Not National Geographic, too! I first thought after I actually managed to sit through the pilot episode. Yes, there is more woo than ever on my TV. From the History Channel to the Travel Channel, there are teams of so-called "experts" scouring haunted houses and the forrest for anything that goes bump in the night. Bigfoot, ghosts, aliens, Hollow Earth inhabitants and just all-around monsters are being tracked down as we speak. Well, sort of. This brings me to the latest rock music infused reality TV series that makes big promises, yet delivers nothing: Chasing UFO's.
JREF contributor Dr. Karen Stollznow also took the time to break down the horribleness that is this show.
Unfortunately, UFO Chasers is just another new “reality” show that recently debuted on television. Skeptics (and even some journalists) have been quick to denounce the show, and the National Geographic Channel, for succumbing to the lure of “unscripted” shows. This is their first foray into pro-paranormal programming, and since the Fox Network Group wants Nat Geo to become more like the History Channel1 this probably won’t be their last.
The UFO Chasers include “Radiation expert” Ben McGee, UFOlogist James Fox and “tech expert” Erin Ryder. They are positioned respectively as the skeptic, the believer and the undecided, although as someone put it to me, “a good skeptic is open-minded and undecided anyway.” The show claims to use science to explore claims of UFO-related phenomena, but the show’s only “skeptic” is quick to believe. (Although he has since defended himself by claiming selective editing.) Ryder the “undecided” one has coined a new label that won’t become popular in skeptical circles anytime soon; she calls herself a “Skeliever – a skeptic believer.”
The team visit “hotbeds of UFO activity” searching for phenomena and evidence. In the first episode they rehash yet fail to solve the already solved story of mass sightings that occurred in Stephenville, Texas, back in 2008. As skeptic Robert Sheaffer reminds us, “the Stephenville case was a repeat of the flare drop responsible for the famous Phoenix Lights in 1997”.2
Typical UFO shows feature questionable characters and retired colonels sharing their unreliable witness accounts of alleged UFO sightings. Chasing UFOs has this same format, but with a twist. It is the “Ghost Hunters” of UFO shows, using the typical ghost-hunting, Bigfoot-hunting, wild goose chase formula, but for UFOs: the collection of anecdotal evidence, the use of tools, and running around in the dark with night vision cameras. The team whisper when they talk so the lights in the sky don’t hear them; until they see something, whereupon they scream, “What the (bleep) was that?” They seem quite certain that a cow (or a coyote) they encounter is a wild boar, but they are absolutely certain that the lights from an airplane constitute an “alien spacecraft”. This is simply another UFO show offering more mundane examples of mistaken identity and hoaxes dressed up as proof.
And of course, if you haven't already accidentally or intentionally exposed your brain to this nonsense, the video above is an excellent and humorous debunking of the editing and investigative techniques team "Chasing UFOs" employ to amp up the show.
Hey, Heather -
ReplyDeleteBen McGee here, the geoscientist wrapped up in the above kerfuffle. Well, while I'm a little late to the party (at least as far as your blog is concerned), if interested in what the show looked like as we were creating it, (along with the skeptical/scientific content that I spent so much time creating and that ultimately didn't end up making the show), check out an example of my blog series on the NatGeo website here: http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2012/07/16/the-science-of-chasing-ufos-ufo-landing-zone-2/
Clicking on my name in the byline will find my other blogs (one per episode), which (intriguingly) NatGeo had no problem with me authoring - despite the fact that each essentially reads as an "episode-that-might-have-been." Perhaps even amongst those in NatGeo there were differing opinions on what the show should have been. If nothing else, perhaps you'll find the contrast between my episode blogs and the final episodes to be an interesting example of the potential perils of engaging in modern television.
-And as for the retrospectively-silly aspects of the show, like whispering at night, we were told to whisper because it "sounded" more like nighttime when viewed on-screen. Not having any prior television experience, I complied. Live and learn.
Cheers,
Ben