Post-Fort People and Activities
A significant portion of UFOlogy is scientific, and dominated by persons trained in astronomy, avionics, astrophysics, biology, and other pertinent disciplines.
Such people are familiar with the scientific method, and when they write, it is for peer-reviewed journals. Some in this group dedicate themselves to investigatory activity and a careful recording of events. Alternatively, less-rigorous groups are preoccupied with government involvement with UFOs. Some of those links motivate subgroups devoted to conspiracy theory predicated on an inherent sneakiness of Washington, NASA, and other entities.
Baseless conjecture can be addressed. But nobody can turn back the clock, which is to say that traditional-mode UFO enthusiasts are aging. Here, “traditional” connotes a certain purity of interest: rooted in astronomy if not complex astronomical science, and an openness to the possibility of UFOs’ extraterrestrial origins. Organized U.S. government interest in UFOs brought the subject some useful gravitas during about 1948–70, but when government investigatory agencies pulled back and abandoned their public face, general interest in UFOs began to fracture into subgroups. From the late 1960s forward, increased public interest in the paranormal profoundly affected the philosophical nature of UFO studies. First-and second-generation UFO enthusiasts that had been formed from the “hardware” nature of World War II placed value on the solid, empirical aspects of technology and evidence. These people shared a cast- iron-and-rivets orientation, and an understanding of technology (particularly avionics). They could make distinctions between the real, the likely, the possible, and the absurd.
But those first-and second-generation enthusiasts are now between about fifty- five and ninety, and have aged into irrelevance in a culture that worships the young, the new, and the bizarre. Even bright youngsters that developed an interest in UFOs as recently as the mid-1980s are now in their middle forties, and some may have failed to resist the sirens’ songs of parallel dimensions, human-alien hybrids, astrology, Bigfoot, extraterrestrial demons, and healers from the stars.
People younger than forty haven’t the shared memory needed to return to the unsentimental empiricism of the early UFO investigators. Indeed, memory is hardly needed at all in a 21st-century environment of ceaseless blogs, texts, Instagram, and Snapchat.
In 2013, UFOlogist and retired process design engineer Frank Purcell wrote to UFO Trail, a popular blog. “Conjectures [about UFOs] are fine,” he said, “but they are not science.” He went on to elaborate on the importance of controlled laboratory experiments to any exploration aspiring to be scientific study.
Specific to UFOs, Purcell said, [W]hile UFOs haven’t been experimented on in laboratories, what we do have are anecdotal reports, sometimes with physical evidence such as radar reports, photographs, film, and even, occasionally, medical information from people interacting with UFOs. But an important distinction needs to be made if we contrast ufology with, say, evolution and astrophysics. With UFOs there is no body of laboratory-based knowledge from which to draw reasonable theories. The best people can do is make conjectures.