User talk:UKTab

May 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute to the encyclopedia, but when you add or change content, as you did to the article Rod (paranormal), please cite a reliable source for the content of your edit. This is particularly important when adding or changing any facts or figures and helps maintain our policy of verifiability. Take a look at Wikipedia:Citing sources for information about how to cite sources and the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. LuckyLouie (talk) 18:31, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi LuckyLouie

From what I can gather, an article is allowed to stay in wikipedia if you just throw in some outside references to physical works, whether they're factual or not?

Surely the original author should have to prove 100% that what they're typing are facts. Just quoting someone elses references shouldn't be enough to start a wiki page.

In the same manner, I referenced a single youtube video (out of tens that I could have chosen) which disproves everything the original article has stated (ie that 'rods' are a basically an illusion caused by high-speed long exposure camera lenses). The very fact that military pilots have captured 'rods' on standard aircraft chase-cameras at altitudes higher than any insect can reach, and at speeds greater than any flying creature known to man can attain, renders the original wiki page on this subject useless.

All I added were a few words, in order to show that the page was using 'evidence' from less-than-appropriate sources. Reference 1 - The Skeptic's Dictionary. This site does not have any evidence of its own. Instead, it relies on quotes from Doug Yanega, an entomologist - someone who studies insects, NOT films. Yes, he may have filmed a moth which, using a high-speed shutter looked only slightly like the rods in the professional films, but that's as far as he went into it. Refence 2 - A badly translated, no fact at all, web page written by someone who works in the pharmaceutical industry. Again, not totally qualified to state facts about high-speed films. Reference 3 - Once again, the 'facts' are just theories found in a single paragraph of a web page that is just ranting against ufologists. i.e. no film experts to be found anywhere there. Reference 4 - The BBC film clearly shows an object flying under the arched bridge at high speed. If you could watch every news film in history that had birds in it, you'd watch them and you say "Hey, a bird just flew past" because you would see the wings flapping, or they'd be going past slow enough to be able to see they were birds. That object was going too fast to be a bird, and was too large to be an insect. Judging the scale of the object to the bridge, that would have to be the largest flying insect in the world. Funny how the close up stops before you see it pass under the bridge. That would have given people a better idea of the speed and size of that thing! I've watched the video many times, and (apart from being too big) if it was an insect as stated on the wiki page, why did it disappear from view just after it passed under the bridge ? Insects don't, but 'rods' do. Reference 5 - This reference is just a question asked by a member of the public, answered by a non-qualified person running an anti-ufo website! With no facts to back him up, the man responds with nothing but his own beliefs.

Every day, we find new creatures in the sea, so why not in the air ? Our eyes can only see at certain speeds and within a limited range of the light spectrum. Technology allows us to capture things that we cannot normally see. With so many new species being discovered every year, you have to agree that there is a greater argument for these rods being real, than not.

Yours,

uktab

The short answer is, Wikipedia gives precedence to "the establishment" view on everything, especially in matters of science. There's more at WP:FRINGE. As to 'why some sources are reliable and others are not' - that is made clear at WP:RS. - LuckyLouie (talk) 23:32, 25 May 2010 (UTC)