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(Albuquerque, New Mexico) Papers presented: Forbidden Science: The UFO Phenomenon and the Research Community, Jacques Vallee, Ph.D
FORBIDDEN SCIENCE: THE UFO PHENOMENON AND THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY
by Jacques Vallee
ABSTRACT: Polarization between the dogmatic belief in extraterrestrial intervention on the part of most UFO advocates, on one hand, and the skeptical rejection of the entire phenomenon by most scientists, on the other hand, has never been as acute as it is today. In the first part of this presentation the case is made that six factors have contributed to this state of affairs.Some of these factors have to do with structural problems that are specific to UFO research, others are seen as symptomatic of larger social effects.The second part of the article takes abduction research as a special example of a missed opportunity for the application of sound investigative and ethical principles to the UFO experience. The third part concludes with a proposal in the form of a list of eight practical steps that are neither glamorous nor radically novel, yet could lead to a vast improvement in the level of our knowledge about the UFO phenomenon and in the credibility that it might be granted by the scientific community.
INTRODUCTION
I am quite happy to attend this conference but I am not quite sure why Walt Andrus invited me to speak to you: I may be the only person here who doesn't know what UFOs are. Most ufologists know (or think they know) that UFOs are extraterrestrial vehicles, in other words, spacecraft from another planet. We are told that even the question of their motive has been solved: they are coming here to steal our genetic material (1). Nine million Americans are supposed to have experienced abductions (2).
In the meantime, the vast majority of scientists and technologists continue to regard all this as complete nonsense: they may acknowledge that a strange phenomenon exists, but they "know" (or think they know) that it is not any more worthy of study now that it was twenty-three years ago when the National Academy of Sciences and the University of Colorado released the Condon report.
Never has the situation been so clearly polarized. Never has it been harder to do good research.
As a scientist I have come to the conclusion that a genuine UFO phenomenon exists. It is physical and it is unexplained. Therefore I continue to investigate the sightings in the field and I claim that they represent an opportunity and a challenge to science. I speculate, although I cannot prove, that a non-human form of intelligence is involved. In saying so I am something of an irritant to the skeptics. At the same time, however, I refuse to align myself with the extraterrestrial party line. I realize that my position is unpopular. If I was so blind as to ignore it I would be reminded of it immediately, because believing in extraterrestrials has become a matter of faith, not a subject to scientific debate.
In this sense the pursuit of ufology is a forbidden science, and doubly so: the skeptics do not want free inquiry on the subject because it might disturb their rational universe. And many advocates are equally opposed to free inquiry because the systematic application of the tools of science to this problem might reveal their incompetence as researchers. It would show the UFO phenomenon as far more complex, stimulating, awesome and ultimately important and mysterious than the specific, limited version they are presenting today.
It is the tension between these two positions, the blind skeptical denial and the blind certainty of advocacy, that provides the dynamics we have witnessed in the development of the UFO problem from Kenneth Arnold to Travis Walton and from Roswell to Voronezh. It is that same tension that has distorted, biased and censored our data over the years. The independent scientist is caught in the middle between two extreme positions and has a very hard time finding reliable and knowledgeable investigators with whom to work.
In an effort to clarif your predicament I have divided this presentation into three parts: first a brief, informal look at our troubled relationship to official science. Second, the matter of abductions, which I regard as the latest instance in the long series of the opportunities we have missed. I will end with an optimistic look at the practical steps which might help ufology gain greater credibility.
1. SCIENTISTS AND UFOs
In 1958 two prominent American scientists travelled to France to visit science writer and philosopher Aime Michel who had just published his seminal research about the European wave of 1954. They were astronomers J. Allen Hynek and Gerard de Vaucouleurs. Both were curious, and openly skeptical, about the claims of landings and the presence of humanoids described innumerous reports. (3)
Allen Hynek told Aime Michel in no uncertain terms that he had been astonished to find so many such cases in Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery(4) and that he doubted that any original data existed. If it did, added de Vaucouleurs, they would like to take photo copies of it. He had brought a research assistant equipped with all the necessary material.
