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Did aliens contact humans before, and did we respond back? Or is it not disclosed to the world?

According to Edgar Mitchell, alien contact have been covered up and hidden away.

Aliens have contacted humans several times but governments have hidden the truth for 60 years, the sixth man to walk on the moon has claimed.

rjzii
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Madhu
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    Questions on skeptics are expected to have a notable claim that we can check. If you want to investigate specific claims about alien contacts then add some references. The whole area of myths and rumors about aliens is too broad to discuss. – default locale Apr 05 '13 at 05:55
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    leading wording, uncited claim, no doubt a duplicate of some age old question about "ancient Aliens" claims by the likes of von Daenicken, which have all been long debunked. – jwenting Apr 05 '13 at 06:13
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    I don’t know, I think that (after the edit) this is a good question for this site. Yes, the claim is vague but that’s what the common claim (and commonly held belief) **is**. If we insist on debunking some artificially propped up version of the claim then we don’t actually debunk the claim at all. – Konrad Rudolph Apr 05 '13 at 10:21
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    I know this is a topic many people find unserious and look down upon, but in my opinion skeptics should be open for everything. I might have focused the question maybe not exactly the way Madhu originally intended, but with this it should fall within the rules of the site better, and actually be possible to answer in a proper way. – Wertilq Apr 05 '13 at 11:11
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    Okay, I think we agree it now has a notable claim. We agree that, in principle, we should be open minded about the idea. My only concern is that the question is unfalsifiable. I think most of use provisionally accept that this isn't true without extraordinary evidence, but how can we meaningfully provide an answer? (Skeptics.SE reverses the burden of proof, which makes it difficult to respond.) – Oddthinking Apr 05 '13 at 11:36
  • the problem is that it's impossible to prove that no aliens ever visited, only potentially that some did (and even that in itself won't satisfy the claim, which is that aliens did and "the government" (which one? there's several hundred just at national level) is hiding the fact from the general population, supposedly for up to thousands of years now (why the current US government would be hiding that aliens landed in central Australia 20.000 years ago for example would be pretty hard to explain convincingly, especially if the evidence for it is hidden :) ). – jwenting Apr 05 '13 at 12:34
  • I think the question is answerable in principle but might require analysis of specific examples by those who claim it is true. We can't prove a negative ("it never happened") but we can subject specific claims to critical analysis. – matt_black Apr 05 '13 at 12:52
  • I went to have a look at [Dr Mitchell's background](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Mitchell). (I want to be careful here; if I suggest any of these factors affect the likelihood of him being right, it would be ad hominem.) I found that these claims weren't a recent invention as he became older. He has been making consistent claims since his flight to the moon. – Oddthinking Apr 05 '13 at 13:43
  • I'm inclined to agree with @Oddthinking that this is something that, barring extraordinary evidence that would satisfy the most hard line skeptic, this is something that is unlikely to be unfalsifiable at this time. The scope of human history is too big for there not to have been a one off undocumented case (assuming extra-terrestrial life exists) and any modern claims of evidence have been unsatisfactory for skeptics. – rjzii Apr 05 '13 at 22:10

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