-Laura
UFology
The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) claims that some UFO sightings are alien spacecraft. “A sub-set of the ETH, the Staging Hypothesis, prevalent up until the 1980s, speculated that extraterrestrials have "stage-managed" encounters as a deliberate policy to "educate" humanity.” Ufologists Wilhelm Reich and Jerome Eden have the hypothesis that UFOs and UFO passengers, or at least some of them, are hostile. They claim that the waste product of the UFO engines is what they call "Deadly Orgone," which ruins the atmosphere, dries it out, and is one cause, if not the most important cause, of the development of deserts. Eden, like other researchers, attributes the Cattle mutilations to aliens. They claims that aliens abduct persons, manipulate their feelings and thoughts, and cause military aircraft to crash or disappear, but they do not make open contact to government or military. They also claim that aliens try to "educate" mankind in the way that the human beings develop a spiritual attitude towards aliens and UFOs, hoping that the aliens arrive as the saviors for the big problems of mankind and earth, when, in fact, their agenda involves exploiting Earth's natural resources and destroying its water and atmosphere. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufology) In general, Ufologists claim that alien life exists, has made visits to Earth, and continues to make visits to Earth.
Most UFO websites will provide physical evidence in the form of electro-magnetic effects, vehicle interference cases (where a car or other vehicle's performance is disrupted), physical trace cases (“Usually these involve a landing trace, such as depressed grass or soil, but also burned or broken vegetation, residues, and more exotic traces” (www.ufoevidence.org/topics/physicaltracecases.htm), physiological effects, and radar cases/readings. Other than “physical” evidence, a majority of Ufologist's beliefs and theory seems to be based on accounts of people.
The Ufologists from ufoevidence.org claim that Dr. Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut from the Apollo 14 mission, is now claiming that UFOs do exist, the government knows about it, and they're hiding it from ordinary citizens. Ufologists from ufoevidence.org utilize an appeal to authority, specifically pointing out Dr. Mitchell's qualifications, and use those qualifications as “proof” of the validity of Ufologist claims. The interview states, “Dr Mitchell, who has a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering and a Doctor of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics claimed Roswell was real and similar alien visits continue to be investigated.”
As Robert L. Park states in The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science, “The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.” Ufologists claim that governments know the truth about UFO's and aliens, but are doing their best to keep the truth from the public. (http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/Government.htm) Ufologists play on the natural human tendency to question authority by seeding distrust in government as a means to validate their own claims. Ufologists use both appeal to authority, and in contrast, encourage a distrust of authority, as arguments for UFO/alien existence.
When I was much younger I was camping in my grandparents back yard for the night. I was alone, stargazing, and I noticed that when I was in my tent some of the stars looked elliptical and larger than other stars and then when I stuck my head out of the tent the ellipses disappeared. I convinced myself that these ellipses were UFO/aliens, and that they could see me if I stuck my head out of the tent. For quite some time I was paralyzed with fear, unwilling to stick my head out of the tent door, even though I had to use the bathroom very badly. Finally my bladder could take no more and I rushed out of my tent. When I looked up and saw the stars a thought came to me- those ellipses I saw in my tent might not be UFO's, but merely a result of the netting at the roof of my tent distorting the appearance of the stars. When I returned to my tent I felt rather foolish, realizing that I had allowed my being alone at night to make me paranoid enough to think something with a simple explanation could be something entirely different.
UFOlogists take verifiable information and events, like optical phenomena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_phenomenon), and milk extraordinary conclusions from them. Just like I combined an ordinary optical allusion (tent netting/stars) with ordinary human psychology (fear, isolation, paranoia) and concluded that aliens were above me and could see me. Take away human fleeting emotions and thoughts, and you are left with simple, everyday events.
Ufology is a pseudoscience; it includes several of Park's “indicators” of pseudoscience, including, a focus on a powerful establishment trying to suppress the work, limited detection, evidence is anecdotal, past evidence is used as a support for modern validity (ufoevidence.org/topics/general-ancientastronauts.htm), and new laws of nature must be made to explain observation (hyper.net/ufo/summary.html). Personally I do believe that unexplainable things can and do happen all the time. However Ufology appears to be more of a exploitation, intentional or otherwise, of human psychology, as opposed to anything valid or really extraordinary.
As a human and citizen it is important to recognize something as a pseudoscience so that one does not get caught in a mental, emotional, time-consuming or financial trap. As an educator it is important to teach students about the differences between fact and fiction, reliability and folly. The objective of science should be to find the answers to questions about how things really are. Science shouldn't be about how things appear to be, or seem to be, but as they really are. As a science instructor, teaching students how to discern between reality and appearances can help them not only in their science studies, but with every aspect of their lives.
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