Skepticblog

On a regular basis I am sent links to YouTube to review the latest UFO video footage. Most often it is by a fellow skeptic who just wants to share the latest crappy evidence being offered by the UFO community. Sometimes the links are sent by readers who are perplexed and are looking for an explanation, and occasionally they are sent by UFO believers as a challenge.

The YouTube UFO phenomenon (or “YouFOs” – yes, I just coined that) is a good way for budding skeptics to practice their skilz. This is purely armchair skepticism, unless you want to do some actual investigation, which can be fun too. But armchair skepticism has its place – it is an exercise in logic and plausibility. Someone is presenting you with evidence and you analyze it critically. You may not have the time or resources to do investigative journalism, or to replicate experiments. But asking good critical questions is an essential part of science, and since the burden of proof is on those making the claim it seems reasonable that they should be able to answer our questions.

Recently I was sent a link to this video:

Take a look and see what you think.

Here are the questions I typically go through when confronted with these videos. Keep in mind – no one would be more thrilled than I if we finally had convincing evidence for alien spacecraft visiting the earth. I am looking at these wanting to find compelling evidence. So far, I have not seen anything even remotely compelling, and this current video is no exception.

Detail and Perspective

The first gestalt question I ask is – can what I am seeing in this video be anything other than a large technologically advanced spacecraft? The answer, so far, is always a disappointing “yes.” This usually comes down to detail and perspective. This video, like most, is at such a distance and resolution that we can make out only a provocative hint of what we are seeing – but insufficient detail to really know what it is. It appears to be a hovering object with lights. Can it be a floating object, like a blimp? Sure. Can it be a small model? Yes.

Regarding perspective, it is remarkably difficult to judge size and distance (and therefore velocity, although not relevant to this video) when viewing an object against the sky, with no foreground objects for reference. We simply cannot tell how big this thing is.

Provenance

In order to be compelled by a video I would also like to know where it comes from. Often the source is unknown, with the lame claim that person does not want the attention. Equally dubious is when the dedicated UFO hunter comes up with the video. Encountering a real alien spacecraft would be a rare low-probability event. The chance that a UFO hunter happens to be the only one to capture such video is curious. In this case the video comes from ofuhunter, who has his own UFO page. Other than that, I have no idea who this guy is.

How long is the footage?

Let’s say you walk out of your house early one morning and see a flying saucer in the sky. You rush back into your home, grab your video camera, and start shooting. This is the real deal, and you are filming it. How long would you train your camera on the object? Would you get bored after a few minutes and stop? I know what I would do. I would film it for as long as it was visible. I would try to zoom in as far as possible and make sure the camera focused on the object. I would call my family members to get my still camera so I could take high resolution stills at the same time. I would call friend and neighbors.

But maybe I would not have time. Maybe the object would fly away after a few moments – but then at least I would have footage of the object flying away.

So why is it we get 24 seconds of the object just floating there? Ofuhunter tells us the rest of the footage is being examined by “experts” but we never seem to get the full footage. It just seems like an attempt to explain away what is a typical feature of either hoaxed footage, or video of something mundane. We are being shown a select bit of the video  – I suspect that bit which seems the most impressive but lacks any of the details that would help us determine what the object actually is. Let’s see it fly away. Let’s see it move in front of something so that we can get some perspective.

Of course, hoaxing a short video is easier than hoaxing a long video. And often when the entire video is viewed we can see some embarrassing elements.

Where is all the other footage

This is being presented as a UFO hovering over a populated area. So where is the video from all those other people who would have likely seen it also? Where is the official investigation? Where is the news media? This video is being presented as “final proof of UFOs” but the reaction is underwhelming. Showing the object from different angles by different cameras would help demonstrate its authenticity.

Cameras and video cameras are now ubiquitous. When unusual events happen, everyone can whip out a camera and start filming. If we were being visited by alien spacecraft that occasionally decided to hover over populated areas flashing lights to get attention, there would be numerous videos of the event. Eventually someone would capture compelling video. But it has just not materialized. We are getting the same ambiguous pictures and video we have always seen.

Conclusion

Whenever I express my assessment of the dismal state of UFO evidence, always a UFO believers comments that there is video that has one or more of the features I list as a mark of a compelling video. The problem is, there is no video that has all these features at the same time – and that is what it would take. This is just good science – a scientist asks, “can we know that this is really an alien spacecraft – have we ruled out every other plausible alternative?” The answer is always no.