A note from the editor: UFOs might not seem an obvious area of interest for a finance-focused outlet. But the potential economic and societal implications of the phenomenon have never been more relevant. Since last year, government bodies across the world have chosen to treat the phenomenon increasingly seriously, dedicating ever greater budgetary resources to its study. This means finance-oriented individuals have a duty to judge the facts in question, whatever they may be.
Is it all a waste of time? Or is there something serious to be considered here? Whether it’s black ops, aliens or simple parallax effects, growing establishment curiosity about the phenomenon seems fitting for a (dis)information age that’s full of uncertainty. The more we know, the less we seem to understand and the more divided we become. So what’s going on?
The Blind Spot has no forgone conclusions about any of this. But we do think the topic is worth keeping track of. Luckily we have a homegrown resource in the shape of Dario Garcia Giner to lean on. The below is an introductory guide to one of the more “out there” of the serious theories in the space. We think it’s worth recounting because if you don’t know about the information paradoxes in play, you won’t have any anchor in the wider body of discussion. Also, the ideas presented — those of theorist Jacques Vallee — can be applied beyond the realms of UFOs to other complex information puzzles in finance, markets and economics too.
For the purposes of this article, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are referred to under their old acronym, Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). It is applied to the small percentage of cases that appear genuinely inexplicable.
NASA recently announced the formation of a committee to study UFOs – to be staffed by former astronauts, environmental and astrophysics scientists, among other credentialled experts. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronauts also formed three committees to study UFOs on October 19.
This marshalling of (still relatively limited) resources across several public bodies in the United States – from the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office to NASA’s – is nevertheless totally unprecedented.
And yet turning to hard science to study the phenomenon brings its own issues. Notably, it steps over the work of Jacques Vallee, one of UFOlogy’s most noted and respected researchers.
The problem is not one of direction. It’s not that the scope of NASA’s study, for instance, is restricted to space or the upper atmosphere, like some theorists, preoccupied with potential Unidentified Submergible Objects, have proposed.
It’s that whatever is responsible for the so-called phenomenon, a term to describe the causal mechanism behind genuine UFOs, may not be fully understandable by the scientific method.
No, you haven’t ventured into an anti-science conspiracy channel.
But we ask our Blind Spot readers to patiently bear with us, as its proposer, Vallee, is not a man to be scoffed at; he is perhaps the only ‘UFOlogist’ to have enjoyed a conventional scientific career parallel to his writing of popular UFO books.
A promising young astronomer, Vallee quit the French national observatory in 1962 after witnessing his superior delete evidence of a counter-rotational object in the earth’s atmosphere – years before the first counter-rotational satellite was in orbit.
Hell-bent on explaining this inexplicable occurrence, Vallee then lent his noggin’ to Project Blue Book in 1968, arguably the United States’ most significant and public UFO investigation, as an associate to consultant J. Allen Hynek. Since 1969, he has written numerous books on the UFO subject which are distinguished by their unconventional conclusions.
Now a venture capitalist based in San Francisco, Vallee left Blue Book to work on ARPANET – the successor to the modern Internet, founded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US’s Department of Defence. Vallee also worked as an engineer at Stanford Research International’s Augmentation Research Center – a centre known for its invention of the computer mouse.
Far from a wily-haired bookworm, Vallee was both a technological innovator at the heart of America’s military-industrial complex as well as a true pioneer of UFO research.
But, woe to us, his conclusions are far from vanilla.
Vallee is perhaps most famous for having penned a theory under the dubious name of the “Occult Control System Hypothesis”, so-called because it posits an origin for the UFO phenomenon that is directly concerned with mankind’s development – political or otherwise.
Yes, it’s a weirdly-named theory. But it is what it is.
According to the theory, an inter-dimensional ‘system’ may exercise its ‘control’ over humans through synchronicities, meaningful coincidences, and mysteriously inexplicable events (like UFOs) – hence the problematic term ‘occult’.
He did so by comparing and finding extensive similarities between modern UFO sightings and so-called alien abductions to encounters of ‘magical’ creatures in the medieval era. The simplest example is the alien-probe-in-the-butt theme of modern close encounters and the devil-engaged-me-in-intercourse theme in medieval lore.
But this theory’s complications mean its explanations are better suited to another article. Our preoccupation is in Vallee’s theory-building, since he postulated that the scientific method should not suffice in studying this complex matter.
In fact, despite his blue-chip scientific credentials, his theoretical magnum opus was mostly constructed via a reading of mythology and history – with very little tinkering with electronics, spreadsheets, or telescopes in between.
Nobody will dispute that for a topic that has wallowed on the fringes of Western thought, the inclusion of high-brow scientists in significant institutions is great news.
But Vallee’s research posited that whatever phenomenon is responsible for UFOs, (importantly, he never dismissed a human origin) could be intentionally deceptive. Furthermore, he claimed the phenomenon responsible showed signs of interfering with those who studied it.
Vallee’s credibility, strange theories aside, means his conclusion regarding the unsuitability of the scientific method should encourage bodies like NASA to hire more diverse ‘soft’ talent, which can face what may be a counter-intelligence problem – and not just a scientific one.
Fight Fire With Fire
Let’s start off by explaining some clear nuances.
