More Time Wasted with National Geographic's "Chasing UFOs"

While at the two recent conferences in Reno and Las Vegas (see the previous Blog entry), I had occasion to explain to several people that the latest turd-TV offering from the National Geographic Channel, Chasing UFOs, had succeeded in doing something that never has been done before: UFO proponents and UFO skeptics all agree that the show is absurd, a travesty of "UFO investigation" that makes everyone look bad. Indeed, some UFO proponents think that because the show is so bad, it must be a government plot  to embarass UFO researchers!  Hard-core UFO proponent Robert Hastings quite appropriately says the show is "investigation as farce."  He says that its "entertainment-based formula may best be described as Blair Witch Project meets Inspector Clouseau. If the show’s producers are not secretly in cahoots with some intelligence agency to make legitimate UFO research look bad, by association, they have certainly achieved that outcome inadvertently."

was the UFO a spider web reflection?

Episode 3, "Alien Cowboys," is set in Colorado, where they begin by investigating the Tim Edwards UFO video of 1995.  The Chasers are suitably impressed by this video. So far as I know there has been no skeptical investigation of this video. Bruce Maccabee analyzed it, but came to no conclusions about what it is. "Abovetopsecret" user ALLisONE posted a photo comparing the "UFO" in Edwards' video to the sun's reflection on a spider-thread, and so far that's the best explanation I have seen. The changing shape and size of the object certainly suggests a reflection. The smaller white objects (baby UFOs?) are suggested by some to be insects, but to me they look like little dandelion "puffs", small seed packets being scattered in the wind.

They meet with Chuck Zukowski, who investigates alleged "cattle mutilations." I heard Zukowski speak at the International UFO Congress in February, and posted the following in a Blog entry of February 22:

The sessions began Wednesday morning with Chuck Zukowski talking about the joy of slicing up dead cattle that the aliens have already sliced and diced - that way, he can study their handiwork. He showed some gruesome photos, adding that he always brings his three kids when he investigates a mutilation, so that they can help out. He claims to sometimes detect substantial EMF fields emanating from mutilated cows, and speculates that it is a residual field from some alien device. I am wondering why the field does not dissipate away at the speed of light.

Zukowski explained that his website is www.ufonut.com, because this is what people call him. He said that mutilations seem to follow the cattle of certain ranchers, even if the rancher moves. I would think that what follows a rancher is the propensity to attribute slightly unusual predation patterns to extraterrestrials. He has discovered that mutilations and paranormal events are most common at 37 degrees north latitude, creating a belt of weird stuff running clear across the country. In the Q&A session, the question came up as to whether the aliens might be abducting cattle to create a race of "hybrid fetuses." Chuck thought that might be true. Can this be the explanation for the aliens' bizarre obsession with the nether parts of cattle - the creation of an alien/cattle hybrid? Now that truly bends the mind!

Somehow to me the image of Zukowski's three children romping about while he pores over a mutilated cow seemed delightfully surreal, but Chuck assures us in a comment below that his children are young adults, so their presence is surely more understandable. Soon it's time for the three Chasers, plus Zukowski, to put on the "prosthetic devices" and stumble around in the dark looking for mutilated cows, since it's obviously easier to find dead cows at night than when the sun is out. But just as they discover a herd of live cows from its infrared signature (guys, a dead cow won't radiate heat!), another near-encounter with a wild animal, this time a mountain lion, sends them scrambling back with no alien evidence.

They next visit UFO raconteur Stan Romanek, one of the least-credible persons in all UFOlogy. At this year's International UFO Congress I heard Romank deliver one of the most ridiculous talks on UFOs I'd ever heard. I posted:

Stan is the guy who became famous when he posted to YouTube a video of an alien peeping in his window. Soon others were posting alien Peeping Tom videos of their own, many of them better than Romanek's. He told about how he started to have sightings of UFOs a few years back, and soon they were following him around. Before long, big-headed aliens are playing peek-a-boo in the windows of his home. Then the ETs were replaced by as many as nine alien hybrid little girls, who intrude upon his telephone calls, and also play now-you-see-me-now-you-don't. One of them is Lisa's daughter from a previous UFO abduction. Stan gets a few not-quite-clear photos of strange-looking little girls, whose images probably have been Photoshopped to give them ET features.

