Area 51 is perhaps the second most famous site in modern UFOlogy. This actually refers to an air force base near Groom Lake in Nevada. Area 51 is the classified site where some of the most famous high-powered aircraft in recent times have been tested including the SR71, B1, B2, and F117A. According to some UFOlogists, this is also the place where the US military is storing flying saucers it has acquired over the years. Here, the US is allegedly trying to uncover the secrets behind the alien propulsion system. Other UFOlogists consider Area 51 to be a UFO landing port sanctioned by the US government. A joint pact has apparently been signed in which aliens are permitted to have free reign of America's skies and permission to abduct citizens as necessary in return for revealing technology secrets to the US.

The "Area 51 myth" is cloaked in government conspiracy and cover-ups, and as such is immune to counter-arguments based on facts. It does no good whatsoever to point out that over the past fifty years the USA hasn't developed a single technology which wasn't based on solid, terrestrial-based science. Moreover, a civilization this advanced wouldn't require anyone's permission to fly Earth's friendly skies or to abduct its citizens.

Finally, a word on the "alien autopsy film". Even most UFOlogists have declared this film, which purports to show autopsies carried out on alien bodies found at Roswell, a hoax. Numerous medical and special-effects experts have testified to this effect. Period.

Why? 

When challenged with a clearly articulated claim, particularly one which runs counter to a prevailing paradigm, a skeptic is trained to study carefully all the evidence for and against it, and then determine whether a more prosaic explanation will suffice. This methodology is rather analogous to what happens in a (criminal) court of law. The onus is on the challenger, the prosecution if you will, to prove that its claim is better -- at once simpler and has greater explanatory power -- than the incumbent's or defence's beyond a reasonable doubt. It comes as no surprise that in science the challenger usually fails. But on occasions, it wins its case in spectacular fashion as the revolutions of relativity and quantum mechanics attest.

Making contact with an ETI would rank among the greatest discoveries in the history of our species. Virtually overnight, there would be immeasurable changes to politics, science, technology, religion, philosophy, etc. But before science alters its worldview to include the existence of alien life, it has to have compelling proof. Society relies heavily on science; it just cannot be any other way. This is why skeptics are so adamant about "proof" when it comes to UFOs and related paranormal phenomena.

Why are there so many believers in UFOs, alien abductions, and the associated trappings such as crop circles and cattle mutilations? There is no simple answer to this perplexing question. Who can understand the subtleties of the human mind where belief resides deep within?

When confronted with the unknown, human beings instinctively search first for a "magical" explanation. Thus, the pre-scientific or magical worldview is replete with spirits, demons, fairies, angels, witches, etc. Such explanations are simple to assimilate, even if they don't bear up under scrutiny. Rational explanations, however, often require an effort to understand, but as science has conclusively demonstrated, they are well worth the investment.

