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This conspiracy goes deeper than you thought. Fox Mulder, high priest of UFO conspiracy theory, was a triple agent all along. The faded poster always in shot during heated debates in Mulder's basement office proclaimed the fatal fallacy at the heart of the UFO creed: I Want To Believe'. If a belief is based on need, it is unlikely to be based on objective fact. Or, as any science student will confirm, if a scientist sets out to prove a predetermined theory, it is all too tempting for them to embrace facts that support that theory and jettison the rest.

The very term UFO has been abused; an unidentified flying object is just that, rather than an interstellar voyager which must be knowingly referred to as a UFO in case The Man is tapping our calls. UFO theorists tend to be creative and sensitive people, so sensitive that they're afraid of cutting themselves on Occam's Razor. To paraphrase that principle, to stand any chance of being truthful, a theory should dispense with as many far flung or bizarre assumptions as possible. It is one thing to see strange lights in the sky; it is an outrageous leap to suppose that because we can't explain them they must be extra-terrestrial tourists.

Not that extra-terrestrial visits are impossible; they are just wildly improbable compared to the mundane truth of most sightings. The list of suspects is long and distinguished: hallucination, collective or otherwise; weather balloons; satellites, falling or orbiting; aircraft of all shapes and sizes; atmospheric, magnetic and solar phenomena; meteorites; our own spacecraft. From time to time, a sighting will defy explanation, but that doesn't entitle us to pin a fantasy to it. For example, can we really presume to know everything about how our own atmosphere interacts with our solar system?

As for a military conspiracy, is there really anything strange or sinister about cutting edge military contractors not sharing their latest findings with the world? Secrecy in matters of defence technology is de rigueur and always has been. Some now familiar aeronautical marvels were once jealously guarded secrets whose outlandish appearance might have sparked all kinds of yarn-weaving before their public debut. The SR71 first flew more than forty years ago, the B2 more than twenty: military science doesn't stand still and doesn't shout about its achievements. Any public servant or defence contractor who signs the Official Secrets Act is in on the conspiracy, if you feel compelled to call it that.

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