The latest flap over drone sightings in New Jersey and other states in the North East appears to be – essentially nothing. Or rather, it’s a classic example of a mass panic. There are reports of “unusual” drone activity, which prompts people to look for drones, which results in people seeing drones or drone-like objects and therefore reporting them, leading to more drone sightings. Lather, rinse, repeat. The news media happily gets involved to maximize the sensationalism of the non-event. Federal agencies eventually comment in a “nothing to see here” style that just fosters more speculation. UFO and other fringe groups confidently conclude that whatever is happening is just more evidence for whatever they already believed in.

I am not exempting myself from the cycle either. Skeptics are now part of the process, eventually explaining how the whole thing is a classic example of some phenomenon of human self-deception, failure of critical thinking skills, and just another sign of our dysfunctional media ecosystem. But I do think this is a healthy part of the media cycle. One of the roles that career skeptics play is to be the institutional memory for weird stuff like this. We can put such events rapidly into perspective because we have studied the history and likely been through numerous such events before.

Before I get to that bigger picture, here is a quick recap. In November there were sightings in New Jersey of “mysterious” drone activity. I don’t know exactly what made them mysterious, but it lead to numerous reportings of other drone sightings. Some of those sightings were close to a military base, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, and some were concerned of a security threat. Even without the UFO/UAP angle, there is concern about foreign powers using drones for spying or potentially as a military threat. This is perhaps enhanced by all the reporting of the major role that drones are playing in the Russian-Ukraine war. Some towns in Southern New Jersey have banned the use of drones temporarily, and the FAA has also restricted some use.

A month after the first sightings Federal officials have stated that the sightings that have been investigated have all turned out to be drones, planes mistaken for drones, and even stars mistaken for drones. None have turned out to be anything mysterious or nefarious. So the drones, it turns out, are mostly drones.

Also in November (which may or may not be related) a CT police officer came forward and reported a “UFO” sighting he had in 2022. Local news helpfully created a “reenactment” of the encounter (to accompany their breathless reporting), which is frankly ridiculous. The officer, Robert Klein, did capture the encounter on his smart phone video. The video shows – a hovering light in the distance. That is all – 100% consistent with a drone.

So here’s the bigger picture – as technology evolves, so does sightings to match that technology. Popular expectations also match the sightings. Around the turn of the century it was anticipated that someone would invent a flying machine, so there were lots of false sightings of such machines. After the first “flying saucer” was reported in 1947, UFO sightings often looked like flying saucers. As military aircraft increased in number and capability, sightings would track along with them, being more common near military air bases. When ultralight aircraft became a thing, people reported UFOs of silent floating craft (I saw one myself and was perplexed until I read in the news what it was). As rocket launches become more common, so do sightings of rocket launches mistaken for “UFOs”. There was the floating candle flap from over a decade ago – suddenly many people were releasing floating candles for celebrations, and people were reporting floating candle “UFOs”.

And now we are seeing a dramatic increase in drone activity.  Drones are getting better, cheaper, and more common, so we should be having more drone sightings. This is not a mystery.

Interestingly there is one technological development that does not lead to more sightings but does lead to more evidence – smart phones. Most people are now walking around all the time with a camera and video. Just like with the CT cop, we not only have his sensational report but an accompanying video. What does this dramatic increase in photo and video evidence show? Mundane objects and blurry nothings. What do they not show? Unambiguous alien spacecraft. This is the point at which alien true-believers insert some form of special pleading to explain away the lack of objective evidence.

This pattern, of sightings tracking with technology, goes beyond alien activity. We see the same thing with ghost photos. It turns out that the specific way in which ghosts manifest on photographic film is highly dependent on camera technology. What we are actually seeing is different kinds of camera artifacts resulting from specific camera technology, and those artifacts being interpreted as ghosts or something paranormal. So back in the day when it was possible to accidentally create a double-exposure, we had lots of double-exposure ghosts. Those cameras that can create the “golden door” illusion because of their shutter created golden door phenomena. Those cameras with camera straps create camera strap ghosts. When high-powered flashes became common we started to see lots of flashback ghosts. Now we are seeing lots of AI generated fakes.

All of this is why it is important to study and understand history. Often those enamored of the paranormal or the notion of aliens are seeing the phenomenon in a tiny temporal bubble. It seems like this is all new and exciting, and major revelations are right around the corner. Of course it has seemed this way for decades, or even hundreds of years for some phenomena. Meanwhile it’s the same old thing. This was made obvious to me when I first read Sagan’s 1972 book, UFOs: A Scientific Debate. I read this three decades after it was first published – and virtually nothing had changed in the UFO community. It was deja vu all over again. I had the same reaction to the recent Pentagon UFO thing – same people selling the same crappy evidence and poor logic.

New cases are occasionally added, and as I said as the technology evolves so does some of the evidence. But what does not change is people, who are still making the same poor arguments based on flimsy evidence and dodgy logic.