Rich Reynolds, at his UFO Conjectures blog, has been opining recently about how it’s a waste of time and effort to continue focusing on old UFO cases (I paraphrase).
As an historian, and as someone who once made some documentaries about old UFO cases, I thought I would weigh in.
Is Reynolds right, or wrong?
The answer is: he’s both (but mostly, for the purpose of his general argument, he’s right).
He’s wrong in the sense that studying history is never a bad thing. Indeed, I wish more people were a bit more acquainted with our past, as it would prevent them from making the same mistakes over and over again. Particularly when it comes to studying the sociology of ufology, and the people involved, there is something of merit, and something to learn. That’s always the case with human behaviour. It’s why the good natured work of my friend Aaron Gulyas and his podcast The Saucer Life is useful, because he’s telling us the stories of the people within ufology, not the putative space aliens in which they believed.
But to the broader point made by Reynolds, that UFO “researchers” are stuck in the past, endlessly combing over details of cases from decades ago, hoping to find “the answer” to the UFO enigma, well… he’s pretty much spot on.
Those old and dusty reports are the very definition of cold cases. They have been picked over, again and again and again. There are no answers to be found in further study of those few which remain unsolved.
Witnesses are either dead, or their memories of what happened many years ago are unreliable. The shoddy work of earlier generations on UFO buffs, almost all of them untrained in proper research and investigative methodology, and in many cases driven by belief rather than a healthy skepticism, have tainted the stories, to the point that it’s impossible to know the difference between what actually happened, and what people think or believe happened.
It’s no different than the hymns from that old time religion, or the stories told at the bar by Bruce Springsteen’s ex-jocks in the song “Glory Days”. It’s familiar, and there’s definitely a comfort to it, but other than for the study of the people who were interested in UFOs, which as noted offers some insight into the culture of their day, it’s an intellectual dead end.
I agree for the most part with your view. There's minimal value in looking at old cases. While many UFO fans claim that sightings are "way up" since the announcement of official Pentagon interest (and a new Canadian UAP study), the reality is that the number of UFO reports has increased slightly, but the incidents reported tend to be historical rather than recent. Many of the cases reported to the Canadian UFO Survey these days are things that happened long ago but the witnesses only recently found the courage to report them. Unfortunately, it's impossible to investigate or verify a sighting from a year or two ago, let alone one from 10 or 20 years ago, which is often what we are getting.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not just UFO fans. Debunkers often take deep dives into old cases in an attempt to show the clay feet of the phenomenon. They are usually successful, but sometimes they stretch things a bit too much and make unwarranted assumptions too. Last year, a noted archskeptic posted her explanation for the famous Falcon Lake case of 1967, deciding that it was simply a hoax. This explanation 55 years after the fact was based on the absence to a chronological and careful record of the appearance of burns on the witness' body, concluding that the witness made up a story to cover up some illegal activity. It was only when RCMP and RCAF investigators took interest that he burned himself days or weeks later to support his story. This more complex hoax is suggested because the few photographs of the burns published by media and recorded by the RCAF seem to contradict the witness' story, and medical records don't explicitly note what the burns looked like following examinations or how they changed with time.
Testimony of family and visitors to the witness' bedside are either disregarded because of "faulty memory" or their being in on the hoax too. All others who saw the witness' burns firsthand are now dead, so there is no way to defend against this explanation. This, despite the fact that both the RCMP and RCAF stated in their reports that they could not fully explain the case.
But 55 years later, without interviewing the witness, his family, any examining physician, military or police investigators, let alone visiting the site itself, the case has been explained.
The sands of time obscure many palaces.