A friend of mine and I got into a discussion about how fun it would be to set up some elaborate UFO hoax and, assuming that it was seen by a decent sized crowd, sit back and study what people had purported to see versus what they actually saw, and just watching just how big the event would become. We both know that psychological studies have been done in this manner; I saw a TLC show a few weeks ago where the crew for the program did something similar. They recruited a dozen or so subjects that believed they were participating in a desert survival reality TV show and exposed them to an elaborate hoax. A mole was implanted in the group, and a Psychology post-grad student from somewhere back east posed as a UFO expert, befriended the group of subjects, and helped the mole psychologically prep the group for a "UFO" sighting. The results were pretty interesting, from the most gullable subject saying afterwards that she "knew it was a hoax all along", to others who were very curious yet skeptic, and weren't quite sure what was really going on.

My question is this: What do people here think of someone setting up a UFO hoax solely for the purpose of sitting back and watching reaction? Assuming that: the hoaxer does nothing to purposely perpetuate the hoax, id est, the hoaxer does not attempt to make people believe they observed more than they did; that no one was placed in any danger and no laws were broken; and that the hoaxer never told anyone the truth (unless someone became unsettling disturbed over the matter); do you guys think that hoaxes are a bad idea, do you think that it helps open up discussion about UFOs, do you think that, revealed as a hoax or not, that it takes any credibility from actual UFO sightings, or...?

Just curious.