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When it comes to the emotive topic of UFOs (as in alien spacecraft), scientists simply don’t want to know or enter into the debate if it can be avoided, for the main reason that the makers of the UFO = alien spaceship equation doesn’t hold. he doesn’t shut up That’s ‘present’ in terms of the kind of evidence scientists tend to have to ‘present’ when making claims. If they have to ‘present’, they in turn expect others to ‘present’ evidence before them. The scientific consensus is that UFO = alien spacecraft aficionados have not done an adequate job in the ‘presentation’ department. One of those scientists with that point of view (POV) is the well-known astronomer, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. While on the whole he is reasonably correct in that view, some of his arguments are flawed and lack credibility in my view.

When it comes to evidence for this or that explanation for a UFO sighting, especially the UFO = Alien Spacecraft explanation, eyewitness testimony is suspect. Or so recounts the astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson through several YouTube clips relevant to his opinion on UFOs. But wait, there is more!

Dr. Tyson very correctly points out that the “U” in UFO stands for “unidentified” and that is all anyone seeing what to them is an Unidentified Flying Object can expose. One should not jump to the conclusion that “U” equals an alien ship. There is no plot there. However, he also points out, an equally valid comment, is that we don’t like mysteries as things that are unidentified and therefore tend to jump to unwarranted conclusions to identify the unidentified and perhaps unidentifiable. No argument from me there, other than to point out that we jump to the conclusion of UFOs = alien craft in favor of some other explanation, probably because there must be something to suggest that possibility; there is something in the observation date that points to alien spacecraft and not something else.

He points out that there are natural phenomena and conditions that can confuse someone unfamiliar with those phenomena. There is no argument on that observation either.

HUMAN PERCEPTION

But it goes a bit off the rails by suggesting that the least likely form of bona fide evidence is human perception or eyewitness testimony. Optical illusions are a good example, as he delights to point out. However, when it comes to man-made or designed optical illusions, there aren’t that many natural ones, though there are some, of course, like mirages or that ship that “sinks” when it passes beyond the visible horizon.

I get the impression from Dr. Tyson’s comments that eyewitness testimony is as reliable as a $7 bill. Human perception is absolutely 100% fallible. Although eyewitness testimony is a cornerstone in legal proceedings, court lawyers have a field day to discredit eyewitness testimony. Experiments by psychologists overwhelmingly show that any sudden and unexpected event witnessed by ten people will result in ten different versions of what happened, just not that drastically. I mean ten witnesses will differ on the height, weight and attractiveness of the person in the unexpected event, but they will not differ on the fact that he was a human and not an elephant!

Humans are pretty good when it comes to the details, otherwise why would law enforcement officials ask you to flag down the criminal in a police lineup or news reporters question witnesses to some unusual news? To take just one of thousands of possible examples, you can easily distinguish your face from the faces of your parents and from the face of anyone else you know (in person) or have seen frequently (like Dr. Tyson on YouTube). . You know a new and different face when you see it. You can tell a human face from, say, a reconstructed Homo erectus face. You can tell a primate face from a feline face from a canine face from a bovine face. You can tell the face of a penguin or an eagle from its ancient ancestor, the T-Rex. If you can’t tell a frog face from a crocodile face from a shark face from a spider face, there’s something seriously awry. Assuming there is nothing crooked; you can distinguish all these examples of faces even though they are all faces.

So, in your day to day life, 99.9% of what other people tell you they saw (ie Joe Blow drinking in the pub) you will believe them. Human perception is flawed, but it’s all you’ve got for all practical purposes, despite the millions of smartphone cameras snapping photos of everything. People don’t tend to tell you they saw Joe Blow in the pub AND show you Joe Blow’s smartphone camera photo of him in the pub, as you obviously wouldn’t believe them without pictorial backing.

In any case, perception in humans is usually more than adequate, for example, when driving a car or playing a baseball game. Human beings have an excellent innate ability to judge height, depth, color, direction of sound, types of sound, movement, speed (speed plus direction), etc. We’d better have those skills if we want to survive from day to day; week to week; month to month; etc from birth to death.

