Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

The Dragon in My Garage
tantamount to contempt for purported witnesses." It is not, or
should not be, arrogant dismissal of sincere and affecting testimony.
It is merely a reluctant response to human fallibility.
If any powers whatever may be ascribed to the aliens - because
their technology is so advanced - then we can account for any
discrepancy, inconsistency or implausibility. For instance, one
academic UFOlogist suggests that both the aliens and the abductees
are rendered invisible during the abduction (although not to
each other); that's why more of the neighbours haven't noticed.
Such 'explanations' can explain anything, and therefore in fact
nothing.
American police procedure concentrates on evidence and not
anecdotes. As the European witch trials remind us, suspects can
be intimidated during interrogation; people confess to crimes they
never committed; eyewitnesses can be mistaken. This is also the
linchpin of much detective fiction. But real, unfabricated evidence
- powder burns, fingerprints, DNA samples, footprints, hair
under the fingernails of the struggling victim - carry great weight.
Criminalists employ something very close to the scientific method,
and for the same reasons. So in the world of UFOs and alien
abductions, it is fair to ask: where is the evidence - the real,
unambiguous physical evidence, the data that would convince a
jury that hasn't already made up its mind?
Some enthusiasts argue that there are 'thousands' of cases of
'disturbed' soil where UFOs supposedly landed, and why isn't that
good enough? It isn't good enough because there are ways of
disturbing the soil other than by aliens in UFOs - humans with
shovels is a possibility that springs readily to mind. One UFOlogist
rebukes me for ignoring '4,400 physical trace cases from 65
countries'. But not one of these cases, so far as I know, has been
analysed with results published in a peer-reviewed journal in
physics or chemistry, metallurgy or soil science, showing that the
'traces' could not have been generated by people. It's a modest
enough scam compared, say, with the crop circles of Wiltshire.
*They cannot be called, simply, witnesses - because whether they witnessed
anything (or, at least, anything in the outside world) is often the very point at
issue.
171