Professor Says UFO Studies Should Be Taught At Universities 311
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.
It doesn't sound crazy (Score:4, Interesting)
A rigorous scientific and professional approach would be far better than an amateur approach any day. Otherwise we deny the phenomenon entirely, or rely on amateur people who keep finding traces of them anywhere they look. You know they saying: "To a person holding a hammer, every problem is a nail."
Re:sound good to me (Score:5, Interesting)
I had this class. In my university, the history department had some classes in secret societies and conspiracies. We discussed the history and psychology of these events and how they've migrated from supernatural to scientifically based as our culture changed from dependence on one to dependence on the other. It was very interesting, though the mythology on Masonry and the Illuminati and such were far cooler than the UFO stuff IMO.
It was a good class and I agree that it should be a history elective.
Anthropology (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a class that studies those who believe in UFOs would definitely be worth of an anthropology class.
Who are the believers? Why do they so strongly believe they saw a UFO? What is the cultural basis behind this belief? What are the equivalents in other societies? Ghosts? Evil spirits? Angels? A study of the people would be very interesting.
I think this anthropology professor might even be qualified (if biased) to teach such a class.
Re:Religion Studies (Score:5, Interesting)
-Laurie Anderson
--
BMO
Re:Religion Studies (Score:2, Interesting)
The UK acknowledges the phenomenon: Ministry of Defense [www.mod.uk]
So does Mexico [rense.com]
oh, and so does the FBI [fbi.gov]
and the CIA [cia.gov].
UFO's are not just some hoojum bullshit. There is a serious phenomena of unexplained activity/objects, and rigorous scientific endeavor would get much more credibility if this area was at least explored from a rational and logical standpoint in educational institutions without all the hooting and hollering, even if what we discover is against our rational and logical assumptions.
and if your really interested, check out the NASA video of the STS-75 [youtube.com] incident. Watch the video, and then read what NASA [nasa.gov] conveniently doesn't discuss.
An opinion that differs from the others (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm shocked at how closed minded so many of you are. A lot of things sound ridiculous until you start learning about them. Here on slashdot we have tons of comments from people who have absolutely no knowledge of an area that are just dismissing it because it doesn't fit into their limited view of reality. I am not a "believer," but I sure as hell am not a pseudo-skeptic debunker either.
I have dedicated many hours to studying these things, so let me say a few things. I'm going to stick with abduction phenomenon, because I find that to be the most fascinating and the most controversial. First off, it happens to people from all walks of life. It even happens in cities. It happens to police officers, soldiers, teachers, and software engineers. It tends to "run in the family," meaning if a parent of yours had had the abduction phenomenon you are likely to as well. The stories that the vast majority of people report tend to greatly overlap in descriptions of things they saw, equipment used on them, etc. Most people that do report it are embarrassed and many are very disturbed and emotional about what has happened to them. They don't usually want any publicity. People who this happens to repeatedly often just want it to stop happening. In other words, the great majority of cases aren't people seeking attention.
You may think that maybe this can all be mental phenomenon that perhaps people are genetically predisposed towards, but you'll have to look at the physical scarring that often occurs, the implant studies, the many cases that have had lots of witnesses, the cases where many people were abducted, etc.
A funny thing about this phenomenon is that it doesn't fit into any category very well. The more you study it the less sense any theory makes. People start proposing ideas like maybe these aren't physical beings but inter-dimensionals (whatever that means.) Some have noticed similarities between historical accounts of demon abduction and fairy abduction. Some people speculate on the motives of the beings. All we can really tell from studying this is that there is definitely some phenomenon occurring, it is extremely disturbing and embarrassing to the people that it happens to, it often has physical effects, and it we don't yet have any model that can explain it.
I know I'm not going to sway anyone's opinion with the little things I have time to write here. If you are willing to at least consider that something really is happening to people I suggest you find some books. Since the study of these things is not allowed to be discussed openly by scientists or at universities there are a lot of nuts that end up writing and lecturing about these topics. Many of them are the attention and money seeking people exploiting the phenomenon for their gains. Luckily there are some good people as well and some scientists that have risked their careers by exploring these things. It is hard to make suggestions as many authors have good and bad areas, but as an introduction I'd recommend Budd Hopkin's book "Missing Time."
Bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
The video quality has been improved ever since video cameras became commonplace.
