Why Scientists Worldwide Should Study UAP - Prof. Garry Nolan (Stanford University)

Transcript

An unprecedented international symposium on unidentified anomalous phenomena will take place this fall on the shores of Lake Maggiore in Italy. The conference is organized by the Sol Foundation, a think tank consisting of experts from academia and the military, which was founded at Stanford University. Its goal: To scientifically investigate the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects and prepare mankind to deal with them. I'm now joined by one of the founders of the Sol Foundation, Professor Garry Nolan from Stanford University School of Medicine. Welcome, sir.

Thank you very much, and thank you for your attention to the matter and to your audience. Thank you for being here. Now, you have published over 300 research papers. You hold 40 U.S. patents.

You have been honored as one of the top 25 inventors at Stanford University. So let me ask you, why is it that a renowned scientist like you is interested in the topic of UFOs? Well, I've always been interested in what I would call the data off the curve. It's always been the unexpected and the unexplained data in my own day research and cancer research, which is mostly what my day job is about, that has led to discoveries. In fact, almost all Nobel Prizes have been given because somebody bothered to go against the norm to recognize that there is data off the curve that needs to be explained. And so we have unexplained phenomenon that have been with us for at least 80 or so years, at least in the public and military realm, but we know go back thousands of years.

But my personal conviction comes from personal experience. When I was a young boy, I saw an object that went literally right over my head early in the morning. I was a newspaper boy delivering inWindsor, Connecticut. Unmistakable what it was. This was circa 1973.

When I was younger, I had other kinds of interactions that perhaps could be better discussed at another time. But those personally convinced me that there was something there. At the time, in the 1970s, I had no idea what it was that I had seen. It wasn't really until 20 or so years later that... seeing other people's and reading about other people's experiences led me to understand that there were many more people than just me who had seen these things and put the entire thing in context.

At that point in my life, I was already an established scientist. I just started my job at Stanford University as an assistant professor, and it occurred to me that, well, personal anecdotes and personal experiences are one thing. I could talk about those to my colleagues, and they might smile and sometimes smirk or laugh about it. And that was the point at which I realized, if I really want to do something about this to change people's minds, first I have to point out and remind my scientific colleagues that asking a question is not what's wrong. Stopping people from asking the question is what's wrong.

And when you have something as important as that humanity might not be alone in this great universe that we have, it does two things. It first of all tells you that there is a future for intelligence, that we will not go off an apocalyptic cliff at some point in the future, but also, that we might have somebody from whom we can learn something, that there is a success. And to know that we're not the only ones, that sense of loneliness that we might have might be changed. But I'm also a practical individual. You know, those 40-ish or so, the many companies that i've started have come from looking at science and data and realizing how the investment from the public in taxpayer dollars actually can be returned via understanding of the science of what it is thatany given scientist is investigating.

So, here we have a situation where we appear to be faced with technologies that are thousands, if not millions of years in advance of our own. And if we could scrape even the smallest bit of understanding out of those apparent technologies, how would that advance and help humanity? I mean, look, our entire civilization is based on grains of silicon. That understanding powers all the artificial intelligence, which frankly is about to become a non-human intelligence right in front of our eyes. So if there's an opportunity to help us get out of whatever cul-de-sac that we are driving ourselves into, I think that we should be extremely open to thinking about any other kind of opportunities that might come our way. And to me, one of the greatest opportunities and one of the greatest unmet challenges is knowing whether or not we are alone in the universe.

And you are convinced of that. Would you share with us a little bit about your work for the U.S. government? I was approached back around 2012 or so by representatives of the CIA and an aeronautics corporation to help them with understanding of harm that had come to individuals in the military and diplomatic corps. They approached me, not because I had any special experience in UFOs. I had never really been public about it at the time, but because my laboratoryused the world's best instruments for blood analysis.

And they were doing complete medical workups of these individuals to try to understand what had happened to them. What might be common and what might be not so common about their injuries? They didn't tell me what it was that had caused these injuries at the beginning. They just came in and they did what any scientist would do. They showed me the data. They didn't allow me or even force me to think about conclusions.

