10 (Legitimate) Reasons Aliens Probably Aren’t Here

It’s always been a low hanging fruit of scientific Skepticism, and debunked for half a century, but the notion that advanced alien life is visiting Earth persists. The exact same unsubstantiated claims along with hearsay presented as evidence resurface every so often – and along with them, the exact same logical fallacies which persuade people it’s true.

The fact is that these arguments, while couched in the latest terminology and new faces ‘testifying’ or ‘whistleblowing’, are still as poor and unsubstantiated as ever – arguably even weaker, given our ever-growing scientific knowledge and data surrounding the points they make.

I’m going to take a look at some common tropes and points people make to me when expressing their enthusiasm for their belief that aliens are or have visited our planet. During this piece I aim to demonstrate the pitfalls in reasoning and the flaws in those arguments.

Without further ado, here are 10 solid scientific arguments refuting the alien conspiracies, plus some deconstructions of common flawed arguments you may regularly hear in favour of alien visitation.

Reason 1. The Laws of Physics

Speed of Light. This is such a stronger reason than a lot of people know. Nothing with mass can travel faster than light (or as fast as), because the closer an object with mass gets to the speed of light, the more energy is needed to accelerate it faster. This results in an effectively infinite amount of energy/fuel needed to even get close.
Sheer distance over time. To illustrate the distances and time taken to travel between star systems, take our nearest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri. A lightyear is the distance covered by the constant speed of light over one year. The nearest star to us is 4.25 lightyears away, so even if mass could reach the speed of light, it would take 4.25 years at the very least, at that constant speed. This doesn’t account for acceleration/deceleration. So, we’re talking lifetimes of travel. The distance at light speed to just the centre of our galaxy, is a huge 25,000 years away if the speed is constant – our galaxy being about 100,000 lightyears across in total. This almost certainly rules out any other galaxy.
Acceleration – all methods that are plausible are extremely inefficient. Theoretical methods are still not great time-wise or fuel-wise.
Deceleration – they’d have to begin decelerating about half way through the journey if they COULD travel that fast. This would again add significant time to the journey, as there isn’t much distance spent at full speed.
The Drake Equation. This is a probabilistic formula used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in our Milky Way Galaxy. Check the link and the podcast episode below for a detailed description of how that may help our estimations if interested. It’s worth noting that this is largely a guess, as we don’t have solid enough data on many of the components of the equation. So let’s be extremely charitable and say there are 100 billion habitable planets in our galaxy (which would be one habitable planet for every star). Let’s also assume the formula happens to be correct in estimating there are about 12,500 intelligent alien civilizations which may currently exist. That number distributed over 100 billion stars, gives the probability of any one star harbouring intelligent life a 0.0000001 chance. So, to think the chances that any of them apart from us would be anywhere near us, is again vanishingly low – and that’s being more than charitable.
Evolutionary time scales. It took about 4 billion years for complex life to evolve on Earth, which is roughly a third the age of the entire universe – and only now do we emerge as an intelligent species. The chance that we would coincide time-wise with another sufficiently intelligent life form, within travelling distance, is stupendously low.
Evolution itself – another of the most solid scientific theories we have demonstrates that an intelligent brain is extremely costly for energy – very inefficient from a survival perspective. We may very well be a very niche example of all life in the universe where we got partly lucky and had an extremely specific set of evolutionary pressures which resulted in our level of intelligence. In other words, the physics of evolution tends to favour the path of least resistance; and intelligent life is not an inevitable consequence of evolution. This is evident in that we are the only one on our planet among millions of species. Therefore, it would seem likely that should other chances of intelligent life evolving in the universe manifest, it would be extremely rarer than non-intelligent life, and would therefore more likely be distributed far, far away and out of possible travelling or even communicable distance; even if there are other planets with life on them within our galaxy.

These are all highly significant problems for the idea that aliens are here. I’ve only outlined some of the physics here, but if you want more solid explanations then check out the below discussion with astrophysicist and senior research scientist Dr Bryan Gillis where these points are explained a little better –

Logical Fallacy Alert!