YET, now there are people who reject ufo footages because 'they look too clean'.
make up your mind first.
if you cant trust anything, just go check Soviet ufo files. they are open, and history channel even ran a documentary with footage from within them. some of the footages are very very out of the ordinary. you can find them on youtube too.
I had a class on UFOs back in the late 70's (Score:1, Interesting)
It was at Temple, and actually given under the History department. The prof was David Jacobs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Michael_Jacobs [wikipedia.org]
He seemed pretty reasonable back then. His position was that there was enough unexplainable stuff going on that something weird was happening that warranted further investigation.
From the Wikipedia page on him, it seems he's gone a little more extreme on the subject these days.
Re:sound good to me (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually took a UFO class in college (Temple University). It was a history elective, one that was exceptionally popular and difficult to get into. The class was positioned as one that mainly dealt with UFOs and their impact (or lack thereof) on society, mainly from a governmental point of view.
Except, that was only the first half of the class. After the midterm there was a heavy focus on abductions, and we had to read a number of "non-fictional" books on the subject. It was a bit freaky if you started to believe it.
Beats me if they still offer this class, I took it in 1995.
Re:sound good to me (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, your test flight mention is actually very legitimate.
When I was a kid, I lived on one of the military practice routes. I loved watching the jets fly over, so if I heard them coming, I'd run outside to watch them fly over.
One day, around 1985, I saw a very odd plane fly over. I hadn't ever seen anything like it. It looked kind of like a fighter jet, but it had very angular features, including a tall angled cockpit , a weird body, and weird tail. I told my parents, friends at school about it, and even some teachers. They all thought I was nuts. I had even sketched generally what it looked like, and I was told "there's no such thing."
About 3 years later the gov't announced their "new" F-117, and that was the plane.
Of course, since I had been watching and trying to identify the planes flying over for quite a while, I knew this was definitely a military jet of some sort, so there was no good reason to scream alien conspiracy.
I fell for another one that I was convinced was a UFO, because I had no better way to explain it. Years later, I was talking to a retired USAF pilot, and he told me exactly what it was. It would have been a rather uncommon sight, so I just dumb lucked into seeing it. It helped that I could tell him my precise location, time of day, and even the direction I was facing. Given the choice of the very likely answer I was given by someone with no advantage to lie to me, or believe that an alien spaceship buzzed me, while I'd like to believe it was an alien, it simply wasn't.
Re:UFO is an acronym (Score:3, Interesting)
Alas, here come another problem: science is as applicable to natural phenomena as much as they are recurring. The foundation of science is experiment which by definition of scientific experiment should be repeatable. The natural phenomena that are under science should be repeatable.
More fundamentally, science is about observation. You make observations, construct a hypothesis which makes certain predictions, and then conduct further observations to either confirm or deny the predictions. This doesn't always take the form of a repeatable experiment. Sure if it's chemistry then anyone should be able to duplicate the results. However in geology or astronomy it is perfectly valid to observe an unusual phenomenon only once, and construct a hypothesis that predicts certain other phenomenon, and if you later observe that new phenomenon that's evidence for your hypothesis. All without repeatability.
So even observing each UFO only once, it would be perfectly possible to construct hypothesis based on those solitary observations that allows for future observation to confirm or deny it.
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
search youtube for mexico ufo videos. such videos of the quality you seek is commonplace there, because ufos, for some reason, appear en masse there with no hesitations, for hours.
What I Have Learned (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to read extensively about UFO's. I was determined to "get to the bottom of it" and figure out once and for all whether the phenomenon was hardware or wetware (psychology). I never did come to a conclusion. The debunking was usually disappointingly sloppy; they make almost as many logic flaws as the "believers". My analysis left me with a Big Null.
But the one thing I did learn by reading many witness accounts and the after-math is that if YOU see a flying saucer or UFO, shut the hell up. Reporting it is a recipe for headaches and ridicule.
Call MUFON or a similar organization to report it to get it off your chest and into their database. Other than that, it didn't happen. Move on.
What declassified UFO documents have shown... (Score:2, Interesting)
From the classified UFO documents that UFO conspiracy theorists like to use to justify their paranoia have shown once they have been declassified have been quite disappointing. What we have always ended up finding is that they weren't classified because there was some massive UFO cover-up, but rather that governments were paranoid regarding sharing how data was distributed and communication protocols. The actual data was pretty boring and has done nothing to vindicate conspiracy nuts.