Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T00:42:42.432Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Deconstructing the Rio Scale: problems of subjectivity and generalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2019

John W. Traphagan
John W. Traphagan*
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 2505 University Ave. A3700, Austin, TX, 78712, USA
*
Author for correspondence: John W. Traphagan, E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines and deconstructs the Rio Scale, focusing primarily on the recently published Rio Scale 2.0 concept, from the perspective of a social scientist. I argue that although there is value in developing tools to help astronomers and other scientists communicate their perceptions about the significance of a contact event to the media and the general public, the Rio Scale 2.0 remains problematic conceptually and, thus, does not represent a robust method for assessing or communicating the import of a valid contact. Therefore, it should not be used as a method for informing the media or the general public about scenarios that involve the detection of valid signals suggesting the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Keywords

Objectivity and subjectivitypublic opinionRio ScaleSETI
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 18 , Issue 5 , October 2019 , pp. 463 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Almár, I (2001) How the Rio Scale Should Be Improved. 29th Review Meeting on SETI, 52nd International Astronautical Congress. Toulouse, France.Google Scholar
Almár, I and Tarter, J (2000) The Discovery of ETI as a High-consequence, Low-probability Event. 51st International Astronautical Congress. Rio, Brazil.Google Scholar
Almár, I and Tarter, J (2011) The discovery of ETI as a high-consequence, low-probability event. Acta Astronautica 68, 358–361.Google Scholar
Anderson, TL (2009) Better to complicate, rather than homogenize, urban nightlife: a response to Grazian. Sociological Forum 24, 918–925.Google Scholar
Bernard, HR (1995) Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. 2nd Edn. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.Google Scholar
Dick, SJ (2007) Societal Impact of Spaceflight. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Google Scholar
Eisfeld, R (2018) Projecting landscapes of the human mind onto another world: changing faces of an imaginary Mars: Rainer Eisfeld. Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century, 97–115.Google Scholar
Forgan, D, Wright, J, Tarter, J, Korpela, E, Siemion, A, Almár, I and Piotelat, E (2018) Rio 2.0: revising the Rio scale for SETI detections. International Journal of Astrobiology 1–9, doi:10.1017/S1473550418000162.Google Scholar
Lane, KMD (2011) Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morrison, P and Cocconi, G (1959) Searching for interstellar communications. Nature 184, 844–846.Google Scholar
Partridge, C (2004) Alien demonology: the Christian roots of the malevolent extraterrestrial in UFO religions and abduction spiritualities. Religion 34, 163–189.Google Scholar
Savage, DL, Hartsfield, J and Salisbury, D (1996) Meteorite Yields Evidence of Primitive Life on Early Mars. Washington, DC: NASA.Google Scholar
Traphagan, J (2014) Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Human Imagination. New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media.Google Scholar
Traphagan, J (2016) Science, Culture and the Search for Life on Other Worlds. New York, NY, Springer Science+Business Media.Google Scholar
Wright, JT and Sigurd̵sson, S (2016) Families of plausible solutions to the puzzle of Boyajian's star. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 829, L3.Google Scholar
Zeller, BE (2010) Extraterrestrial biblical hermeneutics and the making of heaven's gate. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 14, 34–60.Google Scholar