New UFO hearings continue an “endless loop” of sensation

I don’t want to believe; I want to know. That is my mantra. I am a scientist, and I want something real, something I can do something real with, not more swirling stories of incredible possibilities that are never backed up. As a professional astronomer whose professional task is to professionally think about finding life beyond Earth, that’s my reaction to yesterday’s congressional hearings. Let me explain.

In 2017, the New York Times ran a story on a government program aimed at studying unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), i.e. UFOs. The story was accompanied by three now-famous videos showing fuzzy-blob UAP encounters recorded by Navy jets. This was the beginning of the modern era in UFOs/UAPs where the subject has seemingly climbed out of the shadows and is being taken more seriously in many camps. A string of new organizations began studying UAPs, including a panel convened by NASA of expert and open-minded scientists. Along with these studies came congressional hearings on the subject. The claimed goal of these meetings is transparency. The questions they are supposed to ask are: What does the government need to know about UAPs? What, if anything, does the government already know but is not revealing? Unlike the scientific studies, the congressional hearings included some witnesses with pretty extraordinary tales to tell. This is what I want to focus on today.

Let me start by saying that I am a fierce advocate for transparency. If there is data relevant to the question of life in the Universe, then Holy Moly… let’s see it! I am also in favor of open and transparent scientific investigation of UAPs. Only good can come from such studies, as they will, at the very least, show people how science is worked out. From climate change to vaccines, there are a lot of difficult choices we need to make as a society and folks need to understand how science goes about its business of knowing what it knows.

And that’s the point of my frustration with these hearings

Science is a process where a bunch of people get together and work things out in an open and transparent way. It is organized skepticism. But over and over again in these hearings, people make claims that are beyond extraordinary and, also, beyond verification. These claims are that the government has spaceships hidden in secret garages; it has non-human biologics (that’s not even a real thing in science) in its possession; and it has stacks and stacks of high-resolution images that would conclusively prove we’re being visited by at least one advanced alien species. But then, of course, no one can ever produce the actual evidence. Often the witnesses have not seen the supposed evidence themselves but have talked to people who talked to people who have. 

The important thing to understand about these kinds of claims is they go back to the very beginnings of UFO culture, as I found in my research for The Little Book of Aliens. There have always been ex-government officials who claimed exactly what these modern witnesses are claiming and never is there anything that scientists like me can get our hands on to do something with. 

Obviously, the point of these hearings is to get some transparency on exactly this subject, and no one would be happier than me to find out that the government has proof that life exists beyond Earth. That is, literally, the one question I desperately want to answer before I die. But the long history of UFO culture is dominated by a mix of hoaxes, conspiracy-mongering, and terrible data that is passed off as “proof.” From that history, I know you need to come into this subject with a container ship’s worth of skepticism or you are going to get burned. Humans are very good at fooling themselves, especially about things they want to be true. Not getting fooled in this way is exactly why we invented science.

A few points about these extraordinary claims are worth noting. Sean Kirkpatrick was the recent director of the Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). This is one organization that’s been handling UAP studies. Kirkpatrick has talked about what he sees as a long-running circular conversation among UFO enthusiasts in the government. People who claim to know about something talk to other interested people. Those people then talk to others about that first person and their claims. This goes on and on until a kind of murky mythology builds up where no one has actual proof of anything, but everyone says they know someone who does. 

But that proof never actually shows up. I remember reading a press release in 2019 from To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science claiming that they had “exotic materials featuring properties not from any known existing military or commercial application.” That’s quite a claim. As far as I know, five years later, that claim remains unproven. 

So my fear with these congressional hearings is that this endless loop of sensation will go on. It will just be charge and countercharge extending forever into the decades with nothing ever resolved. After all, if you truly believe the government has proof of aliens, what proof would you accept that it doesn’t?

Meanwhile, the public will miss the real action — the action starting right now as astronomers begin searching distant alien worlds for hard evidence, evidence that all can see, of distant alien life.