"This made me laugh (reports Aime Michel) because I had been screening the Western European Press (for unusual items) since1945, long before Kenneth Arnold, thanks to the documentation services of the French National Radio (RTF), which worked very well. Hynek, de Vaucouleurs and his assistant spent several days going through my documents and recording them photographically."
As readers of my Journals (5) know, Dr. Hynek had to admit that the reports existed but he remained skeptical about the reality of the landings long after his visit to France: "these episodes read like ghost stories," he told me when I first raised the issue with him in 1963. It is only when I showed him, day after day, how the sighting patterns observed in Western Europe in the fifties were duplicated in the U.S. files that he began to change his opinion. But he died without being able to convince his colleagues in astronomy to take a closer look at the data. In recent correspondence de Vaucouleurs, one of the great contemporary cosmologists and now a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, was still unconvinced. He felt that UFO reports simply showed what peculiar things human consciousness could do. In so saying, he was only expressing the common scientific consensus on the topic. The truth is that the technological community in general is indifferent to the UFO problem.
Those few hard scientists who have taken the trouble to look at the data (you can count them on the fingers of one hand) disagree with such an assessment, of course. We have met too many truthful witnesses, we have seen too many cases of actual traces. Yet those of us who have remained involved over the years have failed to convince our colleagues that significant time and energy should be directed at this mystery. I see six reasons for this state of affairs.
1. The debate has remained firmly locked into the absurd contention that UFOs, if they exist, must be extraterrestrial spacecraft. Any open-minded researcher who dares to question this position meets with the unbridled rage and censorship of UFO zealots. Yet it is clear to any scientist who is aware of the current speculations in physics that many other, more elegant possibilities exist.
2. The technological arrogance with which the problem has been approached (and is still approached) has done grave damage to otherwis evaluable attempts to understand the major factors in the UFO phenomenon. Typically, groups of engineers or physicists get assembled, often under the auspices of some government agency or aerospace company, and they work feverishly for a few months or years under the assumption that given enough data and a little time they will be able to crack the problem by themselves, more or less in secrecy. They expect to go on to discover the elusive "propulsion system," an infinite source of free energy, or the secret of antigravity. The goal is either to obtain some military breakthrough before another country, or simply to patent the new device and become very wealthy. I can think of at least four teams that were funded to do just this since the sixties. I am occasionally contacted by technology buffs who have such schemes in mind. They are very disappointed when I tell them that solving the UFO problem will involve more than state of the art reverse engineering.
3. Occasionally a truly brilliant attempt is made at multi-disciplinary research and analysis. Unfortunately, it seems that the findings of such exceptional efforts have always been ignored by policy makers, who were either looking for quick technological breakthroughs or were simply worried over political implications. I believe that is exactly what happened to the extraordinary recommendations contained in the "Pentacle memo," which was decades ahead of its time, as I have revealed in Forbidden Science (5).
4. The expectation of extraterrestrials is a sociological effect which in itself can be, and is exploited for down-to-earth, sophisticated psychological warfare. While little money has been spent researching UFOs, considerable effort has been made to study, document and exploit the belief in extraterrestrials. Someone has been using (and is still using) the sociological impact of the phenomenon for his own purpose, muddying up the waters and making the life of the objective researcher very difficult.
5. We lack unbiased venues for the kind of informed debate without which new science cannot flourish. We do have the journal of Scientific Exploration,a refereed publication that disseminates UFO research articles without being affiliated with or controlled by a specific UFO group. But JSE has to cover a wide variety of other topics as well (6). There is an unfilled need for a rapid exchange medium where field investigations, of the type independent researchers like me would like to publish, could appear on a regular basis.
6. The problem has simply proved much deeper than any of us imagined in the sixties and seventies. A new generation of ufologists,which entered the field with the same cocky arrogance we once showed, has itself become mired in conflicting reports and confusing statistics, and is beginning to learn the same lesson today.
Many of you have criticized my work by saying, "One moment you talk about UFOs as if they were real, physical, material objects. And in the next sentence you talk about them as psychic effects, producing paranormal phenomena in and around the witnesses." This is a fair criticism of my research. I can only answer that this ambiguity is genuine, and that it lies in the data.
Never has that ambiguity been more obvious than in the field of abduction research.