The Conspiracy Primer - Alien Nation   The UFO crowd is pretty insistent that the answer to "Is there anybody out there?" is a firmly established "duh". Some, such as astronomers, are not so certain. Before science is prepared to accept that spacemen walk among us, an alien body or some item of unearthly manufacture would be nice, thank you very much. UFO believers claim this kind of unquestionable evidence is already in human hands. Unfortunately, it's in the wrong hands. There's a conspiracy involving top government officials, NASA personnel, generals, and every American president since Truman to keep it all from us. DON'T PANIC Why? The pat answer is that there would be panic in the streets if we knew UFOs were real. The cabal that is covering it all up must not think too highly of a population that has lived with the knowledge that thermonuclear midnight has been four minutes away since the dawn of the cold war. You would think if anything could motivate a people to freak out, pull their money out of the stock market, or do something truly unthinkable like vote for politicians outside of the two-party system, it would be the revelation that Commies have every backwater on the auto club map targeted with a MIRV. THERE MUST BE SOMETHING MORE TO IT Humans -- survivors of countless upheavals -- have not only proven themselves to be quite adaptive to sudden change but they have also proven themselves to be quite tasty. It is our crunchy goodness that is one suggested reason why there's been a huge UFO cover up. A reptilian race with a taste for human sashimi is en route to earth in a spaceship that looks like an asteroid. Luckily, a race of gray aliens in flying saucers got to earth first to warn us about the coming dine-in invasion. The grays also struck up an alliance and are supplying the defense establishment with incredible technology. The catch is the government has agreed to let the grays occasionally snatch some people. Why? It seems these poor grays, in the process of building some Dyson spheres, let all the water leak out of their gene pool. They need our DNA to prime their genetic pump. Unfortunately your average citizen isn't going to stand for government-approved kidnapping no matter what kind of techno gunk can be had. The blow-back from other shadowy plots such as CIA mind-control experiments and putting former Nazis on the public payroll has made it abundantly clear that Joe Six-Pack doesn't quite understand the lengths one must go to protect national security. NONE DARE CALL IT A LEAK Critics of the "The government knows they're up there, they just ain't telling' us!" conspiracy theory argue that if this is true, it is clearly the most successful cover up of all time. After all, it would require, over 40 years, the silence of hundreds of people from different walks of life. Nixon couldn't keep Watergate under wraps. Reagan couldn't keep Iran-Contra from tainting his administration. War hero Bush couldn't keep a rotten economy from an electorate hepped up on Jingoism. So if American presidents can't keep relatively small bush-fires under control, how come every one of them since Truman has managed to keep this explosive story quietly smoldering? Enter MJ-12 (aka Majestic-12). MJ-12 is a super-secret government within the government. MJ-12 has been trying to keep the whole alien thingy under wraps since it was formed in 1952. Threats and the occasional political assassination keep everyone in line. According to a transcript of a speech given by Milton William Cooper in 1989, MJ-12 bumped off JFK because he was about to spill the beans on the saucermen. Cooper claims he's a former military intelligence man with the inside scoop on the whole alien conspiracy. Braving an assassin's bullet, Cooper reveals a lot about the alien cover up and MJ-12. Among many allegations, he says: we've had secret bases on the moon since the mid-1960s. the government has a shadowy plan called Alternative-3 in the works that would see patriots and abductees herded into concentration camps should the UFO secret ever get out. full time horror author and part time UFO buff Whitely Strieber is a known disinformation agent. (It seems Strieber's more moderate outlook on the alien question makes him a government plant) Despite Cooper's far out claims, he does offer the UFO crowd a useful rebuttal to the "So, why hasn't anyone come forward with this information?" criticism. It appears some do. And when they do, they're just labeled as cranks. Another deep throat is "Government UFO Scientist" Robert Lazar. In a number of interviews Lazar has offered a fantastic tale about his work at the Nevada Nellis Airforce Base's mysterious Area 51. The area is a test range for secret military aircraft, stuff America really, really wants to hide from the Commies. For example, U2 spy plane pilots were trained at Nellis. Lazar says, however, stuff like flying saucers and anti-matter reactors are being secretly developed there. The UFO crowd really loves Lazar because his credentials look pretty good. He says he got a master's degree from MIT in 1982 and worked as a physicist at Los Alamos National Labs before working at Area 51. George Knapp, an anchor man at KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, Nevada, did a little digging and oddly enough had a hard time confirming Lazar's background. A check with Los Alamos met with official denials that Lazar was ever an employee. Is Lazar lying? Knapp dug a bit deeper and discovered a 1982 Los Alamos phone book that listed Lazar. How could the lab deny employing Lazar when there was an obvious record of his employment? Knapp concluded that someone was trying to make Lazar's past vanish! Others have also snooped around on their own and they are not so certain someone is out to erase Lazar's past. The inconsistencies in Lazar's story have been compiled by Tom Mahood . Mahood's document reveals that a couple of skeptics checked several directories at MIT and could not find any listings of Robert Lazar. Was Lazar erased from all of them? Mahood argues it would be pretty hard to make undetectable edits to microfilm records stored in vaults. Mahood's documents also presents an alternative view on the "cover-up" regarding Lazar's employment history with Los Alamos. Mahood has established that the lab's phonebook listings include not just employees but subcontractors. Lazar's entry indicates he worked as a technician for a subcontractor. So while the official denial seems rather ominous, it isn't. Anyone who has ever done temp work knows that while you might show up at some point in a company phone book, you wouldn't necessarily be entered in human resources records as an employee. MAIN TENETS Lazar's "testimony", Cooper's speeches, works by such authors as Whitely Strieber, Budd Hopkins' research into alien abductions , and a series of documents called The Krill Files have formed the torah of UFO belief. It all sort of works like this: World authorities became concerned by reports of strange flying objects in the early 1930s. In the 1940s, Allied pilots started calling the objects "Foo Fighters". Some say the Nazis not only had alien contact but by the 1940s they had UFOs and even moon bases! It wasn't until July 2, 1947 when some grays crashed a saucer at Roswell that it became clear that aliens were behind flying saucer reports. MJ-12 was formed a few years later in response to some