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Shostak is truly Ignorant

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David Biedny

Paranormal Adept
So this shmeckie showed up on the X-Zoned radio car crash last night. I'm listening to it right now via iTunes, and I just heard Shostak claim that there's not a single good UFO photo in existence. If this guy is a scientist, he's the least curious and technically-capable scientist I've ever heard. He's willfully ignoring the Trindade and McMinville photos, two of the most compelling photographic cases ever. He wouldn't last 10 minutes on The Paracast.

dB
 
David Biedny said:
So this shmeckie showed up on the X-Zoned radio car crash last night. I'm listening to it right now via iTunes, and I just heard Shostak claim that there's not a single good UFO photo in existence. If this guy is a scientist, he's the least curious and technically-capable scientist I've ever heard. He's willfully ignoring the Trindade and McMinville photos, two of the most compelling photographic cases ever. He wouldn't last 10 minutes on The Paracast.

dB
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So we put him up against Friedman, have an ultimate smackdown, and destroy his ass. :D

This way Friedman is blamed for it. :)
 
Fuck that, I would rather we take him down all by ourselves.

I had to turn off that terrible show, McConnell is as sharp as a sack of wet mice. What a fucking tool, and Shostak's really not much better himself. Skepticism is an crucial thing, logic even more so, but Shostak has no sense of balance between the two. And let's not forget, Shostak had Krazy Korff on his show as a respected guest, which tells you something about Shostak's base reasoning skills.

dB
 
David Biedny said:
Fuck that, I would rather we take him down all by ourselves.

I had to turn off that terrible show, McConnell is as sharp as a sack of wet mice. What a fucking tool, and Shostak's really not much better himself. Skepticism is an crucial thing, logic even more so, but Shostak has no sense of balance between the two. And let's not forget, Shostak had Krazy Korff on his show as a respected guest, which tells you something about Shostak's base reasoning skills.

dB
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Fair enough. Let's get him on and give him the treatment he deserves. :D:D
 
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
 
dhatz said:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
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Very much so. The idea of UFO's is a threat to his livelihood.

Don't forget also that the S.E.T.I. effort also provides argumentation for the U.S. government to avoid the UFO subject completely. Framing the ufo phenomenon with a silly effort to investigate has worked wonders.

In other simple words... a conflict of interest.
 
I find Shostak's ignorance disappointing. If he'd said there were no good alien spaceship images available, I'd be the first to agree. Instead, he's talking through his bum, and displaying the typically shallow thinking of his ilk when it comes to UFOs.

All the acronym UFO stands for, is unidentified flying object. Why do so many people have trouble grasping that? To make 'UFO' and 'alien spacecraft' synonymous, as Shostak appears to be doing, is a contradiction in terms. Think about it. If we could definitively point at an object in the sky and say 'that's a spacecraft from Zeta Reticuli' - it wouldn't be a bloody UFO, would it? We'd know what it was. So for anyone to say there are no good photos of UFOs - well, that's just ignorance of the most banal and tedious kind. I'm sick of repeating, UFOs exist and have frequently been successfully photographed - we just don't know what they are :mad::mad::mad:.
 
Gene Steinberg said:
Fair enough. Let's get him on and give him the treatment he deserves. :D:D
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Funny enough, I'll bet he would come on and stay the entire 2 hours and take the beating. He seems like that guy. Of course he would keep repeating the same crap and eventually David would be forced to drive to his house nd beat him with something blunt. Which is fine, he just needs to bring a video camera.
 
Around 1998, shortly after his book "Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on ET Life" was published I was invited to appear with Seth Shostak (up in San Francisco) on some forgotten Sci-Fi channel "almost science" program. Shostak and I ended up debating the UFO question on this show.

I ended up using the Drake equation as an example of a "SWAG" equation (and unless you've been in the military, SWAG means Scientific Wild Ass Guess) and even though agreeing in principal with SETI, it was in many ways even more "cultish" than legitimate UFO research. And when he suggested that the idea of "light speed travel" from star to star was not feasible, I used the following example of our (human) technology advancing.

"Suppose we traveled back about 400 years ago to the age of Christopher Columbus. The most advanced mode of transportation was sailing ships. They left Europe and months later stumbled over the New World. Today we make that same trip in hours, and not by better and more advanced sailing ships but by aircraft ... a new technology. Human "hard science" is only approx. 200 years old, imagine ... if you can ... what we might develop in another 100 or 1,000 years! The mind boggles ... and the upshot was Shostak signing a copy of his book for me. (In it, he said words to the effect of ... he could count on ME to keep guys like him ... honest.) :)

Decker
 
When people say Shostak is ignorant, I feel that is not really an accurate statement. Im sure he knows quite a lot about the UFO subject and is even aware of good UFO photos. He just chooses to feign ignorance.

Thats obviously much worse than just being ignorant.
 
Decker said:
(In it, he said words to the effect of ... he could count on ME to keep guys like him ... honest.) :)
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That is chilling, because I like to think that scientists should be able to keep themselves honest. It's not like he's a used car salesman or a bouncer at a strip joint...
 
Hello.

I don't know Seth directly, but I do know his co-host, Molly Bentley.

Personally, I really do admire what Seth does, and has done, but I have no idea why he talks about UFOs since he has never researched a case, as far as I know.

He is pretty fucking brilliant when it comes to radio astronomy though.

BTW, I was shocked when Korff was on his show, but I was more shocked that Korff sounded reasonable rather than the bat-shit insane I have been used to for the past several years.

-Derek
 
Just remember that Shostak has appeared in nearly every UFO documentary of the past 2 decades, introduced as offering a "scientific" and "reasoned" angle to the UFO discussion ...

Seth Shostak's articles are syndicated on dozens of high-traffic websites, including space.com, news.yahoo.com, msnbc.com etc reaching MILLIONS of people.
 
Shostak, if I'm not wrong, has publicly stated that pilots are no more reliable as visual witnesses than the average Joe on the street.

Tell us, Derek, are all debunkers as intellectually dishonest as Shostak? ;)

dB
 
David Biedny said:
Shostak, if I'm not wrong, has publicly stated that pilots are no more reliable as visual witnesses than the average Joe on the street.

Tell us, Derek, are all debunkers as intellectually dishonest as Shostak? ;)

dB
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Chuckleberryfinn said:
Can you trust Mr. CBart to give an honest answer?
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Yes, you can. I have always given honest answers. I cannot help it if you do not agree with my answers.

David, what Shostak (and others) have said is technically correct, although it is very clumsily worded.

Pilots can be mistaken about what they see. Physicists can be mistaken about what they see. Photographers can be mistaken about what they see. Television Post Production Producers can be mistaken about what they see, etc., etc.

Everyone can be mistaken about what they see. That is just the way it goes. I believe that is what Seth was trying to say, but it is difficult to present that concept in a quick soundbite and when someone does it always appears as though the critic is attacking the credibility and experience of the observer and that makes the statement appear ridiculous.

-Derek
 
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