They said, here's the data. What do you think? And so that is, in essence, what science is supposed to do. Look at the data without any foreordained conclusions, and then from that, decide what the hypotheses might be that represented what the data was. As it turned out, the majority of those patients, there were about 100 or so, were in fact what we now understand to be something called Havana syndrome. So I had seen at that time some of the first Havana syndrome patients before it was even known to be Havana syndrome.

But once we had categorized what is atrue national security threat recognized by the U.S. Government now, what remained on the table were individuals who had had interactions with, they claimed, craft of some kind and that they had been harmed by something that was emanating from the craft's propulsion systems amongst some of the other things that had been seen. So, are you convinced that the U.S. government has already retrieved crashed craft of non-human origin? I'm going to be careful about how I say this. I can be personally convinced because of the many things that I have seen.

I'm not allowed to talk about the things that have been shown to me in confidence. But I'm convinced enough to go against the advice of many of my colleagues who've said, oh, you're going to ruin your career, Garry, by studying this. And the answer is, nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, it's motivated not only me, but in the creation of the Sol Foundation, we've been able to create a picket fence, an area within which other scientists, academics, lay individuals, military, diplomatic individuals, all who have their own personal experiences or knowledge about this matter to come together in a place where they will be able to talk maturely, professionally, scientifically, and academically about it. So we've done, I think, in the last three or four years, a great job at opening up the aperture for people to come in and have discussions and to look at it from many different perspectives.

I mean, it's not just: "Are they here?". It's, well, if they are here what might be the intent? What does it mean about theology? What does it mean about religion? What does it mean about the potential economics if some of these technologies might suddenly burst upon the scene? Imagine if suddenly you had the ability to negate the use of oil. Do you want to release that immediately? Because you would probably destroy the stock market for at least a year or two. So there are ways that you can what we call "war game" out the pros and the cons of how to address these matters without inflaming or using hyperbolic language to bring what I think is the truth of this. Now, remember, there's two ways that any individual, at least a scientist, approaches this.

You have your personal beliefs, which in science are actually called "preliminary experiments" or "hypotheses". So I can be convinced 100% about the reality of how I think certain kinds of cancers might be solved, but i still have to do experiments to convince my colleagues thatmy hypothesis is correct. Scientists do this every day. But the sameapproach has to be applied in a very professional, slow, patient manner to say, okay, if thishypothesis is true, what are the kinds of data that we need to collect? Or, in another way without being too conspiratorial, what data is being withheld from us by our governments that are necessary for us to carry out the work that we need to do. Many people listening to you from Europe will probably think, well, why is this important for us? Because to many Europeans, it seems that UFOs only crash in America.

It's a genuine United States phenomenon, and it doesn't occur in Europe. What do you think about that? Nothing could be further from the truth. There are many incidents in Europe and in fact, one of the very first claimed crash retrievals was in Italy back in I think the 1930s or so, late 1920s, 1930s. But even if they all happen to only crash in the United States, the reality of it means something global. But if anybody looks into the history of the matter, they understand immediately that there have been events around the world, crashes claimed around the world, Russia especially.

The very well-known UFO researcher, UAP researcher, OVNI researcher by the name of Jacques Vallée spent a lot of time in the former Soviet Union, dealing with scientists there and chronicling the things that they had seen and that they knew that their own military was doing. You know, if you talk to people within what is the so-called "legacy program", the people who claim to be directly working on the craft - and I have spoken to them personally -they say: Oh yeah, we know China and Russia have their own programs. The United States has many agreements with what are first called the Five-Eyes-nations. Those are the English-speaking nations Canada United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand. Those are the first level agreements.

But then, there are agreements with France and others. And it's also now very well understood that the United States has agreements where if something does come down, they then have permission to go in and retrieve it. There was an event for instance in Brazil that was recently put forward in a movie by James Fox, the Varginha incident, which it's said, claimed, chronicled and documented that the United States sent a retrieval team to basically retrieve it from Brazil, not steal it from Brazil, to under agreement retrieve it and bring it back. So it sounds like the United States have it all under control, the whole situation. But how about the Europeans? Why do you think Europe should deal with it? Because for instance, one of the more famous events in the United Kingdom around what's called Rendlesham, where nuclear weapons were being kept, there were basically sightings and a landing where one of the individuals who claimed to have been harmed.

