John Gertz (yes, that Gertz), like any producer worth his salt, is waiting to savor the schadenfreude from the failure of any messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) efforts. In his recent review, he excoriates METI as “unwise, unscientific, potentially catastrophic, and unethical”. Gertz, a former chairman of the board of the SETI Institute, delivers a myopic view of METI and attempts to separate its goals from those of SETI. His review comes at a politically pointed time for SETI, where Douglas Vakoch and Seth Shostak sought to initiate immediate high power radio transmissions towards our nearest neighbors but were denied by the SETI Institute. It is a calculated attempt to delegitimize METI as science in an effort to curtail any of its progression.
Gertz initially poses the question: “[d]o space aliens present a clear and present danger and, if so, is there anything we can do about it?” It is a question worth mulling over, but as it is impossible to quantify unless we make conclusions on fictitious arguments, should not be fatal for METI. He then proceeds to discuss the arguments against SETI. Gertz claims technological benefits accrued from Moore’s Law and should be much more efficient than the past five decades. He ignored the fact that these same advances trickle down to any proposed METI experiment. He notes “funding situation suddenly and dramatically improved when in 2015 Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Foundation announced its pledge of $100 million over ten years” to fund SETI efforts. To this blogger, funding is perhaps what drives most of the criticism of METI. SETI is at a philosophical crossroads where, with no results for the past five decades, people are questioning the efficacy and purpose of SETI. For Gertz, to allow METI to persist and continue observations is to attack SETI and potentially rob it of any valuable funding in the near future.
His arguments as to the nature of ETI and its behavior to humanity are fictitious and impossible to quantify (see Figure 1). His considerations of ETI “travel[ing] hundreds or thousands of LYs just to eat us”, launching a “fairly small kinetic projectile” towards us, or appearing as a taunt have no merit. Ergo, such statements should not be included when considering the fate of METI. Gertz also attacks the use of Arecibo for directed messages. He claims passive leakage does not pose an issue and can even be addressed, suggesting “provision[s] for muting the radar during moments when the target occults a nearby star or transits the plane of the Milky Way”. This appears to be a rather slippery slope, as it would suggest not only METI but active scientific research should adopt some form of ethical considerations. This view would also question the validity of optical SETI endeavors which are currently looking for powerful, pulsed emission.
For this blogger, the biggest concern is the ahistorical view of SETI. Most of the criticisms against METI: it being unscientific, unwise, and having no methodology, can be and have been applied to SETI. We have read papers by Hart and Tipler that sought to discredit SETI as a waste of money and effort, and this is what Gertz appears to do with METI. Gertz is using the guise of ethics to stymie METI because to attack the objective of METI would be to attack SETI. Gertz wants to relegate METI to pseudoscience and retain SETI as the only feasible approach to determining if ETI exists, particularly given its recent boost in funding. This blogger views SETI and METI in a similar light. Until there is sufficient data to suggest otherwise, it is unwise to consider either a failure. If METI can secure the appropriate funds and communication channels, then it should by all means proceed.