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Citation for published version (APA):Milligan, T. (in press). Equivocal Encounters: Alien Visitation Claims as a Societal Problem. In Proceedings ofthe International Astronomical Union: IAUS (387) Cambridge University Press.

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Download date: 30. 9. 2024

Equivocal encounters: alien visitation claims as a societal problem
Tony Milligan1

1

Department of Theology and Religious Studies,King’s College London
anthony.milligan@kcl.ac.uk
Abstract

The contention of this paper is that alien visitation claims are a societal problem when they (a) move into the mainstream of discourse to
the extent that government policy has to respond to them; (b) when theygenerate background noise which impedes science communication; and (c)when they become entangled with indigenous origin narratives, making it
hard to recover the latter. Where this is the case, periodic debunking
looks like a failed paradigm. Something closer to a scientific research program (SRP) might be called for, at some point. This is an idea which has
already been advanced by Avi Loeb and Martin Elvis (albeit in significantly different ways and for different reasons). It is not clear that we are
already at the stage where an SRP is required, but such a requirement
does seem to be on the near horizon.) The paper concludes by setting out
a number of framing requirements for any such SRP.

1

Background noise

As a commonplace observation, the world could have been very different. It ispossible to imagine a world identical to our own until around 1950 but whichthen diverged. In this alternative world, a small number of artefacts have since
been discovered, giving plausible indications of the advanced engineering required for spaceflight. While not definitive, the artefacts are not easily attributable to any terrestrial culture or military program. In this alternativeworld, there are good reasons for belief that aliens have visited Earth. (Forconvenience, I will refer to this as belief in ‘alien visitation.’) The evidence is
not absolutely conclusive, but reasonable standards of evidence have been met.
Science in this alternative world is much the same as it is in our world, with theaddition of research programs into possible alien technologies and the propulsion
systems which might help to account for their presence.
This is a description of a possible world, but it is not our world. In ourworld, talk about alien visitation belongs mostly to counterculture and lightentertainment. In our world, alien visitation claims are typically underwhelming. More particularly, they are regarded as underwhelming within the spacecommunity. But if we are underwhelmed by what has been offered as evidence,then we may owe a story about what would count as convincing evidence. Astory that does not set up standards which are a great deal more demanding
than those accepted in normal areas of research where a good deal is inferred1rather than directly experienced. Science in our world often involves inference
to the best explanation (IBE), with complex discipline-specific norms for whatcounts as ‘best.’
So far, the best explanation for any natural phenomenon has never been
alien visitation. Since around 1950, in our world, discussions about contact
with other, similarly intelligent, alien beings have generally taken the form of
a borderline scientific interest in SETI and METI together with philosophicalspeculation about the likelihood that any such beings exist, protocols for a hypothetical first contact, and speculation about whether or not evolution will
have converged or taken some radically different path elsewhere. Beyond this,the dominant scholarly and scientific response has taken the form of periodicallydebunking visitation claims without become drawn into any ongoing researchprocess that might accomplish little more than repeatedly pointing to the exceptionally low quality of the evidence presented and the poor argumentative
framing. (Usually, some appeal to analogy rather than anything so robust asIBE.)
There are three reasons why this approach may not hold indefinitely. In
one way or another, all of them involve the idea that widespread and unfoundedalien visitation claims are a problem for society and hence a problem for science.
Here, I am not interested in the peculiarities of individual agents many of whom,
in any good society, are likely to believe all manner of strange things. Rather, I
am strictly concerned with the societal role of widespread and unfounded beliefin visitation.
The first reason why debunking is unlikely to be good enough response formuch longer is a shift of belief in visitation from the counter-cultural fringes
over into the political mainstream, evidenced by effective pressure in the US to
engage in a mass release of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena related documentation. If beliefs of this sort (in conspiracy, concealment and collaboration) havemade it into the mainstream, then periodic debunking has simply not worked.
Moreover, if we hold that the practice of science in a democratic society requires
the answerability of the science community to sustained public concerns thensomething more robust may be due. This will be the case even if the end story
that is told (‘no aliens, no coverup, no conspiracy’) is likely to be the same.
The second reason for a different kind of response, beyond debunking, isthat alien visitation narratives create a great deal of unhelpful background noisethat gets in the way of science communication. Visitation claims, when theyoperate in this way, are again a societal problem. Moreover, the backgroundnoise of such claims has undergone exponential expansion with the arrival ofsocial media. Much of the focus has been upon biology, through attempts torepresent the discipline and its core concepts as little more than ideologicallydriven social constructs which are overly responsive to power elites. Effective
science communication has become harder as the historical standing of science
as one of our most reliable pathways to knowledge has come to count for very
little online. If we value science communication (as we should do) then there well
may come a time when we have to accept the need for a more robust response.
A third and related reason for looking beyond the paradigm of occasional
2

