This appeared on the website of the FR3 Champagne-Lorraine French regional TV channel:
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When ufologists contacted this TV channel offices to check what this was all about, they said that it was actually an April's Fool prank.
My impression is that they actually used a "true" story and true captured images of a true video: many people take digital images, then when they download them on their personal computer, or check a digital video on the PC for editing, and then they see small "things" on the bottom of the sky, that they had not seen when they recorded the images.
Experienced ufologists, who are by no means the silly morons that the media sometimes like to ridicule, sometimes use to make sensational headlines, know very well what this is all about:
These are flies, planes, birds, paper bags or plastic sacks, of dead leaves and so on, which are not noticed at the time of taking the images because they are too small, too far, or too close, or too fast, and that one concentrates on the camera sight that does not allow at all to distinguish them. But later, these things become visible, but often not very recognizable on the images.
Ufologists even have a name for this kind of simply explained UFOs:
BLURFOS, i.e. "blurry UFOs".
"I did not notice anything when I shot the images, and there was nothing on the following image and next image... but on that one, when I downloaded it on my PC / looked at film on my PC, there was this UFO..."
(Typical BLURFO report)
The "witnesses" of this type of UFOs, generally, are neither silly people seeing alien spaceships everywhere. But they are not either experts of this topic, and they are thus just puzzled, they send their images to ufologists by email, and far from saying "photo of an alien spaceship", they generally merely ask the ufologist, "What was it? Is this a UFO?"
Of course it is not always like this. Exceptionally, the person who took the image does not want to listen, totally clinging to his certainty that it can only be an alien spaceship, and the honest ufologist who would explain him why there is no reason fir such a belief gets backlashed.
There are even some people who after having taken such an image and having become convinced to own the photograph of the century, start to run around places taking more such pictures and show them as evidence of "invisible alien spaceship revealed only on photographs" and put them on personal websites and web forums and don't you dare contradict them, for they are now "better ufologists" than anyone else!
But, I'd like to state once again, these situations are exceptional.
I receive many BLURFO photographs. There was a "peak" in 2004 - 2005, because digital cameras became cheaper and allowed anyone to shoot inexpensive photographs in large numbers, to keep only the good ones. Currently - as of 2006 - I receive much less BLURFO images, because in the collection of reports that I publish, people do see that what puzzled them is not inevitably an alien spaceship.
Unfortunately but inevitably there are many "ufologists" who are actually simply young people with no experience, who do not know much of the matter, who do not make any research, and who, instead of informing the "witness", show the images around on their website saying "UFO photo" or even "proof of alien spaceship."
They make sometimes "enlarge" the images to "reveal details" supposed "to prove" that it is an alien spaceship, but it is a false method to approach this kind of images because their enlarging is made in "smoothing" mode, and this wrongfully creates impressions of defined shapes or metallic aspect. Others even undertake erudite studies and calculations.
All that will never change: serious and experienced ufologists are a negligible minority compared to the huge number of young inexperienced people who are "interested in UFOs", which consists most generally just in creating a small website and copying things found on other websites, without any "added value".
Serious and experienced ufologists exist, and may have a website too, but they are drowned in this hubbub of gobbledygook, and of course, the media call more readily on ufologists they can make fun of or those who make outlandish claims, or those who love to be "on TV", while those who do a serious work without seeking attention are out of the picture.
And thus, aliens can visit us as they wish, that would never be taken seriously because the "signal" is drowned in the "noise". This gap between serious ufologists and the ignorant and unaware, instead of reducing, only grows as years go by, so much so that to try to make a point on any small things, like for example to explain what BLURFO are is not much more effective than fighting against windmills.
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To organize an April Fools prank is nothing outrageous. To use UFOs in an April Fools story is nothing outrageous either, at least, I find it more funny than outrageous.
But there are some small things to note.
First of all, FR3 TV already told us a UFOP story recently. The thing that seemed to have moved them a lot was only a party balloon in the shape of a children comic character, and ufologists, not the TV, determined that and said so:
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Then, in this April's Fool prank, there is an entirely false assertion:
They write, "as for all the known images of UFOs, it is impossible to make out anything significant by enlarging."
This is entirely wrong!
There is a number of known images of UFOs where enlarging did show significant features. There is also a great number of UFO photographs where there is not even need for enlargement to make them "significant", whether indicative of a commonplace explanation or of the lack of commonplace explanation.
To reduce the controversy around UFO images to a matter of "impossibility of enlargement of all UFO images" does not have any truth in it, and should be understood by the readers of this prank as part of the prank.
But it never stops...
