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Friday, June 11, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
IN FEW WE TRUST
By Michael Amon
Review-Journal
What if all of the Area 51 buffs, "X-Files" fanatics and Art Bell listeners turn out to be right? Aliens would make contact with humans, and everyone would turn their eyes skyward, wondering what would happen next.
Would dutiful citizens trust their government to handle the situation and rush to get information to the public?
Just maybe, the world would find some time to act rationally and embrace and learn from the new life forms. Or would there be a national freak-out, with people quitting their jobs, fleeing their homes and moving into the hills?
According to a national survey done in April and released Tuesday, most people think they could handle contact with aliens in a rational manner without the hyperbole of a worldwide catastrophe.
But few trust their neighbors to react so calmly.
Titled "The Day After Contact," the poll of 1,971 people reported that the majority of Americans, 84 percent, said they do not think human contact with alien life forms would change how they live from day to day.
Yet, 25 percent said their peers would "totally freak out and panic," 14 percent said alien contact would cause most people to behave strangely, 36 percent said most people would be very concerned, and 10 percent said their fellow humans would become irrational and dangerous, perhaps hurting each other.
Only 13 percent thought the rest of the population would handle the coming of extraterrestrials in a calm and reasonable manner.
The disparity between what people say they would do and what they suspect others capable of surprised Dr. Colm Kelleher, a scientist at the National Institute for Discovery Science, which enlisted the Roper Organization to conduct the survey in April.
"To us that means that either people don't trust other people, or they haven't thought about the questions very much," Kelleher said.
When commenting on how they would react to news of alien contact, 32 percent said they were fully prepared to handle it, and 17 percent said they would have to seriously rethink their places in the universe. Only 16 percent said they would be seriously shaken, and 5 percent said they would be extremely distraught. Thirty percent said they wouldn't care.
The survey had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.
"We're looking at a survey of what people think they will do, not what they'll actually do," said Glen Campbell of the Area 51 Research Center.
He said the discovery of extraterrestrial life would be monumental, like "discovering a new continent."
The survey suggests people do not trust each other to react rationally in abnormal situations. History does not do much to dispel that notion.
In 1938, Orson Welles' radio retelling of H.G. Wells' novel "War of the Worlds" provoked mass uprisings in New Jersey and New York City among people who thought the broadcast was a live news feed.
Welles' version of "War of the Worlds" also caused riots when played in Chile and Ecuador and, as recently as 1988, in Portugal.
Few studies have been conducted that detail the effect alien contact would have on human civilization, Kelleher said. He said that the results of the survey did not rule out the possibility of mass hysteria as portrayed in "Independence Day."
"That really depends on how the information is presented," Kelleher said.
If a military leader or a scientist calmly informs the public that contact has been made with other life forms, the public would handle it differently than if television news agencies announced the findings while showing scenes of riots in cities.
"It could all depend on who the reporter is," Kelleher said, adding that hysteria can be contagious.
According to the poll, people do not trust the government to handle contact with extraterrestrials nor do they believe the government would release any information.
Only 20 percent said they would want the government to make first contact with aliens. Seventy-one percent said they believe the government would classify findings; 23 percent think federal officials would suppress and actively discourage civilian knowledge of contact.
A subdivision of the poll reported 80 percent of the people who are active in government and the community, the "trend-setters," do not trust the government to make the first contact.
"That's the way that Americans have always thought. Americans have always distrusted the government," Campbell said.
Space industry officials are indignant at the thought of mistrust.
"Who would they trust (to handle it)? The Denver Broncos?" NASA spokesman Brian Welch asked.
When dealing with a hypothetical situation such as discovering alien life, it is difficult to develop an exact, comprehensive plan for informing the public about scientific findings, Welch said.
He points to how NASA recently handled the announcement of a theory that basic life forms existed on Mars. The theory was based on findings that Martian rocks discovered in Antarctica contained fossils of microbes.
Welch said the government did not want to hype the Martian findings before they were solidified.
"We didn't want to do anything to inhibit our scientists from getting a paper published," Welch said. "We kept it secret. We took extra special care that we at NASA kept our mouths shut and let the scientific process take its course."
The possibility of contact is very plausible, Welch said, but the contact may not be so dramatic as movies make it out to be.
Welch said most of NASA's efforts at first contact are being made through listening for incoming radio waves from space that have signs of intelligent life and searching for signs of basic life on the planets and moons of the solar system.
"It's not so much a question of what are we going to do when the starships come down to the planet. It's how do we communicate (with them)?" Welch said.
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