SUMMARY

For more than 60 years the primary approach by the media and scientific communities to the subject of UFOs and Flying Saucers has been based on pseudo-science. Proclamations and attacks, often given the appearance of being scientific, have been launched at every aspect of the phenomena. Despite an enormous array of real evidence and data, we have been treated to false claims, false reasoning, bias and ignorance. The basic rules of pseudo-science have been followed, including especially that there are no good reasons to present solid scientific information, that absence of evidence in the hands of the writers and proclaimers is proof of absence of such evidence, that everything claimed by a debunker must be true, that everything claimed by a believer is false, that one must denigrate “believers” and “buffs”, but accept all attacks as legitimate.

NEED TO LOOK AT EVIDENCE

Most graduate students are taught to begin a new research project with a literature search. See what has already been published before doing ones own work. No sense reinventing the wheel and certainly don’t make claims that can be destroyed by those more familiar with relevant past publications. Yet one of the most common and distressing aspects of the pseudo-scientific anti-Ufological literature is the failure of the pseudo-scientists to do their homework before putting their mouths or computers in gear. I am referring to evidence about large scale studies of sightings, landings, abductions, multiple witness radar visual cases, saucer crashes, government cover-ups, etc. As somebody very much concerned with advanced nuclear and space technology, I have been appalled by the silly pseudo-scientific statements that have been made about space travel, high acceleration travel and interstellar travel. As the original civilian investigator of the Roswell Incident, and a long-term investigator of the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, I am equally appalled at the unscientific arguments made against these two bell-weather cases. The common features of these attacks include:

A. A failure to look at the literature that is available about all of these.

B. An unwillingness to recognize that the “specific details of how something is to be done” are very much more important than broad general notions about the laws of physics.

C. An enormous arrogance in thinking that if certain things were true or certain technologies were real, these all-wise pseudo-scientists would know about them. They don’t, so the notions must not be true. None of this is to say that there hasn’t been a lot of pro-UFO garbage published as well. But Ufologists tend to be critical of their own kind. The pseudo-scientific anti-Ufologists never seem to want to critique another debunker no matter how false the claims. They repeat the claims rather than pointing out the fallacies.

Originally posted by m0r1arty
Whilst there may be the odd person who claims knowledge that later gets disproven on the sceptical end of the spectrum - the vast majority of ignorance is weighted on the believers end.

The prestigious American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Professional society of the aerospace industry, stated:

"The opposite conclusion could have been drawn from its content, namely that a phenomenon with such a high rate of unexplained cases (about 30%) should arouse sufficient scientific curiosity to continue its study."

Originally posted by JimOberg
When ufology was half its current age, I won an international science prize for this essay (Stanton never forgave me for preventing his essay from winning). Has anything changed for the better in the ensuing decades?

Originally posted by titorite
I liked this thread in particular because it addresses the pseudo skeptic and BUNK SCIENCE.