Just wake me when Jeff Goldblum gets to checkmate...

I'm not a scientist or a science reporter, but doesn't one traditionally wait until a major discovery has been made before announcing said discovery? I ask because Science and Technology Daily, a state-run Chinese tech news outlet, reported on researchers who detected alien signals and then took the story down because they jumped the gun and consensus among the worlds scientific community is basically naw. 

"Uh, naw. Naw, that's not real."

-Scientists

BNU also announced that they've next year's
College Basketball Team championship title.

Yup, no aliens. The researchers who picked up the signals were comprised of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, UC Berkley, and Bejing Normal University and right there we probably should have known. BNU, you might recall, is the same university who ran with a story earlier this month about how its researchers--using sophisticated gambling math--predicted that there were definitely forty-two thousand alien civilizations in the galaxy right now. Or possibly one hundred and eleven. Or any number, who even knows?

Print Media: yesterday's news, today!

Becuase that's a huge range and at some point you might as well say that there are between zero and a ka-gillion aliens species out there and the point is that maybe they should think about having something a little more solid before getting our hopes up, you know? Oh well, in the scientists' defense, researcher Zhang Tongjie did say that the signals picked up by the world's largest radio telescope were likely terrestrial and not extra terrestrial in origin, so I guess this is just the newspaper trying to...well, not sell newspapers, this is 2022, get clicks?

China's Sky Eye radio telescope
seen here, not detecting aliens.

"The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed and ruled out. This may be a long process."

-Zhang Tongjie, chief scientist of China's 

equivalent of SETI, saying the thing 

they probably should have led with

Ok, maybe BNU is off the hook this time, and this was all just overly enthusiastic reporting, but c'mon.

Upheaval, panic, and chaos different
from the kind we're used to, that is...

I know journalism is dead, but being first to report that aliens exist isn't nearly as important as being right about it, you know? Hard proof that we are not alone in the universe would be huge, world-changing news and force us to re-evaluate everything. We can't even begin to imagine the implications of an advanced alien civilization or its effect on our own world. It could cause panic, political and economic upheaval, just absolute chaos. There's just no precedent.

So I guess the point is maybe don't just run with bold claims like "Hey, we picked up transmissions from aliens!" unless there's proof. Something concrete. Like, plans for a space ship or a countdown to our annihilation. Something, and not you know, nothing. 

Unless space ships are taking up positions over
 recognizable landmarks, I don't want to hear it.