Equivocal encounters: alien visitation claims as a societal problem

Abstract The contention of this paper is that alien visitation claims are a societal problem when they (a) move into the mainstream of discourse to the extent that government policy has to respond to them; (b) when they generate background noise which impedes science communication; and (c) when they become entangled with indigenous origin narratives, making it hard to recover the latter. Where this is the case, periodic debunking looks like a failed paradigm. Something closer to a scientific research program (SRP) might be called for, at some point. This is an idea which has already been advanced by Avi Loeb and Martin Elvis (albeit in significantly different ways and for different reasons). It is not clear that we are already at the stage where an SRP is required, but such a requirement does seem to be on the near horizon.) The paper concludes by setting out a number of framing requirements for any such SRP.