As a follow-up to my last post, I wanted to comment on the recent New York Times article on reports by US Navy pilots of unexplained aerial phenomena. The article paints the pilots as reliable witnesses, and I have no reason to doubt that. The phenomena themselves appear to be truly interesting. It seems likely the things detected by the new Navy radar and later by sight by the pilots are real objects of some sort. As to what they are, this is an open question. I was pleased to read that the pilots themselves do not wish to engage in any speculation on that and say they are not trying to “make up myths.” This fact did not stop the authors of the article from bringing up the possibility of extraterrestrial origins, though they mention it in the context of it being a very improbable possibility.
As one of my favorite skeptics, Jason Colavito, points out in his very critical blog post on the article, two of the authors, Kean and Blumenthal, seem to lack some objectivity given their past work on fringe topics. As Colavito writes, “While it might be ‘big’ that the paper of record continues to foist UFO bullshit on America, having spoken to Blumenthal and to Times reporters, it’s pretty clear that the editor who publishes this tripe has a personal interest in UFOs.” Colavito’s statement seems a bit unfair to me. The article itself does not seem to me an attempt of the Times to “foist UFO bullshit” on its readers, but a pretty even-handed reporting of the accounts of two Navy pilots, who themselves seem beyond reproach.
Whether or not the editor has an interest in UFOs seems to be irrelevant to me. The accounts of the pilots are of real interest and have national security implications. If our radar systems and pilots are seeing unidentified object in our air space, I should hope they feel comfortable reporting this to their superiors without ridicule, as I said in my last blog post. Simply because the phenomena is comparable to past UFO sightings does not make it any less concerning to me as a US citizen. If these objects are sent by our enemies, we need to know more about them and do something about them. If they are something else entirely, we should study them just the same. What’s the problem with that? We should not be sensationalizing these accounts and speculating about extraterrestrials, though. Colavito seems to think we can’t try to figure out what the phenomena are without venturing into the fringe. That’s simply not true and reporting on the matter need not be regarded as solely feeding the fringe.