The chill of hidden events

It’s unlikely that anyone is more intrigued by the potential ripple effect of the recent UFO data-sharing alliance between Chile and France than sociologist Ron Westrum. Westrum was a speaker at the Greensboro, N.C., conference where GEIPAN’s Xavier Passot and CEFAA’s Jose Lay began comparing notes that led to last week’s formal agreement. Westrum’s topics included “hidden events” — those real things that occur but are rarely discussed thanks to cultural denial — and pluralistic ignorance.

Where France and Chile have evidently given their societies permission to discuss The Great Taboo at official levels, the Ivy League-educated professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern Michigan University says decades of avoidance and outright fraud by American authorities — particularly military — have presented “a huge conflict issue” in the evolution of cultural attitudes over UFOs in the States.