2. ABDUCTIONS
Given the extraordinary complexity of UFO data, it is relatively easy for anybody to pick a particular theory or personal belief and to "prove" it using a selected subset of the cases. All that is required is to bully dissenters into remaining silent and to sweep firmly under the rug all the data that doesn't fit. Once such a theory is constructed it is easy for its promoters to exclude opposing views and to create the appearance of consensus. That is very good marketing, even if that isn't good science.
We have already seen this trick at work when the Condon Committee was selectively sifting through the data to prove that UFOs didn't exist. The same trick is now being used by the promoters of the alien abduction theory.
A brief personal anecdote will illustrate the process. It developed in a curious way when I was "disinvited" from the first TREAT conference on abduction research and trauma. I was first told that I had not qualified for an invitation because I wasn't a health professional. When it was pointed out that most of the fifty or so attendees were people with no scientific credentials, let alone medical degrees, I was told I didn't qualify because my name hadn't been proposed. When it was shown that several attendees had in fact proposed my name the sponsors finally confessed that I had been excluded because of the statements I had published questioning the extraterrestrial theory and challenging the way hypnosis was being used in abduction research.
None of that came close to the real reasons.
The real reasons are simple: Like a few other researchers, I happen to have evidence, in the form of first-hand data, that flies in the face of the theories the abductionists are marketing.
It is easy to understand why so many ufologists, and so many inquiring minds among the public, have become fascinated with stories of abductions and their aftermath and their apparent promise of a solution to the whole mystery. In an impressive array of books and television programs, we have seen a slick presentation of selected cases that tend to prove that we are indeed being visited by aliens from the stars. We are told they are coming here in search of biological material. The media love the sensational character of such stories and will not miss an opportunity to put them on the air.
While the casual viewer or the interested ufologist sees this kind of imagery on the television screen, however, detailed research in the field will bring up many other pieces of information. Many abductions do not involve the well-defined phases described by some authors. Many abductions are not traumatic.
Many abductions do not involve short gray beings. Many abductions do not involve medical examinations at all. Many abductions do not involve devices that look like spacecraft.
More, tragically, beyond these observations, I can testify to a disturbing flow of private complaints from witnesses who feel victimized by the investigator's rash and amateurish treatment of them. The files I have accumulated tell a grim tale of cases where the ufologists actually increased the victim's distress, forcing him or her to seek professional treatment elsewhere. They contain phrases like "I am currently involved in therapy with (specialist's name withheld). He believes that (the abductionist) reinforced through hypnosis not only his own preconceived notions, but also the context of what I may have garnered (such as the movie based on the Betty and Barney Hill story)"(7). In another letter an abductee writes "this man's methods are most unethical . . . my stress for the most part is not from so-called "aliens" but from those who appear to be helping me cope with this phenomenon." (8)
Yet another abductee who is listed among the alien abduction databases wrote to me complaining: "I have so much inside of me that I don't understand! . . . and there is so much that isn't in that book! In order to maintain a kind of order, to keep the readers from getting confused, much of what (the abductionist author in question) considered 'peripheral' was omitted, and I feel that all of it is important." (9)
Such phrases come back again and again in the letters I receive. Some of them go beyond complaining. They contain precise, desperate accusations. Those are the abduction details you never hear about.
The problem doesn't stop there. Some of the more intriguing episodes, when they are carefully investigated, open up alternative interpretations that are even more chilling in their earthly reality, even more disturbing in their implications than the idea of aliens looking for human embryos. One of the cases in my files involves a continuum between ritual abuse and UFO experiences (10). It seems that alien imagery was deliberately planted into the mind of this female witness as an overlay to a terrifying experience that was not to be consciously recalled. In another case a young man appears to have been made to submit to a curious organization through images of aliens that were planted in his unconscious (11). He recognized them when he saw the cover of Communion. But hypnotherapy led to the opposite result of what abductionists would have expected: the UFO episode seems to have been fabricated to encode and screen suggestions that turned this subject into a virtual slave of the cult in question for several years.
No wonder this information is not welcome at abduction club meetings. But neither is it welcome by the ufological community ingeneral. Recently a conference was convened under prestigious auspices, apparently to discuss all these issues. But instead of the open academic setting one might have expected, prospective attendees were firmly requested to disclose their data in advance, submitting it to a committee of judges heavily weighted with believers who would scrutinize all submissions prior to sending actual invitations. Such a procedure is a classic maneuver designed to discourage dissenting views and to defuse their relevance to the debate. That old "trick," too, was used successfully by the Condon committee--until someone finally blew the whistle.
