Here is a rundown of the top stories about anomalies, pseudoscience, paranormal and the mysterious from the past week courtesy of Doubtful News.
Whoa. It was a busy week. The media did a good bit of mystery mongering this week.
These strange red lights were seen in a Washington neighborhood and published in the local paper. Interesting that they correspond exactly to a hoax smart phone app. But the paper concludes it's military exercises.
A Buffalo area newspaper reports on ice holes that appeared in a private pond. And, they make a big deal about it when it's really not a big deal. I try to tell people that but they would rather it remain mysterious. Such is the life of skeptics.
A strange white animal crawls out of the woods and dies under a porch in Maine. One biologist retrieves the carcass and makes a curious discovery.
A woman reports what looks like a primate in a U.K. park.
And, there was much ado about nothing as this hoax UFO memo gets lots of attention in the FBI archives. More than it deserves, really.
The media really wanted this to be more than just cat chasing dogs. So, as is customary, the chupacabra was invoked. Really, folks, dogs can damage your BMW worse than a mythical creature.
We also heard about a bomb found in a squid and eyeballs found in the trash.
Watch out for the Pacific Northwest's version of Roswell to grow in popularity.
Irony alert of the week: People who have never found Bigfoot produce a book calling Finding Bigfoot.
In the past few weeks there has been a dust-up about the quality of TED speakers. TED is a platform for ideas where speakers have their 15 minute talks recorded and placed on the web. Local TED events may be endorsed by the TED brand but the West Hollywood event lost its TED affiliation due to the very non-scientific topics presented at the event.
Speaking of psuedoscience, what do archaeologists do when faced with "bad archaeology"? Should they ignored it as they have typically done or should they speak out?
What do we do about exploitative television? The Biography channel has in the works a new show about children who are reincarnated. Yes, it sounds that bad.
Because of Holy Week, the Shroud of Turin was on display in more ways than one this past week. Publicity was heaped upon it due to a new book that once again flies in the face of the scientific consensus and purports to say the shroud was of the age of Jesus.
A tragic story of a woman who chose natural childbirth with the help of a naturopath results in a harrowing delivery and a child with brain damage.
Another new study shows that there is no increased autism risk from childhood vaccines. Can we put this myth to rest now?
Finally, digital memory cards are hardy little buggers. One survived a very long journey at sea and still held the owners snapshots. Thanks to the internet, the memories were preserved.
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Sharon Hill runs Doubtful News, a unique feed of news stories about the paranormal, pseudoscience, the weird and the unexplained with questioning commentary.