low-level pleasure flights the grays made over the White House. MJ-12 soon arranged a meeting with the grays. After MJ-12 heard about the impending invasion of man-eating reptoid aliens, MJ-12 signed a treaty that allowed abductions as long as not a lot of people were taken and they were returned unharmed. For their troubles, Americans received a transfer of technology (like flying saucers for the Air Force). Area 51 became the testing ground for these newly acquired saucers and by the mid-1950s America was on the moon. By the late 1960s, MJ-12 began to suspect that the grays were not being entirely truthful or living up to their end of the bargain. They were taking a lot more people than planned and they were jamming two millimeter long mind-control devices up their snouts. It also seemed the grays weren't always giving a lot of people back. Three million people are held in underground bases in the South West. When the reptoids arrive, the grays are going to release their army of captured zombies from underground bases. Implanted abductees will then be switched on like Manchurian candidates and will blow up power stations and stuff. The reptoids, and their faithful gray allies, will then establish a One World Government and start eating. Even with their captured and controlled humans, the reptoid-gray tag team know they can't go it alone. They've got their own human accomplices: members of the government, the UN, bankers, and the media. MJ-12 has its own back-up plan. If the invasion story ever gets out, MJ-12 is going to suspend the constitution, grab abductees and stick them in camps before they can take out so much as a Dairy Queen. MJ-12 knows that sort of behavior is not going to sit well with true patriots, so they'll have to be stuck in the camps as well. Even with the full force of the American military, MJ-12 knows they can't go it alone. They've got their own accomplices: members of the government, the UN, bankers, and the media. Who would have guessed? UFO (unidentified flying object)   "…nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge...further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby." –Edward U. Condon   A UFO is an unidentified flying object which has been identified as a possible or actual alien spacecraft. Such objects include meteors, disintegrating satellites, flocks of birds, aircraft, lights, weather balloons, and just about anything moving within the visible band of electromagnetism. So far, however, nothing has been positively identified as an alien spacecraft in a way required by common sense and science. That is, there has been no recurring identical UFO experience and there is no physical evidence in support of either a UFO flyby or landing.   There are as many photographs of UFOs as there are of the Loch Ness Monster, and they are of equal quality: blurs and forgeries. Other physical evidence, such as alleged debris from alien crashes, or burn marks on the ground from alien landings, or implants in noses or brains of alien abductees, have turned out to be quite terrestrial, including forgeries. The main reasons for believing in  UFOs are the testimony of many people, the inability to distinguish science fiction from science, the willingness to trust incompetent men telling fantastic stories, the ability to distrust all contrary sources as being part of an evil conspiracy to withhold the truth, and a desire for contact with the world above. Belief in aliens in UFOs is akin to belief in supernatural beings.     UFOlogy is the mythology of the space age. Rather than angels...we now have...extraterrestrials. It is the product of the creative imagination. It serves a poetic and existential function.  It seeks to give man deeper roots and bearings in the universe.  It is an expression of our hunger for mystery...our hope for transcendental meaning. The gods of Mt. Olympus have been transformed into space voyagers, transporting us by our dreams to other realms.          --Paul Kurtz     Dr. J. Allen Hynek, astronomer, foremost proponent of UFOs, and the one who came up with the expression "close encounters of the third kind," defines a UFO as:   [T]he reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky or upon land the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one is possible.   These mystifying words seem to say that when you see something which intelligent people cannot rationally explain, then you are seeing a UFO. Witnesses to such sightings often claim that what they saw could not be explained by the known laws of physics.  They claim to have witnessed a violation of a law of nature, i.e., a miracle.   What Hynek considers to be "all available evidence" may be much less than what a skeptic would require. For example, the evidence appealed to by UFOlogists consists of (1) the testimony of people who claim to have seen aliens and/or alien spacecraft; (2) facts about the type of people who give the testimony; (3) the lack of contrary testimony or physical evidence that would either explain the sighting by conventional means (weather balloon, prank, meteor shower, reflection of light, etc.) or discredit the reliability of the eyewitness; and, (4) alleged weaknesses in the arguments of skeptics against the UFOlogists. The last item is irrelevant to the issue, yet it plays a disproportionately large role in UFOlogy. Attacking an opponent's arguments or motives, instead of presenting positive evidence in defense of one's own view is common among defenders of the claim that UFOs are alien spacecraft. Of course, there is nothing wrong with attacking an opponent's argument and exposing weaknesses and faults thereby. But refutation is no substitute for support. It is simply faulty logic to assume that because an opponent’s reasons are flawed, one’s own reasons are valid. One’s own reasons may be just as flawed as an opponent’s, or even more flawed.   Another common tactic of UFOlogists is to claim that the skeptic cannot prove that what was seen was not an alien craft. One is supposed to infer from this fact that the perception probably was of an alien craft. This kind of reasoning is known as the argumentum ad ignorantiam. A claim does not become true or reasonable if a contrary claim cannot be proved to be true. With arguments for UFOs there are two distinct moves here. One is to claim that no logical explanation is possible because some scientist, pilot, Air Force Colonel, or Ph.D. cannot think of one. The other is to point to the lack of contrary evidence: no counter-testimony of other eyewitnesses, no proof that there were not aliens or alien spacecraft. Here, too, there is a logical error. The fact that some genius cannot come up with an explanation for something is irrelevant to deciding whether the correct explanation should be couched in terms of  visitors from outer space. The choice is not either (A) we know this conventional explanation is correct , or (B) we must conclude that  aliens have visited us.   It seems more reasonable to believe that the only reason we cannot explain these sightings by conventional means is because we do not have all the evidence; it not because these sightings are probably due to alien visitations. If we had all the evidence, we would probably be able to explain the sightings by some conventional means. The fact that we cannot prove that Mr. and Mrs. Barney Hill were not abducted by aliens, does not support the hypothesis that they were abducted by aliens.   