Dear Ufology: I’m Out

Dear Ufology:

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while but just never got around to it. Then I got an email from someone claiming to be a legitimate UFO documents researcher telling me what a great writer I am and requesting that I write more blog posts poking fun at one of my favorite sham people in this, because he and his colleagues think it’s hysterical. From the totality of his email I gathered that he was one who believed in the stale extraterrestrial hypothesis and hadn’t read anything else on my blog. To him, I am just a a satirist–a noble profession, but for me it comes from a deeper place than parody for parody’s sake, or taking it to con men as a comedic power trip.

At least it should. But does it anymore?

Ufology, it’s not you, it’s me. I’ve changed. I don’t care about pedophile puppet makers and pretend-poor podcasters. Doctors who aren’t doctors and lobbyists who don’t lobby. I’ve done my part in helping expose hypnosis as the wrong tool for memory retrieval and the pseudo therapists taking advantage of people. Done my part in illuminating alternative theories to the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Done my part in helping to foster a legitimate scientific survey of experiencers. Done my part in holding conferences. Done my part in exposing my life of high strangeness for your scrutiny. Done my part in trying to lighten up a dreary field full of self-serious noisemakers, opportunists, and whatever wannabe-famous people from five steps below wishing to be a youtube sensation are.

Whatever positive impact all of that has had on anyone’s life was worth it. But I’m not really angry anymore about the stuff I despise. It’s all vastly, wildly uninteresting. And so maybe I am becoming a parody for parody’s sake kinda guy. The next inevitable step is becoming an unaware parody of myself. Meh. Who wants to be that guy?

I have one more ufological book in me, as promised. A sequel of sorts to, I Know Why The Aliens Don’t Land!. And I’ll keep doing The Experience for as long as experiencers are willing to talk. The occasional Paratopia Oculus? Sure. But really, that’s it, for I have already moved on.

Of all the books I’ve written, perhaps the most useful for readers has been Urgency. And over the years many readers have told me they wished I’d take that part of my life more seriously. I never didn’t take it seriously, personally, but publicly, I tend to be serious in spurts. Mainly, I’ve been a clown show of contradiction. (Is it any wonder that I find Trickster Theory so appealing?)

Well, no more. I’m hunkering down. I’m doing the work. I’m moving on into the serious phase. Not Marky Mark into Mark Wahlberg serious. I mean, I am bringing my sense of humor with me as I go, but it’s not coming from a place of anger, because where I’m going, only those truly, deeply concerned with life the universe and everything will follow. It is the place at the heart of all this Mystery that we claim to care about. It is a place not of debate, self-agrandizement, and fruitless commotion. It is a place of undoing. Our undoing. And I hope to see whomever is ready for the grad school version of Urgency. there.

 

Time To Come Undone

Click Me. Be The Rabbit Hole.

Breaking Out of the Bubble

Breaking Out of the Bubble

 by Guest Blogger,
Tyler Kokjohn

A Review of
The UFO Phenomenon: Should I Believe?
by Dr. Robert Davis

Dr. Davis has taken on an extraordinarily challenging task; outlining the many and disparate elements linked to UFOs and providing a broad perspective on the issues surrounding them.  The literature of ufology is vast, but he manages to condense each area into cogent summaries.  His writing is clear and concise and he has carefully referenced his sources.  A thoughtfully crafted, thoroughly edited product, this book offers some of the background and controversies of each topic from a somewhat neutral and mostly scientific perspective.  Dr. Davis is explicit he remains agnostic as to whether currently inexplicable UFO events reveal the activities of a non-human intelligence.  Consistent with this stance, he examines the topic in a manner that will provide readers some appreciation for the controversies that plague the field.

One of the most interesting things Dr. Davis does is to combine his overviews with insightful assessments of the situations.  Convinced a fundamentally more scientific approach and formally organized governance of the new efforts are the way forward, he offers specific recommendations for future work to improve understanding.

Ufology has fallen far behind the times and bringing new-found information to the fore should be a priority effort.  Although farsighted, Dr. Davis failed to escape the bubble that has suffocated ufology.  Insular and hostile to criticism this field collapsed into scientific stasis a long time ago.  As long as investigators remain reluctant to accept the verdict of data, acknowledge the implications when it is conspicuously absent or even gauge its overall reliability, they will continue circling the same ground endlessly.  Unfortunately, Dr. Davis overlooked some critical developments such as the Innocence Project and offers readers  scant detail on revolutionary new DNA analysis technologies.  These interrelated topics pose a substantial challenge to ufology and failing to address them adequately is a major oversight.

The Innocence Project (1) has upended the justice system completely by using DNA evidence to exonerate persons convicted of serious crimes.  These efforts have forced a fundamental reconsideration of the accuracy and reliability of eyewitness testimony.  How far can such evidence be trusted?  In his book, How UFOs Conquered the World, David Clarke describes experiments which reveal eyewitnesses may produce accounts that differ from actual events (“Purple Lights and March Foolishness” chapter).  These findings – relatively new and not-so-new – pose a significant challenge to the field and have never been integrated into the canon of ufology.

A failure to exploit new scientific advances may have contributed to the persistence of hypotheses in an absence of corroborating evidence.  The prime example is alien abduction investigation which is now more akin to a literary genre than scientific research.  Several investigators have issued specific claims that are potentially verifiable through genetic testing.  Uncorroborated accounts of missing pregnancies, breeders, hybrids and more have been published and presented at meetings for years.  The means to validate the claims have existed for years and still no one can deliver the genetic evidence or simply provide samples for independent analyses to prove them.  Suggesting investigators document the validity of alien hybrid babies is a weak call-to-action that simply ignores the obvious failures and apparent refusals to conduct truly scientific investigations.  Alien abduction writers have no incentive to get off the amazing stories treadmill until their books stop selling.  Life in a bubble has been good for their business.

Scientific progress hinges on integrating new developments that open up new vistas and opportunities.  Scientists and physicians have leaped on new DNA analysis and sequencing technologies to employ them in new situations.  The pace of advancement is furious.  In contrast, ufology abduction writers have been clinging to the same clearly problematic investigation methods for decades.  This sad situation has not been appreciated within ufology although a number of investigators, authors and experiencers including Jack Brewer, Philip Klass, Kevin Randle, Carol Rainey, Jeff Ritzmann, Jim Schnabel, Jeremy Vaeni, Emma Woods and more have published devastating critiques of the methods and conclusions of abduction researchers.

Perhaps the UFO experience is like Plato’s Cave where we play the role of prisoners imputing motivations and deducing ‘facts’ from shadows cast on walls.  The ambiguous nature of the phenomena may have enabled the non-human intelligence narrative to endure in an otherwise unsympathetic environment.  Ignoring contradictory information and methodological challenges has kept unsubstantiated ideas alive far beyond their scientifically productive lifespans.  Dr. Davis has provided some background material and suggested approaches that may help some readers decide if UFOs have any deeper significance.  However, the scientific community abandoned UFO study half a century ago and nothing that has come forward since then has altered the consensus.  Unless new ideas penetrate and new ways of conducting research take hold, ufology will remain voluntarily imprisoned in a static void.

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