“Science could discover something paradigm shifting, it’s happened before. Something that could redefine physics as we know it. There was a time when people scoffed at the idea of [insert historical discovery] so who knows what advanced technology aliens could have?”

*NOTE: This is only a fallacy when used to assert that aliens might or have or are visiting Earth.

This is maybe the biggest and most obvious fallacy people commit in response to the laws of physics argument – we might discover ‘new’ physics. The bottom line is that we haven’t discovered that – and there’s no plausible reason to consider it. When using it to strengthen a position which says aliens might be here, this argument is equivalent to fantasy; in that for any of it to be considered seriously, you have to invent a completely new set of ‘unknowns’ and assume they are true (which is irrational, as they are made up). All this is based purely on the desire for it to be real – not evidence, plausibility, reality as we know it.

This short video both illustrates the speed of light barrier and counters all kinds of ‘what if’ questions people try to break it with. As you will see, it’s a solidly known scientific fact which holds under all scrutiny:

Ok, what if everything we know about reality really is wrong? Well then you'd have to stop trusting literally anything - since physics underpins everything we see and observe and how it all behaves and interacts - even indirectly. Yeah, wait, that would be silly. For one second consider exactly how much evidence that would take to validate. It would take more solid evidence than all of our current knowledge in the world combined can offer today – and that is a lot. It would take something which explains literally everything we know about everything, as well as or better than what we already know. Unless that amount of evidence becomes known, there is no justification for invoking a made up scientific paradigm shift.

In search of reality, truth, you can’t favour assumptions over all that we do know about the universe and its nature: physics, mathematics, etc. – we can't ignore every possible way we have to inform us. It is completely unjustified and illogical to do so. It’s wilful ignorance. The difference with what we do know is that it’s a robust and tested scientific theory (in the scientific definition of 'theory', not a guess), and it is predictive (follows logically based on tested knowledge) – not assumptive (requires baseless unknowns of our preferred choice to fill gaps in knowledge).

The knowledge we do have is so robust in describing reality that we have made countless discoveries which were predicted by this framework before having even tested or observed them – later tests and observations proving them correct.

Take this short video for just one example, where Neil deGrasse Tyson illustrates just how accurate and powerful real science is, and how we can and do know stuff about reality (including how aliens are almost certainly not here):

The laws of physics – while added to in the smaller details – have stood up to every challenge put to them. This is because they were found by objectively testing reality; not by inventing, deciding, hoping, believing, guessing and assuming that we knew better.

Back to the "undiscovered physics" fallacy:

This fallacy is often used by Alien enthusiasts to justify breaking the laws of physics or ignoring problems/flaws in their reasoning.
The Begging the Question fallacy – the conclusion (that intelligent aliens are here or exist at all in proximity to Earth) is assumed in the premise of the argument (it’s possible ‘they’ have technology that breaks the laws of physics). The evidence doesn’t justify the assumption though. There is in fact no justifying evidence for either assumption (that aliens exist, or for technology capable of breaking the laws of physics as we know it). This renders it a pointless argument.
False Premise fallacy – "we don’t know there’s not a technology out there that could redefine physical possibilities; therefore it’s possible." Ignores the possibility it just may not be possible, which given current knowledge would be the most likely outcome.
Occam’s Razor states that the more assumptions needed to make a hypothesis viable, the less likely it is to be true. The assumptions here are that things which we’ve no evidence for exist (see the Begging the Question point).
The Appeal to Ignorance fallacy – another way of putting it is that “science doesn’t know everything”.

“Science doesn’t know everything.”

Closely related to the first fallacy, people often have this knee-jerk reaction. Well of course science doesn’t know everything, but that doesn't mean that science knows nothing. There’s a hell of a lot it does know, and that happens to be a lot more than those who say ‘science doesn’t know everything’ realise.

It’s an irrelevant argument, because if the justification of something without evidence existing is that science doesn’t know everything, then you can state that for any ludicrous claim you choose – the logic is the same:

Person A: “Vampires exist – people I trust have told me they saw one, and many more claim they’re bitten.”

