Many scientists and skeptics expressed concern to us about the New Yorker article “The U.F.O. Papers” (in the May 10 printed edition). We know of at least two who submitted letters to the magazine about it. The New Yorker didn’t publish them, but here they are:
Dear Editors:
As an astronomer, educator, and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, I was appalled to read the gullible and one-sided article about UFOs in your May 10 issue. It did not exhibit any of the hallmarks of good journalism for which The New Yorker is justly esteemed. The author interviewed mostly “true believers” in the extraterrestrial hypothesis of UFOs and did not bother talking to any of the serious skeptics (easily revealed by a Google search) who have found far more prosaic and “earthbound” explanations for the incidents and images ballyhooed in the piece.
It’s as if you published an article on the COVID vaccine in which the author spoke extensively with vaccine opponents and those who think injecting bleach is more effective but did not bother to talk with scientists or doctors at all.
You owe your readers a far more balanced treatment. I suggest you assign one of your writers to cover the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, an organization of scientists, lawyers, magicians, educators, and investigators who have devoted a significant part of their careers to helping journalists and the rational side of pseudoscientific claims.
Sincerely,
Andrew Fraknoi
Former Executive Director, The Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Currently, Astronomy Professor, Fromm Institute, University of San Francisco
Fellow of the American Astronomical SocietyHere we go again! The Times in 2017 publishes a notoriously credulous report about UFOs, and now The New Yorker doubles down with “The U.F.O. Papers” article (May 10), focusing on the same people, all enthusiasts for UFOs as something truly mysterious. Your article highlights Leslie Kean and presents her as “sensible,” but my readings find her to be a credulous, pro-UFO believer. An article truly interested in an informed scientific perspective would not have devoted so much space to dubious claims and stories without mentioning their abundant rebuttals.
The article did devote one page (out of 15) to Mick West and his “mild” UFO-debunking approach, but that was about it for skepticism. A truly balanced article would give equal space to the voluminous skeptical UFO examinations by Robert Sheaffer (BadUFOs website) and the late aerospace journalist Philip J. Klass, who was the world’s most informed UFO debunker and is not mentioned at all in this article. And no mention of the two U.S. Air Force studies in the 1990s that clearly explained so many sensational reports.
You quote SETI astronomer Seth Shostak about the likelihood of intelligent life elsewhere but don’t quote his view about the high unlikelihood that they could be here (“Aliens There but Not Here,” Skeptical Inquirer, May/June 2020). And nothing from other prominent astronomer/educators like Andrew Fraknoi or Neil deGrasse Tyson, who could have given scientific perspective. A missed opportunity to inform and educate.
Kendrick Frazier
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(Science writer and editor, Editor, Skeptical Inquirer: The Magazine for Science and Reason, skepticalinquirer.org; Co-Editor, The UFO Invasion (forty articles examining claims about UFOs, aliens, and Roswell from a critical, scientific perspective), Prometheus Books.
The New Yorker did publish one letter (May 31 issue) by a psychologist referring to Jungian archetypes influencing the UFO narrative.