UFO research and science

What is the relationship between ufology and science? “You get an ology, you’re a scientist”. So said the character “Beattie” in the famous 1980s British Telecom TV advertisement. That said, the scientific community clearly doesn’t recognize ufology as a legitimate part of science, standing in its own right alongside subjects such as biology or psychology. Some ufologists are scientists and some scientists are favorably disposed towards ufology, but generally speaking the scientific community regards ufology as a hobby, if indeed it pays the subject any attention at all. Does any of this matter and what, if anything, can be done to change this state of affairs?

History

At official level, science and ufology have cohabited, though they have been uneasy bedfellows. We should not forget that in America, long before his involvement with the Center for UFO Studies, the astrophysicist Dr J. Allen Hynek was appointed as scientific consultant to the USAF’s UFO projects, Sign, Grudge and Blue Book. The MOD’s UFO project owes its very existence to a scientist. Papers declassified by the Ministry of Defence in 2001 and released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Flying Saucer Working Party - the UK’s first official study into the UFO phenomenon - was set up as a direct consequence of the MOD’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Henry Tizard. In response to a wave of UFO sightings in the UK and indeed all around the world, Tizard’s view was that “reports of flying saucers ought not to be dismissed without some investigation”. Earlier still, in the Second World War and immediately thereafter, another famous scientist - the MOD’s Director of Scientific Intelligence, Professor R. V. Jones - had probed mysterious reports of so-called “Foo Fighters” and “Ghost Rockets”. The forms which Project Blue Book and the MOD’s equivalent used to record UFO sightings were designed with input from scientists, so as to facilitate the recording of the information required for meaningful investigations to be undertaken.

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