Professor Says UFO Studies Should Be Taught At Universities

New York anthropology professor Philip Haseley wants young people to get the best education possible, and part of that education, he says, should be about UFOs. Haseley thinks universities should offer classes on UFOs and other unexplained phenomena from space. "[A sighting] happens to millions of people [around the world]. It's about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study. It's important that the whole subject be brought out in the open and investigated," he said. I want to believe the truth is out there in 500 words or less.

Re:Religion Studies

[sznupi]

They would fit. But I would expect a lot of controversy with that approach.

Re:Long past due

[Wyatt Earp]

Project Blue Book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book [wikipedia.org]

The US did research it and did publish what they found. Of course they covered stuff up because the UFOs are classified aviation programs by USAF, CIA, USN and who knows what other TLA.

Re:Anthropology

[khallow]

It's also worth noting that there are interesting mass psychology phenomena here. For example, belief in UFOs has declined in popularity since Y2K (IMHO though my opinion was backed in 2001 by anecdotal observation of ufology vendors at a conference in San Jose). There's been no change in knowledge of UFOs. What has changed?

A significant question for science

[CRL2002a]

IMHO, unexplained aerial phenomena (I hate the term 'UFOs') are quite an open question. There is a lot of data out there to establish the reality of the phenomenon and that a significant number of events are unexplained. Probably the best are a number of radar/visual cases occurring in the 1950s and 1960s, in which multiple radars and multiple aircraft all tracked an anomaly for a lengthy period of time. For a good summary of unexplained cases, I recommend looking up the report of the Sturrock Panel (http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/SturrockPanel.htm). This panel examined some of the best evidential aerial anomaly cases and concluded that there was a significant unexplained component to the UFO phenomenon. There are several other good reports, but I recommend this one as a good place to start.

Re:Bullshit

[Tablizer]

Some were proven to be mistaken identity. The "bottom" of the disks always lined up with the pixel orientation of the vid camera, strongly suggesting they were an imaging artifact, perhaps of seagulls in the sun.

Re:Long past due

[speederaser]

http://www.history.com/shows/ufo-hunters/videos/soviet-archives#soviet-archives

there. enjoy. some narration is there but after you will see the video itself.

Oh please. That thing is clearly a triangular weather balloon viewed from below, like this one [solar-balloons.com].

Re:An opinion that differs from the others

[Ginger Unicorn]

If you haven't already, Try reading "why people believe weird things [amazon.com]" by michael shermer. Since reading this i'm convinced that there are no such things as ghosts, and that aliens aren't visiting the earth, whereas before i think i just adopted the attitude that the huge body of anecdotal evidence for both of them must indicate something, no smoke without fire, etc.

If you are interested in skepticism in general I can recommend the podcasts skeptoid [skeptoid.com], skepticality [skepticality.com] and the skeptics guide to the universe [theskepticsguide.org]

The betty and barney hill episode [skeptoid.com] of skeptoid is quite enlightening. There are quite a few UFO episodes [skeptoid.com].

The shermer book is essential reading.