ET's flown home – chased off by the internet?

[Ivan Seeking]

I had to post this.

ET's flown home – chased off by the internet
Ben Macintyre

The disappearance of flying saucers and little green men – and a shift in human credulity
Now the UFOs have almost vanished. Sure, you still get a few alien abductions, especially on New Year’s Eve, and diehard ufologists are still recording close encounters of the umpteenth kind. Since 1955 the National UFO Reporting Centre in Seattle has clocked 125,000 reports of sightings. But in recent years the numbers have dropped dramatically. [continued]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2111848,00.html

So I did a little check on the National UFO reporting center's database.
http://www.ufocenter.com/

Year Reports
2006 [to date] 448
2005 3999
2004 3829
2003 3363
2002 2954
2001 2817
2000 2420
1999 2301
1998 1420
1997 980
1996 674
1995 1122
1994 274
1993 214
1992 169
1990 150
1989 161
1988 152
1987 129
1986 135
...

Or, try a google of "UFO Reports" - 269,000 hits. So even if the reporting rate has decreased for any particular UFO group, the number of groups tracking this has increased tremendously since the advent of the internet.

I guess the author hasn't talked with the half dozen cops who chased a UFO all around Highland Illinois a few years ago. But I do think that the internet has helped to show that the 90-95% of all reports that we have always known to be explainable, are just that. The only surprise seems to be for the debunkers.

 

[scott1]

1997 980

Make that 981 I saw a UFO in that year but never reported just told few friends.But I didn't report or anything

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The interesting thing is that although only 1:20 to 1:10 reports turn out to be interesting, for decades surveys have shown that only about 1:10 people report [what they believe to be] UFO sighthings.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

He said 43 sightings were reported in 2005 compared to 112 the year before.

“We’re [Ontario area] way down,” Rutkowski said. “But despite that, [Canada] recorded its second-highest number of sightings in a single year.”

He said Canadians reported 769 sightings overall—a slight drop from 882 the year before.[continued]

http://www.fftimes.com/index.php/6/2006-04-06/24991