There's a very famous story about it. And actually, I think even a movie. I actually went out and collected that individual's blood for analysis. In fact, probably the country which has done the mostopen work, is France, where it's in the military, in the scientific community, it is an allowable subject. So to say that Europe is somehow immune or that Europe is ignoring it, frankly, flies in the face of the facts that there are these events that have been chronicled and seen.

There is at least the one that I know of that came down in Italy. I'm aware of some others that i can't talk about. But the United States has for better or worse been the recipient of most of the crashes. What also appears to be the case is that we don't quite understand how their technologies work. I n speaking with people on the legacy program they say their technology is as advanced to us as would be a cell phone to a Neanderthal or a Denisovan.

And i'm not trying to denigrate Denisovans or Neanderthals. I have five percent DNA from themin my history. Okay. Sothere's lots of questions that have to be dealt with And now, two years ago, you co-founded the Sol Foundation at the University of Stanford. And this is where the symposia took place so far.

Now you're coming to Europe, you're coming to Italy. By the end of October, you will have the big Sol Symposium at the shores of Lake Maggiore in Italy. Why have you decided to go to Italy? Well, the first event was held at Stanford because the donors who had provided the money to Stanford, to the Sol Foundation, which is what's called a 501c3 charitable nonprofit organization. The money was allowed to come through Stanford. Stanford held the money for the Sol Foundation.

So it wasn't officially founded at Stanford, but Stanford was more than willing to help me, because they knew that I was a credible researcher and that I wouldn't embarrass anybody. They then basically allowed the first of the Sol meetings to be held at Stanford and it was basically sponsored by my laboratory and Stanford University. So there you have Stanford University right up front saying: we want you to brand this as a Stanford event because we're excited about it. Sol has formally separated from Stanford because it's a 501c3 and has its own agenda. And then we had another meeting last year in San Francisco.

You know, California is a nice place to come, but it's also a long way to come for people, especially Europeans. And they felt that, well, maybe you should have it close to us for a change so that we can more easily partake. There's probably many places that we could have had it, but Italy, in some ways, because it was, as I said, one of the first known instances of a crash that had happened in the world, even before the so-called Roswell event, seems a perfect place to start. And of course, what's actually quite nice about going to Italy is that it also highlights the Vatican's interest in the matter. The Vatican has an astronomer who is essentially related to the SETI organization, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

And the Vatican has made statements that they have no problem with the idea that there might be alleged intelligences other than humans. Because in the Vatican's view, and in mine, I was born Catholic and grew up Catholic, it doesn't diminish God's relationship to humanity. It expands it because it says that God can bea creator of many civilizations, not just humanity. And there are many interesting speakers that are going to speak at the Sol Symposium. Can you walk us through or can you name some of the speakers that you that you would like to highlight? Actually, the top of the agenda is Beatriz Villarroel.

And she's from Scandinavia. She works out of Sweden. And she's an astronomer. She'sput in some remarkable publications looking at the sky from old photographic plates, where there are stars in certain areas of the sky, where there's a star there in one picture, but it's missing a few years later in another one, where stars don't disappear. And this was before the time of satellites.

And she has multiple instances of this. So that's one speaker. Our next speaker is Karl Nell, who has been deeply involved in the attempt to get the U.S. Government to release the information. And hewas largely involved in helping to put together a bill in Congress that will be attached, hopefully, if it's passed, to the Department of Defense budget.

We've tried it now two times, this is the third time. 60 pages. And here's what's interesting about this, if you want sort of confirmation of whether or not the government is involved. Senator Schumer, our Senator Rounds, as well as several other important senators on the Senate side, but then also congressional members are all co-sponsoring this bill. And if you look at the language, it's extraordinary.

It says: The Department of Defense and any relevant government agencies will release all information that they have to a central committee, which will then decide what shouldstay private, what can go public. And what I put forward is, what might go out for public-private investment. It talks directly and defines non-human intelligence, reverse-engineered craft, the economic potential of what this might mean. And this is, from the Senate side, the Democratic leader, Schumer. I mean, why would such an individual, especially in a time of, let's say, relatively fraught politics in the United States, why would he risk his own reputation and the reputation of his party for something that he doesn't know even more about than I do? So he's read in at a higher level.