Are we so naive as to believe that contrasting data can be ignored forever? How can we imagine that the scientific community will not see that it is not given the whole story? Are we blind to the fact that policy makers, if they chose to become involved, would immediately request all the data and that independent researchers like me would then be able to testify?
Consider the following facts:
1. The American public is being taught to expect an imminent landing by extraterrestrials and to recognize them as short, gray aliens with big dark eyes. The fact that real UFO witnesses actually describe a wide variety of other shapes has been censored, to such an extent that some research groups do not even accept these other shapes into their database.
2. The public is being taught that the only appropriate response to a UFO incident is abject terror. Several recent television programs, expanding on popular books about abductions, have implied that the experience was uniformly terrifying.
3. The public is subtly being taught that UFOs, if they exist, are necessarily extraterrestrial vehicles and cannot be anything else. Here the ufologists are actually resorting to the worst argument of their old skeptical adversaries, namely ridicule, to purge the dissenters from their ranks. Yet some of the major scientific figures who have carefully researched the data, men like Allen Hynek and Claude Poher, concurred as early as the mid-seventies that the extraterrestrial theory was unsatisfactory.
4. The abduction data has never been made available for general inspection. In the words of Dan Wright, "books have been produced, certainly, but not investigative reports" and "we have no access to two separate abduction databases ostensibly compiled outside our (MUFON) organization over the past few years." (12)
5. Even the obvious contradictions in the "alien" theory of abductions have been swept under the rug because they show far too many cases to be explained by the need for biological material. I was criticized by many of you when I pointed out that under the first-level extraterrestrial hypothesis landing statistics would lead to a figure of 14 million close encounters over the entire world, a figure some of my colleagues, like Dr. Robert Wood, thought too high (13,14,15). Now the abductionists are actually claiming a far larger figure of nine million abductions for the United States alone, in support of their theory that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft. This would translate to nearly two-hundred million abductees for the whole planet. Such statistics actually prove the opposite of what they try to prove. The aliens would have to be very poor scientists indeed if they needed that many interventions to collect the kind of material any skilled human nurse couldcollect in a few hours, and without inducing trauma.
What is in question here is the very idea that UFOs are extraterrestrial in the usual understanding of the term. As Dr. Hynek himself said in October 1976,
"I have come to support less and less the idea that UFOs are 'nuts and bolts' spacecraft from other worlds . . . There are just too many things going against this theory. To me, it seems ridiculous that super intelligence would travel great distances to do relatively stupid things like stop cars, collect soil samples, and frighten people. I think we must begin to reexamine the evidence. We must begin to look closer to home."
But you won't find these words quoted by the abductionists either.
Among the list of stupid things a superior extraterrestrial civilization with any knowledge of biology would not need to do would be to scoop up skin samples and remove embryos from millions of terrified Americans. The abduction theories make for good television entertainment but for very bad science. The fact is that people are experiencing abductions and the resulting trauma. But the real work to understand and alleviate their suffering has not begun. Nor is it likely to begin until those who have valuable data are able to present it in an atmosphere of open, informed debate, and in the absence of any preselection or censorship.
3. PRACTICAL STEPS
Let us now return to the wider enigma which UFO observations present to the interested researcher. Contrary to what many ufologists still think, official science is not uniformly against this kind of speculation. In my own experience, the real debate about the phenomenon doesn't have to do with whether or not the phenomenon exists.
Some specialists in high technology have even openly expressed the opinion that the sightings corresponded to an objective reality. What they question is the ability of modern science to deal with it. In private conversations with Professor Condon in 1967 I heard him express a similar view. He thought a study of UFOs was a waste of time not because the problem didn't exist but because it was outside the realm of science.
I disagree with this view because, as a French astronomer once said, no problem is scientific or unscientific by nature, but only by the way in which it is approached. The challenge here is to construct a rational, testable way to approach the UFO phenomenon. I do not pretend to have a solution to this problem, but I would like to offer eight simple guidelines for future research.
