Ok, I admit it. I like watching Ancient Aliens (It’s my fall asleep to show). Partly for the giggles, and partly bc I often think to myself: “That would make a cool Sci-Fi movie”. FTR: I don’t believe any of it.
My question is: These Professors and other professionals that show up on the show to provide commentary; Aren’t they worried about damaging their careers or reputations?
No way in hell would I agree to go on that show if I held such an esteemed position.
I know that Dr. Michio Kaku has been on Ancient Aliens and on some Art Bell show. I haven’t seen where it’s hurt his reputation any. (I also haven’t seen those shows, so I don’t know what he said.)
I don’t think Tsoukalos has any reputation outside the fringe circles.
ETA: here’s a link to one of Kaku’s talks on ETs. The ending is awesome!
Academic experts are not immune from poor judgement or having career-wrecking brain explosions or being seduced by interviewers into corners from they can’t escape.
A common thing is to offer opinions way outside your field with no idea that just because you have this body of knowledge, it gives you no capacity to dabble in another field. Ancient Mystery type programs often have people who are eminent but in something else, or people who have a PhD, but in something else.
My favourite is the late Barry Fell, eminent Harvard marine biologist but writer of complete garbage on ancient migrations and deciphering ancient languages. Just on factual and evidentiary grounds, leaving aside the latent racism and bizarre historical revisionism, his work can be completely dismissed but the allure of quoting a Harvard professor to underpin your own unsupported and loopy ideas sees his name endure.
A friend of mine has been on many episodes of Ancient Aliens, with the (in my opinion, misguided) notion that they could get some education in with a demographic that they wouldn’t otherwise reach. I don’t think that idea is properly factoring in the amount of cutting and editing that happens between the recording and the broadcast.
Highly-educated people are not immune to believing utterly wack things.
My aunt is highly educated, and a Flat-Earther and 9/11 Truther. My highly-educated mom thinks the Moderna vaccine turns you into a human magnet and metal spoons will stick to your skin. There is no shortage of highly-educated folks who ascribe to QAnon. Most of the Heaven’s Gate cult members were highly educated; same for Falun Gong.
What damage do you envision they would suffer? If they present their own work there and their work is bonkers, then they aren’t adding much damage. If they present reasonable arguments in the face of nonsense, there might be some who think they should have just said no to appear, but they aren’t going to be disinvited to conferences or have unrelated papers rejected.
I have worked with pharmacists who did not know that:
Don’t forget about Linus Pauling and some of his “research” into vitamin C. I remember when he said that vitamin C killed the AIDS virus in a test tube, and another scientist said, “I could whizz into this test tube, and it would probably kill the AIDS virus.”
Who knows - some of them may have gone on “Ancient Aliens” to get their names exposed? Or even as satire?
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[Moderating]
@74westy , modifying the contents of a direct marked quote like that is not allowed on this message board. You’ve been around here for long enough to know that. If you want to post a link in response to a quote, put the link outside of the quote tags.
Thanks. Will do.
RationalWiki calls this phenomena Inverse stopped clock–a a situation in which someone who is usually logical, rational, or correct does or believes something idiotic or crazy.
Main article here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Inverse_stopped_clock
Older version with list of “examples”: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Inverse_stopped_clock&diff=2301942&oldid=2301941
In at least some cases, there is active misrepresentation about what the documentary is about, combined with editing to make them say what they wanted them to say. I remember watching some expose on how certain scientists were tricked into being involved in a flat earth documentary. I believe the thing the scientists talked about was real, but it was being used entirely incorrectly to prove the flat earth.
I also know there are just actors who just saw a job and didn’t know what it was about. I remember Kate Mulgrew disavowing something she was on.
If I ever believed these people honestly believe what they are selling, I don’t any longer.
I have a good friend of mine who’s a fairly well respected historian, and he’s been on a couple of those sorts of shows earlier in his career. Apparently it pays well for not a lot of work. He’s also been featured on Fox News talking about Bowe Bergdahl about 7 years ago in a more serious capacity.
Anyway, I think that the general attitude is more that their publications and research will do the talking, not whatever other stuff they do to pay the bills. My buddy is something of an authority on robotics in warfare- drones, AI, cyberwarfare, etc… has whatever the equivalent of tenure is within the military educational system, and is a senior fellow at a think tank.
So apparently it didn’t dent his career too bad. However, those of us who know him from undergrad still get a big laugh out of the fact that one of his Nat Geo channel appearances caused him to be quoted out of context and appear on a bunch of “The Government knows about aliens!” conspiracy theorist websites as “proof”. Naturally we give him a hard time about it whenever we can.
I find it both amusing and sad when somebody is introduced as a ‘leading expert’ on a subject where there is no evidence (ghosts, aliens, Bigfoot etc.)
How did they get their ‘reputation’? 
Opinionating to people wanting to hear confirmation of what they already believe leads to publicity and recognition, which leads to requests for opinions … and so on, in a virtuous [?] circle.
If you’re lucky, there is potential to monetize it through books and lecture tours, but that is probably only open to the top echelon. Most of these people have day jobs which occasionally draw them into awkward positions, such as Young Earth Creationists who are also geologists needing to talk about billion year old rocks having to come up with all manner of additional bridging arguments and secondary explanations why the data don’t fit their models the way they’d like.
People who like and consume pseudoarchaeology such as on Ancient Aliens usually are fascinated by the narratives and ‘what if …’ speculation woven by these people, but are also often strongly drawn by the underlying narratives like conspiracist thinking, that expertise is over-rated and disguises self-interest, racist historical narratives aimed at undermining uppity indigenous affirmations that they were not wiped out, and all that sort of stuff.
Some of the experts who venture into taking on these roles as fringe pundits buy into these ideological messages, but many are simply drawn by the allure of being listened to and mistaking attention for credibility.
I’m thinking that ship has long sailed by the time they agree to appear on the show.
I would at least expect an “expert” on say UFOs to be well read on the subject and know about significant sightings in the past.
A basic question to ask a UFO “expert” so see if they know what they are talking about:
How did the term “flying saucers” come about?
If they can’t answer that they are probably not that well informed on the subject because it originated from the one of the first and most famous UFO sightings in modern history.
There are entire fields that study things that we know aren’t true. What we study is people: the psychological and cultural elements that allow people to take the undeniable fact of unidentified objects and turn them into UFOs, complete with alien abduction narratives. Seeing how these cultural aspects develop over time is useful, and the people who study that have had a lot to contribute in terms of the recent embrace of conspiracy theories. For example, see ECU professor discusses COVID-19 conspiracies following book release (the author did not, as far as I know, ever appear on Ancient Aliens, though).
That’s fair enough. What I don’t like are so-called ‘experts’ who have literally no evidence to examine, yet earn an income preying on gullible folk.