In a 2017 interview with 60 Minutes, Robert Bigelow did not hesitate when he was requested if house aliens had ever visited Earth. “There was and is an present presence, an ET presence,” stated Bigelow, a Las Vegas-based actual property mogul and founding father of Bigelow Aerospace, an organization NASA had contracted to construct inflatable house station habitats. Bigelow was so sure, he indicated, as a result of he had “spent tens of millions and tens of millions and tens of millions” of {dollars} trying to find UFO proof. “I most likely spent extra as a person than anyone else in the US has ever spent on this topic.”
He’s proper. Because the early Nineties, Bigelow has bankrolled a voluminous stream of pseudoscience on modern-day UFO lore—investigating every part from crop circles and cattle mutilations to alien abductions and UFO crashes. Certainly, should you title a UFO rabbit gap, it’s a very good guess the 79-year-old tycoon has flushed his riches down it.
However it’s additionally a very good guess that Bigelow would see this otherwise. In spite of everything, each the media and Congress at the moment are solemnly discussing a supposed huge UFO cover-up by the U.S. authorities. There’s even proposed laws to open the X-Information! “The American public has a proper to study applied sciences of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena,” Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer of New York harrumphed in a latest public assertion.
This legacy of plutocrat-backed fringe science comes as political partisanship, company propaganda, and conspiracy mongering continues to sow mistrust in science. One lawmaker, Consultant Tim Burchett of Tennessee, just lately stated, “The satan’s been in our means,” claiming a “cover-up” of UFO stories by army and intelligence companies.
Such discuss was as soon as solely the area of Web fever swamps and late-night conspiracy- themed radio reveals. Now it is a part of the political mainstream. This doesn’t occur with out Bigelow (and different rich eccentrics) greasing the way in which with their fats wallets. For instance, Laurance Rockefeller was undoubtedly essentially the most distinguished UFO benefactor within the Nineties. The rich inheritor financed quite a few UFO panels, conferences and book-length stories that stored alien craft within the public discourse.
From a scientific standpoint, all this cash appears wasted on a zany quest that’s akin to the seek for Bigfoot or Atlantis. The identical is likely to be stated of Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb’s latest hunt for proof of extraterrestrial life off the coast of Papua New Guinea, which value $150,000 and was funded by cryptocurrency mogul Charles Hoskinson. Loeb’s polarizing claims of discovering traces of alien expertise and of getting a extra open-minded and dispassionate strategy to fringe science have garnered a really staggering quantity of media protection, however his friends within the scientific neighborhood are rolling their eyes.
It is the most recent stunt by Loeb, who additionally helms a controversial UFO challenge and beforehand drew the ire of his colleagues with outlandish claims concerning the supposedly synthetic nature of an (admittedly bizarre) interstellar comet. Steve Desch, an astrophysicist at Arizona State College, just lately informed the New York Instances: “What the general public is seeing in Loeb is just not how science works. They usually should not go away pondering that.”
True, however as communication researcher Alexandre Schiele wrote in a 2020 paper for the Journal of Science Communication, what folks see about “science” is often on TV, notably through sensationalist programming on cable channels resembling Discovery and the misnamed Historical past Channel, the place viewers are “bombarded with aliens, ghosts, cryptids and miracles as if they’re indeniable details.”
Sadly, a lot of this nonsense has, at one level or one other, been masked with an aura of legitimacy by prestigious establishments. For instance, the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise lent its imprimatur to an alien abduction convention within the early Nineties—which Robert Bigelow helped pay for. A beneficiant benefactor to academia, Bigelow additionally gave tens of millions to the College of Nevada in the course of the Nineties to review supposed psychic phenomena, resembling telepathy, clairvoyance and the potential of life after loss of life. (Lately, the billionaire has turned his consideration and cash largely to the afterlife.)
Certainly, there’s a lengthy custom of fringe science at prestigious universities. The doubtful area of parapsychology, as an illustration, owes its existence to the many years of pseudoscholarship churned out at Duke and Harvard College—and financed by rich non-public patrons. A few of our most illustrious thinkers, such because the eminent psychologist William James, have fallen for it. Perception in Martians sprang largely from a rich beginner astronomer, Percival Lowell, who constructed the observatory that also bears his title. A College of Arizona psychology professor attracted criticism lately for taking cash from the Pioneer Fund, based in 1937 by textiles magnate to promote the racist science of eugenics.
Ultimately, this wacky stuff, be it ESP or UFOs, makes its means to Congress and the Pentagon. That is how we find yourself with folks in government-funded packages who declare they’ll bend spoons with their minds or stroll by way of partitions. And that’s how we find yourself with the Division of Protection giving Robert Bigelow $22 million from 2008 to 2011 to research UFOs, werewolves and poltergeists (significantly) on a Utah ranch.
This may be the identical ranch Bigelow had already purchased after studying a narrative in a Utah newspaper about how the property was teeming with UFOs, together with one “enormous ship the dimensions of a number of soccer fields.”
Does this sound acquainted? If that’s the case, that is as a result of in latest weeks, various related hard-to-fathom, evidence-free UFO claims have echoed with out problem by way of the halls of Congress and throughout tv networks. Among the many most eyebrow elevating: tales of recovered saucers, hidden alien our bodies, and a soccer area–sized UFO noticed over a army base.
Guess what: You may draw a line from these outlandish assertions to the huge repository of so-called research as soon as funded by Bigelow. In actual fact, among the folks he contracted to put in writing them, resembling astrophysicist Eric Davis, have acknowledged talking (behind closed doorways) with Congress.
To say UFO enthusiasm has swept Washington D.C. is just not an overstatement. Lately, there have been three Congressional hearings and two Pentagon activity forces. NASA is about to ship its personal verdict after a year-long examine. As Timothy Noah writes within the New Republic, “UFOs are quick turning into the most-studied matter in American governance.”
Maybe, however Robert Bigelow will inform you that no person has studied the subject greater than him. He is likely to be proper. Regardless of the newest UFO whistleblower says and no matter Congress turns up, you may guess that Bigelow already paid for it.
This text was first revealed at ScientificAmerican.com. © ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved. Observe Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Go to ScientificAmerican.com for the most recent in science, well being and expertise information.
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