King’s College philosophy prof Tony Milligan worries that too many people believe that aliens have visited Earth — a fifth of UK citizens and a third of Americans, according to some research. As he helpfully details, political figures as prominent as Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Chuck Schumer have deemed the matter worthy of investigation.

Milligan, seeing belief in UFOs and alien visitations as a “a widespread societal problem,” writes,

The belief is now rising to the extent that politicians, at least in the US, feel they have to respond. The disclosure of information about claimed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs rather than UFOs) from the Pentagon has got a lot of bi-partisan attention in the country.

Tony Milligan, “Belief in alien visits to Earth is spiralling out of control – here’s why that’s so dangerous,” The Conversation, September 2, 2024

Well yes, it did. In what many regard as a commendable display of transparency in 2021, the Pentagon let the public in on a lot of information about odd sightings. The information neither proved nor disproved that any aliens had ever visited Earth. But ridiculing the idea for decades had only fueled suspicion — as it might be expected to do. What Milligan sees as a problem, many others would see as a solution.

Political dangers?

He goes on:

All this is ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions. There have been humorous calls to storm Area 51. And after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, this now looks like an increasingly dangerous possibility.

Milligan, “That’s so dangerous”

Why? That was a joke five years ago at a now-deleted Facebook page. And has anything happened since then to suggest otherwise?

Milligan identifies other concerns as well. One is that, as he says in a recent paper, theories about alien visitors “generate background noise which impedes science communication”:

History, a YouTube channel part owned by Disney, regularly delivers shows about “ancient aliens”. The show is now in its 20th season and the channel has 13.8 million subscribers. The Nasa astrobiology channel has a hard won 20,000 subscribers. Actual science finds itself badly outnumbered by entertainment repackaged as factual.

Milligan, “That’s so dangerous”

Yes, and lotteries are much more popular than statistics classes too. That’s not going to change and it doesn’t affect the greater esteem in which science is held.

The curious relationship between science, science fiction, and popular belief

On the bright side, popular interest guarantees that science communications that offer the slightest hint of ET life will receive a broad hearing. In fact, the hope of finding alien life is one of the factors that disposes citizens to support, through their taxes, expensive projects like space exploration. The large and powerful science fiction entertainment industry — the cultural background of “UFOlogy” — is not going away any time soon either.

Whether these interconnections are a problem or a solution depends so much on how we see them: A public that took no interest in UFO sightings or science fiction would probably be a harder sell for science, not an easier one.

Cultural corruption?

Another concern Milligan addresses is that Indigenous mythology will be corrupted by UFOlogy. Space alien stories “become entangled with indigenous origin narratives, making it hard to recover the latter”:

Nasa and the space science community do support efforts such as the Native Skywatchers initiative set up by the indigenous Ojibwe and Lakota communities to ensure the survival of storytelling about the stars. There is a real and extensive network of indigenous scholarship about these matters.

But UFOlogists promise a far higher profile for indigenous history in return for the mashing together of genuine indigenous stories about life arriving from the skies with fictional tales about UFOs, repackaged as suppressed history.

Milligan, “That’s so dangerous”

But again, when cultures mingle, stories mingle too. A live indigenous culture is bound to grow and change like any other. Some artists choose to preserve and develop the best; others have an eye to the main chance.

It’s never been any different; the challenges face by indigenous culture are faced by any number of classical Western cultural traditions as well.

On the whole, Milligan’s worries are not so much unreasonable as they are perennial. People will not easily accept that humans might be alone in the universe. We will always find reasons to believe otherwise.

We always face these types of problems within any vigorous tradition. We should be glad that science is still a vigorous tradition. Here’s the paper.

You may also wish to read: Extraterrestrials are clearly a matter of faith, not science. We can be quite sure that “They’re not out there” will never be the default hypothesis, as astrophysicist Ethan Seigel hopes. Something in us just does not accept being alone. The basis of the search for extraterrestrials is faith and science is her handmaid.

and

Science Wager: Extraterrestrials will be spotted within 15 years. An astrobiologist had made the bet with a planetary scientist, after they whittled down ET theories to two possibilities: They’re hiding or they’re not out there. Dirk Schulze-Makuch thinks ET is hiding (the Zoo Hypothesis) but planetary scientist Ian Crawford takes the position that they are just not out there.