The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Sagan next turns to claims of alien abduction, which, according to polls in the early 1990s affected two percent of all Americans. Sagan points out the ineffective design of the polls, which renders their conclusions spurious, as the researchers didn’t even ask about abductions, but rather made inferences based on descriptions of sleep disruption. Sagan then questions if the supposed victims of abduction are recalling an external event or a state of mind.

Quoting John Locke on the fundamental importance of not building an opinion stronger than the proofs on which it is based, Sagan examines the proofs for UFOs, as of 1996. Sagan admits that, when he was a high school student, the initial claims of flying saucers in the late 1940s “seemed pretty believable” (68). In college, however, after coming across books cataloging public delusions and widespread frauds, he realized that there could be other explanations for UFOs. Given his new knowledge of scientific rigor, Sagan realized that witness testimony, which often forms the entire basis of most UFO reports, is not consistent or infallible enough to be the foundation of a theory.

Crop circles are a good case study to see how low the public's standards for evidence are—people are willing to accept almost any report to foster their belief in aliens. From 1975 to 1991, crop circles appeared, first in England and then around the world, with no explanation. They were widely interpreted as resulting from “a superior intelligence” (74), which most supposed was extraterrestrial. In 1991, two men from England admitted to creating the first crop circles as a lark. However, while their admission was covered by the media, this has done little to diminish the fact that crop circles are still regularly cited as evidence for the existence of extraterrestrials. Sagan suggests that the persistence of this belief is the result of a lack of critical thinking, the desire to maintain wonder, and unfamiliarity with the skeptical method.

As a part of the committee tasked with evaluating the US Air Force’s findings on UFOs over the preceding 40 years, including their flagship effort, Project Bluebook, Sagan has viewed the most concrete findings on the phenomena. Again he found spurious argument, poor investigation, and assumed conclusions. Physical evidence collected from the scene of the alleged flying saucer crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, points to Project Mogul, “a cluster of high-altitude classified balloons” (85) carrying radar equipment meant to scan for incoming nuclear attacks. Most of the physical evidence collected at other crashes, and many of the reported sightings, also point toward this major Cold War military initiative. Often, when people reported witnessing these objects, the investigating military officials encouraged them to remain silent about what they’d seen, fearing the Soviets would find out. This secrecy, Sagan admits, resembles a cover-up, but it also has a simpler explanation: wartime national security. Sagan urges that, given the fall of the Soviet Union, all these files should be made available to the public to dismiss the air of secrecy. (By 2022, the files were in fact declassified, revealing exactly the conclusions that Sagan posited in the book.)

Sagan investigates another “intersection of the conspiracy temperament and the secrecy culture” (88) of the US. When the Freedom of Information Act is used to gain documents relating to UFO activity from the National Security Agency, heavily redacted files often feed into the suspicions of investigators, who are quick to assume that whatever proofs they are searching for are exactly what has been blacked out. In fact, the plethora of redacted information is just as likely to be perfunctory or banal, redacted because of protocol rather than an attempt at obscuration.

The chapter concludes with an interstitial vignette describing the Aurora, a highly-secretive reconnaissance aircraft whose existence is unclear. Sagan briefly argues that exclusively assuming UFOs are extraterrestrial visitors is very limiting—they could just as likely be “time travelers” “demons” or “tourists from another dimension” (93-4), or secretive aircraft such as the Aurora could also be the source of these sightings.