Page 16 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - February 2023 Edition

16 UFO Mania Is Out Of Control

UFO Mania Is Out of

Control.

Please Stop.

Sorry to disappoint you, this
science writer says, but there’s

zero evidence of aliens.

Continued from Page 15

This UFO moment is strikingly
reminiscent of how the UFO mythology
began in 1947. On June 24 of that year, a
pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported
seeing nine mysterious objects traveling
near Mount Rainier at high speed. Arnold

said the objects “flew like a saucer would
if you skipped it across the water,” and
“The X-Files.” Now we’ve come full Or even by the aliens who are secretly
the media took it from there, inventing
circle: Pilots are once again seeing things running everything.
the concept of “flying saucers.” Soon the
they can’t understand. The difference is
whole nation was quite obsessed. Not
this time there are videos. Science is often mistaken for a list of
long afterward, a balloon-borne military
things we know. It is really just a system,
surveillance instrument crashed on a
The “republic of science” is engaged in a set of techniques and principles for
ranch near Roswell, N.M., and even
the study of “observable natural investigating the world. It’s extremely
though it looked nothing like a flying
phenomena.” I have lifted both phrases successful as a method of interrogating
saucer or, for that matter, anything
from Richard Rhodes’s monumental the natural world. It revealed, among
remotely extraterrestrial, the debris
book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” other things, that the universe is
somehow spontaneously generated a
This is why science and science imponderably vast and marvelous.
series of increasingly dramatic narratives,
journalism are not well equipped to fact-
culminating in a sturdy hoax about
check religious beliefs. Religions Unfortunately, this system, although able
recovered alien bodies and reverse-
typically involve events that are neither to penetrate the cosmic darkness, is less
engineered alien aerospace technology.
natural nor necessarily observable on useful for detecting things conjectured to
demand. And that is where science runs be in some manner cloaked, or able to
In those early days of ufology, the classic
into trouble with UFO reports. The duck into a different dimension or
story involved something in the skies
videos and photos are ambiguous to say parallel universe. Maybe the aliens
seen by pilots or ordinary citizens.
the least. Eyewitness reports, even from traverse the universe in wormholes that
Mysterious lights. Scientists would
credible witnesses, are not the same as are invisible to us. But how would you
weigh in and say this was due to some
having a piece of an alien spaceship to know?
kind of perceptual error. People were
scrutinize or, better yet, some alien DNA.
fooled by Venus, by the moon, by
The UAPs may turn out to have prosaic
“swamp gas.” Intensive investigation by
The republic of science has some cultural explanations. In fact the intelligence
government experts and the Pentagon
norms and ground rules. One of them is report mentions many of them. Consider
failed to find any evidence of alien
openness. That means you have to show the first two of the five explanatory
spacecraft.
your data. Also, scientists have to be categories:
honest. They are allowed to be wrong,
Then the mythology took an interesting
but they can’t be liars. There’s a great “Airborne Clutter: These objects include
turn: People started getting abducted by
deal of trust that’s built into the scientific birds, balloons, recreational unmanned
aliens. It happened in their sleep. Science
enterprise. aerial vehicles (UAV), or airborne debris
fiction writer Whitley Streiber wrote a
like plastic bags that muddle a scene and
book, “Communion,” that claimed that
And so, scientists (and science reporters) affect an operator’s ability to identify true
such an abduction happened to him. Then
tend to be wary of conspiracy theories, targets, such as enemy aircraft.”
a Harvard professor, John Mack, wrote a
which have secrecy as their essential,
book saying that the reason people
defining feature. Most UFO narratives “Natural Atmospheric Phenomena:
believed they were being abducted by
are conspiracy theories of sorts. They Natural atmospheric phenomena includes
aliens is that they were, in fact, being
posit not only the existence of ice crystals, moisture, and thermal
abducted by aliens. They came from …
extraterrestrial visitors, but also a fluctuations that may register on some
another dimension?
conspiracy of silence, obfuscation and infrared and radar systems.”
intimidation of witnesses by the
That mythology ran its course, maybe
government, or maybe the news media, (Continued on Page 17)
after being so thoroughly narrativized by
private corporations, the globalists, etc.