It seems to me that ufology's main argument against ufology being pseudoscience is that ufology covers a far broader group of disciplines than merely attempting to identify UFOs.
To this end I'd like to ask ufology a simple question.
I'm a professional astronomer, I collect observational data of stars, process the data into a meaningful, measurable form, study it, obtain quantifiable results, calculate error margins, compare the results to previous works as well as to theory, form conclusions based on these results and comparisons, make predictions about what further research will uncover, and publish all of this for scrutiny amongst the wider astronomy community.
My friend Sean studies the history of astronomy, from its very beginnings as myth used for mnemonics, navigation and divination, through the renaissance and the separation of astronomy from astrology, to the modern day and the exploits of astronomers through the ages, including their lives outside of their work. When he finds something new or contentious he tries to find corroborating evidence.
A former colleague of mine, Daniel, although trained as a professional astronomer, now studies astronomical archaeology. Simply put he looks at ancient sites, such as Stonehenge, and tries to work out how they could have been used for astronomical measurements, and what their overall purpose might have been. Part of this involves creating scale replicas and using them to make measurement. He also compares different sites around the world looking for similarities and differences in their alignment and construction.
I have another friend, Amy, who studies the psychological and social impacts of astronomy on the public. She's particularly interested in the effects of astonomical findings and news reports on people with strongly held religious beliefs.
My question for ufology is this - of the four people detailed above, myself, Sean, Daniel and Amy, who is doing astronomy, and if anyone isn't doing astronomy, what is it that they are doing?
Hey Wollery ....
First, just razzin' a little, but it sure took you a long time toget to that "simple" question ...
and it's not quite so simple. Consequently my answer isn't going to be quite so simple.
Second. Thank you for taking the time to consider the issue and ask my point of view. I once took an introductory astronomy course in university, but now only enjoy it from in an armchair capacity. So getting the chance to exchange views with a genuine astronomer is certainly a privilege.
Now to begin. I take it that you're proposing an analogy between astronomy & ufology so as to compare how the two fields are defined and perhaps identify some logic that could be applied to both fields and shed some light on the topic of the thread ... "Is Ufology a Pseudoscience?"
Here is one way I way I would answer your question. You've proposed a few activities that take place under the general heading of Astonomy, as shown below, with a couple more categories added:
Astronomy:
- Study of the observable universe
- History ( people, advances, myth, legend, astrology etc. ).
- Archaeology ( locating ancient artifacts and observatories ).
- Culture ( clubs, politics, alternative, religion ... etc. )
- Technology ( Telescopes, computers etc. )
- Education ( from leisure learning to academic )
- Entertainment ( Cosmos, Discovery, National Geographic etc. )
- Journalism ( Science and astronomy magazines ).
Now you're implying by your question, a sort of distinction based on what people do, a kind of "we are what we do" approach, which seems logical at first, but really isn't. Why? Let's look at the list above with specific attention to a couple of items and apply the question "... who is doing astronomy ...?" As an example let's take my professor at university who was teaching my course. When he was
teaching, was he doing astronomy? Obviously not. Does that mean we should take Astronomy 101 out from under the heading of "Astronomy" ... no, of course it doesn't, because although
teaching astronomy is different than
doing astronomy, it is still a valuable
part of astronomy.
Let me add a little more context to this for you that I'm sure you'll appreciate. When I was taking my course and I was in the classroom, I had no doubt that I was
involved in astronomy, and when we all got together up at the Rothney observatory to do our field work, I felt I was a small part of the astronomy culture as well ... but it wasn't until I sat down alone at the telescope in the chilled night air and looked into the scope and started recording what I saw, that I knew I was
doing astronomy.
Returning to the topic. In ufology, we don't have empirical data that can be directly observed and measured repeatedly. So the scientific method can only be applied to the study of the data and not the object itself. Therefore we cannot make any
scientific conclusions about the actual subject matter ( UFOs ). However the data can be studied scientifically using various statistical methods, from which some perfectly valid conclusions can be made. For example how the overall pool of sighting reports relates to various demographics.
For the rest, we can only do our best to apply critical thinking in an effort to determine the most reasonable explanations and look for further clues in that direction. Astronomers have been doing that for ages ... take the example of black holes. Once they were only exotic theory, yet the dogged pursuit of the clues has led us to accept them as real today, even though none have yet been directly observed ( that I know of ).
So now let's suppose someone had come along and pointed to the theory of black holes, and the lack of empirical evidence, and the lack of direct observation, and because you said something like "we think there is a super massive object there that absorbs light", claimed that all astronomy is pseudoscience because you had drawn a conclusion without any proof? Skeptics do this all the time with ufology ... only people actually see the UFOs as well.
Let's take another example. Suppose some skeptic pointed to the cultural aspect of astronomy dealing with alternative theories and ideas, say perhaps Velikovsky or Sitchin ( 12th planet ) and kept focusing on them over and over again in order to slap the pseudoscience label over all astronomy. Would that be fair? Again, this is done all the time to ufology by skeptics.
I could probably come up with even more ... like the Drake Equation, Was Drake a pseudoscientist for coming up with the Green Bank Formula? Certainly not. Does the formula meet the definition of pseudoscience? Probably. But even if it did does, so what? Does that make all astronomy a pseudoscience? Again ... certainly not. Are you doing pseudoscience right now by discussing ufology with a ufologist? No. Am I doing science? No. But I am doing one of the things in ufology I enjoy most, which is having an intelligent discussion with someone.
j.r.
