I wanted to call the attention of readers to this informative and humorous post from Skeptophilia entitled, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Starseed.” The post is about the nonsensical new-age fantasy maintained by some people that they are actually extraterrestrials in human guise. The post is especially adept at making two items clear: (1) the deeply flawed and self-delusional logic that convinces these poor souls that they are really aliens; and (2) the contrived “research” on the part of people like Brad Steiger aimed at reinforcing the delusion (and selling books).
Granted, I don’t think all of Steiger’s work is this bogus. And to be fair, Steiger doesn’t seem to do research; rather, he “reports” things found somewhere (where?). But this material gets re-cast as though it were empirical, when the string of statistics drawn from his work in this post has absolutely no basis in empirical research. Without citations of actual studies or at least peer-reviewed article references, or URLs to lab reports for these “findings,” the enterprise is irresponsible. Less academically: it’s faked statistical BS that leads to reinforcing a false view of reality and, for these folks, themselves.
