The thing to take away from this case is not that these guys are bogus, the world is full of frauds, after all; and one fake report in the press about an anomalous event doesn't necessarily mean all anomalous reports must be fakes.

The key here is to see how these initial reports seem so plausible at first, and those predisposed to be sympathetic to them tend to take a wait-and-see attitude rather than an immediately skeptical one. Our sense of fair play makes us want to give them the benefit of a doubt, and makes the skeptic's attitude seem unnecessarily harsh and closed-minded.

But in a world where there are those who want to believe are so trusting, those who want to profit from lies so common, and the press more interested in generating readership than getting to the bottom of things, a healthy skepticism acts as a first line of defense against BS. All filters, no matter how well designed, tend to remove part of the signal, and let some of the noise through. But in spite of these shortcomings, we must have them in place or we will be overwhelmed with anomalous reports and their very ubiquity will give them a legitimacy they do not possess.

Still, I am haunted by the idea that some of these defenses against nonsense we erect may some day fail us and allow us to miss a genuine phenomenon simply because it seems to follow the recognizeable pattern
of "paranormal" reporting. Several years ago I wrote an article for an astronomy magazine suggesting that there should be a central clearing house for irreproducible or bizarre observations made by amateur astronomers. Amateurs spend a lot of time actually looking at the sky, and everyone I've talked to, as well as myself, has witnessed things in the sky he or she cannot explain. I call these anomalous events irreproducible observations, because they do not tend to repeat themselves and you simply can't send a telegram to the IAU and ask them to publicize and confirm it. These one-shot observations are not necessarily UFOs or other paranormal events, they may be genuine astrophysical phenomena, misidentifications of common objects, honest mistakes, or unusual but nevertheless real manifestations that deserve to be studied.

I found that one of the "weird" sightings I listed in my article had indeed been seen by some of my readers, and they wrote me back with plausible suggestions as to what it was, including one with enough evidence to convince me I had probably seen something real (but very ordinary, alas!).

I suggested we needed a place where reports of this nature by qualified observers, particularly experienced amateurs, could be collected and made available for public review by their peers. I think we can all agree that a UFO report from an experienced observer will immediately be recognizeable by other amateurs as being more believable and trustworthy than one from an ordinary citizen who just sees a light in the sky; even if they refer to the same event! The observer will also open himself to critical review because he is not anonymous or unknown. Most important, his evidence will be in the appropriate form other experts require.

Does anyone know of a forum like this anywhere, either on the Net or in a reputable publication? The magazine I wrote to published my article, but they did not follow up on my suggestion (can you blame them?). Perhaps one of you can come up with a way to make this work.