Jacques Vallée interviewed by Daily Grail

I previously posted that the good folks at Daily Grail republished the classic 1979 fortean book, "Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults," by my friend Jacques Vallée. (Jacques is a computer scientist, astrophysicist, UFO researcher, and the basis for the Lacombe character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He is also a past president former research director at Institute for the Future, where I am a researcher.) Today, the Daily Grail posted an interview with Jacques where he talks about the work that has made him a "heretic among heretics." From the interview:

TDG: When we look at ufology in the 1960s, versus today, I'm not sure a lot of progress has been made (perhaps even the opposite). Is ufology a sisyphean endeavour, unworthy of our prolonged attention? You've personally devoted almost 50 years of research and writing to exploring the phenomenon – can you give a simple opinion to the question: what is behind the UFO phenomenon?

Jacques Vallée: You’re asking me two different questions here. I have convinced myself that there was a real UFO phenomenon once the errors, hoaxes and occasional manipulations were screened out. We do know a great deal more today than we did just 10 years ago, thanks to dedicated researchers who have invested their time and resources to documenting the data. That is not as good as a serious scientific research effort, but one should never underestimate what can be achieved by motivated amateurs. This being said, it would be unrealistic to expect quick solutions, in this field as in any other scientific endeavor.

I have also been interested in the nature of consciousness, and that field has not gotten closer to a solution in fifty years either. Similarly, look at some of the lingering enigmas in archaeology, or in medicine: all we can do is document our data and hope someone will make sense of it at a later time.