Person B: “There’s no evidence at all for any of that. Vampires are not proven to exist, have never been recorded, have traceable roots in stories and mythology, and all of our scientific knowledge to date, from multiple disciplines, would suggest they don’t exist either. Oh, and there is proof that people certainly do lie, can be fooled, or are delusional.”

Person A: “Science doesn’t know everything, what if we’ve not figured it out yet?”

Person B: “….am I on mute? I feel like you’re ignoring some key points here.”

You’re effectively saying that you don’t need any evidence to validate a claim, and that having lots of evidence which contradicts the claim doesn’t count. This a silly point of view. Science not knowing ‘everything’ doesn’t mean nothing is knowable. This fallacy is:

· Countered very eloquently by the earlier Dara O’Briain quote.

· Argument from Ignorance fallacy.

· Also closely related to the “science was wrong before” argument.

Reason 2. The Lack of Actual Sightings

Nothing that constitutes a UFO ‘sighting’ is ‘confirmed’ as anything. This is because they are by definition, unidentified. So no, not even one can be presumed to be aliens.
The SETI institute (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), an actual organised institution run by relevant experts, surveying the skies constantly, have zero sightings. They are a non-profit program, with around 100 scientists. Their goal is literally to search for and understand life beyond Earth.
NASA, ESA, and other space agencies around the globe are surveying the skies constantly, and are at the forefront of technology, with no sightings.
Use of advanced radio telescopes never pick anything up physical or signal-wise.
Do the comparison: credible, trained astronomers, searching for likely habitable regions of space, backed by science, with equipment more advanced than anyone else would equal ‘actual’ sightings. Alien enthusiasts looking with questionable gear and no knowledge or training in video illusions or science, spotting a blob which could be anything, is not a ‘confirmed’ sighting.
Satellites - there are roughly 7,000 in low Earth orbit, with clear, advantageous views of nearly everywhere on Earth. No sightings.

Reason 3. The Lack of Actual Evidence

No tangible evidence has actually been confirmed scientifically or otherwise.
Every claim ends at the claim, which is as good or bad as anyone’s word – certainly not evidence.
Conspiracy theories of cover ups don’t hold any water unless proven – then it wouldn’t be a conspiracy theory, and there would be evidence.
‘Whistle-blowers’ saying there is evidence is not the same thing as there being evidence. Saying that proof exists, is not itself proof, nor even proof of proof.
A year-long report of UAP’s by NASA found no conclusive evidence of anything.

If interested, the below is a near complete debunking of the congress hearings of the ‘whistleblower’ on UFOs, and the complete lack of any plausible evidence - plus the logical fallacies they constantly use to rationalise their enthusiasm for alien visitors:

Reason 4. The UFO/UAP Videos Are Explainable

Mick West is a very coherent and fair communicator and videography expert. His many video analyses show that there are plausible explanations that don’t require the jump to alien conclusions. He not only offers tangible explanations, but in many cases actually disproves claims made by authoritative US military and Navy pilots, with simple geometry and maths, in relation to the video footage.

This video is a summary video of the Pentagon UFO videos, which he also has more detailed individual videos on if you look on his channel:

Even footage we still can’t identify doesn’t equal aliens. There is evidence of many ways illusions can be created but no evidence that suggest aliens are visiting, so illusions and other Earthly or atmospheric phenomena are the most likely explanation in absence of any evidence.
Aside from physical videos, there are a plethora of human biases which lead us to interpret data as something it is not, in favour of the desire of it to be true.

