see?

something i suspected, but which was confirmed during my time in the library today:

try to find scholarly articles containing the keywords "ufo" and "extraterrestrial," and the overwhelming majority of your results will be from the fields of psychology and social psychology (sometimes sociology as well). almost without exception, the goal of these articles will be to explain how & why people come to believe that they've been abducted by aliens. certainly, these disciplines are not to be criticized for addressing issues which they see as reasonably falling within their rightful provinces...but can it be that the only academically interesting question regarding UFOs and extraterrestrials is a psychological one??

this is a good example of what i mean when i refer to the role that academic disciplines play in shaping the UFO/ET debate. academics are supposed to be experts, right? and we often defer to experts when attempting to settle disputes about which we suppose experts should have authoritative knowledge, right? well, with regard to the possibility that extraterrestrials might 1) exist, and 2) have visited our planet, the "experts" are predominantly--bordering on exclusively--concerned with how so many people can possibly have such similar delusions. discouraging.

lesson: sometimes academia is simply unable to play a meaningful (let alone helpful) role in your quest for knowledge, because academia is pretty sure you're just fucking nuts to begin with.