Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

Betteridge's Law of Headlines strikes again:

> Q. Do you think that if Clinton is elected we can expect to learn new information about UFOs?

> A. I highly doubt DoD or any other government agency is concealing UFO information.

> Q. Are you certain there is no government cover-up?

> A. It’s impossible to prove the negative, so all I can say is that I never saw any evidence of official interest in UFOs.

> Q. So where does this all leave us, and what is to be done?

> A. In my view, calling for the end to an alleged government UFO cover-up is almost certainly a dead end, and does not help inspire anyone in government to become more open to the topic. The UFO mystery is a scientific problem.

(That's not to say there isn't a UFO cover-up. But we're discussing this article, and the insiders' opinion is that the answer is no.)

There's also a big difference between UFO and Alien Vehicle. A UFO could be a foreign airplane, or satellite, or a weird meteor, or two birds duct-taped together.

Why is it so inevitable that someone must come in and remind us that UFO != alien craft whenever there is a thread about UFOs? A UFO (in the common use of the term) is almost certainly not a foreign airplane, satellite, weird meteor, etc, because the cases that continue to be called UFOs generally are of objects that portray aerodynamics that are beyond any known sources. So yes, UFO does not mean alien craft, UFO means "some crazy ass shit that is almost definitely not something we understand" -- pointing out the distinction does not somehow neutralize the mystery of the cases that persist to this day (like the Belgian one in this article.) The 'extraterrestrial hypothesis' is certainly an attractive one to try to rule out for these cases, but nobody presumes to think it's the only one worth considering.

Looks like the only reason this interview was given/article was written was to try to get a few page views in the wake of Clinton saying some dumb off-the-cuff stuff about UFOs.

I disagree. One of the relevant information provided by the article is that this topic should be considered a mater of scientific research and that he joined the effort of UFODATA. Maybe we don't have the same information filters. I tend to filter out anything related to Clinton and US elections ;)

> two birds duct-taped together That's an oddly specific case - is this just a humorous idea, or an actual UFO explanation from real life?

Every time I see the word "UFO", I think back to this comic: http://i.imgur.com/86y8abV.png

There are almost certainly multiple "UFO" cover ups by the US government - to prevent classified aircraft from being identified when they're being tested.

Certainly. Also weather balloons that were in fact doing remote observation of Soviet nuclear weapons testing (see project Mogul run out of Roswell, NM).

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