Have You Ever Been Responsible For A Hoax? Options

[paxdan]

I've moved my response from the Deep Impact thread....

Personnally I am not closed to such matters as UFOs, crop circles and the like

I once flew a very large delta kite at night with a glow stick attached, that one made it into the local newspaper. I've also had a crop circle i made reported at the back of the Fortean times. I have a pan of that i took with my 35mm camera which was one of the first pans i ever assembled.

Thats two, has anyone else ever been responsible for lights in the sky or strange phenomenon?

[djellison]

"You could do like this onewith only ropes? "

Yes. You could replicate it on a piece of paper with a compass - you can replicated in a field with rope.

I'm going to give you a bit of a warning here - you're beginning to step into the anomalistic / kook regieme. I've only recently removed someones account for this - and I dont want to have to do it again. This is unmannedspaceflight.com - not cropcircles.com - please respect that.

Doug

[abalone]

  This is unmannedspaceflight.com - not cropcircles.com

Doug

I have been watching the dicussion for a while without comment. I agree with Doug, it does not belong here. It is a insult to science and has the potential to cause a lot of harm.

There are a lot of gullible people in the world, they can"t help it, and this type of thing takes advantage of their gullability. To me making crop circle or wasting time on other hoaxes just means that scientists energy is diverted from real work to wasting time answering stupid media question. Hoaxes are a disservice to science, they are anti-science and bring no credit to anyone that particpates in them.

It bad enough to walk into your local newsagent and to look for the most recent copies of my favorite astronomy and science mags only to finding the science section packed with "New Age" and "Astrology" trash.

As for UFO's visiting Earth, whenever some poor guillible fool that has seen too many crop circles tries to persuade me with his half-backed conspiracy crap or the latest fruit-loop case that has been kidnapped and had weird sexual experiments performed on them, I simply ask them this question.



If these Aliens come from such a superior and advanced society that is able to travel the vast distance between the stars at will.................

When they come to Earth, no doubt after many lonely years in space,....

Why do they only ever talk to idiots?

[Bob Shaw]

I think we're probably all agreed that the whole UFO/Astrology/Crop Circle thing is, indeed, sheer guff (well, I *hope* we are, anyway!) but discussion of such matters is of interest insofar as it relates to the public perception of reality. The mainstream media are - frankly - counter-informative most of the time, and feed the masses with unreality almost by default. It behoves us as rational (but see below) and well-informed beings to at least be aware of current fads and fancies, if only in terms of the sociology. So long as we're clear about why we are discussing certain things, there's no harm done.

Or maybe 'sociopathy'...

Human beings are *not* rational - but they do rationalise and seek out patterns in the world, and if we are to persuade our fellows that a world-view based on science is the way forward then we must attempt to understand the processes that militate against science, ranging from the naive 'I want to believe' right through to the organised counter-science movements which are out there.

In short: Know Your Enemy!