ridicules the whole UFO phenomenon and doesn’t mince any words about it.” He sat
back and showed his palms imploringly. “Why go out of your way to upset lots of
people who don’t care about Koming and aren’t interested in any religion, but
who tend to be enthusiastic about the space program? NASO has some strong
supporters among UFO buffs. Why antagonize them?”
“I’m in the science business, not the business of making myself popular by
propping up popular myths,” Conlon replied. “That means looking for explanations
of facts. In that area there aren’t any facts that need explaining. Period.”
Brady looked across the desk in surprise. He wasn’t a scientist, but he thought
he did a pretty good job of keeping abreast by reading the popular literature.
Something was going on in the skies that scientists couldn’t account for,
surely. And, Senator Koming’s demands aside, Brady rather liked the idea of
NASO’s committing some serious effort to investigating the subject. It would be
an exciting activity to be associated with and something interesting to tell his
friends about. “But there has to be something out there,” he objected. “I mean,
I know ninety-five percent, or whatever, of what’s reported is rubbish, but what
about the other five? How can you explain that?”
Conlon snorted and massaged his forehead. How many times had he heard this
before? “I can’t, and neither can anyone else,” he replied. “That’s why they’re
what they call unidentified. That’s what the word means. It’s no more mysterious
than car accidents. If you analyze the statistics, you’ll find that some percent
are due to drunks, some to carelessness, some to vehicle defects, and so on
until you end up with five percent that nobody can pin down to any specific
cause, and nobody ever will. The causes are unidentified—but that’s no reason to
say they have anything to do with aliens. It’s the same with UFOs.”
“That doesn’t prove they don’t have something to do with aliens though,” Brady
pointed out.
“I never said it did,” Conlon replied. “I can’t prove Santa Claus doesn’t exist
either. You can’t prove a negative. Philosophically it’s impossible.”
“So, what are you saying?” Brady asked him.
Conlon tossed his hands up and shrugged. “I told you, I’m a scientist. Science
doesn’t have anything to say about it. It’s not a scientific matter.”
“How can you say that, Walt?” Brady sounded incredulous. “It’s connected with
space and spacecraft, alien life . . . How can you say it’s not scientific?”
“The way a theory is constructed logically is what makes it scientific. Not its
content. To be scientific, one of the conditions a theory has to meet is that it
must be falsifiable—there must be some way you can test it to see if it’s wrong.
You can never prove, absolutely, that any theory is right. If you’ve got a
theory that says Some UFOs might be alien spacecraft, then I agree with you—some
might. There’s no way I could prove it false. That’s all I could say, and that’s
all science says. It isn’t a falsifiable theory. See what I mean?”
Brady was shaking his head reluctantly. “I can’t buy that. There has to be some
way for science to evaluate the subject, some way to test some part of it at
least.”
“There is. You invert the logic and put forward the theory that I do:
No UFOs are alien spacecraft. Now, that theory can be falsified conclusively and
very simply, but not by anything that’s been offered as evidence so far.”
“But what about the astronomers who’ve endorsed it publicly?” Brady persisted.
“What astronomers?”
“Oh, I can’t recall their names offhand, but the ones you read about.”
“Pah!” Conlon pulled a face. “You mean people like Jannitsky?”
“Well, he’s one, yes.”
“He used to be a scientist—shut up in a lab all day with nobody ever having
heard of him. Now he’s a celebrity. Some people will do anything for
recognition. How many more like him can you find? You can count ’em on one hand,
and in a country this size that’s the least you’d expect. It doesn’t mean a damn
thing, Al. Less than two percent of professional American astronomers consider