NEW VERSION IS HERE

Journalists need to check their sources and should not dramatize "doomsday stories". If they must run them (as for 2012), they should make it clear if there is no scientific support. They should not publish non noteworthy amateur doomsday videos at all.

This was prompted by a story that got widespread coverage during the "silly season" here in the UK, publicizing an amateur video on youtube. It describes "all the stars falling from the sky" and other events of Armageddon "forecast" for 29th July 2015. The Telegraph dramatized it with a clock counting down the hours and minutes left before the world ended according to the video. Many people were extremely anxious, and scared that we'd all die when the timer reached zero.

Why is this important?

I am an author of online articles debunking Nibiru and other non scientific apocalyptic news stories. I got many pm's and comments from anxious vulnerable people after the Telegraph article, who thought we were all going to diel.The NASA scientist David Morrison, who fielded "Ask an astrobiologist" up to his retirement in 2012 coined the word "cosmophobia" for people who suffer extreme anxiety as a result of stories like this. We need to remember that these stories can be read by anyone including young teenagers, people with learning difficulties, and many who have flunked physics at school. They have no way to judge statements about "all the stars falling from the sky" etc in a scientific way.

SCARED PEOPLE AND SUICIDES

Incredible as it may seem to authors of these "silly season" type stories, there are many ordinary people who take such things deadly seriously. They are deeply concerned about things that sound utterly bizarre to astronomers, such as the Earth flipping upside down, and planets or solar systems flying past Earth or impacting it in the near future which they think are only known to NASA and kept secret from everyone else. They also are concerned, that we have a dangerous second sun next to the sun we all know about, visible on rare occasions at sunrise or sunset, and for this last story, that all the stars will fall from the sky.

To judge by the comments and pms I get, some of them are so anxious they can't sleep and worry about such things day and night. They try to calm down but when they go online they see yet another story about a near future Doomsday and start panicking again. Some have to leave their jobs because of anxiety, and others are suicidal. There is at least one confirmed suicide caused by the 2012 scare and David Morrison says that anecdotally he was told of several more.

I don't think the journalists can be aware of the impact their articles can have. Something has to be done about this form of reporting. This is mainly to raise awareness. If you have ideas of places to send this petition, I welcome suggestions! For more about the story that inspired this campaign and to read some of the comments by people who are scared by such things, see my "World Did NOT End On 29th July! AWFUL "Silly Season" Story - Journalists Please Be More Responsible"" and other related articles. The messages I get via pm are similar. Also if anyone reading this is scared, please see that article where I explain with simple arguments why none of those things are possible, and do comment there if you have any questions.

Since I wrote the first of these Doomsday debunking articles last autumn I've had hundreds of comments on the articles by very scared and occasionally suicidal people, increasing to many per day at the height of these scares, and I've had many pm's about it as well. Most of you reading this won't realize it, but there have been four major scares since then (for those who notice them) - September 2015, before Christmas 2015 (when I got messages from people asking if there was any point in preparing for Christmas as we would all be dead), spring 2016, and now, July 2016. I'm already getting messages about yet more separate "predictions" for August, September and October of this year.

The video for the Telegraph article was not uploaded by anyone of note. Indeed it was an unauthorized copy re-uploaded with a date added to it, and denounced by the original author. The video has racked up over six million views as a result of this free publicity and has probably earned its author thousands of dollars through ad revenue.

NEED FOR ACTIVE DEBUNKING BY THE MEDIA

There is also a need for more debunking to counteract all this publicity in the papers. There are many excellent debunking articles and videos from 2012 by Phil Plait (of "Bad Astronomy" fame), David Morrison (now retired, senior NASA astrobiologist and expert on asteroid impacts and former head of the Sagan institute) , and several others - but I get scared people asking me, who is debunking these stories now? Of course the ideas are still nonsense, the 2012 debunking articles are still valid, and changing the date makes no difference. But these are people who can't evaluate them. They are impressed by the large number of recent media stories promoting these ideas, and an almost complete lack of any stories debunking them, which creates the very false impression that the majority opinion is that these stories are true.

The only debunking material I can point to since 2012 (apart from my own articles) are the answers by scientists on Quora, and the facebook page dazzthecameraman. If you are a journalist, please consider writing a debunking article instead of an article that publicizes these ideas. If you don't have a strong scientific background, any astronomer can help you write it.

The image associated with this campaign shows a drawing of the planets orbiting the Sun, by Copernicus, which marked the beginning of modern astronomy. Many readers of the articles will not be familiar with many of the details of modern astronomy, and as a result are especially vulnerable to believing these stories.