If you have no faith in science, which is based on evidence, experiment and reason, what DO you put your faith in? I can't think of any other field of philosophical enquiry that puts such effort into establishing the truth, whatever that might be.

For me, there's a world of difference between genuine scientific investigation and the current scientific establishment. Witness Robert Winston's misguided and ill-informed comments on the paranormal last year.

To jump back a few comments (sorry!) I agree that an awful lot of UFOs get sighted over scarcely populated areas. Any possibility that light pollution plays a role in this? I can see a few stars over my home, but UFOs are almost certain to be planes circling the airport.

Well, this is becoming quite philosophic, ain't it? I won't delve in the personal part but there's a "paranormal" connection.
I won't name the persons but I strongly suspect two otherwise respectable researchers from the physics department of a well-known university of having tampered with a "ghost photograph" or, at very least, not to have told the whole story. I am not saying that they "debunked" the aforementioned photograph (actually it's an IR image) but quite the contrary. And I am stopping there.
Another problem is how researchers present themselves to the public. This Winter I attended a UFO seminary and one of the speakers acted in front of the crowd like your average "TV debunker". Need I say more? I had the occasion to talk to him after the symposium and, as he recognized me as be more informed than the classic UFO enthusiast, we had a very interesting conversation about advanced physics, the French GEPAN program and some "very impressive" cases. I regret to this day of not asking him a question "why did you act that way in front of people? Why are you not talking openly about this?". I walked away with the firm impression that he was a secret believer (he surely believes in little green men WAY more than I do) but he somehow felt compelled by his status to act like someone would expect a "serious researcher" to act. And that's the core of the problem.

Surely a problem with peer-reviewed journals is the possibility that they only represent the consensus of a dominant group within that branch of science?
When a postgraduate at uni I found it quite revealing how certain "fashionable" topics seemed to be more heavily covered in the leading journals than others. I certainly wouldn't use this as a basis to either reject peer-based journals, or conversely to claim "fringe" claims are widely and deliberately marginalised, but we do have to be very careful about how we treat the mainstream view of any discipline.

Believe it or not that's just what I meant (or at very least they turned a blind eye on the forgers themselves).

I read Jenny Randles in Fortean Times and she, as I am, are still fed up with the media loving a good mystery but not interested in solutions - UFO's fill the skies, a few more copies of the paper are sold featuring tales from readers, but any explanation that the sighting was of chinese lanterns isn't interesting so myths are perpetrated. Suddenly Britain is in a big wave of UFO's. Luckily however, this may spur on some genuinely strange sightings - maybe things will get wierder.

As I pointed out in the past a light in the sky, even if we cannot exactly point to its origins, means absolutely nothing.
It can be a star, a planet, a flare, a Chinese wedding lantern, an airplane, a secret flying machine, an alien spacecraft, a space-time anomaly, an angel carrying an oil lamp...
But this light can become interesting if it behaves in a way which becomes very hard to explain using known physical phenomena. Chinese wedding lanterns and ballons will behave pretty much naturally, being born by wind currents. But as you rightly pointed out nobody seems seriously interested in doing any serious research anymore, it's just the "shock value" that counts. Add the fact that the press is only interested in bringing out the wide-eyed witness and the sneering armchair skeptic and you'll see how far we get.