debunking is that this same background noise has already compromised cultural
astronomy, respect for which is a crucial aspect of good relations between indigenous peoples and an astronomy community whose ground infrastructure is often
sited in remote locations and sometimes on indigenous lands. My own initialinterest in visitation narratives stemmed from a growing sense of the problem
of disentangling indigenous storytelling from counter-cultural narratives. Oneof the pathways for entangling is political activism where the authority of indigenous storytelling carries a tempting political cachet which can lead to anoverriding of fidelity to the storytelling itself as narratives are reframed for thepurposes of dissent. Again, this looks very much like a societal problem.
It may still be too early to call for an actual paradigm shift in the responseof the science (and especially the astronomy) community. However, I do wantto suggest that the possibility of such a shift sits somewhere on the horizon.
Eventually, the background noise may become overwhelming. Whether or not
we are ‘there yet’ is unclear, and I will remain officially neutral on the question.
I will also concede that there could be a downside to such a change. A moreengaged paradigm could initially increase the background noise in the hope of
better long-term containment. Such long-term containment might never arrive.
This is a significant concern. And so, I will restrict myself to the weaker claimthat even if we are not yet ready for a more engaged response, we should alreadystart to consider what such a response might look like.

2Equivocal encounters

If this response takes the form of ongoing scientific research programs (SRPs)
to evaluate alien visitation hypotheses, these need not go beyond the boundsof appeals to the natural, and hence they need not sit outside of the bounds of
genuine science. However, the capacity of SRPs to command respect across arange of related and involved scientific disciplines would depend upon exactly
what sort of hypotheses were being evaluated, as much as it would upon how
the evaluation might proceed.
There is a lesson that might be learned here from the emergence of parapsychology departments. Even if the methodology happened to be rigorous, thesubject matter itself puts the research beyond the bounds of anything likely to
be taken seriously by peers in psychology or in the physical sciences. Similarly,
anyone considering whether or not the pyramids were built using alien technology is unlikely to be taken seriously. Some filtering must take place to help
differentiate between what is worth examining and what is beyond the pale.
But we need not think in terms of the outlandish. Rather, we can consider only possible artefacts of the sort brought into play in the scenario of theimagined world. In the absence of any response to METI, the artefact-focused
approach has been the most credible game in town. It is the option pursued notably by Avi Loeb and by a number of Harvard researchers based around Loeb’s
Galileo Project. Rather than targeting the wilder horizons of dubious testimony
about abduction, they have focused upon equivocal material evidence in forms

3such as possible derelict craft and possible physical residues. The interstellar
object ‘Oumuamua, in particular, has been claimed as a possible derelict spacecraft [Loeb, 2021], and metallic spherules off the coast of Papua New Guinea
have been claimed as possible residue which cannot readily be explained by
the industrial revolution [Loeb et al., 2024]. Claims which have been strongly
disputed.
Of the two, the ‘Oumuamua claim has been the more productive. Whilefew astronomers have ever believed that it is an actual derelict alien craft, theexercise of showing that its trajectory can be explained in far simpler terms (e.g.,
by localised gas pocket formation followed by outgassing as a result of proximity
to the Sun) has been a worthwhile exercise. It would also not be unfair to pointout that there is a widespread view, across the space science community, that
Loeb’s overall approach is shaped too much by wanting to believe, that it is
too entangled in the kinds of populist narratives about power relations withinscience that I allude to above.
In fairness to Loeb, it may simply be difficult to build any robust SRP
program dedicated to evaluation of artifact claims under current conditions,
without involving a disproportionate number of people who also want to believe,
and who have a certain attitude towards the conservatism of more mainstreamlines of scientific research. Furthermore, scientific expectations sometimes do
shift over time. If are currently in an encounters-are-unlikely phase, this may
reflect our current technologies rather than attitudes that we might on the otherside of the revolution in robotics and AI. Expectations can shift in the light oftechnological change.
In line with this, I want to differentiate between two claims. With allowances
for some slippage into more dramatic claims in public statements, what I taketo be Loeb’s view is that sooner or later, we will stumble upon remnants of, ortrace residue from, an alien craft, and we may already have done so. Instead,I am sympathetic towards a position set out by Martin Elvis in a sympatheticbut critical response to the Loeb claim about ‘Oumuamua: a broad scientific research program can be built around evaluation of alien craft claims for a suitable
range of objects from beyond the Solar System [Elvis, 2022]. This view is consistent with the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Or, with a softer version, such that the evidence needs to meet a usual standard
but we are entitled to set up a default position of rejecting extraordinary claims.
In the case of alien visitation, we are entitled to assume that any such claims
are far more likely to be false than true. A default assumption that Loeb seems,
at times, to regard as closed minded. Rather, I take it that defaults of this sortare a familiar part of normal science, and they are often part of any disciplined
form of enquiry.
At least three reasonable assumptions are shared across the the Loeb andElvis approaches, in spite of their significant differences. First, when it comesto interstellar distances, ships are better at survival than crews. Any alien craftthat we encounter would probably be a derelict and so it might not exhibit
ongoing control. Second, an alien craft really could look like a naturally occurring object. A little like the papyri at Herculaenum which initially appeared4to be charred pieces of wood rather than a precious treasury of text. Such an
appearance could be accidental (a result of the ravages of time) or intentional(to avoid cultural impact or else to avoid any risks of detection and tracing backto a homeworld). Third, in line with the previous two points, any encounter
could well be equivocal, i.e., what is encountered may be less than clear cut.
The equivocal nature of such encounters with interstellar objects might leave
open the possibility that one or more such encounters with a difficult to identify
object, spread over a sufficient period of time, could eventually turn out to be
the real thing. No laws of nature would be violated. Nothing odd need occur.
And accepting this in no way does not automatically step outside of the normalbounds of science.