Reason 5. The Hype is Usually Hoax

Crop circles mystified people, captured international imaginations, and couldn’t be explained…until they could, and it was done by two guys with a sense of humour and a plank of wood and rope. Scroll to the ‘Solving the Mystery’ section of the above link if you want the short of it, but the whole read is a great psychological explanation of why people believe in such things.
Bob Lazar (frequently referenced as testimonial ‘evidence’) was the self-proclaimed victim of an Area 51 cover up story involving alien tech and crafts, even alien bodies. He has since been proven a fraud and maintains his many lies to this day. He gets publicity and money via his books though. Far from any association with MIT and Caltech scientists, he has associated with pop punk star Tom Delonge, conspiracy theorist George Knapp, and of course UFC commentator and stoner/nonsense-peddler Joe Rogan. Not a relevant qualification between them.
Recent ‘whistleblower’ David Grusch managed to take this old rehashed and embellished UFO hoax all the way to congress, riding nothing more than a lot of ‘I’ve seen stuff, honest! But I can’t talk about it.’ You can’t be a whistle blower without producing evidence of something.
The hype around military and government sources, while obviously an argument from authority, is not as credible a reason as one might think to treat this seriously. In fact, the notion of aliens is a cash cow for many officials and closely knit friends of congress.
There are plenty more famous cases of late and historically, all either untrue or unsubstantiated – usually both. The more of these that are debunked, the statistically higher the chance that the next is also nonsense – especially when they are making the same claims, with the same lack of evidence. It’s an ever growing number.

Logical Fallacy Alert!

“David Grusch is a former military intelligence officer turned whistleblower – that makes him a credible source.”

Whistleblowers don’t necessarily include evidence, nor are accurate. Anecdotes/Testimonials are not evidence.
Military intelligence officers, like trained pilots, are not trained critical thinkers, scientists, skeptics, or trained in identifying objects. They’re as prone to cognitive flaws as the rest of us.
This is an Argument from Authority fallacy because the mere fact of his credentials is the reasoning behind it; ‘his claims are credible because he’s a former military intelligence officer, so we can trust what he says is true or accurate.’
Anyone can lie. Anyone can make mistakes. As well-intended as anyone can be, they can still misinterpret information, and everyone is prone to cognitive biases. As it turns out, David has been good friends with various Ufologists and enthusiasts for years – very telling.

This short take is a perfect analysis of the David Grusch story and the claims he makes in general, which cuts through the hype to find what is really an empty core:

Seth Shostak, senior astronomer of the SETI Institute, also writes an eloquent take in which he importantly points out that Grusch ‘considers himself’ a whistleblower. A very important nuance.

Reason 6. ‘Scientific Skepticism’ is not ‘Cynicism’…and Ufology is not Science

Science is a method with a high bar of rigour and evidence. The simple fact is that none of the claims made for aliens have ever met that bar, full stop. Not even to be considered evidence of any kind.
This well warranted scientific doubt is often attacked and reframed as cynicism or a conspiracy by UFO enthusiasts/Ufologists. The reality is that real skepticism means proportioning your doubt in line with the available evidence – or lack thereof.
Ufologists are not science trained. Ufology is not a recognised science, and does not follow the scientific method. It is pseudoscience among real scientific disciplines.
Contact the wrong 'experts' and you have another hoax. The Chilean Navy UFO. Ufologist Leslie Kean, a firm believer in alien visitation, took the Chilean government for a ride for years – while the internet figured out what was going on in 5 days. Scientific skepticism protects against junk 'science' and from being fooled.
NASA actually are calling for more data and taking UAPs seriously, not just dismissing them. This still doesn’t mean they think it is plausible that aliens are here.
UAPs, if a threat, are much more likely a military threat. This means we absolutely should be investigating, but not that it must be aliens, nor that it’s even possible – let alone probable. Apply Occam’s Razor.
This NASA report calling for better methodology indicates little to no confidence in what enthusiasts are calling evidence, highlighting the poor quality and poor methodology which believers tend to go by.
What will they find by collecting high quality data? The likely answer will be akin to ‘nothing’, but might reveal international military threats, or simply natural phenomena where the illusions fall away with more data.

Reason 7. Diminishing Probability of Advanced Life

Probability is often misinterpreted. You may think it’s inevitable that there are advanced spacefaring aliens visiting Earth after hearing stats about the numbers of stars and planets in our galaxy alone. But this boost of chance is only applicable to the one and only example we know – us – in the whole universe. And while it boosts the probabilities of life having evolved elsewhere, it tells us nothing about the frequency or distribution of that chance. Furthermore, when you whittle down the probabilities for all conditions needed for life, and even smaller – intelligent life, and factor in other variables which would make it more difficult, you’re actually applying a very small number (nearby, habitable planets) to a huge one (stars in the galaxy) - physics being the obvious barrier.

