Do you think aliens in ufos have visited Earth? (And all things UFO)

Very good article- but bit of a killjoy though
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Friends and colleagues have urged me to write something about UFOs, because the topic is hot again and I’m sort of the space alien reporter on staff. This refers not to where I’m from, but to the kind of stuff I used to write about.

I wrote a book (“Captured by Aliens,” 1999) that was primarily about the scientific search for extraterrestrial life and included a long section on UFO mythology. I’ve been to Roswell.

I wrote about the mass suicide of the 39 Heaven’s Gate cultists who thought they would be transported to a spaceship trailing comet Hale-Bopp. I’ve interviewed people who think their bodies have become inhabited by aliens from the Pleiades.


But I’m wary of returning to that strange universe, because anything I write is guaranteed to be unsatisfying for everyone involved.

My strong suspicion is that the number of UFO sightings that involve actual alien beings, from deep space, with the tentacles and the antennae and so on, is zero. I would put the likelihood at 0.0000 and then add some more zeros, before eventually, begrudgingly — because I’m so intellectually flexible — putting in a little 1 out there somewhere to the right, a lonely sentinel, because who knows? (Yes, I’m saying there’s a chance.)


This skeptical take, however, is the boring take. A better story would be that, after all these decades as a skeptic, I’ve converted, because the recent rash of UFO sightings has persuaded me that these are, in actual fact, spaceships from somewhere else in the universe, or perhaps from the future, and could even be future humans, such as grad students getting their PhDs in paleoanthropology. Much better story.


Science journalists regularly disappoint people by refusing to confirm really cool things like UFOs, past-life recall, astral projection, telekinesis, clairvoyance and so on.

When I wrote my aliens book I made a disastrous marketing mistake by not including any aliens in the story, focusing instead on people who believe in aliens. Thus it was a major disappointment for readers who bought a copy after finding it in the “Occult” section at Barnes & Noble.

Over the years I have found less joy in telling the believers that what they believe is not true. It gets old, always telling people to stop reading the horoscope.

We all rely on our beliefs to get through the day. They are our handrails on a shaky planet. People don’t need someone with a fanatical desire to be correct to come along and pry their fingers loose.


Make no mistake: I want to be the reporter who goes out on a limb and breaks the space aliens story. I want my name on a front-page story with a 72-point headline saying THEY’RE HERE. That would be a great, career-making story.

But the aliens never deliver. It doesn’t matter how many front-page stories there are about UFO sightings, or that the Pentagon acknowledged it had an in-house UFO-probing office, or that some government officials think UFOs might be aliens. None of that means they’re here……..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/08/11/stop-ufo-mania-no-evidence-of-aliens/