Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World
Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World
THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD initial excitement. Many have heard of the pictograms in cereal grains and their alleged UFO connection, but draw a blank when the names of Bower and Chorley or the very idea that the whole business may be a hoax are raised. An informative expose by the journalist Jim Schnabel (Round in Circles, 1994), from which much of my account is taken, is in print. Schnabel joined the cerealogists early and in the end made a few successful pictograms himself. (He prefers a garden roller to a wooden plank, and found that simply stomping grain with one's feet does an acceptable job.) But Schnabel's work, which one reviewer called 'the funniest book I've read in ages', had only modest success. Demons sell; hoaxers are boring and in bad taste. The tenets of scepticism do not require an advanced degree to master, as most successful used car buyers demonstrate. The whole idea of a democratic application of scepticism is that everyone should have the essential tools to effectively and constructively evaluate claims to knowledge. All science asks is to employ the same levels of scepticism we use in buying a used car or in judging the quality of analgesics or beer from their television commercials. But the tools of scepticism are generally unavailable to the citizens of our society. They're hardly ever mentioned in the schools, even in the presentation of science, its most ardent practitioner, although scepticism repeatedly sprouts spontaneously out of the disappointments of everyday life. Our politics, economics, advertising and religions (New Age and Old) are awash in credulity. Those who have something to sell, those who wish to influence public opinion, those in power, a sceptic might suggest, have a vested interest in discouraging scepticism. 76
5 Spoofing and Secrecy Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) When the mother of celebrity abductee Travis Walton was informed that a UFO had zapped her son with a bolt of lightning and then carried him off into space, she replied incuriously, 'Well, that's the way these things happen.' Is it? To agree that UFOs are in our skies is not committing to very much: 'UFO' is an abbreviation for 'Unidentified Flying Object'. It is a more inclusive term than 'flying saucer'. That there are things seen which the ordinary observer, or even an occasional expert, does not understand is inevitable. But why, if we see something we don't recognize, should we conclude it's a ship from the stars? A wide variety of more prosaic possibilities present themselves. After misapprehended natural events and hoaxes and psychological aberrations are removed from the data set, is there any residue of very credible but extremely bizarre cases, especially ones supported by physical evidence? Is there a 'signal' hiding in all that noise? In my view, no signal has been detected. There are 77
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5<br />
Spoofing and Secrecy<br />
Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his<br />
self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the<br />
marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved,<br />
require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the<br />
contravention of probability by the thing testified.<br />
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)<br />
When the mother of celebrity abductee Travis Walton was<br />
informed that a UFO had zapped her son with a bolt of<br />
lightning and then carried him off into space, she replied incuriously,<br />
'Well, that's the way these things happen.' Is it?<br />
To agree that UFOs are in our skies is not committing to very<br />
much: 'UFO' is an abbreviation for 'Unidentified Flying Object'.<br />
It is a more inclusive term than 'flying saucer'. That there are<br />
things seen which the ordinary observer, or even an occasional<br />
expert, does not understand is inevitable. But why, if we see<br />
something we don't recognize, should we conclude it's a ship from<br />
the stars? A wide variety of more prosaic possibilities present<br />
themselves.<br />
After misapprehended natural events and hoaxes and psychological<br />
aberrations are removed from the data set, is there any<br />
residue of very credible but extremely bizarre cases, especially<br />
ones supported by physical evidence? Is there a 'signal' hiding in<br />
all that noise? In my view, no signal has been detected. There are<br />
77
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