1. Recognize that this research involves human subjects and deal accordingly. A UFO report is the result of human perception, and it is a function of the infinite variety of human concepts of reality. It has an impact on the lives of individuals. To ignore this impact is irresponsible and unethical. The first rule in any investigation should be to attend to the witness as a person and to do no harm.
2. Better standards of investigation and reporting should be enacted. I have proposed a very simple system (the "SVP rating") to indicate the credibility of reports and I will again offer it here (16). It relies on only three questions: Do we know the source of the report?Was a site visit made? And what alternative explanations exist for the event? In the absence of such a rating the UFO databases and catalogues that exist today are little more than large buckets filled with random rumors.
3. Better exchange of data is imperative. No single source is available to an independent researcher as an unbiased reference to the phenomenon either in its current activity or in its past history. Various UFO groups have built elaborate investigation and reporting networks, only to hoard the cases that are sent to them, burying them in their filing cabinets. In ten or twenty years, the only consistent source of UFO data in the United States may well be Lucius Farish's Newsclippings, which have no pretension at interpretation.
4. A single classification system should be adopted for the gross indexing of the reported events. Following Hynek and others, I have made a proposal in this direction (16). The search for the ultimate system is a foolish distraction, a pointless exercise. No system will ever be perfect, but a non-perfect system can be augmented by expanded codes best suited to detailed studies. Without a single standard overall system, it is impossible to build global statistics. And without global statistics we are flying blind, unable to detect the major patterns in the phenomenon.
5. A small but very interesting set of reports contain references to hard traces, notably metallic residue found at the site after a UFO event. These samples should be collected and studied using modern techniques of analysis. Modest steps have been made in this direction, but much more can be done. Many of these cases are not sensational. But waiting for the next Roswell is not a constructive option.
6. Another small but interesting set of reports is accompanied by usable photographs. Again, an effort should be made to exploit them morefully. Techniques for digital image processing have been making rapid progress in the last five years, making it much easier to detect fraud and yielding better information.
7. Better field research is needed, and this is where an organization like MUFON can have the greatest impact. There is a danger, of course, that the raging debates about a few sensational topics like MJ-12 will distract investigators from the hard, unrewarding necessity of field work.
8. The study of abductions could be vastly improved. Sensational theories (which are not really theories in the scientific sense, but little more than strongly-held beliefs) should be de-emphasized and more serious investigations should be conducted, as Dan Wright has suggested. Whenever hypnosis is performed, I believe it should only be conducted under medical supervision by psychiatrists or psychologists with considerable clinical experience in the technique, and with an open mind (but no personal axe to grind) on the subject of UFO phenomena.
The outcome of such careful research might be a reappraisal of the entire subject and it might unearth some surprising insights that have been rejected a little too quickly. The history of the field abounds with such forgotten episodes.
A series of very interesting letters by well-known writer Philip K. Dick is a case in point. He once gave a very detailed, non-fiction account similar to that of many UFO witnesses and abductees when he described his own encounters with an entity that first manifested by keeping him awake at night with "violent phosphene activity" (17). It "did not seem bound by either time or space . . . within my head it communicated with me in the form of a computer-like or AI-system-like voice, quite different from any human voice, neither male nor female, and a very beautiful sound it was, the most beautiful sound I ever heard." (10 Feb. 1978)
He added that he thought it as "an ionized, atmospheric, electrical life form able to travel through time and space at will . . . through camouflage (it) prevents us from seeing it." And he described the aftermath of his initial experience: "during the days following . . . the imposition--that is the right word--the imposition of another human personality unto' mine produced startling modifications in my behavior." He came to the conclusion that he experienced "not added perceptual faculties but restored perceptual faculties . . . we are imprisoned by blunted faculties: the very blunting itself makes us unaware that we are deformed." (20 Feb. 1978)
Philip Dick wrote some 500,000 words of notes over a four-year period concerning his "paranormal" experience and concluded that "I will never really know what did in fact happen. Some living, highly intelligent entity manifested itself inside me and around me, but what it was, what its purpose was, where it came from--I have tried a thousand theories, and all work equally well, but at the same time each theory leaves some datum unexplained . . .and I know this is not going to change (PKD's emphasis). I have the impression that a master game-player and magician and trickster is involved." (23 Feb. 1978)
By trying to force the UFO experience into the narrow mold of the extraterrestrial theory, we have lost sight of other, more profitable avenues of research. We have allowed abduction believers to drive us into a blind alley. We have wasted a valuable opportunity to open our minds to new models of reality.