The numbers improve the possibility of intelligent life occurring elsewhere in the universe – but due to other variables such as timing and conditions, not necessarily the chance or frequency of it occurring. We simply can’t assume that it’s likely at all, when the only example we have is us. Evolutionary speaking, intelligent life is not an inevitable result of life having started at all.

Miniscule probabilities. The possibility of other life having evolved at all in our own galaxy are probable. Certainly possible. The probability that another intelligent and sufficiently advanced life has made it, in the same galaxy out of trillions, and close enough to be in travelling distance to us? It’s very vanishingly low.
Distribution. Humans are the only evolutionary life form on Earth out of millions, to have managed it. In the context of trillions of galaxies each containing 100 billion stars, the distribution of intelligent life is much more likely to be galaxies away – or at least too far away within our own galaxy to traverse.
Relative time frame - Sufficiently advanced life and tech to interstellar travel, close enough, AND exist in the same time frame as humans on Earth? Some points here about timescales.
Timescale to develop intelligent life. This short reel is a great concise explanation by astrophysicist Brian Cox, on the biological plausibility of life developing in the timescales it took: in a nutshell, it took life 4 billion years to get only this far – a third the age of the universe. If that is typical, then we could be looking at even lower chances of other intelligent life having evolved in the universe – and too far away to ever see, let alone reach, if so.
Conditions needed. There’s a very specific set of conditions required for Earth to have been habitable. There’s an even more specific set of conditions needed for life to have started. Even after these were met, it was still a chain of chance events that led to multicellular life.
Existential threats like wars, asteroids, religion, natural disasters, resources etc. can cause extinction events. As well as the rarity for our level of intelligence to occur such that we are the only species with it; we’re also lucky to have had such a stretch of uninterrupted stability on our planet. One asteroid or super volcano at the wrong time and size, and we may well have never existed. Conversely, had the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs not happened, we also may never have had the same evolutionary opportunities. And these events are not uncommon, on cosmic/evolutionary time scales. This again makes it even less likely that a near enough planet has survived for the same amount of time, under the same conditions, pressures, and arguably for much longer given that they’d need to be far, far more advanced than us.

As you can see, there are a lot of extremely low chance events that would have to go perfectly and align at the right time, even for them to just exist. What’s more, on top of all of the above, assuming one civilisation made it against those odds…why would they choose to travel here? It may not be worth their time, resources, efforts, or life. It might not be possible at all. They may just be happy where they are.

Reason 8. Contradictory Arguments

The notion that aliens have advanced tech beyond our imaginations (and breaking the laws of physics) are here, completely undetectable to our most advanced space institutions, yet are crashing into Earth. Travelling interstellar distances and bending the laws of physics to their will, but they just can’t manage a clean landing.
We’ve been supposedly reverse engineering alien tech and materials for 70 years or so, yet nothing useful has emerged as a result. All our advances in materials and technology can be traced back to a real origin, step by step.
Only high ranking military, government, and online crackpots know about them, yet the global scientific consensus, with the working knowledge and equipment to actually search and analyse such claims, all agree there is no currently compelling evidence.
Supposed alien tech and a world-first discovery up for grabs, yet no government or scientist wants to claim it – or the trillions of dollars and fame and prestige it most likely would yield. Every single other groundbreaking scientific discovery is competed for globally.
50+ years’ worth of a ‘covered up’ conspiracy, which hundreds of people would be involved in, yet podcaster and stoner Joe Rogan and film maker Jeremy Corbell ‘know’ and can’t be silenced. ‘Known nobody’ and fraud Bob Lazar selling his books on Amazon can’t be touched by the government who can allegedly keep alien tech a secret for decades; but they can wipe all record of his MIT/Caltech credentials, while forcing everyone involved at MIT/Caltech to keep quiet about him ever being there.
Millions of dollars of dedicated space-surveying equipment can’t detect alien craft, yet a grainy, low resolution camera can (this really highlights confirmation bias). Satellites covering the Earth can see a book cover from space, but can’t pick up spacecraft in low orbit?
A high res camera in everyone’s hand for a decade now, yet still the available data gets no better. The so called ‘evidence’ literally is the blur, the uncertainty.
There are lots of classified government programs. There always have been. There are many reasons for that, and it doesn’t point to ‘becuz alienz’. If they are classified, then there are repercussions for ‘whistleblowing’. But there was no whistleblowing because they weren’t allowed to disclose the details. So Grusch is not a whistleblower. If he truly was, wouldn't he surely face repercussions?
Aliens have been in contact with Earth for decades and the US government is keeping it secret ‘because the world would descend into chaos’. Yet the aliens clearly haven’t attacked us, and still it is humans who continue to wilfully endanger each other – and the planet. Take a look around. The chaos is already here - and I'm not only talking about the ridiculous state of mis/disinformation and pseudoscience having such a large global outreach.