Many UFOlogists think that if eyewitnesses such as Whitley Strieber, Betty and Barney Hill, or other alleged alien abductees are not insane or evil, then they cannot be deluded and are to be trusted with giving accurate accounts of alien abduction. Yet, it seems obvious that most sane, good, normal people are deluded about many things and not to be trusted about certain things. While it is generally reasonable to believe the testimony of sane, good, normal people with no ulterior motive, it does not follow that unless you can prove a person is deranged, evil, or a fraud that you should trust his or her testimony about any claim whatsoever. When the type of claim being made involves the incredible, additional evidence besides eyewitness testimony is required. Would it be reasonable to convict a paraplegic of a crime on the basis of the testimony of ten pillars of the community who said they saw the defendant flying naked with angel's wings and snatch the purse from a little old lady? It is much more reasonable to believe that good people are doing evil things, or that they are deluded, than to believe a paraplegic could sprout wings and fly.   UFOlogists would rather follow their faulty logic than accept the conclusions of Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force report which states that "after twenty-two years of investigation...none of the unidentified objects reported and evaluated posed a threat to our national security." (It was in this Blue Book that Edward Ruppelt coined the term "UFO.") UFOlogists are unimpressed with the Condon Report, as well. Edward U. Condon was the head of a scientific research team which was contracted to the University of Colorado to examine the UFO issue. His report concluded that "nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge...further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby."   It is assumed by UFOlogists that the government, especially the CIA, is lying and covering up alien landings and communication. However, there is no evidence for this other than a general distrust of the government and the fact that many government officials have lied, distorted the truth and been mistaken when reporting to the general public. The CIA, however, has shown little interest in UFOs since about 1950, except to encourage UFOlogists to believe that reconnaissance flights might be alien craft. UFOlogists prefer another kind of lie to the government lie. They support the work of NBC, for example, which produced two dozen programs called "Project UFO," said to be based on Project Blue Book. However, unlike the Air Force, NBC suggested that there were documented cases of alien spacecraft sightings. The programs, produced by Jack Webb of Dragnet fame, distorted and falsified information to make the presentation look more believable. No UFOlogist took NBC to task for lying. To the skeptic, NBC was pandering to the taste of the viewing audience. Government agents lie for all sorts of reasons, but covering up alien landings does not seem to be one of them.   Most unidentified flying objects are eventually identified as hoaxes or astronomical events, aircraft, satellites, weather balloons, or other natural phenomena. In studies done by the Air Force, less than 2% of UFO sightings remain unidentifiable. It is more probable that with more information those 2% would be identified as meteors, aircraft, etc., than that they are alien spacecraft.   The reason no logical explanation seems credible to UFOlogists is probably because those making and hearing the reports either do not want to hear a logical explanation or they make little or no effort to find one. In any case, the fact that some pilots or scientists claim they cannot think of any logical explanations for some perceptual observations is hardly proof that they have observed alien spacecraft.   Finally, it should be noted that UFOs are usually observed by untrained sky watchers and almost never by professional or amateur astronomers, people who spend inordinate amounts of time observing the heavens above. These untrained observers have been aided by the availability of inexpensive video cameras, yet despite the enormous increase in volume of such cameras, there has been a drop in the number of UFO observations. Anyway, one would think that astronomers would have spotted some of these alien craft by now. Perhaps the crafty aliens know that good scientists are skeptical and inquisitive. Such beings might pose a threat to the security of a story well told.     The myth of human-alien encounters in the US consists of eight submyths, subject to constant cycles of revision. The “conspiracy” submyth began in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and is associated with Donald Keyhoe’s Flying Saucers are Real (1950) and Flying Saucers from Outer Space (1953), the latter of which created the image of a shadowy US government in cahoots with extraterrestrials (other variants suggested the saucers were top secret US military craft, or Soviet or Nazi craft).   The “underground base/Majestic-12” submyth, a reworking of Richard Shaver’s “Dero mystery” (recounted in Amazing Stories in 1943), contends that the grays live in underground bases, constructed with government collusion, beneath the New Mexico desert. In exchange for new technologies, the government permits the aliens to conduct mutilations and abductions without interference. First proposed in the early 1980s, the “underground base myth” coincided with the supposed identification of Majestic-12 as the secret government agency collaborating with the aliens. The “contactee” submyth originated with George Adamski in the early- and mid-1950s, with books like Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953) and Inside the Space Ships (1955), recounting his meetings with messianic Venusians.   The grays  as flying saucer aliens did not really enter UFO lore and popular consciousness until the mid-1970s, courtesy of NBC’s The UFO Incident (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)—replacing the Etherians or Aryan space Nazis from Venus or some other variety actually described in the 1940s and 1950s. The “Men in Black” submyth, charting the interventions of black-suited figures who sabotage or threaten UFO research, began with Gray Barker’s They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956), in which “they” worked for a secret government agency; Albert Bender’s Flying Saucers and the Three Men (1963) identified the men in black as aliens. The “early abduction” submyth is exemplified by the 1961 Betty and Barney Hill case, filmed as The UFO Incident: an interrupted journey, missing time, bad dreams, and memories of abduction and “medical” experimentation recovered under hypnosis. These early abductions gave rise to the “cattle mutilation” myth, starting in 1967 (and with a horse called Snippy rather than a cow), in which apparently mutilated livestock are presumed to have been the subject of alien experimentation. The “late abduction” submyth began 14 years after the Hill case,  in the month following the broadcast of The UFO Incident (1976), with the five-day disappearance of Travis Walton, later filmed as Fire in the Sky (1993). The rediscovery of the Roswell story in Charles Berlitz and William L Moore’s The Roswell Incident (1980),  launched the “crashed saucer” submyth.