CONCLUSION
I don't know what all this means for you. I can offer no advice on methodology beyond the few guidelines I have outlined above. But I can tell you what all this means for me.
As long as our debates and disputes had to do with the interpretation of data, with the analysis of sightings and claims, our disagreements were the natural, healthy expression of opposing viewpoints. But we have entered a very different era today. Even the character assassinations, the outright lies, the ugly rumors that are now flying among the UFO groups could perhaps be forgiven as the desperate expression of people who have run out of rational arguments. But there is worse: Today the trauma, the emotions of witnesses are shamelessly exploited in support of preconceived theories.
A time when sincere witnesses are actually being hypnotized into agreeing with dogmatic ideas about the phenomenon, a time when biased statistics are seriously presented on the basis of catalogues where the data that didn't "fit" has been thrown out, a time when an attempt is made to indoctrinate therapists so they will interrogate witnesses along pre-determined patterns, is a very good time for any researcher with intellectual integrity to walk away and seek challenges elsewhere.
Fortunately other topics beckon. Massive series of UFO events, similar to those I investigated in the last few years in Brazil and in Russia, have passed unnoticed in the media. This changing, infinitely fascinating phenomenon keeps adapting to our own perception of it and sending us clues. It begs to be investigated. In this respect a scientist can do more effective work by conducting his research far from the ufological community.
For over forty years we have blamed the debunkers for our failure to obtain the attention of professional scientists; we have pointed a stern finger at the government (whatever that is) for our lack of insight and our reluctance to conduct decent field investigations. It is time to outgrow these childish attitudes.
Perhaps the revelation of the ultimate truth about UFOs has been, is and always will be an imminent event of great importance for human destiny. And I fear that the serious investigation of the phenomenon has been, is and always will be a forbidden science.
REFERENCES
1. Jacobs, David, Secret Life. Simon & Schuster, 1992.
2. Budd, Hopkins addresses New Jersey MUFON Group. New Jersey Chronicle Vol. 2, No.
3. Jan-Feb. 1992. The estimate of nine million abductees in the U.S. is based on a survey of 6,000 people conducted by the Roper organization at the direction of Hopkins and Jacobs.
3. Author's personal correspondence with Aime Michel, letter of 22 January 1992.
4. Michel, Aime, Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line Mystery. NewYork: Criterion Books, 1958.
5. Vallee, Jacques, Forbidden Science: Journals 1957-1969. Berkeley: North Atlantic, June 1992.
6. JSE is published quarterly by the Society for Scientific Exploration. Sample copies can be obtained by writing to the Editorial Office, ERL, 306, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4055.
7. Blue files, personal communication, case F184.
8. Personal communication, case F186.
9. Personal communication, case F185.
10. Manuscript, personal communication, M48 (1990).
11. Manuscript, personal communication, M50 (1990).
12. Wright, Dan, Abductions: Our Dirty Secret. MUFON UFO Journal, No.287 (March 1992), p. 10.
13. Vallee, Jacques, Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of UFOs. Journal of Scientific Exploration 4, No. 1 (1990), pp.105-117. Reprinted as an appendix to Revelations. New York: Ballantine, 1991.
14. Wood, Robert, The Extraterrestrial Hypothesisis Not That Bad. Journal of Scientific Exploration 5, No. 1 (1991), pp. 103-111.
15. Vallee, Jacques, Toward a Second-Degree Extraterrestrial Theory of UFOs. Journal of Scientific Exploration 5, No. 1 (1991), pp. 113-120.
16. Vallee, Jacques, Bringing Order Out of Chaos: Definitions and Classifications, Appendix to Confrontations. New York: Ballantine, 1991, pp. 231-244.
17. Dick, Philip K., Correspondence with Ira Einhorn, unpublished, private communication. (Blue File ref. F183) Various biographies of Philip K. Dick contain supporting data.
