The proof is out there ...

[emad]

Seth Shostak is perfectly prepared to believe that aliens have visited Earth. Just give him one piece of solid evidence

Thursday August 18, 2005
The Guardian


The good news is that the latest polls confirm that roughly half of all Americans believe extraterrestrial life exists. The weird news is that a similar fraction think some of it is visiting Earth.
Several recent TV shows have soberly addressed the possibility that alien craft are violating our airspace, occasionally touching down long enough to allow their crews to conduct bizarre experiments on hapless citizens. While these shows tantalise viewers by suggesting that they are finally going to get to the bottom of the "UFO debate", they never do.

That's because the evidence is weak. During a recent show in which I participated, guest experts who have long studied UFOs argued for extraterrestrial presence by showing photographs of putative alien saucers at low altitudes. Some of these objects appeared as out-of-focus lights; others resembled hubcaps or frisbees.

Since the former are perforce ambiguous, the latter command more of my attention. How can we know they're not hubcaps, tossed into the air by a hoaxer with a camera? The reply from one expert: "these photographs pass muster". When quizzed on exactly which muster was mastered, his response was that "atmospheric effects give us a limit on the distance, and careful examination has ruled out photographic trickery". Well, the former is chancy, and relies on some assumption about atmospheric conditions (was it a foggy day in San Francisco?), and the latter proves nothing. A real shot of an airborne hubcap would be free of photographic trickery.

Additional evidence is "expert testimony". Pilots, astronauts, and others have all claimed to see odd craft. It's safe to say that these witnesses have seen something. But just because you don't recognise an aerial phenomenon doesn't mean it's an extraterrestrial visitor. That requires additional evidence that, so far, seems to be unconvincing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/lastword/story/0,13228,1550737,00.html