ARTICLE

Are UFOs and UAPs Ordinary, Extraordinary Terrestrial, or Extraordinary Extraterrestrial Phenomena?

BY MICHAEL SHERMER

An advantage of having worked in the skeptical business for 30 years is institutional memory that enables me to place the current claims and controversies into historical context, even that of personal memory. So, when the New York Times published their article on “The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program” in December of 2017, 1 and CBS’s 60 Minutes reported that “UFOs Regularly Spotted in Restricted U.S. Airspace” in May of 2021 2 —the reports bracketing the latest wave of apparent sightings—I forthwith recalled similar such waves in the past, both since the early 1990s when we started publishing Skeptic magazine and devoting numerous issues to the topic, and previous historical upsurges of sightings going all the way back to the 1890s groundswell of “mystery airships” spotted moving across the United States, later identified as dirigibles. Historian Mike Dash’s description of the 1896-1897 series of these mysterious airships will sound familiar to those energized by the latest round of UFO videos:

Not only were [the mystery airships] bigger, faster and more robust than anything then produced by the aviators of the world; they seemed to be able to fly enormous distances, and some were equipped with giant wings…. The files of almost 1,500 newspapers from across the United States have been combed for reports, an astonishing feat of research. The general conclusion of investigators was that a considerable number of the simpler sightings were misidentification of planets and stars, and a large number of the more complex the result of hoaxes and practical jokes. A small residuum remains perplexing. 4

Residues and Distortions The final “small residuum” qualification hints at a reality in all skeptical and scientific investigations. No hypothesis or theory in any field accounts for 100 percent of the phenomena under investigation. The “residue problem” means that no matter how comprehensive a theory is there will always be a residue of anomalies for which it cannot account. The most famous case in the history of science is that Newton’s gravitational theory could not account for the precession of the planet Mercury’s orbit, subsequently explained by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection could not account for anomalies like the peacock’s large and colorful tail (which would be a bullseye for predators), but his theory of sexual selection did, demonstrating how females select for mates based on certain traits males develop to stand out from other males and to attract females.

The residue problem in UFOlogy is instructive because it enables skeptics to find common ground with believers and allows us to live comfortably with the fact that we can’t explain everything. For example, in her bestselling 2010 book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record, UFOlogist Leslie Kean notes that “roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings can be explained” as:

weather balloons, flares, sky lanterns, planes flying in formation, secret military aircraft, birds reflecting the sun, planes reflecting the sun, blimps, helicopters, the planets Venus or Mars, meteors or meteorites, space junk, satellites, swamp gas, spinning eddies, sundogs, ball lightning, ice crystals, reflected light off clouds, lights on the ground or lights reflected on a cockpit window, temperature inversions, hole-punch clouds, and the list goes on! 5

So the entire extraterrestrial hypothesis for explaining Unidentified Flying Objects and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UFOs and UAPs respectively) is based on a residue of data left over after the above list has been exhausted. What’s left? Not much, I’m afraid. Let me close the book on Kean’s book, since she was the coauthor of that 2017 New York Times article that launched the current frenzy over UFOs and UAPs.

Kean begins by asking readers to consider “with an open and truly skeptical mind” that such sightings represent “a solid, physical phenomenon that appears to be under intelligent control and is capable of speeds, maneuverability, and luminosity beyond current known technology,” that the “U.S. government routinely ignores UFOs and, when pressed, issues false explanations,” and that the “hypothesis that UFOs are of extraterrestrial or interdimensional origin is a rational one and must be taken into account, given the data we have.” She then opens her exploration “on very solid ground, with a Major General’s firsthand chronicle of one of the most vivid and well-documented UFO cases ever”—the UFO wave over Belgium in 1989-1990.

UFOS AND UAPS

Here is Belgian Major General Wilfried De Brouwer’s account of the first night of sightings:

Hundreds of people saw a majestic triangular craft with a span of approximately a hundred and twenty feet and powerful beaming spotlights, moving very slowly without making any significant noise but, in several cases, accelerating to very high speeds.

Compare De Brouwer’s version of events to Kean’s summary of the same incident:

Common sense tells us that if a government had developed huge craft that can hover motionless only a few hundred feet up, and then speed off in the blink of an eye—all without making a sound—such technology would have revolutionized both air travel and modern warfare, and probably physics as well.

Note how de Brouwer’s 120-foot craft becomes “huge” in Kean’s retelling, how “moving very slowly” was changed to “can hover motionless,” how “without making any significant noise” shifted to “without making a sound,” and how “accelerating to very high speeds” was transformed into “speed off in the blink of an eye.” This language transmutation is common in UFO narratives, making it harder for scientists and skeptics to provide natural explanations. Keep this in mind as we consider the latest wave of UAP sightings and videos.