About Mikael Expertise I will be happy to answer questions regarding scepticism itself, as well as to provide a sceptical viewpoint on a wide variety of subjects, from the claims of paranormal to pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. From homeopathy to near death experiences, if you've got a question, fire away.
Experience I've been a sceptic for about a decade now, a position which I gravitated towards from an earlier fascination with all things supernatural. I have a fully naturalistic worldview, which means that I don't believe in the existence of the supernatural; this includes ghosts, deities, and a whole variety of the claims of supernatural abilities . Being a sceptic though means (contrary to how many perceive scepticism) that I must first consider myself falliable, which I do. I don't hold on to any of my beliefs dogmatically, but subject all my views to scrutiny, which makes them liable to change if new evidence so demands.
Education/Credentials Several years of university studies - not on a relevant subject though. On the subject of scepticism, self educated - I don't think that's a subject for higher education! :)
Expert: Mikael Date: 4/22/2007 Subject: craft from earth
Question hi-I am not sure how to ask this but i will anyway.These are my opinions only and based only what i have read from books -internet -tv ect.
You state you can explain most things therefore i will ask -How can the skulls found in mexico be explained apart from being skull binding?
now i realise that these also have been found in norway as well .
-How can the thousands of sightings of ufo 's be explained -unless all the witness are making up stories and are all lying ? Even footage -most of it fake -but some of the craft in the footage cant be explained even by sceptics -such as the NASA footage of strage lights that take right angle turns in space .
How can the tunguska explosion be explained as it to took many angle turns and didnt fall straight.
Now i read there are evidence of giants and these bones have been destroyed but some remain and the native americans talk of them as being real?I realise this has nothing to do with aliens or ufo but what if they are?
This cant be dismissed but is often overlooked as the bones of these giants are kept away in some basement and no real documentation or study has been given to them becasue experts ect wont except them.
Now i also like things to be explained away by science ect -I do belive that most footage and sightings of ufos are usually ordinary objects but i have read so much and all these cant be dissmissed becasue science cant explain some things even if they have nothing to do with aliens or ufos -but in my opinion there is more evidence for a alien conspiracy than there is for ghosts or loch ness monster.
thanks
Answer Hi Jack,
That's a lot of questions, and many of the points you make are really too vague references to things for me to address directly, but I'll do the best I can and hopefully I'll be able to address your concern as to why sceptics aren't generally very impressed by UFO sightings and stories.
I'll start by saying that sceptics aren't any different from anyone else in that I'd love nothing better than to find evidence of life beyond the Earth, and a contact with an actual, intelligent extraterrestrial being would be beyond wonderful! I deeply, in my heart, wish that such a thing would occur - the answers that could be gained simply by studying a life form not evolved on Earth are many, and deep. Even without direct exchange of ideas and culture, just a sample of tissue from such a being would answer some of our deepest and most interesting questions about biology, and even the origin of life. There is not a sceptic on earth who would not jump for joy at reliable, good evidence of alien life.
Sceptics, in the media, get a very bad (and highly inaccurate) wrap - mostly because their standards of evidence are higher than what most non-sceptics require to be convinced. Sceptics, however, tend to be passionate about the truth, so passionate in fact, that they do something that doesn't come easily: they will not accept evidence JUST on the basis that it conforms to their expectation, or what they'd like to be real. A sceptic must further always be ready to change his mind if and when good evidence comes to light in support of something that they didn't believe in before. A sceptic must be able and willing to change his mind with evidence.
So why aren't sceptics persuaded by UFO sightings, videos and a whole host of stories people tell? Do sceptics believe everybody who recounts these stories to be a liar, or mad? Certainly not; of course there are many people who simply make up stuff to write book, to make a profit, or simply to gain attention they crave (after all, there's a LOT of money to be made in UFO books, or books on the supernatural), but you don't have to lie or be mad, to be honestly mistaken.
And there are so many, many ways to be honestly mistaken about something you are quite sure about - things that most people aren't aware of, things that still affect all of us. Even sceptics. We all tend to make certain kinds of errors in our perceptions and our thinking, and this is what makes eye-witness testimony so unreliable, and what makes accounts of personal experience likewise unreliable.
Sceptics tend to be educated in these typical errors people make, and know many things about human cognition that people who haven't looked into these things aren't really aware of.
These things make testimonials and anecdotes unreliable - a sceptic will never be convinced by testimonials or anecdotal evidence alone, because they don't consider that evidence at all. Are sceptics then saying that there are no anecdotes or stories that are true? That ALL stories are based on honest mistakes, errors in perception or memory, or outright lies? No - sceptics aren't saying that. What we are saying is that there's no reliable way of telling when an anecdote is true, and when not, and this is why anecdotes aren't evidence.
