The Geogria Straight is one of the free weekly newspapers in Vancouver that is pretty well known in the local skeptics communities for being a bastion of woo. They’ve often had articles promoting homeopathy over vaccines.
But this latest cover just blew me away. And since I’ll cry if I don’t laugh and be obnoxious about this, bare with me.
The article is about a local nutjob who thinks he saw something spooky in the sky 11 years ago and is now running the BC UFO group. It’s also about a new book that catalogues a bunch of anecdotes from pilots and generals who think they saw something.
The author of the book admits most UFO sightings are terrestrial, or easily explainable things:
During her interview with the Straight, Kean pointed out that many things can be mistaken for a UFO. They include weather balloons, flares, planes flying in formation, secret military aircraft, birds reflecting sunlight, blimps, helicopters, and planets such as Venus and Mars, as well as meteors, meteorites, and numerous other naturally occurring events.
“Most UFO sightings are meaningless,” she said. “They really can be explained. We’re talking about a very specific group of sightings. Those are the cases in my book.”
She also emphasized that a UFO is merely an object that cannot be identified, and not necessarily an alien spacecraft.
Well that’s great, but when something isn’t easily explained, it must be god aliens!
She goes on about this and that case and wonders why such miraculous discoveries aren’t being reported by newspapers on the front pages.
Maybe it’s because you sound like a lunatic!
I’d honestly have more time to be fair and level minded about this, but after 60 years of supposed “sightings” all we have are anecdotes and blurry pictures.
It is now okay to simply laugh at these people.
For some reason in Vancouver, people openly mock creationists who try to sneak their lies into schools, and yet UFO and 9/11 conspiracy nuts get the front page.
At the end of the article they also quote a UBC astronomer, who, as a good scientist, admits:
“It does seem like there is a small set of UFO phenomena that are not explained yet,” Rosolowsky commented. “The nature of science is that because they’re not explained yet doesn’t mean that they can’t be explained. But at the same time, you don’t know.”
They also quote the chair of the (now defunct) BC Skeptics who “quips” and denies reports.
Great and balanced reporting.