Rumors surfaced on Sunday via the tabloid Daily Star that legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin and three of his peers passed lie-detector tests claiming they saw a UFO. The story even popped up in more reputable outlets such as MSN and International Business Times.
U.K.’s more well-known tabloid The Sun (along with the Mirror—see update) also ran the story, citing the Daily Star’s report. Dozens of sketchy websites copy-and-pasted the original story prompting Facebook users to flag the claim as fake news.
But tabloids and fake news websites pushing false information is business as usual. What’s strange about this story is how quickly it made it to more legitimate outlets.
“Buzz Aldrin passes ‘lie detector’ on claims that Apollo astronauts saw UFOs,” the headline from IBT and MSN stated. Not only is the original report eight years old, but the Daily Star gets several key facts wildly wrong in its Sunday “exclusive.”
First, the article claims that “Aldrin has always maintained he spotted a UFO on the way to the moon, saying: ‘There was something out there that was close enough to be observed, sort of L-shaped.’”
In fact, Aldrin has denied that he saw any sort of alien UFO which the article claims (as he reiterated during a 2014 AMA on Reddit) and says he never took a lie-detector test.
Aldrin’s spokesman told Australian-based Pedestrian and Snopes the story was certainly incorrect. “Buzz has always been very clear that he never saw any UFO’s or anything to indicate we’ve been contacted by alien life,” the spokesman told Snopes. “So this is someone just trying to capitalize on using his name to get press.”
(Note: This is not the first time someone has used Aldrin’s name to gin up controversy. With that in mind, TWS Fact Check would like to warn the Daily Star of Buzz’s mean right-hook.)
Secondly, the Daily Star claims that the technology used to analyze Aldrin’s statements is “top-secret” and “could soon replace those used by the FBI.”
TWS Fact Check reached out to Sound Health Options, the website affiliated with the Institute of BioAcoustic Biology, who directed us to a 2010 Word doc from Sharry Edwards of Sound Health (whom the Daily Star cites in its report).
The “complex computer analysis” that is “still top-secret” is actually available for free online and has been for quite some time.
Sound Health’s “NanoVoice” claims to analyze your voice and reveal “your authentic SELF.” Edwards used the NanoVoice to analyze an interview with Aldrin, in which he discussed seeing something during his time in space which he could not quite identify.
“There was something out there that, uh, was close enough to be observed and what could it be?” Aldrin said in the 2005 interview with the Science Channel. “Mike decided he thought he could see it in the telescope and he was able to do that and when it was in one position, that had a series of ellipses, but when you made it real sharp it was sort of L shaped. That didn’t tell us very much.”
From analyzing this interview, Edwards claimed that “[Aldrin] wants his statements about his seeing a UFO to be believed.”
Aldrin addressed his statement during a 2014 “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit when asked what he saw on his mission to the Moon:
He concluded by stating that “it was not an alien. Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence..There may be aliens in our Milky Way galaxy, and there are billions of other galaxies.”
In short, Aldrin did not submit himself to a lie-detector test and does not believe he saw an alien UFO. The test was done in 2010 by an organization that claims “the state of your health can be found in the sounds of YOUR voice,” not “top secret” lie-detecting technology.