Reason 9. Grand Conspiracies Fail Mathematically

There is plenty of plausible reasoning which shows that grand conspiracies are set to fail, this post summarises (and links to) a scientific paper which explores mathematical probability of a grand conspiracy being revealed from within. The post also discusses some good additional points on conspiracy mechanisms and their flawed logic.
Note that there’s no credibility to a conspiracy theory unless sufficient evidence substantiates it. At that point it’s not a conspiracy, but no earlier than that, and not based on anecdotes and testimony – which are not evidence.
Again, 50+ years of a government conspiracy cover up involving hundreds of different, ideologically diverse people coming and going is almost impossible, and that’s mathematically speaking.

Reason 10. Occam’s Razor

As referenced several times earlier, Occam’s Razor states that the more assumptions needed to make a claim viable, the less likely it is to be true. The most likely true answer is the most in line with our testable and tested framework of the universe, which requires the least assumptions outside of what we know to be true. To make the idea of aliens visiting Earth true, you would need a lot of large, implausible assumptions as placeholders for evidence, contrary to what is established science. This suggests that it is likely untrue, unless legitimately and scientifically verified – which rarely happens in cases which turn out to be…untrue.

Occam’s Razor means that truth favours provable, plausible explanations over completely unsubstantiated assumptions which demand a leap of faith. That is, there are plenty of possible and proven explanations for UFO videos, abduction experiences, and sightings; hoaxes covering many of them, that make it much more likely another illusion or hoax – or simply a mundane glitch or unexplained phenomena. But aliens? Zero proof. Entirely assumptions. Unexplained doesn’t equal unexplainable.

More Arguments/Logical Fallacies Debunked

“We don’t actually KNOW there aren’t aliens though.” “You can’t PROVE he’s lying.”

The Burden of Proof fallacy. It’s not up to us to prove anyone is lying. It’s up to them to back up their claims.
Argument from Ignorance fallacy.
They may not actually be lying with intent. They may truly believe what they are saying. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily correct.
You can’t prove a negative in anything – this doesn’t mean we can’t know things which suggest it isn’t true.

Proving a negative is a common tactic used in bad faith by believers of anything. This passage from Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World, is a fantastic and eloquent way to break this down:

The Invisible Dragon

I highly recommend the book, as an essential and eye-opening read into rationality and critical thinking.

“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.”

This relates directly to the last argument, but I think stands alone. This is because taken literally, it’s true. It’s very persuasive and cleverly worded. But if you’re talking about something for which there’s a profound lack of evidence for, contrary to specific claims (which themselves would demand evidence to make), then in that context the absence of evidence does suggests evidence of absence, for all intents and purposes. At least where all avenues of possible evidence have been considered.

Usually this is just a disguise for the ‘can’t prove a negative’ gambit. It serves to falsely boost the validity of the claims of alien visitation (for which there is no evidence) while minimising the skeptical position (for which there is a tonne of strong reasoning). Ok, so the statement is semantically true. But guess what? Absence of evidence is also not evidence of anything!

“Trained military pilots said the Pentagon videos couldn’t be anything human engineered.”

“The military pilots are convinced it was flying faster than is physically possible.”