Stan injured himself falling off a ladder, and was going to get corrective surgery. However, before the operation he was abducted by ETs, and his injury was miraculously healed, to the astonishment of his doctor. Before finishing his talk, he mentioned in passing that someone had anonymously mailed him actual photos of the true Roswell crash debris, and he flashed them tantalizingly on the screen. Stan Romanek is a one-man paranormal factory, and I suspect these wild claims will just keep piling up for many years.

Afterward while Romanek was at his table in the vendors' room (he and his wife now have three books of wild UFO claims), I introduced myself to him, and gave him my "Bad UFOs" card. I asked him why the aliens were following him around. We chatted very briefly when somebody (probably his wife) must have whispered, "don't talk to that guy." Suddenly it was, "I can't talk to you. You just bad-mouth people. Go away." I attempted to get a photo of him and his wife (others were doing so), but he turned his face away from me (how I regret not getting that image of Romanek avoiding the camera!). He said he'd have his lawyer sue me if I took a photo; I replied that was ridiculous, since he was a public figure in a public forum. So much for "UFO research!"

You guessed it: Romanek joins the UFO Chasers in their special Dark-Exploration Suits, and they stumble around not some desolate place, but in the suburban neighborhood where Romanek lives, looking for Extraterrestrials. I'm surprised they didn't have an Encounter with an ice cream truck. They don't find any ETs, but Ben spooks James by replicating the "peeping Tom alien" video, lying on the ground and holding up an alien mask.

The Roswell extraterrestrial tin can

In Episode 4, "UFO Landing Zone?", the UFO Chasers jump into "a race to investigate these [crash] claims." Well, it's only been 65 years since whatever it was happened at Roswell, so you'd better jump in before the trail grows cold. They stumble around in the dark, as usual, and get all excited over finding a piece of scrap metal, which only at the end is revealed to be "tin." Saucer debris, or the remains of some ranch hand's long-ago lunch? They also breathlessly find a military button, later identified as belonging to the U.S. Air Force. Too bad that the Air Force did not exist as a service until Sept. 18, 1947, more than two months after Roswell, and thus the button could not possibly have anything to do with any operation carried out in July of 1947. Roswell proponent Kevin Randle adds this about the button:

It seemed to be too good. The button I used for the photograph had not been buried, but only exposed to the open air for a couple of decades. It is tarnished to a bronze color. The button they found seemed to be nearly pristine. I would expect that if it had been buried for any length of time it would have degraded more than my button that had not.

The nearly-pristine post-Roswell Air Force Button

What this tells me is that the National Geographic has gone the same way as the Arts and Entertainment Channel, Bravo, History Channel and a couple of others....The point is that National Geographic is now more about ratings than research. It is about audience share and entertainment and not about finding the truth, whatever that truth might be. It is about superficial research that avoids asking the difficult questions or asking those who might actually have an answer.

 Exactly right. Randle also checked with the White Sands Missile Range about the supposed UFO crash video presented by Ted Loman that we see repeated over and over, research that The UFO Chasers could not bother to do. He was told that it was part of “an infrared shot of a Navy missile test." Case Closed, but by Randle, not by The UFO Chasers. 


And yet at this very moment another TV production company is seeking to cast "a new docuseries following Alien and UFO Researchers and Investigators. The show would be similar in concept to Ghost Hunters -- except with UFO and Alien findings." They explain, "We are looking to follow an existing team of Investigators," not even realizing that there is no such thing. Are they doing this because they believe Chasing UFOs to be a great show, or will they do a decent job of investigating UFO claims? I'd like to be optimistic about the show, but as a realist I'd have to say that the odds are against it.