Crying wolf

While I understand being deeply fascinated with a specific subject, there's a point at which an interest becomes an idée fixe.  The result, especially for a scientist, is such a single-minded focus that it can cloud judgment with regards to the strength of the evidence.  We've seen that here at Skeptophilia before -- two examples that immediately come to mind are the Sasquatch-hunting geneticist Melba Ketchum and the British proponent of extraterrestrial panspermia, Chandra Wickramasinghe.  And the problem is -- for them, at least -- their obsessions have had the effect of completely destroying their credibility in the scientific community.

I can already hear the objections -- that (1) said scientific community is a hidebound, reactionary bunch of sticks-in-the-mud who resist like mad any new ideas, and (2) there are times the mavericks have been vindicated (sometimes after a long and arduous battle to get someone, anyone, to take them seriously).  The former can sometimes be true, but almost all scientists are well aware that groundbreaking ideas -- as long as they are supported by adequate evidence -- are how careers are made.  Look at the list of Nobel Prizes in the sciences in the past fifty years if you want examples.  Virtually all of them were awarded for research that expanded our scientific models dramatically (in some cases, overturned them entirely).  

As far as the second -- that sometimes the fringe-dwelling researchers who say "our entire prior understanding of the science is wrong" turn out to be correct -- okay, yeah, it happens, but if you consider the history of scientific paradigm shifts, what will jump out at you is how seldom that actually occurs.  The Copernican/Galilean/Keplerian heliocentric theory, Newton's Theory of Gravity, Maxwell's and Faraday's studies of electromagnetism, the Germ Theory of Disease, Einstein's Theories of Relativity, quantum/atomic theory, thermodynamics, Darwin's evolutionary model, Hubble and the Big Bang, the gene as the carrier of inheritance, and the plate tectonic model of Vine and Matthews. 

And that's about it, in the last five hundred years.

The point is, we're in a position now where the amount of evidence amassed to support the edifice we call science is so colossal that the "it could all be proven wrong tomorrow" objection I used to hear from my students (especially the lazy ones) is about as close to absurd as you want to get.  Sure, there will be some modifications made to science in the future.  A few -- probably very few -- will be major revisions.  But there's no reason to think that science as it stands is in any way unstable.

And people who come at it with earthshattering claims based on extremely slim evidence are almost certainly wrong.

Which brings us to Avi Loeb.

Loeb is an astrophysicist at Harvard University who has garnered significant notice (and notoriety) in the past few years from his fixation on the extrasolar source of some astronomical objects.  (By extrasolar I mean "originating from outside the Solar System.")  In 2017 he made headlines by claiming that the oddball astronomical object 'Oumuamua was not only extrasolar -- something fairly certain given its trajectory -- but that it was the remnant of a spacecraft from an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization.  Since then, his obsession with extraterrestrials visiting the Solar System has become so intense that it has drawn unfortunate comparisons with this guy:

The latest salvo from Loeb et al. is a sample of metallic beads scavenged from the floor of the Pacific Ocean near Papua New Guinea, that Loeb says are the remnants of a meteor that exploded in 2014.  So far, nothing to raise an eyebrow; meteoritic debris is cool but hardly uncommon.

But (as always) he goes one rather enormous step further, and claims that the meteor it came from was extrasolar, and the concentrations of metals in the beads indicate the object that exploded may have been an alien spacecraft.

Look, I'm as eager as the next Doctor Who aficionado to have a meet-cute with intelligent aliens.  (As long as they don't turn out to be Daleks, Sontarans, or Stenza.  I do have my boundaries.)  Hell, the way things are going down here on Earth, I might even ask to be taken on as a crew member when they leave.  But if you're asking me to believe you have bits of an alien spaceship, I'm gonna need more than a few oddball microscopic metal beads.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan used to put it.  And this ain't it.  

At the moment, Avi Loeb is increasingly reminding me of a famous character from fiction -- The Boy Who Cried Wolf.  I have no problem with Loeb and his friends continuing to search; maybe (to quote a luminary of the field) The Truth Is Out There, and Loeb's dogged determination will eventually pay off.  But the problem is, there's a significant chance that (like The Boy in the fable) if he ever actually does find the hard evidence he's looking for, by that time he'll have exhausted people's patience to the point that everyone will have stopped paying attention.