Trained pilots are not necessarily trained in the scientific method, critical thinkers, or trained in identifying objects. They’re as prone to cognitive flaws and optical illusions as the rest of us. This requires many other skills – Mick West is one shining example of having the necessary skill to debunk the Pentagon UAP videos, for example. This is discussed in detail at the Center for Inquiry:

Pilots are trained to fly, not necessarily to identify anomalies. They use gear which is made for specific purposes, not including searches for extra-terrestrials and this equipment can be ‘fooled’ as well as the user. That is, to produce artifacts of the technology and unexpected results.
They are not necessarily physicists, and do not have as good a grasp on what's physically possible as a physicist; nor the data to go about working it out.
These problems are often not a question of physics so much as other disciplines like video analysis - as demonstrated in the above video. Even physicists wouldn't know how to interpret the sketchy data of UFO videos.

“Astrophysicists and other scientists agree that it’s almost certain that we are not alone in the universe.”

This is absolutely true. However, it doesn’t add any strength whatsoever to the argument that we’re being visited by aliens.
Appeal to Extremes fallacy. Extrapolating far beyond what scientists actually tend to agree on.
What’s agreed is that ‘life’ probably exists. This doesn’t mean necessarily intelligent, or close.
Astrophysicists and scientists don’t actually argue that this supports alien visitation.
False Equivalence fallacy. Scientists discussing the possibility of ‘life’ doesn’t equal Ufologists (pseudoscience) hyping up non-evidence as proof of advanced intelligent life visiting Earth.

Extra note on false balance: this is a tactic used mostly in the media when trying to be 'fair' or represent 'both sides'. In reality, it gives more weight to the incorrect side than the evidence warrants. It elevates the perceived legitimacy of it in the public eye.

Why the Hype, Then?

Why then, do so many people still get wrapped up in the hype and believe in such huge but baseless claims?

One large reason is of course influencers promoting any old junk-science. Joe Rogan is probably the largest repeat offender of this. On alien abduction, that he discussed on his show recently with Matt Rife (a predisposed believer), he erroneously speculates:

“It feels real, because it is real.”

Astonishingly, he starts out at several right answers (the fallible brain, errors of perception, chemicals, sleep phenomena, influenced by cultural shifts in tech and sci-fi, combinations of all and more, etc.) and ends up talking about how it could in fact be multi-dimensional alien souls, only accessible through doses of psychedelics made in the body. Ironically he almost had it when he said it feels real.

It’s genuinely fascinating to watch him first make a reasonable case for why people think they’re abducted by aliens, using valid points, and then somehow ignore that as he spirals into a child-like fantasy with a straight face, and seems to prefer that version. Guess what, though? People actually get roped into this kind of nonsense, whether he takes it seriously or not.

Conspiratorial thinking is a complex topic. It has been studied, and it has been shown that certain personality traits indicate a higher chance of willingness to believe in conspiracies. This article from the American Psychological Association summarises one such large-scale study.

To summarise other powerful reasons:

Logical Fallacies/flawed reasoning is persuasive, but wrong.
People don’t care about knowledge necessarily, just enjoy the excitement of belief.
As linked to earlier, there’s money to be made.
Cognitive traps and biases lead us to ignore a lack of evidence in favour of our desire to believe.
Constant media hype from junk-journalism and clickbait pieces reinforces unsupported claims and makes vague insinuations. I took apart a piece like this here to show how wildly things can escalate.
The continual stream of silly claims made by authoritative public figures to congressional hearings, giving such claims false balance in the eye of the public, and staying present in the minds of the public. Examples include the recent Mexican mummy presented as an alien to Mexican congress. This story is not just mad, but also stems partly from racism.
Constant ‘investigative’ trash-documentaries on platforms like the History Channel and more recently Netflix, give the appearance of legitimacy via slick production values and emotional anecdotes/speculation dressed up as investigation. You see this with things like ghost documentaries too. They play to the viewers biases, desires, expectations, but don’t analyse it fairly and logically. They are better entertainment than a real investigation, to most. It is all theatre.
In conjunction with the reasons above: repetition. Repetition of things whether true or false, leads the brain to feel like there’s more truth to a claim – and this is actually one trick that ‘psychics’ and magicians exploit in people. This is called cognitive ease. Here’s a good explanation of this particular bias:

Lastly, let’s not forget pure, simple trolling.

