Dana Scully is famous for her scientific, rational explanations for the events in The X Files.
She often has one. Usually she has many.
Sometimes she is right, more often she is wrong.

Here is just a selection of what have become known as SRE's - Scully's Rational Explanations...

|| Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | Season 5 | Season 6 ||

Season One

"Pilot": The abductees were members of a cult.

"Deep Throat": Budahas's memory loss was "selective amnesia". The UFOs are "lasers reflecting off the clouds".

"Squeeze": A "convulated genetics theory".

"Conduit": Kevin's binary drawings were a "statistical aberration".

"Ghost in the Machine": It was all done by Wilczek.

"Ice": The physicists killed themselves due to "severe isolation distress."

"Space": Colonel Belt's possession was severe dementia.

"Fallen Angel": Max Fenig was a "delusional schizophrenic".

"Beyond the Sea": Scully's visions of her father were "grief symptoms".

"Genderbender": Transvestites.

"Lazarus": Packed full of SREs, highlights were ""post-trauma psychosis", "stress", "instrument malfunction", "some sort of dissociative hallucinatory activity" and "stimulation of the temporal robe".

"EBE": The trucker shot at a mountain lion and that old classic, "the lights he saw were swamp gas".

"Shapes": One of my personal faves: the enlarged teeth were "an abnormal development of calcium phosphate salts". And once again, there was a mountain lion.

"Little Green Men": An electrical storm wiped the tape.

"Duane Barry": Another favourite: Duane's implants were "shrapnel from Vietnam".

"Firewalker": Ever stuck for an SRE, use the old classic "post-traumatic stress".

"Excelsis Dei": The woman was raped by an elderly patient in a semi-schizophrenic state.

"Die Hand Die Verletzt": The falling toads were due to tornadoes in Massachusetts.

"Colony": The arsons are the work of militant pro-lifers.

"Fearful Symmetry": The cameras were of such poor quality that they couldn't pick out a grey elephant in the dark....

"The Calusari": The balloon was being moved by the wind, even though the wind was blowing the other way.

"Our Town": The scorch marks in the field were from illegal bonfires. So close...

"Paper Clip": Nazis.

"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose": Clyde is just a lucky guesser. Mulder agrees!

"The List": It's a conspiracy (yes!) against the prisoners & guards, with the accomplice on the loose.

"The Walk": Once again, post-traumatic stress, shell-shock, yadiyadiya...

"731": "There is no such thing as alien abduction."

"Revelations": Kevin wounded himself after abuse by his father. Religious stories are "hagiographic fabrications"

"War of the coprophages": The whole idea of alien life is "astronomically improbable" and the deaths were all from natural causes, (allergies, straining too hard on the toilet, all the usual causes of death)  and not actually from the roaches.

"Syzygy": Rumour panic.

"Grotesque": The jailed killer has an accomplice.

"Teso Dos Bichos": Do we have to go here? OK. Belack is the killer, lots of buildings have rats, the rat went into the car to keep warm, Mulder may have been drinking the Jahe (yah-hey) stuff.

"Hell Money": Ritual Triad killings.

"Jose Chungs "From Outer Space"": The girl is suffering from stress and sexual trauma. The hypnotist is leading her on. It doesn't enhance memory. Mulder is *quote* "Nuts!" *end quote*.

"Avatar": Skinner is suffering from REM sleep disorder.

"Quagmire": Lake monsters are "folk tales born of a collective fear of the unknown". It's a busy lake. The fish ate one of the bodies. The man fell in while relieving himself.

"Wetwired": Amphetamine abuse, and too much watching TV (Take note, philes!)
 
 

"Home": The Peacocks raped and kept some girl until she gave birth.

"Unruhe": The film was out of date. The film was heat-damaged.

"The field where I died": Multiple personality Disorder. And she was right!

"Sanguinarium": Lack of sleep. Drugs. Medical malpractice.
 

More Season Four SREs coming soon.