I read an article by a UFO enthusiast recently that brought up an interesting point that applies to many things besides UFOs.
He conceded that 95+% of UFO reports turn out to have mundane explanations. An airplane seen from an unusual angle or under unusual lighting conditions. Odd cloud formations. Rare natural phenomena, like ball lightning. And of course, some number of blatant hoaxes.
But, he said, that leaves a hard core of 4 or 5% that CANNOT be explained by mundane phenomenon, and so must really be alien spaceships.
And I thought, Hmm. If investigators work really hard and can find mundane explanations for 95%, but cannot find such explanations for the remaining 5%, there are two obvious interpretations: (a) The remaining 5% cannot be explained in mundane terms. Or (b) If we had more information, or had more accurate information, than we could explain the other 5% also.
Because let's get real here. Sometimes a mundane explanation for a UFO report is obvious. The person making the report thinks it's amazing and inexplicable, but the investigator can say, Yes, that's exactly what you see when the Sun shines from behind this type of cloud. And we know that type of cloud was in the sky that day, we have reports from other observers. Or whatever. Sometimes it sounds more mysterious. But there's a huge catch there. A person reporting something they considered mysterious might exagerrate unusual elements, or imagine that they saw things that weren't really there. He's so sure that that airplane was really an alien spaceship, that he just imagines that the face he saw in the window was an alien and not a normal human. Etc. But how do you know what's a real observation and what's imagination?
That reminds me of a totally different case. I saw a documentary on TV about the history of vampire legends. Along the way, the narrator said that perhaps vampire legends got started when there was an epidemic in some medieval town where people fell into a coma. The townspeople thought they were dead. With so many victims, they didn't have time for proper funerals, so they buried them in shallow graves. Some number of the coma victims then spontaneously woke up, and the ignorant townsfolk thought they had come back from the dead. The coma victims were dazed and confused so they acted strangely. In their crazed and desperate state they tried to eat wild animals, maybe even in some cases attacked people. Which led the townsfolk to think they were some kind of zombies. Other parts of the story, the narrator said, like turning into a bat, were later elaborations of the tale.
My first thought was that this sounded plausible. They offered no evidence to back it up -- no accounts of a similar plague where the victims were properly diagnosed, or detailed accounts that made clear what had really happenned. But it sounded plausible.
But then I got to thinking. What made it sound plausible was that they took the parts of the story that they could explain with their theory and assumed that those were true, and the parts of the story that didn't fit their theory they declared were "later additions". Well you could prove almost anything that way. If you believe the evidence that fits your theory and reject the evidence that doesn't fit your theory, of course your theory will be confirmed.
Another example: I've seen a few collections of "amazing stories of the supernatural that science can't explain". Like, we were the only ones in the park that day, but here in this picture I took of my wife you can see a mysterious figure in the background. Or, my father died before my son was born, but my son said that grandpa came to see him one day and described him exactly. I find such stories interesting but unconvincing. How do you know there was no one else in the park that day? Are there guards at all the entrances recording everyone who comes and leaves? Which is more likely: that an alien or a time traveller teleported in to the park, or that there was someone wandering around that you didn't notice until you saw him in the picture? And when you say your son described grandpa perfectly, do you mean that he said something like, "He was 5'10", weighed 180 pounds, had a scar over his right eye and a tatoo on his left arm with an anchor and the words 'USS Kearsarge'"? Or was it more like, "He was an old man with gray hair"?
People do this all the time in less dramatic cases. Like, the people in my political party are good and noble, while the people in your political party are evil and corrupt. Easy to prove. Look at all the news reports about people from your party doing evil and corrupt things. Well yes, there are reports of people from my party doing similarly evil and corrupt things, but those reports are just obviously lies and slander. The only evidence you have for them is eyewitness testimony -- which is obviously lies -- and video of him doing it -- which is obviously doctored and fake. Whereas the things your people did, we have rock-solid proof. Like, my brother-in-law said he overheard a conversation in a bar where a guy said that there's a rumor going around that someone had a dream about this. What more proof could one ask for? Think of all the news reports that quote an "anonymous source", so it's impossible to check. Or how often a reporter will say, "Many people believe ..." without specifying who these "many people" are. Perhaps "many people" are him and a couple of his friends.
I think the sad reality is: We claim that we examine the evidence objectively and follow it wherever it leads. But in real life, most people form their opinions first, based on what they would like to believe or what fits their world view, and then look for evidence to confirm the conclusion they already reached.
So when we see a case like -- to get back to the dramatic -- a UFO report that we can't explain, the "UFO believer" says, See, you can't explain that one! That one is really an alien spaceship! The "UFO skeptic" says, Sure, I can't explain that one. But I really doubt it's an alien spaceship. If we just leave this part and that part out of the story, if we consider the possibility that those are the teller's imagination, then it could all be explained as X.
© 2024 by Jay Johansen
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