Anecdotes can be useful only as inspiration for doing research on a subject, and looking closely at more tangible evidence. Most of the things you say "can't be dismissed" are based on personal stories, anecdotes, or second hand information, or even just rumors - not only can they be dismissed, they MUST NOT be considered reliable evidence, by anyone who truly cares about having their beliefs be as close to reality as possible.
Even if it would be exhilarating, wonderful and extraordinarily exiting to find, say, that the skulls you mention were extraterrestrial in origin, we must consider the evidence dispassionately, without letting our wants and desires affect our judgement of what is real and what is not.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - and this means that the more unusual the claim the more revolutionary it's implications, the more it would force us to rethink things which have thus far been held up by mountains of good evidence, the stronger and more remarkable the evidence for the claim has to be, for it to be taken seriously.
Now imagine this sort of a skull being further deformed by skull binding - not a very large leap to see how the a skull like the "starchild" could be formed like this.
Evidence for a terrestrial origin of this skull further comes from the material, which is calcium hydroxylapatite, the normal material of mammalian bone. Further, there has been DNA analysis of the skull, in 2003, in which mitochondrial DNA was recovered, and that conclusively showed that the child had a human mother. Humans inherit ALL their mitochondrial DNA from the maternal line, so mitochondrial DNA can say nothing of the father, for that, we would need nuclear DNA - that hasn't been successfully recovered from the skull, however.
So is there a possibility that this might be a hybrid of some sort - half alien, half human?
To that, I can say conclusive, no, there's not even the slightest chance.
Why am I so sure? Because the chance of human hybrids with aliens that are not only not closely related to humans, but not even developed and evolved on the same planet - not sharing any genetic lineage with humans - being compatible enough, biologically, to make a hybridization feasible is so low that winning the lottery a thousand times in a row would seem likely by comparison.
There's no real reason why an alien species would even have DNA, rather than some other medium, or that it would use the same amino acids, OR that the structure of it's genetic material would be anything even remotely like earth-bound species. Even closely related species on Earth often cannot interbreed - humans and chimps share a relatively recent common ancestor, but already our genes have drifted so far apart, that successful hybridization would be extremely unlikely.
Outward similarity between us, and the other species wouldn't increase the odds one bit - with any understanding of biology, and genetics, it is embarrassingly obvious that any hybridization is the stuff of fiction, it simply isn't plausible.
The ONLY way in which hybridization might work is if the aliens evolved on earth, as a very recent off-shoot of the human line, and that simply isn't plausible because no fossil evidence exists to suggest such a line. And certainly, another human-related species, close enough in history that they'd still be able to interbreed with humans, and yet so different as to match the popular image of aliens, living alongside our genetic lineage and developing intelligence and technology advanced enough for space travel would have left more than bones behind - there would be abundant archeological evidence of artificial structures, tools and artifacts that exceed our technological knowledge. And why would they have left?
So the only plausible way which would allow the "aliens" to be close enough to us biologically to produce a hybrid would require a scenario where conspicuous amounts of evidence is completely absent from the geological record. And remember: remarkable claims require remarkable evidence - there is no real justification to invent complicated and contorted excuses in order to hang on to a view which, if true, would be fascinating. A genuine truth seeker does not resort to ad hoc explanations in order to hold on to a belief that would be very cool if true - a truth seeker should not allow their preferences to affect their evaluation of evidence, but this should be done dispassionately.
Why don't sceptics then find videos, such as the NASA tapes showing dots moving and changing direction suddenly as good evidence of UFO's being extraterrestrial space crafts? (Remember, that UFO is simply "Unidentified Flying Object" - and thus any completely natural object that we can't immediately identify is by definition a UFO, until we can identify it. This doesn't mean that every UFO is extraterrestrial in nature)
This is because again, there are many much more simple explanations for these observations, and something that has a plausible mundane explanation cannot be the remarkable evidence that would be required for a remarkable claim.
A dot of light in a camera's field of vision on a space craft, may simply be a piece of space debris reflecting the light of the sun - and importantly, from these images, you can't tell how far away the dot is.
The dot may be miles away, or it might be inches away from the camera! Why does this matter? Because if it is very close to the camera, then any slight movement of the spacecraft would make it appear that the dot changed direction, even when the spacecraft's movement was slight enough not to change the field of view when it comes to far-away objects like the stars in the background.
Further, camera's aren't perfect, and you'd really have to have proper expertise in both the equipment used, and in illusions of photography, in order to reliably rule out mundane explanations. To most UFO believers it seems to suffice that THEY personally cannot think of a mundane explanation (without even putting much effort to trying), even though they are not experts in the fields that are relevant to evaluating such a thing.
