Ufology's "Disciplines"

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While “Ufology” is a bogus enterprise pretty much, it does have, within it, categories of study that mimic those of science.

For example, there are UFO theorists, like me, who speculate about what UFOs are and what they may have been in the past.

There are UFO archaeologists and paleontologists who study older UFO cases and the environments (context) in which they appeared or were witnessed. Jose Caravaca and Kevin Randle would be in this group.

The social and psychological (and neurological) disciplines are sometimes applied by practitioners to the UFO enigma but qualified persons often go off track, trying hard to embed sightings with an astronomical or physical patina, confusing the mental aspects of UFO with accretions that are not sociological or psychological. I put Gilles Fernandez and the French skeptics in this category.

What about UFO physicists or engineers? Stanton Friedman started out to be one, but got sidetracked, and there are few people in Ufology who have the credentials or cachet to pursue the phenomenon within the category of its technology or mechanical manifestations.

There are UFO librarians/cataloguers who collect UFO accounts, past and present and list them for “researchers,” investigators, buffs, and others. Issac Koi and MUFON are providers of UFO incident lists.

Then we have UFO journalists, persons who seek out UFO accounts, some in the past, but mostly those that are occurring now, for presentation to UFO enthusiasts. Nick Redfern and Leslie Kean are such.

There should be forensic experts in Ufology, and I think Bruce Maccabee could be considered one, but there are few real forensic efforts being employed in Ufology.

There are UFO historians, who contemplate or gather past UFO sightings with a kind of passive insight. Jerry Clark is an example.

Then there is the category of rational skepticism, in which I’d put Robert Sheaffer and Tim Printy.

My list goes to the heart of the plaint that past UFO events and sightings are passé and should be eschewed by UFO aficionados.

To understand or get a handle on what UFOs were or are, one has to embrace some of the past, iconic cases while looking for new incidents that may be relevant to the study of UFOs: Ufology.

To throw out the older UFO cases is foolhardy and without scientific acumen. To just study current sightings is exactly the same: stupid.

RR