Do UFOs come from outer space?
Or is it "all in our heads"?
ParaScope Editor's Note: Several weeks ago, ParaScope reprinted an article from Magonia magazine by John Rimmer, entitled "E.T.H.: Extremely Tenuous Hypothesis." Rimmer criticized International UFO Reporter editor Jerome Clark for his advocacy of the "extraterrestrial theory" of UFO origins, which, as the name implies, posits that UFOs truly are vehicles piloted by sentient alien beings. Rimmer advocates the "psychosocial hypothesis," which explains UFO sightings as products of human imagination and altered states of consciousness.
In the spirit of robust debate, ParaScope presents Jerome Clark's response to Rimmer's article. Listen to both sides, and make up your own minds about which theory makes the most sense. For more info on some of the various theories on UFO origins, see related article.
From: "Jerome Clark" (jkclark@frontiernet.net)
[quoting John Rimmer's essay]
> E.T.H. - Extremely Tenuous Hypothesis
> John Rimmer
> http://www.magonia.demon.co.uk/news/clark.html
> The major part of the book [Spacemen, Demons, and
> Conspiracies: The Evolution of UFO Hypotheses, Fund for
> UFO Research, 1997] is an attack on the 'New-UFOlogy'
> ideas of the sixties and seventies, particularly the works of
> John Keel and Jacques Vallee. Clark himself, like many Americans
> now settled into middle-aged, middle-class conformity, has
> problems about the nineteen-sixties. Clark's historicist view of
> UFOlogy sees it emerging from the original sightings and contacts
> in the 'forties into two separate strands of thought: the
> 'saucerians' - pro-contact, space-brothers oriented, and the
> 'UFOlogists', scientific and skeptical of contact claims. There
> is a great deal of truth in this, although the separation between
> the two streams was never as total as Clark believes, and he has
> rather starry-eyed views on the scientific rigor of the
> 'Urologists. At one point he claims: "To [UFOlogists] the ETH
> was something more to be assumed than to be speculated about
> [true, but hardly scientific]. UFOlogy's best and brightest had
> more interest in investigating reports and correlating data than
> in wondering about the Greater Meaning of it All." In your
> dreams, Jerry!
In yours, John.
What's striking about the psychosocial hypothesis (PSH, or Purely Speculative Hypothesis) is its advocates' disdain for the pragmatic business of investigation and documentation. Of course there is a lot of silliness, naiveté, and gullibility over the course of UFO history. No one knows that better than I, having read probably more UFO literature than all but a small handful of my fellow humans; see the 93 pages of small-print bibliography in my just-published The UFO Encyclopedia, 2nd Ed.: "The Phenomenon from the Beginning." That, however, is not the end of the story, much as the PSH types desire it to be so; there are also first-rate investigations conducted by the heroes, sung and unsung, of UFOlogy. If the PSH types are aware of their existence, they are maintaining a tactful silence on the matter. The fact that they don't want this stuff to exist won't make it go away. It is also true, as I wrote and as John would know if he had made the effort, that in UFOlogy's early days the ETH was more often assumed than speculated about. Even I was surprised to find that out.
While I was researching The UFO Encyclopedia, I was pleased to see, often buried deeply in NICAP and other archives, thick files on case investigations, in which the investigator or investigators left no stone unturned. I found the same in the past year while going through the massive files of the late James E. McDonald, housed at the University of Arizona. No airy pronouncements from the armchair, in short, but richly informed judgments from the field. This is how science is done. In this sort of material (as in Blue Book records, Condon files, and elsewhere) and through these sorts of efforts, one finds the core of the case for UFOs as anomalous physical phenomena apparently under intelligent control.
I am amused to find myself labeled a "conformist" and an "ardent" supporter of the ETH. Reading stuff like this, I am reminded again of why, long ago, I abandoned ideology for pragmatism. The latter didn't force me to reinvent the world to conform to my own biases.
> In fact it would be hard to find a UFO magazine in the fiftiesFor a full account of how UFOlogists (beginning with Fort) have treated the ETH, read "Extraterrestrial Hypothesis and," which appears in The UFO Encyclopedia, 2nd Ed. (374-93). An abridged version of the same essay appears in the trade paperback The UFO Book (199-218). As is typical of PSH writing, the above bears some passing relationship to some things, and none whatever to others. In short, speculation in the UFO literature about the ETH has covered the spectrum: from the naive and crazy to the sober and intriguing. Having spent a good part of the last year reading SETI literature, most of it written by credentialed scientists, I can say pretty much the same of that literature. Until we know a whole lot more than we know now about extraterrestrial life, that is likely to remain the case.
> and sixties which did not from time to time waste a great deal of
> paper in vague, speculative rambling articles -- what Hilary Evans
> memorably describes as 'deserts of arid speculation' -- about life
> and the universe. The magazines that didn't, presumably Clark's
> data correlators, were simply listings of cases; mostly
> uninvestigated reports from newspapers. These were, and are
> still, very useful in their way, but hardly represent the 'hard
> work and shrewd analysis' which Clark claims as a hallmark of the
> scientific 'UFOlogists'.
> This cosy sub-division of the subject came under threat in theIn The UFO Encyclopedia I have written extensively about Keel, Vallee, and paranormal/occult UFO theories. Again, interested readers are urged to go there for a full expression of my views.
> seventies with the rise of two of Clark's principal betes-noir,
> John Keel and Jacques Vallee. I agree that Keel was responsible
> for introducing a new element of anti-scientific irrationalism
> into the field of, and in Magonia's '25 Years Ago'
> columns you will have read how Alan Sharp regularly locked horns
> with Keel over his lack of scientific credibility. In Keel's
> favor it must be said that his investigations (and when all is
> said he probably did more first-hand investigation than most
> so-called scientific 'UFOlogists') opened out the field of
>, and yes, Clark is right, helped undermine the complacent
> acceptance of the ETH amongst most UFOlogists.
