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Tuesday, September 4, 2012

UFO Busters

I have a low opinion of the new National Geographic show "Chasing UFOs."  Although I find the cast fairly likeable, the production is just laughably corny and the cases tend to be silly, content free, or have been long put to rest.  However, what's not to like about seeing Jaime Maussan's marmoset hoax roundly debunked?  That buffoon can not be put down hard enough.

The problem with any UFO show is that the better the job you do, the more the entertainment value is likely to be low.  Most cases evaporate immediately, most of the rest lack sufficient evidence for serious investigation, and the few that remain come along only very rarely and there is nothing to "chase." Instead of modeling their show after the laughably hokey ghost hunting shows, Nat Geo should look instead at the very successful Mythbusters as a model.  Mythbusters has been hugely successful by showing people building things, solving problems, facing frustration,applying science, and wrecking things thoroughly.   Most of the myths are busted, but some are judged plausible, or even confirmed.  See how that could be a UFO show?  You're welcome, NatGeo.

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Dream of the Open Channel Blog by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

3 comments:

  1. I feel this show was put together by people who did not have a clue as to what a ufo investigator does in real life. Apparently the show was leaning towards the ''hollywood '' version instead of the real life version. I cannot watch the show at all...Fact or Fiction is even worse...all they are doing is showing people how to create a ''hoax ''...

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  2. I think there is value in showing how a hoax can be created that closely mimics the evidence at hand. It has something to do with the Likelihood ratio: A piece of evidence is not evidence FOR x if it is at least as probable to be collected if x is false.

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  3. Imo the show is purely for amusement and nothing else, same goes for the show Fact or Faked Paranormal. I get a good laugh out of both.

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