The problem I have with the TV show 'UFO Hunters'

reply to post by -Blackout-


excellent, Blackout
Very informative. Many things i did not know that I now do. (Including, but not limited to the fact that Bill Birnes has beautiful eyes. Really quite lovely.)

reply to post by spinalremain



Wasn't Bill Birnes in the recent Disney film 'Race to Witch Mountain'? I thought it was him with the Conspiracy RV. He didn't wear sunglasses in that one.

I always really liked the dynamic of the three main guys they had on the show. There was "the guy in the hat," the older fella with the baseball cap and mirror shades who pretty much believes every single thing anyone tells him and seemed to have zero sense of skepticism, at all.

Then there was the guy who clearly really wants to believe, who's kind of in the middle. He's not a scientist, but does his best to look at evidence and get at some truth. I think he's often too gullible for this stuff, and quick to believe things that probably aren't true, but at least he's trying.

Then there's the scientist guy, whom they brought on (I think in Season 2?) to be the skeptic of the show. He applied more rigor to his investigations than the other, and I think made a good foil to "the guy in the hat." What was interesting was that over time, the scientist guy became ever more open minded to a lot of the UFO stuff and I think by the end of the first year he was on, had come to the conclusion that "something" was going on. He still applied healthy skepticism to his work, but there were just too many things beyond his ability to explain after a while for him to think it was all just bogus, like he seemed to at the beginning.

Originally posted by LifeInDeath
I always really liked the dynamic of the three main guys they had on the show. There was "the guy in the hat," the older fella with the baseball cap and mirror shades who pretty much believes every single thing anyone tells him and seemed to have zero sense of skepticism, at all.

Yes that's Bill Birnes, and he is one of the least skeptical people I've seen. Which is why he kind of surprised me in one episode when he said something to the effect that 95% of all UFO cases are garbage, only 5% are really interesting. Which is consistent with the MUFON assertion that most UFOs are manmade objects or natural phenomena. But yes, he could be a little over the top sometimes, like when he called that kid a hybrid!

Maybe that's why I liked the previous series better, UFO files, it didn't go over the top quite as much.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by LifeInDeath

But yes, he could be a little over the top sometimes, like when he called that kid a hybrid!

Which kid did he call a hybrid, was it the episode with the African American guy in Suffolk, Virginia? I think he was an ex-Marine or something.

[edit on 14-5-2010 by Jack Jouett]

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Maybe that's why I liked the previous series better, UFO files, it didn't go over the top quite as much.

But that's the beauty of the dynamic of the three different viewpoints. The scientific skeptic balances out the guy in the hat. You hear multiple points of view from pretty much the widest possible spectrum. If the whole show was just him and his one point of view, I'd find it worthless, but with the more scientific side also being presented, it lets us choose what we agree with.

I like how Bob is willing to believe EVERYTHING he hears, and then theres that guys who is always in the exact middle. In the there is that other guy who doesn't believe anything ever said. Sometime I watch it just so I can see them bicker. LMAO

reply to post by siriusexile


A scientists isn't supposed to believe anything. Their job is to look at evidence and come to a conclusion which that evidence can support. It isn't that he doesn't believe there are things flying around, it's that he doesn't believe they are aliens. Even if he did believe that they are aliens, his job is to show scientifically what it is, why it's happening and to show how the evidence supports his hypothesis.

Science has nothing to do with belief. Science is proof. Well, it's supposed to be.

their case numbers are numbers that UFO HUNTERS themselfs make for archives, as you can see some of the case numbers are somewhat similar to the inident like for example,

First contact: case # has 1897****- (the date of the case)

Cops vs ufos: case # 911*****- (has "911" for cops)

they use these methods to make their case number easier to identify.

Look, if its on the TV , and someone makes money from it, then its nonsense and worth nothing. Does that clear it up ? Yeah ? Good ... move along.

reply to post by TrueBrit


Absolutely!

Those guys are jokes!