We have all at one time or another experienced "transcendental urges," yearnings for something beyond this world. Major religions hold that such longings will only be truly satisfied through a union with God, who is the creator of the world but also exists outside the empirical world. The vast majority of humans over the past millennium has professed a belief in God. Yet the last forty years has witnessed an unparalleled crisis of faith in western society and an attendant loss of respect for authority in our culture, from politicians to religious leaders. But this hunger for a sense of purpose, comfort, belonging, meaning--something which transcends the mundane--persists unabated.

How we satisfy this hunger is influenced by our culture in which science plays a prominent role. Science, particularly astronomy, has opened up a universe with unlimited possibilities to the average person. It is in some sense natural then that humans now seek transcendental solace "out there," "salvation in/from the stars" if you will. Thus, instead of demons and fairies, we prefer their magical 21st century counterparts, UFOs and alien abductors.

But belief in UFOs and aliens would not be so widespread were it not for widespread science illiteracy and a general distrust of authority, particularly scientific authority within the public. How else can one understand the tremendous popularity of the paranormal in the popular media? Most reasonably educated adults are hard-pressed to separate fact from fantasy in the numerous paranormal dramas on TV or blockbuster movies. Networks and studios know promoting government conspiracy theories and cover-ups fills more than our need for mystery and intrigue; it fills their bank accounts. No matter that conspiracy theories almost never pan out in real life. No matter that the probability that the US government and "evil scientists" have conspired to successfully hide alien bodies from the public over the past 50 years is essentially zero given that a true piece of an alien craft or fingernail would fetch tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on the open market.

Is there a solution to the widespread belief in the paranormal, including UFOs, which currently plague our society? The late Carl Sagan thought so. His answer---one which I endorse---is contained in the subtitle of his last book; Science as a Candle in the Dark. That is, reduce science illiteracy and you'll reduce society's hunger for the paranormal. Make no mistake, it will require an enormous effort to make a difference, but it is a challenge in which the Skeptic delights.