Established experts have a natural (entirely appropriate) tendency to triage reported phenomena through all sorts of other possibilities before concluding they’s genuine UFOs. That can include misidentifications of conventional mundane objects, camera trickery, or environmental effects. Nobody, from the most ardent alien believer to famous so-called ‘sceptics’ like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, would take issue with the conclusion that most UFO sightings are entirely innocuous.
The conventional process can also help with that tiny percentage of seemingly unexplainable UFOs. Perhaps these strange objects are typically found in space, or underwater, rotating at such-and-such speed at a certain height or depth. Maybe they’re not even physical objects at all?
The unexplained minority of UFO reports could be conventional after all – despite thousands of years of sightings, and a century of thousands upon thousands of credible witnesses to extraordinary events. Or it could be a function of unwitting mass psychosis.
But adequate conclusions gathered from such data collection methods require a broader understanding of the UFO problem. An understanding that cannot necessarily be derived via simple observation and data analysis.
The Limitations of the Scientific Process
A properly applied scientific methodology is unbiased and theoretically flawless, but it suffers when asked to study something that is potentially intelligent, alive, and kicking.
The most concerning of these methodological problems – especially related to UFOs – is the observer effect. I can’t presume to understand the nitty-gritty physics of this problem – but it’s exemplified easily enough.
Let’s presume we’ve asked NASA’s telescopes to inform us about the characteristics of the Russian aerospace forces, and rely on their observations to predict Russia’s next moves.
The NASA telescope’s limited sphere of study may determine the speed, altitude, and direction of Russian aircraft – but little more. Furthermore, if the Russians’ intelligence efforts were to discover NASA telescopes were observing them, they could actively try to manipulate their observers.
Science is a weapon of war, for sure. But scientists haven’t replaced analysts at the bureaus of intelligence agencies for good reason.
To fight intelligence, you need counterintelligence.
The second issue with the scientific method’s suitability for this problem is more basic still. It’s the simple fact that some characteristics of genuine UFOs are distinctly un-suited for scientific discovery.
In his book Messengers of Deception, an anonymous officer called ‘Major Murphy’ explained to Vallee the primary issue in using a scientific method to study UFOs;
“Now, in the world of counterespionage the rules are completely different.” He drew a simple diagram in my notebook. “You are a scientist. In science there is no concept of the ‘price’ of information. Suppose I gave you 95% of the data concerning a phenomenon. You are happy because you know 95% of the phenomenon. Not so in Intelligence. If I get 95% of the data, I know this is the ‘cheap’ part of the information. I still need the other 5%, but I will have to pay a much higher price to get it. You see, Hitler had 95% of the information about the landing in Normandy. But he had the wrong 95%!
How is this applicable to the genuine UFO problem? Let’s recap what a study requires to be properly qualified as scientific.
- A controlled environment
- Replicability and falsifiability of experiments
- Predictability based on successful replication
And what characteristics are easy to glean from genuine UFOs? Let’s outline the most simple ones:
- UFO appearances are irregular.
- UFOs may be controlled by some form of intelligence.
- UFOs have displayed adversarial qualities – leading the US Congress and China to name them a threat to national security.
This is no theoretical or abstruse methodological issue, according to Vallee. He himself claimed to experience a direct manipulation on behalf of this phenomenon, and questioned why any serious person would ever believe him. Real or not – given Vallee’s record, we should extend the benefit of the doubt – the coincidence he experienced while studying the UFO cult of Melchizedek clearly interfered with his study of UFOs. Therefore, it is a case in point – whether it existed purely in his imagination or not.
One afternoon in Los Angeles in the winter of 1976, the week he began compiling his notes on various branches of the UFO cult “the Order of Melchizedek” for what became Messengers of Deception, Jacques Vallee stood curbside at Sunset Boulveard and hailed a taxi. He looked downstream at the rush hour traffic, raised his hand towards several oncoming cabs, and one swerved into the curb lane and stopped for him. After a short ride, during which Vallee did not discuss his current research, he paid his fare and accepted a receipt. He stuffed it in his wallet and thought nothing more of it, until two days he noticed it was signed Melchizedek:
“I cannot afford to write this story, because I cannot expect anyone to believe it. At the same time I cannot sweep it under the rug. There is only one Melchizedek listed in the LA phone book, and I have the receipt signed by the driver right in front of me. It was this incident that convinced me to put more energy into understanding the nature of such coincidences.”
If written by anyone but Vallee, the above statement would be indigestible to a mainstream audience. But students of UFOlogy know the strange coincidences which occasionally emerge are but one of its manifold challenges.
That’s not to say the efforts undertaken by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronauts or NASA will be fruitless.
It’s certainly the logical next step.
These scientists will help us get 95 per cent of the information we need to figure out UFOs. But as explained by Major Murphy, the ‘expensive’ 5 per cent of information will determine the nature of that ‘cheap’ 95 per cent.
This 5 per cent is ‘expensive’ because it requires non-straightforward comparative and historic investigation. In other words, the domain of intelligence analysts and historians – not of scientists.
Vallee was pretty much only concerned by that remaining 5 per cent. And it’s precisely why we need to hear his theories – and conclusions – out.
Hopefully, we will soon have legions of scientists working on UFOs. But these may be groping at parts of an elephant in a dark room. They might have more success if they started looking for a light switch.
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