At lunch the other day I happened to catch the tail end of a CBC Newsworld story about a community in Saskatechewan that had recently become a hotbed for UFO activity. Stories about particular region of the country experiencing a rash of UFO sightings seem to hit the national news every few years or so, which I think has more to do with the fact that they make good news 'filler' more than actually being indicative of a spike in UFO reports for that region. I'm probably what could be classified as a 'believer' when it comes down to it, but I'm a much crankier believer today than I was six years ago or so, and one of the main things that lead to my increased skepticism about the phenomena was that many of the more impressive sounding stories tend not to hold up even under even the most superficial of scrutiny (which is all that I'm really capable of). A news item from a talk radio station claims that over three-quarters of the population had seen "the discs spinning and the lights". Who came up with with this estimated number of witnesses? Did someone survey the whole town? (unlikely). Or did someone just speculate that probably three-quarters of the population must have seen it and this was transcribed as news?(more likely) .The CBC estimate is less specific: "many other people on the reserve have seen strange lights and have told her their stories."

If the nightwatchman's story is representative, then the average story may not be that great. His comments: "They were UFOs," and "They couldn't be anything else" makes it pretty obvious that he doesn't have to be encouraged to jump to conclusions and his descripition seems elaborated upon to make what he saw sound more impressive than it may have been: "It was just like you could see the windows turning one way and the ship." Describing windows, or at least something just like window sand calling it a 'ship' makes it seem that there was a pretty good chance that he was really hoping that what we was seeing would turn out to be a spaceship and was straining to some feature that might confirm his hopes. Not the most unbiased witness. One basic rule of UFO investigation that I remember reading about (yes, I've read a book about the topic, no laughing) is that there should be a minimum of two witnessess in different locations for the same event. If out of three-quarters of the town you're only able to get one account by a single witness and even the most minimal amount of reading between the lines can reveal a tendency to jump to conclusions and exagerate, then it seems to me that the entire story should be viewed as suspect, unless multiple and better witnesses can be produced.

A similar rash of sightings occurred in Fort Resolution in the North West Territories in 1996 and I remember it being covered by 'As It Happens' (the same CBC radio show that covered the Saskatechewan sightings) . Apparently, many people had seen the 'strange lights', including people in the next town who saw the lights hovering over Fort Resolution,and the government sent up some sort of official to videotape them. The story stuck with me for a long time, because a. The CBC was covering it so it must have some basis in truth and b. The details seemed so specific and convincing that there must be lots of eyewitness accounts. Once I got access to the internet in the the late nineties I started to read everything that I could find about this sighting on the web, and there was quite a lot, but the more I read, the more those astounding details evaporated into vagueness. Given the number of witnesses, and the duration of the sightings, I would have thought there would have been many very good testimonies. There was a quite a long witness account, but even though I was more than ready to 'believe' what I read made me realise that I'd have to be an idiot to continue to uncritically accept the stories at face value: "Wentzell mounted his Bombardier snowmobile, intent on going out on the ice to investigate. However, when he turned the ignition key, the snowmobile's engine refused to start. The battery had mysteriously lost all of its electrical power. Only when it was replaced with a new battery was the Bombardier able to start. " (Elsewhere in the account I'm pretty sure that the witness himself stated that snowmobiles are very unreliable) . The witness' attempt to make a link between a dead battery and the UFO was a ridiculously unecessary stretch, and coupled with the fact that he later described the UFO as being in low the eastern part of the sky, where there "normally isn't any bright star" sealed it. (Anybody with even the most basic knowledge of the sky (me) knows that at the time of the year Venus is clearly visible in the eastern sky, and is very, very bright.) Again, if this was the best witness they could get,either they weren't trying very hard or there weren’t any good witnesses. I've come to find that this kind of overblown report is representative of the majority of reports, not the exception, which made me really unhappy for a while, because, like I said, I'm a believer, and I really want some evidence to back me up.

I suppose that it's kind of pointless to rant against news sources just for picking up and propogating these stories uncritically because it’s an approach that dominates a whole subset of 'sort-of-not-really-news' and isn't isolated to the topic of UFOs. I guess I just expect more from the CBC. In their defense, it's obvious that a lot of people have some powerful motivating force to accept any evidence that makes them appear more plausible and believable and perhaps they picked up the story because of the that strange mythic quality that makes normally sane people go, "You know what I always wondered about whether UFO's were real or not. Maybe they are!"* Or perhaps it was only intended as a joke, and the CBC thought it would make a light piece that smart people would laugh about, and a only a few dummies would take seriously. I mean really! UFOs?! There was an earthquake that killed 6,000 people the other day and narrowly averted terrorist attack! Shouldn't you have more important things on your mind?

*And makes some people have no problem spending more than an hour writing a blog entry about it because they feel that insubstantial news items about the topic might somehow hurt the public's perception and more valuable attempts to figure out the 'real truth'

9:20 PM