Please put my husband right once and for all

[mindburner]

On the theme of people believing what they want did you hear the article on R4 this morning about UFOs.

Basically a guy writes to the MoD saying he was woken by a loud noise, looked out the window at 3am and finds that he can see a cigar shape. Goes back to bed and when he wakes up in the morning his larm clock is out of whack by one hour - aliens have abducted him and thats where the missing time has gone (or alien spaceship used some sort of warp drive that bent time-space).

Turns out it was the day the clocks went backward

But it well illustrates how a lot of conspiracy theorists minds work. Theres almost always a perfectly rational explanation but its lot more fun to believe you were abducted by aliens than to admit you were an idiot who forgot about the clocks going backwards.

Priceless. It's a bit like the damaged wind turbine a while back. One of the first things the woo woo merchants came up with was that a UFO must have crashed into it. Yea navigate arcross 100's of trillions of miles then hit a wind turbine. Of course statistically this could happen but it is way way down the probable list of explinations:D

[Zakalwe]

I always find that the use of Occam's Razor tends to dispatch 99.9999% of UFO/conspiracy "theories"*/moon hoaxers. The simplest answer is generally the best and correct answer.

So...aliens built the pyramids? Hmm not really...ever get a pile of sugar cubes and try and build the highest possible construction? Funnily enough, a pyramid is the best solution. Swap stones for sugar cubes and you get the same result.

So, we didn't go to the moon? instead we kept a secret quiet from the Russians who were watching the US's every move at the height of the Cold War, faked the evidence arriving at independent countries radio telescopes, faked the thousands of photos (fill your boots over at the Lunar Surface Journal), managed to get 400,000 American employees all to buy into the conspiracy and not one of them blew the whistle in the last 50 years (imagine the collective guilt of keeping that secret until you reached the death-bed?). All this in a country where 5 blokes breaking in to an office couldn't be hushed up.

Conspiracy theorists- sad people who are trying to escape the hum-drum of their sad lives. Or that have significant learning difficulties. Or, more likely, people who have never learned how to think critically.

*They are not theories. Theories generally are built on the basis of observations or calculations that are based on FACTS

[great_bear]

As for an atmosphere of bullying or intimidation, again, I can only speak for my experience, and I have never seen or heard of anyone bullying or intimidating a hoaxer.

- sad people who are trying to escape the hum-drum of their sad lives. Or that have significant learning difficulties.

...

[Zakalwe]

...

Why I oughtta.....

[great_bear]