Greg Eghigian of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (USA) believes that the Western press began writing about unidentified flying objects due to the atmosphere of the Cold War, which, in turn, gave rise to "government conspiracy theories." The scientist writes about this in an article published in the journal Public Understanding of Science.
Secrecy and "conspiracy"
Eghigiyan conducted a study that showed how the "appearance" of UFOs, the idea of them and the attitude of people towards them have changed since 1947, when the first information about "flying saucers" in their modern representation appeared in the press. We are talking about the observation of nine metal objects by aviator Kenneth Arnold over the Cascade Mountains.
The researcher recorded the frequency of UFO mentions in the press, and also checked if these mentions appeared more often in connection with various political events. To do this, he had to extract from the archives information on flying saucers and contacts with aliens, as well as on the activities of UFO societies, which was published in 25 major American newspapers.
Initially, Eghigiyan found out, reports of UFOs began to come in due to the fact that the American intelligence services asked the common people to inform about any unusual phenomena associated with the sky. The fact is that the United States feared espionage from the USSR, and any strange object could turn out to be a Soviet intelligence apparatus … During the first 10 years of the Cold War, more than 4,000 reports on such phenomena were compiled, and some of the information got into the press.
Since the rest of the data was classified, theories appeared that the US authorities were in cahoots with aliens and were deliberately hiding their existence from the general public.
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"Unfriendly" objects
"Exposing conspiracies" were engaged in ufologists, who created various structures engaged in the study of UFOs, published thematic magazines, held conferences and symposia, even arranged "hot lines" for "contactees with aliens." Since they refused to recognize ufology as an official science, a theory arose that scientists are also at the same time with the authorities and therefore deny the existence of humanoids and their ships …
After the Cold War began to decline due to the disappearance of the threat from the Warsaw Pact, the number of references to unidentified flying objects in the press began to decrease. The only exception was the burst of publications about unusual flares in the sky, observed over a number of American states in 19973-1998.
Today, publications about UFOs and encounters with humanoids can be found only in specialized ufological publications, as well as in the entertainment press. Serious social and political publications practically do not mention such incidents. Although information that one or another aircraft belonging to one state illegally crossed the borders of another, not friendly to it, power, is encountered periodically …
The phenomenon of "unrecognition"
Ufology is still called "pseudoscience", although it often uses quite scientific methods. So, our domestic organization "Cosmopoisk" carefully and with the help of instruments checks and investigates all cases that have come into its field of view associated with observations of unidentified flying objects, falling meteorites, contacts, anomalous zones, etc. If the check reveals the absence of any mysteries and anomalies, this information is revealed and made available to the general public.
At the same time, the abbreviation UFO refers to many types of objects, united only by the fact that they are unidentified. This is by no means only about alien vehicles (this is just one of the hypotheses). Theoretically, these could be Chinese lanterns, and planes, and balloons - as long as the object cannot be “identified”, it is in the category of “unidentified” …
“As part of this study, I did not try to show that all ufologists are charlatans and misguided people, just as I did not try to prove that UFOs actually exist,” Eghigiyan commented. - Here another question is much more important - how and why ufologists and real scientists could not find a common language and why they do not trust each other.