ALIEN EXPERTISE
WHAT UFO ‘ENCOUNTERS’ CAN TELL US ABOUT FAKE NEWS AND CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL
PEOPLE DON’T LIKE AUTHORITY FIGURES TELLING THEM THEY’RE WRONG, AND THEY DON’T LIKE BEING IGNORED.
PEOPLE OFTEN MISTAKE KATE DORSCH FOR SOMEONE WHO studies aliens. But Dorsch actually studies something else. A doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, she’s been researching UFO reports collected by the U.S. government.
The Air Force began compiling these accounts during the early stages of the Cold War as part of a program called Project Blue Book. In 1966, it hired the University of Colorado to further investigate stories of alien “encounters” by ordinary Americans. Project Blue Book ended three years later, and the American Philosophical Society eventually archived part of the project in Philadelphia.
Three years ago, Dorsch, a historian, dug through the archives. She found bags of dirt from here ying saucers purportedly landed and even a piece of foil that someone said fell off a UFO. In the process, she discovered another story— one about the struggle between the UFO “witnesses” and the scientists who didn’t believe thema struggle that speaks to more recent debates over climate change and fake news.
In the archived accounts, Dorsch says, earnest believers in UFOS had trouble explaining what they saw—mysterious objects, bright lights and odd shapes in the sky. But the scientists involved in the project considered them crackpots and doggedly tried to negate the idea of ying saucers. Dorsch says she was struck by “how hard people work to... dissuade the gullible American public from believing in this.”
But inside those responses, Dorsch also saw scientists trying to gure out how to communicate to laypeople. In the documents, for example, academics offered UFO witnesses better ways to tell their stories: Can you use this chart to tell us how bright the light was? What coin best describes the size of the object?
Meanwhile, the observers urged the scientists to take them seriously. Dorsch hears unspoken pleas behind these narratives: “I saw this thing. I’m a trustworthy person. I’m not a drunk. I’m educated. I’m an amateur astronomer.”
THERE ARETHESE MOMENTS WHEN W E ALLFEEL LIKE ONE. •• Yuri Milner
The rift between debunkers and believers has its roots in the evolution of science. For centuries scienti c discover was about si le observation takin notes akin redictions thin s that an one could do. the id s science had fractured into sub elds each with its own re uire ents for e ertise. oon an individual’s knowledge was no longer an a ro riate credential. nstead eo le in the eld udged one another based on the degrees the earned and the books the wrote.
That shift left eo le vulnerable to charlatans eo le who fake their credentials and ro ote ideas that scientists consider incorrect. nake oil is uch ore alatable when it’s sold b so eone whose na e is followed with . orsch oints to guests on the T show Ancient
Aliens who call the selves doctors and have a list of ublished books attached to their na es. There are eo le who feel like the ’re not being listened to b bodies in the establish ent she sa s and the ’re looking for so eone to tell the that what the ’re feeling is real.
The division over what constitutes authorit orsch sa s eans eo le need to a ore attention to where the get their facts. ho ou trust she sa s changes the infor ation that ou have.
t also leads eo le to sei e an o ortunit to crush o osing view oints. Take for e a le inor uibbles a ong scientists about cli ate change. ewer ore accurate wa s of easuring and odeling te eratures ake it look as if the lanet hass war ed ore slowl than scientists e ectedd. That s arked debates a ong scientists but it didn’t call into uestion the consensus about cli ate changge. et so e who were tr ing to dis rove the consensus took the debate as evidence in their favor. uch a res onse is a totaal corru tion of e actl what the scientists were sa ing for deccades orsch sa s. nce ou set u criteria for what counts ass fact what counts as truth so eone will nd a wa to ani ulate that.
The recent clashes over fake news and cli atee change denial bear a startling rese blance to the clash on dis la in the F archives. eo le don’t like authorit gures telling the the ’re wrong and the don’t like being ignored. hat is essentiall on trial is...the uali cations of e ertisee orsch sa s. t’s onl a atter of ti e before so eone co es along and sa s hear ou.’ Meghan Ba artels
These discoveries have completely reframed the odds behind the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Those odds were outlined by Frank Drake, the father of modern SETI. He calculated the number of civilizations that could be sending us a signal right now by considering a string of variables: how often life-friendly stars are formed, the proportion of these that have orbiting planets and the fraction of these planets that are habitable, among other factors. The larger the numbers for all these components, the higher the chances of finding E.T. Even if every other variable stays the same, the number of planets we now know about changes the equation dramatically. Finding extraterrestrial intelligence may no longer be a question of “if ” but rather one of “when.”
So far, we are still waiting. A 72-second signal detected in 1977 generated brief excitement but was never heard again. Astronomers now think the noise was generated by gas from a comet. In the 16 years that physicist Gerry Harp has been hunting aliens at the SETI Institute, he says only one signal has looked promising, but that turned out to be from a satellite.
Likewise, the Green Bank Telescope’s ultra-sensitive receptor found no trace of alien messages coming from ‘Oumuamua. Loeb, the Harvard astronomer who led the investigation, says there’s a chance the telescope could have missed a flickering signal. But the scientists weren’t surprised by the noiselessness that followed.
Like many who devote their careers to listening for aliens, they are accustomed to radio silence.