Reply #89: You miss the point

[skepticscott]

As I stated in my previous post, even though past debunking doesn't necessarily bear on the truth of present and future claims it can certainly gives a reasonable person good cause to doubt whether a phenomenon is worth spending their time investigating. Just because people have admitted faking number photographs, footprints and films of things like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster doesn't PROVE that those creatures don't actually exist, but a critical thinker is justified in arguing that the likelihood is too low to justify camping out with a video camera waiting for them to appear. Just because there is no credible physical evidence (after tens of thousand of reports) that alien spacecraft have visited earth and kidnapped millions of earthlings doesn't mean the next light in the sky won't be a true extraterrestrial, but I'd frankly rather spend my time elsewhere until something more tangible comes along.

Would it be important if we actually did find evidence of alien visitation? Sure. It would also be important if we found a cure for diabetes, or developed a working fusion power plant, or any of a thousand other worthwhile things. Dismissiveness is not due to lack of curiosity, but to lack of time and lack of evidence that there's something there worth investigating.