Page 40 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - September 2021

40 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.

By Joel Achenbach

Friends and colleagues have urged me to write
something about UFOs, because the topic is hot
again and I’m sort of the space alien reporter on
staff. This refers not to where I’m from, but to
the kind of stuff I used to write about. I wrote a
book (“Captured by Aliens,” 1999) that was
primarily about the scientific search for
extraterrestrial life and included a long section
on UFO mythology. I’ve been to Roswell. I
wrote about the mass suicide of the 39 Heaven’s
Gate cultists who thought they would be
transported to a spaceship trailing comet Hale-
Bopp. I’ve interviewed people who think their
bodies have become inhabited by aliens from the Make no mistake: I want to be the reporter who you who have been paying attention to other,
Pleiades. goes out on a limb and breaks the space aliens purely terrestrial stuff, like the pandemic. On
story. I want my name on a front-page story with June 25, the U.S. national intelligence
But I’m wary of returning to that strange a 72-point headline saying THEY’RE HERE. community released a long-awaited report on
universe, because anything I write is guaranteed That would be a great, career-making story. But UFOs. The report by the Unidentified Aerial
to be unsatisfying for everyone involved. My the aliens never deliver. It doesn’t matter how Phenomena Task Force followed a series of
strong suspicion is that the number of UFO many front-page stories there are about UFO prominent articles in recent years about videos
sightings that involve actual alien beings, from sightings, or that the Pentagon acknowledged it taken by Navy pilots showing mysterious
deep space, with the tentacles and the antennae had an in-house UFO-probing office, or that objects, some of which appeared to be moving at
and so on, is zero. I would put the likelihood at some government officials think UFOs might be astonishing speeds and with motion unlike any
0.0000 and then add some more zeros, before aliens. None of that means they’re here. known terrestrial aircraft.
eventually, begrudgingly — because I’m so
intellectually flexible — putting in a little 1 out There are practical, mechanical reasons for Interest in UFOs had been boosted further by the
there somewhere to the right, a lonely sentinel, being reluctant to engage on this. To do any kind revelation that in 2007, at the behest of several
because who knows? (Yes, I’m saying there’s a of UFO story requires a descent into the rabbit U.S. senators, the Pentagon created a secret
chance.) hole of ufology, and that hole is bottomless. And office dedicated to studying such enigmatic
this isn’t the kind of story where you can do a lot reports. It was called the Advanced Aerospace
This skeptical take, however, is the boring take. of fieldwork. Earlier this year, in an appearance Threat Identification Program, and, after it was
A better story would be that, after all these with late-night host James Corden, former disbanded, its existence was disclosed by the
decades as a skeptic, I’ve converted, because the president Barack Obama spoke about videos of New York Times in 2017. The fact that the
recent rash of UFO sightings has persuaded me UFOs shot by Navy pilots: “[T]here is footage government was secretly studying something
that these are, in actual fact, spaceships from and records of objects in the skies that we don’t previously considered pseudoscience helped
somewhere else in the universe, or perhaps from know exactly what they are.” But Obama could rehabilitate the image of UFOs. (The Pentagon
the future, and could even be future humans, have gone further: We don’t know where they had decided that unidentified flying objects
such as grad students getting their PhDs in are. should be rebranded as UAPs: unidentified
paleoanthropology. Much better story. aerial phenomena.)
The classic UFO narrative — the interesting
Science journalists regularly disappoint people conjecture, the one with extraterrestrial beings Prominent figures in and out of government
by refusing to confirm really cool things like in it — involves a ziggurat of unknowns and added further credibility. Former CIA director
UFOs, past-life recall, astral projection, unknowables. We’re talking about elusive John Brennan, for example, said last year that
telekinesis, clairvoyance and so on. When I spacecraft piloted by unknown beings, of the sightings could be “some type of
wrote my aliens book I made a disastrous unknown biology, using unknown technologies. phenomenon that is the result of something that
marketing mistake by not including any aliens in Whose motives are unknown. And who come we don’t yet understand and that could involve
the story, focusing instead on people who from … somewhere. And who right now are … some type of activity that some might say
believe in aliens. Thus it was a major hiding? Watching us? Their location cannot be constitutes a different form of life.”
disappointment for readers who bought a copy discerned because they have special cloaking
after finding it in the “Occult” section at Barnes technologies. But which mercifully are not The U.S. intelligence investigation looked at
& Noble. perfect, thus allowing military pilots to see 144 reports involving UAPs. It solved only one
them, sometimes, and even capture them on of them: “With the exception of the one instance
Over the years I have found less joy in telling poor-quality videos. where we determined with high confidence that
the believers that what they believe is not true. It the reported UAP was airborne clutter,
gets old, always telling people to stop reading The lack of resolution to the UFO debate specifically a deflating balloon, we currently
the horoscope. We all rely on our beliefs to get appears to be built into the inquiry. The subject lack sufficient information in our dataset to
through the day. They are our handrails on a is interesting only to the extent that the attribute incidents to specific explanations,” the
shaky planet. People don’t need someone with a phenomena under scrutiny remain mysterious report said.
fanatical desire to be correct to come along and — and therefore outside the normal boundaries
pry their fingers loose. of logic, journalism and science. (Continued on Page 41)
Let’s review the UFO renaissance for those of