginning. It requires the establishment of a sound footing that distinguishes between phenomenon and explanation, and one that emphasizes learning the facts before becoming preoccupied with explanations, theories, and meanings. At least part of the anomaly problem is physical in appearance and amenable to conventional scientific investigation. In any case establishing the existence of a phenomenon has to come first, and here is where science enters as a necessary preliminary to understanding. Most UFOs turn out to be conventional phenomena, and it is a safe bet that most anomalous occurrences will turn out to be mistaken identities, unusual conventional events, or results of aberrant thoughts or behavior. Clear away what astronomers, psychologists, and the rest can explain in conventional terms and a purified sample will remain, the true nuggets of gold separated from the heaps of slag. This sample offers the clearest chance to discern repetitions and patterns that might provide solid clues to an underlying phenomenon—and incidentally, provoke curiosity among people otherwise inclined to dismiss the subject.
Even the high-strangeness cases often mix both physical and paraphysical properties. As long as the anomaly offers something to observe, something for instruments to detect and analyze, it can be a scientific problem and we have a chance to learn about the phenomenon, no matter if the manifestation comes from a parallel universe or outer space, or whether the entities arrive to save mankind or just to empty the trash. Even where strangeness passes beyond accepted norms the means and methods of science still have value—after all, science has chased invisible particles like atoms and “ghost” particles like neutrons and neutrinos with success. Where there’s a will, the means often follow. The will to study may be lacking, but the chance to learn about an anomaly through scientific observation is at least a possibility, and the most likely hope for progress. The advantage of scientific findings is that they count as universal currency, widely accepted except when Congress meets climate change, or among a few romantics and mystics whose heads are not made for these times. But without a scientific foundation the explanatory discourse about anomalies remains a belief system that wins converts because the advocate is eloquent or the ideas hold emotional appeal or some other such questionable reason. As St. Paul wrote to the Hebrews (11:1), “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” True enough in religion, perhaps, but the truth we search for in anomalies demands fidelity to their observational foundation, to a scientific approach and not to hope or faith.
Of course most discoveries that suggest prematurity or could lead to revolution never fulfill that promise. They are simply wrong—remember cold fusion? This fact points to a personal danger in adhering to the ideals of scientific inquiry, a risk of losing something we hold dear. Those ideals oblige the practitioner to follow the evidence, and if necessary, to surrender even the most cherished belief if the evidence fails to support it. This eventuality is especially hard on a human level. We have all devoted time and energy, invested thought and labor, even staked reputation and pride in the pursuit of anomalous phenomena. Was it all a waste of time, a fool’s errand? We have to allow that possibility; and for that reason, I feel a frosty chill whenever a skeptic solves a favorite UFO case. I still believe that there’s something to this anomaly business, and still keep a list of UFO cases that seem like inexplicable examples of an unknown phenomenon; but I am also mindful that a year ago, Exeter would have been on that list.
A final thought of encouragement worth remembering: If a genuine anomalous phenomenon hides within the masses of reports, that truth cannot hide forever. If the anomaly is real, some cases will resist conventional solution because they have no conventional solution. The truth will come out in time as long as efforts persist to find it. Even if our role is no more than to serve as curators of Charles Fort’s damned, at least the anomalies will not be forgotten. If they all turn out to be mirages, they will still serve the scholarly needs of historians, psychologists, sociologists, folklorists, religion scholars, and practitioners of just about every other “ology” in academia, if only to map the errors and oddities of human belief through the ages.
But the universe would be a dull place if we already knew it from corner to corner and had nothing new to find. I’ll still bet the lunch money that we have only begun to be amazed, and anomalous experiences vouchsafe us a glimpse of wonders to come.