\nignorance is political rather than scientific"- that’s the conclusion
\nof two prominent university professors who had the results of their
\nresearch on UFOs published in the August 2008 edition of Political
\nTheory. It was the first time a major political science journal had
\npublished an article dealing with the UFO phenomenon so it has
\npredictably sparked controversy in the academic world. The joint
\nauthors of "Sovereignty and the UFO," are Alexander Wendt, Professor of
\nInternational Security at Ohio State University; and Professor Raymond
\nDuvall, Chair of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.
\nTheir article breaks new ground in opening up for academic debate the
\nway in which evidence of UFOs has not been seriously analyzed in the
\nmodern era. Their main argument is that this is due to a "metaphysical
\nthreat" that UFOs pose to the sovereignty of modern states. This threat
\ncomes not from the reality of UFOs as an inexplicable physical
\nphenomenon that ultimately have mundane explanations, but the implicit
\nassumption that UFOs are intelligently guided vehicles controlled by
\nextraterrestrial intelligences (the extraterrestrial hypothesis). <\/p>\n
Wendt and Duvall argue that a serious study of UFOs could undermine the
\n"anthropomorphic sovereignty" under which modern states operate. They
\nexplain in their paper: "When sovereignty is contested today,
\ntherefore, it is always and only among humans, horizontally so to
\nspeak, rather than vertically with Nature or God. In this way modern
\nsovereignty is fundamentally anthropocentric (pp.607-608)." Put simply,
\nonly humans compete for sovereignty over the population, resources and
\nterritory of the planet. <\/p>\n
In the absence of any conclusive scientific evidence of intelligent
\nextraterrestrial life, political sovereignty remains an exclusively
\nhuman affair. This is why, according to Wendt and Duvall, modern states
\nhave not devoted sufficient scientific resources to the UFO problem. <\/p>\n
since 1947 over 100,000 UFOs have been reported worldwide, many by
\nmilitaries. However, neither the scientific community nor states have
\nmade serious efforts to identify them, the vast majority remaining
\nuninvestigated\u2026. For both science and the state, it seems, the UFO is
\nnot an "object" at all, but a non-object, something not just
\nunidentified but unseen and thus ignored (p. 610). <\/p>\n
This directly led to Wendt and Duvall concluding that states are
\ndeliberately promoting an "epistemology of ignorance." They write: "our
\npuzzle is not the familiar question of ufology, "What are UFOs?" but,
\n"Why are they dismissed by the authorities?" Why is human ignorance not
\nonly unacknowledged, but so emphatically denied? In short, why a
\ntaboo?" (p. 611). <\/p>\n
One critic, Henry Farrell, responded to their paper<\/a> arguing that "the evidence is inadequate to the claims made." . In their online response to Farrell\u00b4s criticism <\/a>, Farrell\u00b4s criticism is the familiar skeptical position used not only to UFO researchers have long claimed that the governments have covered up Wendt\u00b4s and Duvall\u00b4s theory is a variation of the government foul-up The greatest contribution of Wendt’s and Duvall’s article is that it
\nWendt and Duvall agreed that they had supplied insufficient evidence in
\nsupport of their theory but that the "intent in the paper is not in any
\ncase to test our theory: it is to demonstrate the existence of an
\nunacknowledged puzzle, and then, in the spirit of systematic
\ntheorization, offer what we think is a plausible solution to it."<\/p>\n
\nchallenge the evidence supporting UFO research and the extraterrestrial
\nhypothesis in the first place, but also claims that governments are
\nsystematically covering up, or in denial over, the evidence. Wendt and
\nDuvall are not positing a systematic government cover up of the
\nevidence, but are proposing the theory that there exists a deep denial
\nby the modern state over the significance of UFO evidence: "the
\nsovereign represses the UFO out of fear of what it would reveal about
\nitself (p. 625).<\/p>\n
\nevidence confirming the extraterrestrial hypothesis, or are in denial
\nover the evidence. Terms such as "Cosmic Watergate" have been coined to
\ndescribe the government UFO cover-up, and how this systematically has
\ninfluenced public perceptions over the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
\nOther researchers have referred instead to a government "foul-up" which
\nis that governments basically have mangled the scientific research of
\nUFOs, and it\u00b4s up to civilian researchers to shepherd government
\nauthorities back onto the right track. <\/p>\n
\nargument. Rather than governments consciously choosing to neglect the
\nserious study of UFOs through a deliberately thought out public policy
\nprocess, this denial is expressed unconsciously due to the metaphysical
\nthreat posed by UFOs. They point out that these "are questions of
\nsocial rather than physical science, and do not presuppose that any
\nUFOs are ETs. Only that they might be" (p. 611). Consequently, this
\nleads to arguably Wendt\u00b4s and Duvall\u00b4s most significant observation
\nabout the fundamental nature of the UFO issue stated at the beginning
\nof this article, "UFO ignorance is political rather than scientific"
\n(p. 613). <\/p>\n
\ncorrectly casts light on the political factors that contextualize
\nevidence of UFOs and the extraterrestrial hypothesis. For decades, many
\nhave argued that the study of UFOs is a scientific problem that
\nrequires a strict application of the scientific method to get
\ndefinitive answers. The scientific approach has made little progress
\nsince political factors have not been properly accounted for in the way
\nmodern states are in denial about the evidence (the foul-up thesis),
\nand\/or cover-up hard evidence supporting the extraterrestrial
\nhypothesis. The shift from a purely scientific approach to a more
\npolitically oriented understanding ought to be greatly welcomed. It
\nwill provide greater awareness of how modern states participate in the
\nstudy of UFOs and the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Wendt\u00b4s and Duvall\u00b4s
\n"Sovereignty and the UFO," moves academia one step closer to formal
\npolitical studies of evidence concerning the extraterrestrial
\nhypothesis, and its public policy implications. That will ultimately
\nlead, as I argue elsewhere <\/a>,
\nto the development of \u00b4exopolitics\u00b4 as the formal political discipline
\nfor studying the public policy implications of extraterrestrial life. <\/p>\n
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