A nice, broad-ranging history-summary, with some passing comments about how we decide what's scientific and what's not.

The story in the East Oregonian, a small paper, ran with the words ‘saucer-like aircraft’. But, when the Associated Press picked up the story, the description got even more garbled. What Arnold said he’d seen were flying craft shaped like a crescent with ‘wings’ that swept back in an arc. Somehow the AP wire story misinterpreted Arnold’s description, leading The Chicago Sun to run a story with a spectacular frontpage headline: ‘Supersonic Flying Saucers Sighted By Idaho Pilot.’ The Chicago Sun piece triggered an avalanche. Within six months, the flying saucer story ran in more than 140 newspapers across the US. Even more remarkable, an epidemic of flying-saucer sightings began to sweep the nation. By the end of summer in 1947, ‘flying saucers’ were officially a thing.

A classic case of going viral and nobody bothered to check. An entire psychological phenomenon spawned by a misquote.

One of the most important lessons I learned from the Arnold affair is the power of a story. Arnold saw the first flying saucer, and his sighting begins a critical thread in the public’s willingness to go along on evidence-free rides of thinking about aliens and UFOs. It was where the idea of technologically advanced, interstellar life here on Earth right now enters the public consciousness as a major phenomenon. But almost as quickly as UFOs appear, so does a UFO culture that tilts towards the incredulous and the paranoid, marked by a willingness to take anything as evidence. Of course, one could find many individuals taking an interest in UFOs while keeping their sceptical sensibilities, who just genuinely wanted to know what was going on. But, as a cultural phenomenon, public discussion of UFOs would come to be dominated by questionable evidence, conspiracy theories and outright hoaxes... What’s important about the Roswell story is how loose even the idea of evidence becomes.

For a time, I’d become enamoured of von Däniken’s book Chariots of the Gods (1968) and its claims that many archaeological mysteries could best be explained by ancient aliens who had once come to visit Earth. That time ended when, one evening, I chanced upon a PBS documentary called The Case of the Ancient Astronauts (1977). It presented interviews with scientists who had actually spent their lives studying the subjects of von Däniken’s ancient alien speculations. The simplicity with which hard-won archaeological evidence trumped von Däniken’s claims left me both angry (I felt duped by his book) and exhilarated. The establishment of proper standards for what counts as evidence is what set the archaeologists apart from von Däniken’s wishful fantasies. The experience of that stark difference ended my own interest in UFOs and visiting aliens of any historical epoch.

Yeah, likewise pretty much. I wouldn't discourage any younger readers from the pseudoscience stuff because it's definitely got an interesting, inspirational edge to it... I'd just point them in the direction of the proper science as well.

With the giggle factor receding for the scientific search for life, where does that leave UFOs and UAPs? There, the waters remain muddied. It is a good thing that pilots feel they can report sightings without fear of reprisal as a matter of air safety and national defence. And an open, transparent and agnostic investigation of UAPs could offer a masterclass in how science goes about its business of knowing rather than just believing.

#UFOs
#Space
#Sociology
#Psychology
#Politics

https://aeon.co/essays/how-ufos-almost-killed-the-search-for-life-in-the-universe