I'll give you some links at the end of this reply where you can learn the sceptic's reasoning and what makes us tick, and why exactly we aren't convinced that UFO's are extraterrestrial. I recommend reading these things, because not only do they give much interesting and important information that most people don't take into account, you can also learn from them what kind of evidence you'd need to find, to convince a sceptic.
But still a few things to address in your question: first, the "giant" bones. These, again, are based on anecdotal claims, and are thus not evidence - the stories of these bones are further motivated by Christian fundamentalism; the Bible speaks of giants, and so, many creationists want to see fossil evidence of giants. To such effect, creationists sometimes claim that say, a bone that a paleontologist would identify as a thigh bone of a dinosaur, for example, actually belonged to a giant.
The problem is that if the fossil bone has been excavated from it's setting by people without expertice, or possibly people who'd rather not have their find investigated too carefully, for the fear that it might not turn out to be a giant bone after all, all the relevant information which a paleontologist could use to date and identify the bone may have been lost.
Dating of fossils doesn't actually use the fossil itself, but rather dating is done by measuring the age of the layers below and above the fossil, so you need to know the setting where the fossil was found - also, if you know where a fossil bone was found, you can, usually find in the area other pieces of the skeleton.
And it is simply ludicrous to claim that experts (=paleontologists) would refuse to analyze them, or dismiss them without looking - not only because scientists aren't a coherent group who all share the same opinion, or are part of some big organization, but also because paleontologists, like other scientists have chosen that profession because they are fascinated with the natural world, are endlessly curious and motivated by the study of nature.
Further, in science, a chance to make a discovery that would overturn currently accepted theories or concepts is something every scientist dreams about - to simply dismiss a find without analyzing it, a find that promised a chance at immortality in history books, is something not many scientists would do - and much less all scientists! If these bones existed, and their owners truly wanted them analyzed, there'd be an abundance of experts willing to take the task.
Finally the "alien conspiracy" - this goes to conspiracy theories, which is a very, very large subject well beyond what I can write here, in this already lengthy answer. Shortly, it has the same problems with plausibility as all claims of large-scale conspiracies: mainly that the larger the conspiracy, the more people must be aware of it, and the more chances there are of exposure.
Just look at some real-life conspiracy attempts - for example the secret detention centers that the Bush administration held in Europe. It didn't take long for it to be exposed - they simply could not keep it secret. In government after government, there are numerous cases where people get caught from much smaller scale conspiracies than what a world-wide alien conspiracy would be - even much smaller conspiracies are prone to failing and being discovered, blown wide open.
What would a conspiracy to keep proof of an alien presence require? Not only would it require virtually flawless hiding from the large public from the alien's side, but every government would have to be in on it, and agree on keeping it hush hush - after all, why would the aliens confine themselves to one country? What is the likelihood that no nation would disagree on the course of action, and break the silence? When have all the nations on Earth ever agreed on a thing, no matter how sensible?
And imagine the thousands of people world wide who must be "in the know", yet nobody has smuggled out a piece of say, technology that would immediately be recognized as well beyond our technological level?
There are many, many reasons to doubt conspiracy claims, and I'll give you, among the links below, a link to an article about conspiracy theories too.
quoting from that article:
"The curious effect of the Tunguska explosion on the trees near ground zero was replicated during atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s. These effects are caused by the shock wave produced by large explosions. The trees directly below the explosion are stripped as the blast wave moves vertically downward, while trees further away are felled because the blast wave is travelling closer to the horizontal when it reaches them.
Soviet experiments performed in the mid-1960s, with model forests (made of matches) and small explosive charges slid downward on wires, produced butterfly-shaped blast patterns strikingly similar to the pattern found at the Tunguska site. The experiments suggested that the object had approached at an angle of roughly 30 degrees from the ground and 115 degrees from north and had exploded in mid-air."
The evidence of the blast pattern left behind on the ground is consistent with an explosion above ground - which is what would happen if the object falling was a comet made of softer, looser material, instead of solid rock. The shock wave would strip all the trees directly below, and lay down trees in a butterfly pattern around, matching the evidence observed. This is clearly the simplest explanation; there really is no need to suppose alien activity. After all, as I've said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The mundane may not be as fantastic and exiting as extraterrestrial claims, but there really isn't much more than the desire for the fantastic to support such claims. To put it in the words of Samuel Butler: "A Credulous Mind ... finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such."
Here are the links - they are articles on the "sceptic's dictionary", which is a good source for information from the skeptical perspective:
