Astronomers, UFOs and the Null Hypothesis

In a recent article, Ethan Siegel a Senior Contributor on Astronomy in Forbes magazine, provides a very good overview as to why scientists seems to remain mostly mute on the topic of UFOs. Clearly, part of the problem is that UFOs as a general topic doesn't specifically apply to one scientific discipline such as astronomy - it applies to many different areas of science, sociology, biology, engineering, philosophy, etc. Astronomers tend to get the brunt of the questions - especially due to SETI and astrobiology (or, just because they keep their eyes on the sky).

Many people complain that science isn't doing enough to study the UFO evidence. But, is it really a scientific problem? If aliens revealed themselves wouldn't it fall directly into a social/political problem space? Yes, scientists and engineers would be happy to start extending our knowledge based on what we might learn at that point but currently the types of science we need falls more into statistical work and observational evidence since much of the measures are not repeatable. This is more in line with investigators, sociologists and other disciplines (like the military, of course).