THE PHONE GAME

Dr. Tyson places great importance on the boy’s game of ‘phone’ and how that relates to the evidence of how unreliable eyewitness (or hearing witness) testimony is. It is that version of someone who told someone, who told someone, who told someone, who told someone, who told someone, etc. etc That story that goes to ear number one usually ends up having little to do with what the last person in the chain recounts what they were told. Cases where someone who told someone repeated it many times in the future are really suspicious, but that’s not usually the case with UFO sightings. The ‘phone’ is actually quite irrelevant to UFO reports, as the chain is usually just a one-link chain between two people – the UFO witness recounting first-hand his story to the UFO investigator. There are no 20-somethings who have told someone links here. Direct first-person testimony is written or recorded for posterity.

THE LAYMAN WITHOUT EXPERIENCE

Dr. Tyson points out that Joe Blow’s average citizen isn’t usually as familiar with astronomical, meteorological, and optical phenomena, and visions of lights in the sky are frequently misinterpreted: Venus turning into an alien spaceship. However, not all UFO sightings are reports of dots of lights in the sky. UFOs have been seen up close on the ground and often exhibit a substantial disk when viewed in the sky. That is why the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek (who was a pioneer in the scientific study of UFOs and also an astrophysicist like Dr. Tyson) came up with that category of UFO sightings called “close encounters” where misidentification of, say, a star for an alien spacecraft is unlikely since a star never exhibits a substantial 2-D or 3-D geometric shape.

KIDNAPPING

Dr. Tyson also suggests (ironically?) that if you are abducted, take (steal) something from the alien’s shelf to back up your claim with something that can be put on the slab in a lab for independent testing. That is flawed for several reasons. Assuming that he has been abducted by aliens, he must think about it at that time in rather difficult circumstances. That is if he is not naked on the slab being poked and prodded: he has no available pockets to stow anything in, assuming there is something within easy reach to stow in any case. That’s also assuming you’re not being watched. Even if you cut through something, elements and compounds tend to be uniform throughout the cosmos, so an alien ashtray or knife could be made of the same material as an Earth ashtray or knife. Any alleged extraterrestrial artifact would clearly have to be of such a nature as to rule out any terrestrial origin or hoax. It’s a sensible suggestion, but a much more likely bet is that any supposed UFO abductees would pick up extraterrestrial microorganisms that could be detected and cultured as evidence.

FOREIGN PSYCHOLOGY

An obvious flaw in Dr. Tyson’s reasoning is that according to Dr. Tyson, if UFOs are alien craft, why should those aliens land in a farmer’s field instead of something more visible like landing in Times Square? (NY)? Well, aliens, by definition, are aliens and will have alien motives; an alien psychology. We cannot determine in advance how aliens should behave, as we have no studies to deliver on extraterrestrial wet material, alien neurochemistry, and alien motivations.

INEPT FOREIGNERS: SHIT HAPPENS

Dr. Tyson also ridicules UFOs as alien craft by pointing out the [Roswell] crash. How can advanced high-tech aliens navigate and travel across the galaxy and then end up crash-landing? They must be pretty stupid and inept aliens. Actually, in this case, it is an unusually inept example of reasoning on Dr. Tyson’s part. Dr. Tyson – Shit Happens! How many UFOs (if they are alien ships) have not crashed? Almost all of them would be an appropriate response. Sometimes, though rarely, we have plane crashes. Most of the time planes don’t crash. If terrestrial shit happens, alien shit happens. These are fallible aliens, not infallible deities.

In conclusion, Dr. Tyson’s various YouTube submissions are clearly his standard response to the UFO question and his well-rehearsed monologue on the subject. They were pure spectacle: witty, highly entertaining, but unfortunately scientifically barren. His presentations did nothing to promote acceptance of the UFO phenomenon in good faith. As the saying goes, “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”