Posthuman Blues

Apparently Seth Shostak's quips on the NBC UFO special weren't lame enough the first time around, because he's written a new article reiterating them.

The proof is out there ...

"The good news is that the latest polls confirm that roughly half of all Americans believe extraterrestrial life exists. The weird news is that a similar fraction think some of it is visiting Earth."

"Good" news because that means more philanthropists forking over money to listen for radio signals, which is Seth's big thing, but "weird" news that some people think extraterrestrials might already be here because that wreaks havoc with SETI's tidy, hermetically sealed paradigm.

"Additional evidence is 'expert testimony'. Pilots, astronauts, and others have all claimed to see odd craft. It's safe to say that these witnesses have seen something. But just because you don't recognise an aerial phenomenon doesn't mean it's an extraterrestrial visitor. That requires additional evidence that, so far, seems to be unconvincing."

Seth doesn't cite a single case, and with good reason -- some of the best sightings, strongly suggesting exotic craft operating at the boundaries of known physics, have been made by impeccably credentialed observers. He's right, of course, when he writes that "just because you don't recognise an aerial phenomenon doesn't mean it's an extraterrestrial visitor." But is this the best he can do? Sadly, yes.

"When push came to shove, and when pressed as to whether there's compelling proof of extraterrestrial visitation, the experts on this show backed off by saying 'well, we don't know where they come from. But something is definitely going on.' The latter statement is hardly controversial. The former is goofy. If the saucers are not from outer space, where are they from? Belgium?"

Admitting the possibility of exotic objects in our skies -- and, furthermore, conceding that one doesn't know where they come from -- is "backing off"? Real skeptics (as opposed to the faction of virulent pseudoskeptics epitomized by Seth) call this "suspending conclusions"; after all, even the most spectacular UFO sighting isn't likely to reveal the UFO's home star system (if in fact we're dealing with star-hopping craft and not something altogether weirder).

Seth's screeds against UFOs wouldn't irk me nearly as much if they could be excused as simple ignorance. But his incessant attempts to muddy the facts about the UFO phenomenon betray a deliberate (indeed, somewhat frantic) need to stamp out interest.

Radio SETI, it seems, cannot stand as a discipline without creating spurious straw men to impale. At the very least, this should serve to arouse deep skepticism of SETI's dogmatic approach to extraterrestrial communication.