3How can we structure SRPs for equivocal encounters?

The mere fact that I think that this will not happen is neither here nor there.
Patterns of belief around these matters are social phenomena and as an ethicist
it is how science deals with social phenomena that is my primary concern.
Visitation beliefs and evaluation are socially significant even in the absence ofvisitation. To this end, I will suggest that, beyond focusing upon somethingtangible and within normal bounds (such as candidate artefacts), and beyond
abiding by standard naturalistic constraints, any scientific research program inthis area should meet at least three minimal requirements.
1. Independent value: a scientific research program geared to evaluating
alien artifact and trace evidence claims should follow the astrobiological modelin which the scientific value of the work does not depend upon actual discoveryof alien life. Work on ‘Oumuamua is a nice example of research which meets
this independent value requirement. Research to explain ‘Oumuamua’s unusual
trajectory did play off of the derelict craft claim, and upon a resulting search
to find simpler ways to explain its acceleration. Simpler, in an ontological senseof positing a more economical range of entities.
2. Noise minimization: a good SRP should not feed the unhelpful background noise beyond its initial phases of operation. This requirement capturesand makes explicit what is already done on a regular basis in science communication: keep reportage close to the research; avoid sensationalism but expect thatit might be smuggled back in when bylines are written; and choose platforms
for communication with a degree of caution. These are normal good practices.
Of course, the price of any science communication at all comes at the risk ofrepackaging in more sensational terms and the initial stages of an SRP in thisarea would attract attention.
3. Evidential standards: the approach towards justification of claims
adopted by a good SRP should be translatable into robust argument structures
such as inference to the best explanation, rather than relying heavily upon
analogy which has been a staple of alien visitation claims. This leads them5

to look suspiciously like creationist arguments in which intelligent guidance isrepeatedly inserted into naturally occurring processes. The requirement forsignificantly higher evidential standards is not a special raising of the bar but adoor to normalization of sufficiently well-formed and well-directed discourse.
4. Default option: the ontologically simplest option should normally beadopted. Having a default assumption in which we follow Ockham, and do notappeal to more entities than we need in order to explain phenomena, is notprejudice. It is normal science. All other things being equal, explanations inwhich appeal is made to aliens and explanations in which there is no need toappeal to aliens are not equal. Matters would be different if we already knewthat there were aliens and that their traces could be discovered ready to hand.
Such explanations would not then introduce an entity of a new sort. Until suchtimes, the default holds. This also helps to explain why adoption of a default is
not arbitrary: the default is indexed to our existing body of knowledge. Science
does not begin anew with each arising problem.

References[Elvis, 2022] Elvis, M. 2022, Oumuamua Considered as an Alien Craft, International Journal of Astrobiology 21, 63-77.
[Loeb, 2021] Loeb, A. 2021, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life
Beyond Earth Houghton Migglin Harcourt, New York, 2021.
[Loeb et al., 2024] Loeb et al. 2024, Recovery and Classification of Spherules
from the Pacific Ocean Site of the CNEOS 2014 January 8 (IM1) Bolide,
Research Notes of the AAS, 8, 1, 39.

Paper delivered at the Kavli-International Astronomical Union Symposium (IAUS 387) (Toward) Discovery of Life Beyond Earth and its Impact,Durham April 2024.

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