His personal bias, he states, is that 1991 VG is really a man-made artificial object. But if it was, he concludes, then it's observation was really an incredible fluke. All in all, it's quite an amazing piece of work. But I can't help but wonder if he's being serious. After all, it does appears in an April issue.
Nobody likes to be a fool.
On the other hand, Steel is not the kind of scientist who pulls his punches. Steel doesn't expect this hypothesis to be warmly welcomed by anthropologists and antiquarians. Nor will SETI astronomers take kindly to the notion that an alien probe may have performed a reconnaissance mission of Earth in 1991. Of course, human-built space probes have done just that in our solar system for the past quarter century.