The most disturbing thing about what happened to Alexander Wendt’s TEDx video this week is that the curators of the TED Talks brand aren’t stupid. Dial up any of the presentations in their voluminous online collection and you’re going to learn something, from international trailblazers like Jane Goodall and Bill Gates, or up-and-coming unknowns with big and provocative ideas.
But after TEDx “flagged” Wendt’s 12-minute lecture “Wanted: A Science of UFOs” even as it reluctantly, belatedly, posted the clip Tuesday on YouTube, you have to wonder if, like SETI’s Seth Shostak, these normally judicious arbiters of what progress is and is not haven’t disqualified themselves from the most astonishing conversation of our age. “Claims made in this talk,” they warned in the video cutlines, “only represent the speaker’s personal understanding of UFOs which are not corroborated by scientific evidence.”
Did you get that? The judges just pleaded guilty. I’m smelling a trend.\
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