UFOs | Introduction
On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, a businessman and air rescue pilot, was flying his small plane over the Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington. On the lookout for a crashed airplane, he instead witnessed what he said were nine bright glistening objects flying at speeds beyond the capabilities of any known aircraft at the time. Arnold later told a reporter that the entities “flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across that water.” Accounts of his encounter with “flying saucers” quickly spread through the news wires. Over the next several years thousands of other people reported seeing flying saucers in the skies.
The flying saucer phenomenon sparked widespread attention not only from the media and the public, but also from the U.S. government. Between 1948 and 1969, in what eventually became known as Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force maintained a permanent team of investigators to look into these mysterious sightings. Instead of calling the objects “flying saucers,” the Air Force soon came up with the term UFOs— unidentified flying objects. Members of Project Blue Book, which included Air Force personnel and civilian scientists hired as consultants, investigated thousands of reported UFOs. Most UFO sightings were determined to have explainable causes. Some were misidentified humanmade objects such as aircraft or artificial satellites. Others resulted from natural phenomena such as planets, meteors, light reflections off of clouds, flocks of birds, ball lightning, or bright stars. But investigators were unable to find explanations for 701 of the sightings, which were classified as “unidentified.”
A possible explanation for these and other “unidentified” cases is what has been called the “extraterrestrial hypothesis”—the theory that some UFOs are actually spacecraft piloted by intelligent beings not of this world. This idea was voiced as early as July 4, 1947, one week after Arnold’s flying saucer experience, when a news report mentioned the possibility that what the pilot saw were spaceships from other planets. It remains the most familiar and controversial explanation of UFOs. The people who investigate and write about UFOs can generally be categorized as belonging to one of two groups: those who are inclined to believe the extraterrestrial hypothesis and those who are skeptical about it. Both proponents and detractors of the theory often accuse each other of letting preconceived biases shape their examination of the available evidence.
Those who argue in favor of the extraterrestrial hypothesis argue that the universe’s vast size makes life and the development of many technologically advanced civilizations highly probable. Citing the number of stars in the universe, U.S. astronaut John W. Young concluded: “If you bet against UFOs, you’d be betting against a sure thing.” Supporters also point to the large number of UFO sightings (author Barry Parker writes that 100,000 incidents are on record), maintaining that they cannot all be dismissed as misidentified aircraft, natural phenomena, or as hoaxes.
In addition to mysterious sightings, many people have claimed to have actually been abducted by aliens and taken aboard alien spacecraft. Budd Hopkins, the writer of several books on alien abduction, faults scientists for dismissing accounts of UFOs and alien abductions too easily. “Many scientists . . . maintain an interest in . . . the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” he argues. “And yet almost none of these scientists have taken the time to look into the UFO phenomena as it inarguably exists: a phenomenon consisting of tens of thousands of reports of apparent craft sightings, landings, photo and radar evidence and accounts of the temporary abduction and examination of human beings.”
However, skeptics have argued that anecdotal accounts of UFO sightings and alien abductions simply do not provide enough grounds to scientifically validate the extraterrestrial hypothesis. What is needed, they say, is incontrovertible physical evidence such as undoctored photographs, debris from crashed UFOs, or other artifacts. “No good physical evidence—photographic, spectroscopic, or other—supports the hypothesis that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft,” writes Donald W. Goldsmith and Tobias C. Owen, authors of The Search for Life in the Universe. “The UFO data consist almost entirely of eyewitness accounts of things seen in the sky.” Such reports are insufficient, Goldsmith and Owen contend, to support the claims that alien civilizations exist and have the means and motives to travel the extremely long distances between the stars to visit Earth. “When serious investigators who have the necessary skills examine UFO reports, they invariably find some natural cause,” they argue. “Venus, meteors, falling space debris, clouds, migrating birds, airplanes, and even automobiles on elevated roadways have all been mistaken for alien spacecraft, to say nothing of deliberate hoaxes.”
Some doubters of the extraterrestrial hypothesis propose another theory to explain reported UFOs and abductions. Such accounts, they assert, may instead be caused by the mental processes and spiritual needs of humans. Philosopher Paul Kurtz argues that rather than evidence of actual alien visitation, “the UFO phenomenon tells us something about the psychological and sociological behavior of the human species. . . . It is an expression of our hunger for mystery, our demand for something more, our hope for transcendental meaning.” The late scientist and commentator Carl Sagan, noting the similarity of alien abduction accounts with past stories of encounters with demons, fairies and other supernatural creatures, concluded that both may be the products of the human mind. “Is it possible,” he asks, “that people in all times and places occasionally experience vivid, realistic hallucinations, . . . with the details filled in by the prevailing cultural idioms?”
An important adjunct to the UFO controversy is the question of whether the U.S. Air Force and other branches of the U.S. government have lied to the American people. For believers in the extraterrestrial hypothesis, a government conspiracy to belittle UFO sightings and hide evidence of human/alien contact conveniently explains the consistent government denials concerning UFOs as well as the lack of physical evidence. A 1995 poll by Scripps-Howard News Service and Ohio University found that half of all Americans believed UFOs were alien spacecraft, and that the U.S. government was covering up knowledge of their existence. Govern- ment conspiracy theories have been harshly attacked by those who doubt the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Philip J. Klass, a UFO investigator who has written numerous books debunking claims of extraterrestrial visitation, argues that “the only credible evidence of a ‘UFO coverup’ that I’ve been able to find is by those who make such accusations against the government, and by producers of many TV shows. . . . Their false charges needlessly undermine the confidence of our own citizens in our government.”
Other UFO investigators, using recently declassified information, have concluded that evidence does exist of past government obstruction and deception. However, they argue that what was being covered up was not contact with aliens, but rather secret military and espionage airplanes and projects (which may themselves have caused some past UFO sightings).
More than fifty years after Kenneth Arnold’s flight in the Cascades, UFOs continue to be an intriguing mystery for many Americans. People still disagree over whether accounts of UFO sightings and abductions are evidence of alien visitation, products of the human imagination, or have some other cause. The essays in At Issue: UFOs examine this controversy and feature the views of both supporters and doubters of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