In addition to all of the above, another study of ‘The generality of belief in unsubstantiated claims’, found that:

“the measures of specific false and fictitious conspiracy theories both significantly predicted generic conspiracist ideation.”

Basically, believers in one type of unsubstantiated claim are easily led to believe others.

Furthermore:

“…these measures of false and fictitious conspiracy belief were positively intercorrelated with measures of psychological misconceptions, pseudoscience, poorly supported psychological practices, and paranormal beliefs.”

Which means not only are people who tend to believe in conspiracies more likely to believe in other conspiracies, but they are lacking in the general logical and critical thinking skills needed to recognise other forms of false claims. This is unsurprising, but it’s always good to back it up scientifically – such is one of the main points of this post.

Conclusions

My personal stance on whether life exists elsewhere in the universe is almost certainly a yes. This view does not contradict anything I have stated in this piece, and that’s something that people sometimes conflate: ‘life existing elsewhere’ with ‘intelligent life interacting with Earth’. Those statements are incredibly far removed from one another, by sheer physics alone.

When it comes down to weighing up the arguments for and against a big UFO conspiracy, it is still the case that there are plenty of sound, logical reasons which cripple that notion, while no evidence to actually support it.

A lot of baseless and logically flawed assumptions are needed to even suggest that the claim is true. That, and a strong belief in the mere words of one guy with no evidence, at the same time as an unrelenting suspicion of everyone at government level over multiple decades, without evidence. Contradictory of itself.

I know which side I fall down on: that of all our combined best knowledge and evidence, from our best scientists and thinkers. Like Steven Novella though, I’m always willing to change my mind if something actually warrants that. Show me the evidence!

I leave you with this important message:

Further Resources

- NASA is studying more than 800 sightings of unidentified objects in our sky as part of its investigation into the UFO phenomenon. We get an update on the agency’s study in a conversation with a member of the NASA UAP panel.

- We also hear why the belief that aliens exist has broad consensus, but that’s not the same as saying they routinely visit Earth. Plus, a UFO investigator analyzes the startling claim that the military is hiding evidence of alien technology:

The UFO Movie THEY Don't Want You to See

A full documentary featuring lots of relevant expertise, and fair, unbiased analyses of the pop culture phenomena. Embedded here, below.

“In an age when misinformation, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories have become mainstream, UFOs have risen to become one of the most-talked about pop culture phenomena. With all of this noise, how can we expect anyone to know how much of this is true? What is in our skies? What do we know, and how do we know it? And most importantly: Are we being visited?”

“Science does have most of these answers and we're working on answering the rest of them. The film features experts in:

· Physics & relativity

· Exobiology

· Exoplanetary spectral analysis

· Image analysis

· Pilot training and air traffic control

· Defense

The UFO Movie THEY Don't Want You to See will lay out for you exactly what we know and how we know it.”

Carl Sagan: The Demon-Haunted World

All round brilliant book packed with skepticism lessons and descriptions of alien hoaxes through the 40s - 90s.

Chapter 5, 'Spoofing and Secrecy' starting on page 79, is a great one to read as a taster for the rational, evidence informed takes on alien hype. A great quote from this chapter:

“There are reliably reported cases that are unexotic, and exotic cases that are unreliable.” -

This speaks perfectly to all speculations of aliens to date. An example of the former may be Chinese lanterns, or balloons, for which there's consistent evidence of, and an example of the latter could be the recent David Grusch case, for which there are only 3rd hand, vague, speculative anecdotes of.

Carl was an astronomer and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by exposure to light.

A fantastic long form discussion with Adam Frank, Physicist and Astronomer -

They explain in clear terms as to why the scientific consensus among institutions such as NASA is so strong, and how science actually works in gathering evidence for such claims as aliens.

Through The Meta

10 (Legitimate) Reasons Aliens Probably Aren’t Here

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