D. J. Eicher wrote an article in the March 2015 issue of Astronomy Magazine entitled “Let’s cut the UFO crap”.  The title and footnote of this article are offensive and inaccurate.  Answering Mr. Eicher’s letter is necessary, and perhaps will contribute to a constructive debate.
 

Similar to scientists and skeptics who dismiss and disparage the UFO topic, Mr. Eicher appears to be unaware of how complex and extensive the UFO phenomenon is, and seems to confuse the issue of extra-terrestrial intelligence with the issue of UFOs.  Considering Mr. Eicher’s opinion, please also consider this quote from Stanford University Astrophysicist Emeritus Professor Dr. Peter Sturrock’s research: “One also finds that opinions (of members of the AAS – astronomer scientists) correlate strongly with time spent reading about the subject. The fraction of respondents who think that the subject certainly or probably deserves scientific study rises from 29%, among those who have spent less than one hour, to 68% among those who have spent more than 365 hours in such reading.” Perhaps Mr. Eicher should find himself among those who spend more time studying the relevant material before making sweeping statements as in his March 2015 column.

For example, Mr. Eicher is inaccurate when he writes: “…the claims of a businessman who said he spotted nine shiny ”flying saucers” moving at high velocities”. In fact, the witness told the reporters that he had observed during a trip in his own plane a chain of nine peculiar looking aircraft, flying in formation in two lines, and moving “like a saucer would do if you skipped it across the water”.  It was the reporters who in their Associated Press dispatch erroneously transformed the description of the movement of the objects into a description of their shape, “saucer-like”.

Science does not require lock-step compliance with popular opinion. There isn’t anything in the principles of scientific endeavor that describes what one may or may not study.  Mr. Eicher indicated “People see things in the sky they often don’t understand. That’s the conclusion.” For most scientists, a conclusion that states “something happened and I do not understand it” is hardly the point at which scientific inquiry should end. The nature of science is to study what we do not understand.

Despite the cosmic distance scale, it is not unscientific to consider the hypothesis that aliens have visited the planet versus the null hypothesis which states that they have not. The possibility of visitors operating spaceships in the form of UFOs is just one of several hypotheses to explain the UFO phenomenon.

There are well-documented observations made by many different trained, experienced observers that do warrant further study which, unfortunately, he has recommended against. The scientific problem with these reports is they often are not corroborated by instrument readings, and they cannot be replicated. These are problems to address, and are quite different from the problem that is stated in Mr. Eicher’s article.

Mr. Eicher’s article is puzzling, as its premises are not logically connected to the conclusion that the universe is big, Earth is special, and we should take care of it and our fellow human beings. It is not clear what these insights have to do with scientific study to understand aerial anomalies. Certainly psychologists could argue from sound evidence that if you really want to take care of other human beings, the first and most important step is to not exaggerate differences, deride open-minded curiosity, and demonize anyone who chooses to study that which you choose to discredit. Polemical arguments like the statement in the caption that ends the letter, and the article’s offensive title, are examples of what not to do. There are good scientific reasons to be skeptical about anomalous events in the sky, and even more reason to doubt alien visitation. However, those rational arguments do not justify demeaning and dismissing those who are inclined to study the possibility of alien visitation.

Unknown phenomena happening in the sky above is a call to scientific inquiry. That’s how we learn. Serious ufologists recognize the importance of monitoring unidentified anomalous phenomena in a rigorous and deterministic way.  This is the reason new projects for networks of automatic stations for UFO monitoring are currently being defined. Identifying strategic sites and deploying appropriate instruments are crucial activities to enable mainstream scientists to acquire relevant data. Is it unscientific to collect data? We will keep Mr. Eicher informed about such coming endeavours.