Wednesday, January 16, 2008

ET Calling? Nope, Moronic Reporting

A potentially exciting event occurred today--we received signals from intelligent aliens elsewhere in the universe!

Though skeptical, Bad Astronomy and Centauri Dreams both discussed it.

However, if you read what is apparently the original source of the news, you immediately suspect that some moron reporter misunderstood something but blithely wrote on, hoping to bull through the segment without having to really think about the title and first few lines of the report.

And thus it was. It didn't take more than an hour or so to confirm with Seth Shostak, the head of SETI, that the report was bogus.

I'm Bruce Cordell, your source of non-news, signing off.

UPDATE [Friday 1/18/08]: Apparently, the news source that originally reported the story that aliens were contacting earth blames its readers for the error.

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