Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell believes the earth has been visited by aliens from outer space. Not just once, but many times. In fact, I can only assume Dr. Mitchell is convinced that after traveling at least 30,000,000,000,000 miles through space at near the speed of light one of those alien craft had a pilot so amazingly incompetent that he/she/it crashed their super duper little flying saucer straight into planet earth. Where? Why at Roswell, of course. Maybe the poor little alien pilot fell asleep from exhaustion after dodging all those nasty asteroids, comets, and planetessimals and totally missed seeing our pale blue dot. Perhaps aliens really aren’t so intelligent after all.

Dr. Mitchell also believes the government covered up the Roswell crash and has been reverse engineering alien technology for nearly sixty years. Wow. I sure hope after sixty years we learned how to fix their navigation system. Put simply, Dr. Mitchell is a conspiracy theorist. Hmm....wait a minute! Don't conspiracy theorists claim that our going to the moon was a hoax? What does that say about Dr. Mitchell's credibility? While claiming to reveal to us the government’s dirty secrets about Roswell he is still perpetuating the idea he actually stepped on the moon.

If a man who walked on the moon believes in aliens why shouldn't you? After all he is famous. He was an astronaut.  As one person put it, "I know people have had there [sic] doubts about UFOs and aliens but what he is saying can't be a lie. He is a man who has been [sic] outer space in his life. Who knows what he has seen." Well we do know one thing Dr. Mitchell has not seen, and that is any alien beings. The person quoted above has failed realize that his statement is a logical fallacy called “argumentum ad verecundiam.” It is an argument from authority or respect. Fortunately for critical thinkers it does not matter who Dr. Mitchell is. Critical thinkers require something called evidence, and that is one thing that Dr. Mitchell does not have.