The Stupid Gets Even Stupider: A New Pretend Boogeyman!

If you weren't already terrified of imaginary nothings before — this one is sure to do you in!!

The human body contains enough bones to make an entire skeleton!

Yes, it’s kind of funny; but when stated earnestly, for a split second it sounds really impressive… until your cerebral cortex gets ahold of it and tells you it’s just a silly joke. How about this humdinger:

People who work in science and technology die at about the same rate as everyone else.

Logically it’s exactly the same kind of statement: a simple observation of an everyday, expected trend. And yet, it’s making headlines nationwide, frightening members of Congress’s UFO caucus, and it’s even a “national security threat” perpetrated, no doubt, by China.

You’ve already seen the headlines: a large number of US scientists with high security clearances who were working on UFOs and related technologies have all been mysteriously disappeared or killed… supposedly. The UFOlogy community has been banging this drum loudly for weeks now, and their lackeys — the far-right tabloid media — have been dutifully trumpeting the terrifying claim. The whole idea is to draw more and more public attention to their profound personal belief that flying saucers are the crafts of alien beings, perhaps inter-dimensional, perhaps supernatural. These people generally have very strange beliefs.

In short, the SMURFs (SMall group of UFO Religious Fanatics), exemplified by Lue Elizondo, George Knapp, Jeremy Corbell, Leslie Kean, Ross Coulthart, Hal Puthoff, and their newer “whistleblower” recruits such as David Fravor and David Grusch, have fed the names of anyone in science who has died over the past few years to their servants in the Congressional UFO caucus: Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), and tried to spin it as some kind of dark conspiracy. A pattern of disappearances!

Is it?

Of course not. When these 10-12 “mysterious deaths” first became a really popular news item, a lot of us looked at them, and were able to see no pattern at all. First, none of them “worked on UFOs” because that is a fantasy lacking any intersection with real fields of research. Second, a number of science journalists began pointing out from the beginning that these deaths/disappearances did not represent a departure from the normal rate of deaths/disappearances among the general population. Third, these names do not remotely suggest the front line of researchers who might “know too much” about UFOs. Their job descriptions are all over the map; some weren’t even in science at all. A lot of them have been retired for many years. And fourth, none of the deaths were even mysterious!!! About four of them are “unsolved,” but only because they went missing in hiking areas notable for a high rate of missing persons, or under circumstances like dementia or depression — “not found yet” does not equate to “mysterious circumstances.” The one who received perhaps the most press, retired USAF Major General W. McCasland, was long retired and took his pistol with him as he walked out into a remote area, with depression and cognitive decline, leaving his wife telling investigators he “planned to not be found.” Fifth, some of these happened years ago and could not plausibly be considered to be part of any “pattern.”

As you can guess, this is the kind of bullshit that pisses me off. For each of these dozen-or-so families, these deaths/disappearances have been painful, horrible family tragedies. Each was an important story in itself. And yet, they’ve now all been graffitied over with this bullshit fake mystery story; exploited in the service of UFOlogists.

I challenge all of you reading this to NOT SHARE THIS, and also don’t share any other story about the nonexistent pattern of missing UFO scientists.

DO THIS INSTEAD:

Pick a name from the list (the Wikipedia article on this gives you sufficient details), and post a short memoriam about that person and their true legacy. I have no illusion that this will drown out the bullshit story being supershared online, but at least it’s doing a bit of the right thing.

Respect the humans, and disrespect the conspiracy theorists.

Update: Mick West has posted detailed statistics showing that these had nothing to do with one another. I offer this so you can satisfy your own curiosity about whether this is a real thing or made-up bullshit, and I suggest not sharing Mick’s article either, excellent as it is. We have to stop feeding the trolls.