Spooked by UFO

: Image via Wikipedia

Managed to glance at a copy of the Sunday Territorian or perhaps it was the NT News, papers famous for quailty reporting. With headlines like “Man bites dog” or “Prison Break” – refering to inmates getting portable DVD’s to pass the boredom.

Being of a skeptical mindset I glanced with interest at the artcle by Matt Cunningham titled Family spooked by ‘spirit UFO’. It’s not often that you get two lots of woo for the price of one.

So, what do we have to work on here:

2 women and small child on an unlit stretch of road
predisposed to thinking that UFO’s are alien abducters rather than just Unidentified Flying Objects
there are well known stories of spirit lights form the local aborignal population

Description of the object:

white star like bright light
light changed to bright orange
followed them all the way to Borroloola

Now Borroloola is reasonably remote but it is near enough to tindal airbase, cattle stations and standard flight paths. Did the reporter bother to check if it might have been a helicopter or perhaps a light plane using the town as a navigation becon?

Now I don’t expect investigative journalism especially from Territory papers but some simple questions could have been asked.

Then again Matt Cunningham seems to have been lumped with the UFO desk if his past stories are anything to go on:

UFOs invade NT town
Armada of UFOs buzzing Territory
UFO ‘dive-bombs’ couple
Chopper ‘chase’ joins UFO files
Another mass UFO sighting
Outback station stalked by UFOs… again
‘Muscle car’ UFO hoons over Darwin

I am in two minds here, should we invetigate these sightings with a bit of rigour or is it best to let it pass, let the stories add to the Alien UFO myth and the untidy, unscientific investigation that seems to go along with it?

A skeptical look at UFO’s By some chance happening, two of the Skeptical podcasts I...
On the Matter of Choice I was listening to Dennis and Matt on the Non-Prophets,...

GingerRed

January 27th, 2009 at 10:19 pm · Reply

I think your "two minds" can meet in the middle on this. In most cases these things are debunked easily. It does not take a rigorous investigation to find out if there was an aircraft passing over that route. It takes a phone call or two. Rational people will accept the confirmation and laugh at the credulous. The credulous will think it's a cover up and continue to wear their tin foil hats.

OzAtheist

January 28th, 2009 at 4:20 am · Reply

I say don't bother investigating, even Defence don't investigate them any more (as far as I'm aware), it used to be if you got a call from a UFO spotter it would be passed onto a higher Defence authority. These days (at least the last 12 or so years) they just pass the call on to the local authorities (police) who probably log it then instantly dismiss it; or pass it onto the local rag for a bit of a laugh.