The severity of military orders is certainly a major incentive to secrecy. In addition, the history of the U.S. media shows unsettling developments, not least of which is penetration by the intelligence community. By the early 1950s, the CIA had cozy relationships with most major media executives in America. The most significant of these were with the
The result is effective news management. Without question, the mainstream media have supported government propaganda about UFOs. From 1947 onward, while the air force worked to remove the UFO problem from the public domain, the media helped it to ridicule the subject. The release of every major air force and CIA statement about UFOs has, without exception, been met by uncritical media acquiescence. It is true that the decade of the 1990s brought a different kind of media openness about UFOs than existed in decades, due to the recognition that money can be made. The net result, however, is a very mixed bag. At the same time that such television networks as
SCIENTIFIC QUESTIONS
In the conclusion of the University of Colorado Report on UFOs, physicist Edward U. Condon asked with evident annoyance, if aliens are really here, why haven’t they presented themselves? The whole question, he wrote, “would be settled in a few minutes if a flying saucer were to land on the lawn of a hotel where a convention of the American Physical Society was in progress, and its occupants were to emerge and present a special paper to the assembled physicists....”7
If there are aliens here, they do not appear to be interested in announcing themselves to us. Is it yet possible to prove the issue? Are there hypotheses that can be tested? Can “believers” somehow produce the proof that skeptics continually demand?
What would constitute proof? Many people have videotaped UFOs. Some are hoaxes, while others appear to be genuine. Is it possible to prove one is genuine? What about consistent witness testimony? Perhaps persuasive in a court of law, but provable in the court of science? What about radar/visual cases, such as the Redmond, Oregon, case described earlier, in which a UFO was observed visually and tracked on radar? Certainly compelling to someone who was there, but... proof?
We must ask not only what constitutes proof, but who would be authorized to deem it so? Certainly, an acknowledgment of aliens would have to come from a major spokesperson of official culture—a message from the president, perhaps. In other words, the matter may be more political than scientific. UFO evidence derived from a grassroots level is unlikely to survive its inevitable conflict with official culture (fifty years of failure have borne this out). An acknowledgment about the reality of the UFO phenomenon will only occur when the official culture deems it worthwhile or necessary to make it. Don’t hold your breath.
As a result, the easiest thing to do with UFO evidence is to ignore it, which is what most people do. Much harder is to confront it honestly, whether this means accepting or debunking it. That is, accepting into one’s worldview something as “far out” as extraterrestrials is not easy for many people, especially when one’s official culture finds little more than ridicule in the subject. The problem with most skeptical arguments against alien visitation is that, quite simply, they fail to look at the UFO evidence. They appear plausible at first, but usually fall apart when presented with a few good reports. (When all else fails, a committed skeptic can always retreat to the final line of defense: claiming the event was hoaxed.)
The most common of the theoretical complaints are:
