SCIENCE: OUR WAY

We are reaching almost the end of the year. It’s a good time then, for a small reflection.

I am not a scientist. I wish I could be one!

I have a great respect for scientists; I do appreciate all the knowledge that everyday they give to humanity. We owe them a great amount of our progress in understanding nature.

But I tried to learn and to apply the scientific methodology to the particular study of the Unusual Aerial Phenomena.

Through the years I’ve learned many things, I’ve got to know many others.

I could realize that I have been just an apprentice of a scientist. I personally haven’t been able to develop complicated equations, neither it have been possible for me to have around a bunch of instruments to be used in my quest for the real nature of the U.A.P.

Along all this long way of more than 50 years, the best that I’ve got and will be with me forever, is the sincere and great friendship of a lot of people.

I also was able to have very productive dialogs with scientists and I really enjoyed those talks, the mere fact that they were taking place! It was really a privilege and I felt honored by those scientists.

Also along this long way, I have to sincerely regret some misunderstandings and even personal attacks by very few individuals that never get to know me well, or that definitely never dealt with me at all.

How easy is to attack someone whom you have never even seen in your whole life!

More than once I asked myself: wouldn’t it have been fairer for them to first try to contact me, either personally or through e-mail, and try to find out who I really am, how I am and how I think, before going to the attack? Wouldn’t it have been fairer to discuss differences, to clarify issues, before assuming things that are non existent or that are not the way they think they are?

But I understand that ignorance, mediocrity and jealousy are inherent to the human nature, and then I put them aside. They are not stones in my way. Just insignificant distractions that do not even deserve an answer.

The facts themselves are the stronger answer. Myths and wishful thinking become smashed. They have no place in science.

Tricks and hoaxes are despicable.

All said, I would like to share some concepts that for me are very important:

1) The quintessence of science is a permanent quest.

2) The answers science provides are always provisional.

3) When science finds answers to something also finds a new set of questions.

4) Science is a tool, not an idol neither an absolute.

5) Science is the best way to explore, try to understand, experiment, reproduce and proof something.

6) Science is always an open way and demands communication.

I sincerely think that here in our Group, we are people that apply these concepts and are working in accordance with them.

I also consider that before we do science, we need to freely think and think. We have the right to speculate, to imagine, because that is the way we are able then to propose hypotheses. And hypotheses are nothing less than blueprints for a practical work. Finally they’ll become confirmed or rejected by the facts.

And we are doing that too.

Therefore, I want to say to all of you: let’s think creatively, let’s be kind with those who do not understand, but be bold in the defense of science as the universally accepted way to know.

Milton W. Hourcade
Virginia, December 11, 2008.