Proving your UFO case by debating

Victory in debates between people who study the UFO phenomenon about certain cases or theories are touted by some ufologists, most notably Stan Friedman, as part of their case that they are right, and their opponents wrong. This is ridiculous.

Debates in and of themselves prove nothing, particularly when the "outcome" is determined by a popular vote of everyone who listened to the debate. There are any number of factors that can skew the results.

For example, if you are debating Seth Shostak or James McGaha on Coast to Coast, and you take the pro "some UFOs are alien spacecraft" position, not only should you "win" the debate in terms of the popular vote, but you should do so by a wide margin, given the fact that the audience for Coast to Coast is already predisposed to accept your point of view.

Then there is the factor of the quality of the debater. So far in his career, Stan Friedman has been well-served by having some pretty poor opposition - no-one is ever going to confuse McGaha or Shostak with Martin Luther King when it comes to his oratorical skills, for example. A good salesman can get away with peddling faulty merchandise sometimes, and when it comes to selling, Stan is both good and experienced - but that doesn't necessarily make him right. However, against a good debater and public speaker, in a moderated setting (especially in cross-examination format, where Stan would be open to frequent questions), with a more or less neutral audience, I have a feeling that Stan would have a much tougher go of it that he usually does.

All of this is moot, however, because when it comes to matters of provable fact and unprovable conjecture, public opinion is worthless. George Bush and his posse convinced an overwhelming majority of Americans that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, including Senator Hillary Clinton. As everyone now knows, Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. Using Stan's logic, however, where winning a debate at a particular time is deemed important, perhaps even definitive, Bush would still be right, because he could cite opinion poll after opinion poll from back then that showed a majority of people thought he was right.

Anyone who trumpets wins in a debate, whether on Coast to Coast or at Oxford, is trying to gull you into thinking that it matters. Don't be fooled - it doesn't.

What really matters are the facts, the data and the evidence, and the reasonable conclusions that can be drawn from them - not a single individual's well-honed ability to move a crowd at a particular moment in time. Science isn't a popularity contest, and neither is serious UFO research.

Paul Kimball