Apologetically Yours Signed The Anecdote

Recently we read on the FQXi blog under the post entitled Are UFOs Foundational? (http://tinyurl.com/3auxze) that "if we [scientists] actually had scientific evidence of advanced alien life, or any alien life, we would all be jumping out of our skins".

While digesting these eye-wateringly ignorant words we also stumbled across another statement stating that "anecdotal evidence is the least interesting kind of evidence in science, very close to being without value."

And there you have it in all its magnificent glory, another argument by scientists as to why the UFO subject is a waste of their time - because it's based mostly on anecdotal evidence. Poor little innocent anecdote - enemy of the objective, dispassionate observation of scientists. It carries no weapons, it doesn't punch, abuse or maltreat anyone in any way, so why does science run shrieking in the opposite direction at the mere mention of the word? Why do scientists fear it so much? Is the dynamic construct of the simple anecdote too much for them to bear?

Maybe we have to be scientists to understand such things. Perhaps to offer anecdotal evidence for a scientist might be to admit the insufficiency of their knowledge. Could that be a tad too overwhelming for the scientific ego? But didn't anyone ever tell scientists that science is anecdotal? After all, scientists observe an event then tell others about what they saw. Does that not qualify as an anecdote? Scientists didn't wake up one day with the foundations of a scientific modality in their mind. They struggled with their mental limitations, entering deep discussions with other scientists, discussing the what-ifs and maybes of atoms, particles and electromagnetic spin and the like, all before they had their breakthroughs. Isn't the scientific world therefore brimming over with anecdotal reporting?

How can one deny the right of the anecdote to exist? Aren't civilizations built on anecdotes? To deny anecdotal evidence is to stand in a pool of water looking for somewhere else to drink. It is to deny our life, our self. Anecdotes, or more simply, stories, are powerful tools that help us understand what our rigid linear minds cannot. They help us see what has existed right under our nose all along, whether it be how gravity works, how to send a man to the Moon, or whether extraterrestrial life exists.

If the demand for scientific evidence of the UFO subject was less critical of anecdotal evidence it might help us to understand what we obviously do not. Or is there more to it than that? Could it be that it is the power of the truth contained within the witness story that many fear after all...