overcomingbias | That is, in response to any question of theory, it seems that they say the only acceptable answer is “I don’t know”. One must not express more refined degrees of belief, neither numerically nor in terms a more refined partition of possibilities. Regarding various possible hypotheses, one must not discuss their prior plausibility, the likelihood which which each one predicts various empirical details, nor the appropriate posterior beliefs that best combine prior plausibility and empirical fit. Just say “I don’t know” and shut up.
(Yes, they allow an exception for expressing confidence that hoaxes, lies, delusions, and honest mistakes don’t work as explanations. And for giving detailed reasons for this confidence. But only those exceptions.)
This anti-theory taboo among the “serious” who study UFOs seems to me quite wide-spread and it has been going for a long time. You can find a vast amount of UFO work on many particular cases, some work on patterns across those cases, and even some work considering concrete physical mechanisms to explain some common patterns. But you will find almost nothing among the “serious” people on less proximate more social explanations. They are okay with saying that UFOs often seem intelligent, aware, and responsive, but not with discussing the goals, agendas, origins, or histories of those intelligences.
Alas, I have seen this before, in other areas of social science. In fields similarly dominated by empiricists who keep throwing more data papers on the pile, but offering few rewards to those who might try to make sense of all that data. Often because they wouldn’t like the best explanations. It seems that UFOs is now such a field.
Apparently reports have been submitted on over 100,000 UFO encounters worldwide in the last 75 years. Of which 5-10%, or 5K-10K, seem quite hard to explain. Yes, the taboo may have discouraged reports on ten times that number, and yes some governments have actively taken or prevented some data. But the rate at which encounters allow concrete physical samples to be collected seems to have gone way down over the decades, and it isn’t obvious to me that we will really learn that much more from sharper and longer pictures, videos, and radar images.
So an anti-theory taboo risks us spending another 75 years in data collection, after which we may still not know that much more than we do now. The point of data is to inform theory, and it still seems to me that we now have plenty enough data, not only to judge if there is something real, but also to do some theorizing. Yes much theorizing so far has been motivated and/or sloppy, but honestly most of that has been done by folks not very experience or skilled at social science theory. Which is why it seems a shame that social theorists Wendt and Duvall explicitly endorse the anti-theory taboo.
Well I plan to continue to ignore both taboos, both the anti-UFO one and the anti-UFO-theory one. And I invite other experienced and knowledgeable social theorists to join me. It may be less fun at times to work on tabooed topics, but when the taboo is unfair you can have much higher of making valuable contributions on them. And the huge potential importance of this topic seems obvious.
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