Copter Controversy
Stuart Miller goes off on a rant concerning the recent UK-UFO-Police Helicopter encounter:
“The events relating to the recent Cardiff police helicopter UFO ‘attack’ aren’t funny. Yet again a major sighting by a seemingly impeccable source turns out to be nothing of the sort and once more we have been taken in by freaking lanterns. It saddens me therefore to say that I have been laughing my ass off ever since.
“The reason for my mirth is that this time, people who should have known better got bitten and in doing so, have compromised the ideals by which they stand. In the UK there was much excitement and anticipation at this event for after all, it was the experienced crew of a police helicopter who made the report. Every one of them a trained observer who could spot a balaclava clad Chav from 1,500 feet while eating a prawn sandwich and scratching his crotch.
“Yet the value of so called expert witnesses has been called into question in recent years, something with which I whole heartedly concur, but that didn’t stop instant FOIA requests from being thrown in and much telephoning of press offices and a general scurrying around. There was unquestionably a major emotional commitment to this event and the sense of anticlimax and profound disappointment when the denouement was revealed could be felt like a ton of bricks.”
Here’s the rest of Stuart’s post.
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Jul 01 2008 
July 4th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I think the commentary on the Paracast forum was fairly cautious. I think the folks there had “been around the block” enough to wait and see.
There might be a positive outcome of this, if subsequent analysis of the Welsh witness reports were found to accurately describe the appearance and flight behavior of lanterns. If few witnesses described variations in speed, direction, light intensity, etc., and few described great speed or flashing lights, then it would indicate that most witnesses weren’t much affected by their expectations of what they “should” be seeing, due to either the reports they’d been reading about recently, or their standard UFO template in general.
In effect, this constitutes an unintentional experiment in witness suggestibility and projection-prone-ness. If the results are “good” from our perspective, this in turn would add credibility to the likely accuracy of future witness reports.