Internet UFO Mystery

For several weeks. a debate has been raging across the Internet over a piece of video that purportedly shows a UFO over Haiti and the Dominican Republic "up close and personal," as ABC Sports used to say. The video is amazing. It is jaw-dropping. But is it real, or a hoax?

According to David Sams of the Los Angeles Times, it's an incredibly good hoax done as a sort of experiment by a professional animator in Paris who is working on a movie project. The animator's boss on the project confirmed to Sams that, yes, this guy was a genius, and he'd made the video and put it on the Internet, never realizing the uproar it would cause. He might be a genius in film production, this fellow Sams doesn't name in the article about this matter-- Sams refers to him by an e-mail address-- but the animator seems less than savvy about the world if he truly didn't realize what a stir such a clip would cause. Sams seems never to have spoken to this guy directly because the animator preferred to speak through a woman. There's nothing really wrong with that, but maybe it's a bit odd.

The bigger question posed by this incident is whether we can trust what we see on video, anymore. For several years, both UFO researchers and skeptics have pointed out that computer technology has become so good that it's becoming nearly impossible to separate inspired hoaxes from what could be the real thing. The UFO over Haiti may be a prime example of that difficulty.

Of course, the problem goes well beyond UFOs. If reality can be manipulated-- or created-- on video, the door is wide open to more serious misuse. The anonymous animator may have done everyone a service by reminding us to be careful about things open to being twisted to serve an agenda.