And one thing I should say is that, there were three original co-founders of the Sol foundation. One was me, the other was Dr. Peter Skafish, an anthropologist and philosopher. And then the third was David Grusch. and David Grusch was the man who testified under oath in front of Congress about his investigation into claimed reverse engineering programs and what he found.

And he has testified both publicly as well as privately in what are called secure information facilities to congress about what he says the realities of these things are, and has named the locations where the craft are being kept, where they're being reverse-engineered, who's been involved, what defense corporations have been involved, etc.. So to say, for instance, that the government is not paying attention to it even in the United States first of all is an untruth. I mean, they really and truly are. But second, to say that there is no evidence flies in the face of how science is done. You know, there's incredible amounts of evidence.

Evidence is not proof. The evidence iscontextualized data. There's extraordinary amounts of data. I mean, decades and decades of information collected about it. All kinds of documentation going back 80 years from military and CIA, which had been released to the public.

So for anybody to say that there's no evidence, my first question to them is, how much time have you actually spent looking at any of the data at all? And usually the answer is, none, from people who are extremely skeptical, even scientists. And I say, well, maybe you're not a scientist then. Maybe you should rethink what your unwritten oath of fealty is to how science should be done, and that is, if there's data, it needs to be understood. There is quite a number of European scientists that you have invited to the Sol Symposium in Italy as well. Do you hope that the subject will become more interesting for your European colleagues? Well, I know it is.

I mean, I think the only thing that's holding it back is the lack of knowledge of the public. Even news reporters are often afraid that they're going to be ridiculed because of it. Except, look at the New York Times article put outback around 2017 by Leslie Kean and Blumenthal in the New York Times. It was the most citedand followed news story practically of the whole year. And anytime this kind of matter comes up in the public domain, people are fascinated.

People love the idea. But they're fine with it in the abstract. The moment though you ask them publicly to say anything about it, they're afraid of the reaction. But if I go to my science colleagues, so for instance, I go give a talk at Harvard or MIT or even at ETH in Switzerland, and I talk about it publicly, or I talk about my regular cancer science, at dinner - I'm telling you - all anybody wants to talk about are UFOs. You know, Ifly all the way there to talk about all my cancer work.

But at dinner, once a drink or two gets going, they're like: "Garry, tell us about the UFOs! What's going on?" So it's interesting to hear that there is a huge interest even among European scientists, even though it's still unofficial and you're trying to change that and to make it more official with the Sol Symposium in Italy. I wish you good luck for the symposium. Last question. Why do you think in general, why is it important that the whole world comes together to deal with this subject internationally? First, one of the things that's changed in recent years in science is the so-called Open Source movement, where data is more readily shared. Because we've understood that sharing allows for common language to be spoken about a thing.

Sharing prevents paranoia that somebody else might be doing something and using information to their own, let's say, national benefit or personal benefit. So the more that we can make this an open subject of discussion rather than something that might be taken advantage of from a military standpoint, the more we understand how it is that humanity can benefit globally. I mean, look, I'm a U.S. citizen. I was born in the United Kingdom.

I think as a patriot first, but right behind patriot is humanity. And I think that to the extent that the open source movement has been moving everybody towards this, I think that's of benefit to everybody. And something as well that is interesting, that's coming sort of almost at just the right time in history is artificial intelligence. There's not a paper that you can pick up today that doesn't say, the artificial intelligence that we're creating is almost the first non-human intelligence that we are openly discussing what is it thinking and how is it thinking. So here you have this place where humanity is creating its own artificial intelligence, its own non-human intelligence, and we might already be dealing with something that represents exactly the same and analogous situation.

So the argument, or I should say that the discussion about artificial intelligence and non-human intelligence, let's call them aliens, I'm not sure that aliens is the best word for it, is having a discussion about AI is actually going to help the discussion about non-human intelligence because all the questions we're asking about non-human intelligence are the same that we're already starting to openly discuss about artificial intelligence and is it conscious? Perhaps what's here is in fact not necessarily the living beings that sent it here but is its artificial intelligence acting as advanced scouts to watch what's going on on Earth and what we might be up to. Because it's pretty clear, anything that's a million years ahead of us has a longer history view and realizes that one day, they're going to be our actual neighbors. So maybe we should get to know them. Thank you very much, Professor Garry Nolan, for this fascinating interview. Thank you.