They make "scientific sounding" statements that would be de-bunked by second year aeronautical engineers. They make statements about the military that are assinine. You may see former military people who pushed paperwork or shoveled crap, but where are the former command pilots, who know how true aircraft behave, how military organizations behave and are organized, and would be able to provide credible skepticism to demonstrate the "real" UFO encounters that are the ones that should be examined.

There are legitimate events that have been recorded, but when you treat foolish items in the same fashion as the serious ones, there is NO credibility left because they report idiotic stories!

I watched about fifteen minutes one time, and they reported that the UFOs seemed to be interested in the events at the military airfield. Then they showed lights going back and forth in the vicinity of the airbase. STUPID! Those were simply military aircraft changing aspect due to being IN THE TRAFFIC PATTERN!!!!

If these guys can't recognize that, how are they going to explain the things military pilots CANNOT explain?

Originally posted by siriusexile
I like how Bob is willing to believe EVERYTHING he hears, and then theres that guys who is always in the exact middle. In the there is that other guy who doesn't believe anything ever said. Sometime I watch it just so I can see them bicker. LMAO

The scientist guy did, after a while, become more open to stuff, but that was only after he had seen enough evidence to convince him that "something" was going on.

There was one episode where they were looking at the cattle mutilation stuff, and someone brought out a photo of some severely deformed calf they thought might have been a hybrid or experiment, or something. The scientist guy, who is an engineer and not a biologist, I should note, totally freaked out and thought he was seeing some sort of proof for the first time of something really weird going on. The middle-guy was the total skeptic in that case, so their roles really kind of reversed. The middle-guy suggested it was just natural, if very severe mutation/birth defect, which does sometimes happen. I just found it funny that as soon as this very serious scientist got out of his field of expertise, he was as credulous as anyone else.

reply to post by Truth1000


See this is exactly why you dont pay attention to these shows.... they are produced by people who believe in one thing and one thing only ... ratings, turning into money . They dont care about UFO, they dont care about abductees, and they sure as hell arent interested in the truth .
Its not even proper journalism. Its just bloody idiocy with fake ID stamps on it. Bare in mind that there are enough half way respected voices in the world of UFOlogy who are considered nuts by others, and they consider themselves too real for those shows !
You cant learn anything from these ufo shows other than this... if you believe , you are nuts. This not being the case, I cant see why anyone would want to watch them.

I've watched the show many times. The problem I have with it is Bill. He's too gullible. I could fly a kite marked "look at the ufo" and he would justify it as real. That and the fact that they keep you waiting until the end of the show for "ground breaking new information" that we've all seen before. A lot of ufo shows promise the same i guess. Maybe I'm just hard to impress.

Wild Bill Birnes ruined that show in my opinion. The show should have featured three hardcore debunkers that went around bashing witnesses

All in good fun of course.

Originally posted by Jack Jouett

Originally posted by azzllin

It cant ever be considered a fair investigation if others are pulling the strings...

I'm willing to give Bill Birnes and crew a pass if they some how lost content control to the History Channel execs.

This.

None of the cast, including Birnes, had final edit. He was often miffed by what was left out of an episode.

And people who were told they'd be on the show were miffed at him when they got cut out or were dis-invited. Again, those were not his decisions to make and yet he continues to this day to take heat from investigators who didn't make the cut.

They make statements about the military that are assinine.

About the military. The Stephenville episode they did in the first season. The UFO hunter who looks like Danny Bonaduce calls the Fort Worth Naval reserve base and asks to talk to various military represenatives. He get's shut out with each request with a "I don't know what your talking about" type response from the military guy on the line.

What's weird is this, he identifies himself as from the History channel and UFO hunters, but the whole thing has to be staged. First, when you tape somebody's voice on a telephone you absolutely must have their permission, you can hear the military guy's responses so he was being taped.

Why would the military do this? I'm not saying it's some sort of grand conspiracy, but clearly somebody higher up in the chain of command certainly would have had to sign off on a TV shows request to interview somebody for a show and you would think the military would want nothing to do with UFOs. I don't know, it just struck me as odd. Maybe some kind of PR tactic.