> Vallee is a scientist, and his first two books are still held up
> as examples of the kind of 'correlative' work that Clark assumes
> was the standard for UFOlogists at the time. The fact that they
> are still worth reading simply serves to demonstrate how little
> of that type of work was actually going on then. With Passport to
> Magonia Vallee moved into the realm of 'sixties counterculture',
> in Clark's view. I suspect that most of Vallee's interest in
> was fulfilled by the time he published Invisible College
> in the late seventies, and his later books are largely re-hashes
> or diaries of his more productive period.
> The real problem for Clark's thesis with both these writers isThe ETH, right or wrong, is a perfectly respectable scientific theory, as Michael Swords (conspicuously absent in the anti-ETH broadsides from PSHers) has demonstrated in his long surveys of the exobiological literature. Theories that attribute UFO, paranormal, and anomalous phenomena to demonic forces, as Keel's, Holiday's, and FSR editor Gordon Creighton's did and do, would strike most of us as a tad on the irrational side.
> that they showed that the UFO phenomenon was not containable in a
> simple ETH pigeonhole. The problem was one of perception: the
> perception of what constituted a UFO report. Clark castigates F[lying]
> S[aucer] R[eview] for carrying articles by the likes of F. W. Holiday
> about the Loch Ness Monster, and certainly they were tedious enough
> to read at the time. But at least they were able to demonstrate that the
> ETH was not the only unproven theory that could be hung around the
> phenomenon.
> But we are simply told that "as eventually became allThis, of course, is the principal problem of the PSH. It is UFOlogy reduced to literary criticism. Having been an English major myself and a lifelong devotee of literature, I am all in favor of literary criticism, and I know it when I see it. I even think it has its role in the discussion of UFO issues. Where the PSH types go wrong is in believing, strangely, that literary criticism when applied to all UFO issues possesses explanatory power. Another reason I left the fold, for which apostasy I fear I will never be forgiven.
> too apparent" the theory was suitable only for the dreaded
> librarians who wrote about as "an exercise in literary
> criticism".
> I think part of the reason why Clark has abdicated on his attemptHere we get the whiff of Ameriphobia which always seems to turn up in PSH polemic.
> to counter the PSH is that, despite such writers as Martin
> Kottmeyer and one or two other contributors to Fortean rather
> than UFOlogical literature, it has never really been seriously
> promoted in the USA, and as is becoming clearer and clearer,
> American like much of American society is tremendously
> insular.
> This is understandable in a such a huge and diverseHey, John, has it ever occurred to you that we have looked at the PSH arguments and found them unconvincing? Or that the first full-length book to use PSH-like arguments -- Clark and Coleman's The Unidentified (1975) -- was published here in this poor, insular country? Could it be that there is an explanation for American UFOlogists' rejection of the PSH that does not happen to suit your convenience?
> country, but it does reduce the range of influences and ideas
> which impinge on US
> On the last page this book is revealed as a prop for the ETH.I love that sly use of the verb "admits." The sort of rhetorical flim-flammery one encounters often in PSH discourse.
> Clark admits that humans do perceive a remarkable range of
> anomalous experiences: "as... psychosocial theorist rightly
> remind us... gods, monsters fairies, even merfolk... we can grant
> the legitimacy of fantastic experience without taking the further
> step of confusing it with event",
> except of course for UFOs. The core UFO phenomenon is theAnd of course I stand by that. These sorts of cases always leave the PSH flailing. Few PSH types even possess the technical training to investigate them or understand the implications of the evidence. That doesn't stop them from dismissing them wholesale.
> "daylight disc, radar/visual and landing traces (and, perhaps
> crash/retrieval)."The ETH, in these case has been shown to be
> "reasonable, testable and meaningful. At the least it has demonstrated
> the presence of a physical phenomenon with a technology which
> interacts with its immediate environment."
My position on the ETH is far more qualified and nuanced than anything I have seen among the hard-line dogmatists of the PSH. My position is simply that the ETH is, "right or wrong, a reasonable reading of the most evidential reports." I don't claim it is proved; I simply hold that it is a reasonable provisional hypothesis, and I think most thoughtful people would agree. I am far less obsessed with final explanations and conclusive causes than John and his cohorts are.
At the same time I hold the view -- which, if they held it too, would save the PSH types a lot of trouble -- that not all of what we call UFO phenomena are the same thing. I discuss this issue in detail in the essay "On Anomalous Phenomena" in my Unexplained! (1993) and in abbreviated form in the introduction to the new encyclopedia (xii-xiii). I really think we ought to be more modest about what we think we know, and that should go for everybody who wants to call "extraterrestrial research" to those who claim, with no empirical justification to speak of, that anything not otherwise accountable for can be contained in a Purely Speculative Hypothesis and swept out the door.
For a full history and critique of the PSH, see my Encyclopedia, 749-59, or The UFO Book, 492-504 (hardly an "abdication," John). For solid cases which remain puzzling after extensive investigation and analysis, see those books, too. (You might be particularly interested in the entry on the RB-47 case.) They also contain extensive bibliographic references so that those whose minds are not shut tight as mousetraps can learn more.
In a sense, of course, one can't help envying John and the Purely Speculative crowd. They have all the answers. I, on the other hand, am still searching. I suspect most of the rest of you are, too.
Cheers,
Jerry Clark
 |
E.T.H.: Extremely Tenuous Hypothesis? |
|
Nebula: UFOs & Aliens |
|
UFO message board: Share your views |