So sorry to rain on the UFOs-and-aliens parade, but me, I don't think we've got anything here but some pieces of a curious metallic meteorite.  Worthy of study, no doubt, but as far as what it tells us about extraterrestrial intelligence, the answer seems to be: nothing whatsoever.

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Breaking news: Russian meteor explosion causes major eruption of nonsense

Why oh why can't people just accept the scientific explanation for something?  Why must they come up with wacky woo-woo bullshit every damn time?

I am, of course, referring to the news story that I'm sure all of you have heard of by now; the meteor explosion that injured over 1,000 people yesterday near Chelyabinsk in the Urals region of Russia. 

It was, to be sure, quite an event.  The shock wave from the explosion shattered windows and damaged buildings, and because it occurred near a populated area, it was captured more than once on cameras.

But the first problem with the public understanding of what had occurred was that it happened on the same day as a near pass by a different piece of rock, asteroid 2012 DA14.  Eminent astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson went on record as saying that the two events were unrelated, and the fact that they occurred on the same day was nothing more than a coincidence.

But no.  It couldn't be just a coincidence.  Start with a post in the blog Twilight Language, wherein we find the following quote from "astrologer Philip Levine:"

In other times and places, these would be a sign, a very big sign, saying something (what depends on which prophet or psychic you listen to). If you think the Universe is intelligent and an embodiment of some kind of Being, then you would want to know what It is saying.
If, like most, you believe the Universe is just a random collection of debris with no meaning other than chaos, then Statistics is your God. And the statistical chance of ONE of these things happening is immensely small, but TWO on the SAME DAY, within hours, in this infinitely vast Universe, is something to give one pause.
If you aren't sticking your head in the sand, how does this coincidence/synchronicity strike you?

It strikes me as a damn coincidence.  That's what you call it when two events coincide.

Then we had Russian parliament member Vladimir Zhirinovsky blathering on that the meteor wasn't actually a meteor, it was an American weapons test:

Those were not meteorites, it was Americans testing their new weapons... (Secretary of State John Kerry) was looking for (Russian Foreign Minister) Lavrov, and Lavrov was on a trip.  He meant to warn Lavrov about a provocation against Russia.

Right.  Because that's plausible.  The US Secretary of State calls up, and says, "Um... just so you know, we're about to blow up a weapon over one of your cities today.  Hope you don't mind.  Give my regards to the wife and kids."

Things only got worse from there.  A "senior clergyman" in Yekaterinburg said the meteor was a Sign from God:

From the Scriptures, we know that the Lord often sends people signs and warnings via natural forces.  I think that not only for the Ural [regions] residents, but for the whole of humanity, the meteorite is a reminder that we live in fragile and unpredictable world.  It is the Lord's message to humanity, and we need to pray to understand it.

Or, maybe, just consult an astronomer.  They seem to understand it pretty well.

Which is more than I can say for major league baseball player José Canseco, who weighed in on the event with the following series of tweets:

No way was that a meteor in russia today
Governments think truth is a poison that will kill them
we have lots of enemies dont underestimate them
long range test deal with russia operation meteor
north korea do the math

The media is now calling Canseco a "meteor truther."  Which makes me want to weep softly and bang my head against my desk.

NASA, of course, had the straight scoop, and said that the Russian explosion was, in fact, a meteor, and that this meteor and the flyby asteroid were unrelated:

According to NASA scientists, the trajectory of the Russian meteorite was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, making it a completely unrelated object. Information is still being collected about the Russian meteorite and analysis is preliminary at this point. In videos of the meteor, it is seen to pass from left to right in front of the rising sun, which means it was traveling from north to south. Asteroid DA14′s trajectory is in the opposite direction, from south to north.

But why listen to a bunch of silly old scientists when you can get your information from an astrologer, a clergyman, a batshit crazy politician, or a washed-up baseball player?

To sum up: AAAARRRRGGHHH.

Oh, and one last thing; if you see people post a photograph that they claim is the crater from yesterday's meteor, and it looks like this:

Please do me a favor and set them straight.  This is the Derweze Gas Crater in Turkmenistan, a place where a combination of natural gas seeps and soil that's high in flammable organic matter resulted in a giant burning hole in the ground.  It has nothing to do with the meteor.

Thanks.  I'll just go take my high blood pressure medication, now.