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The Ballads of Emma and James

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This is probably the single most serious issue, with the most potentially damaging implications, that has emerged from these developments. If Rainey's accusations are legitimate, the next step is determining when Hopkins began to fall prey to his own credulity. Did he screen potential subjects appropriately when compiling the research for Missing Time and then become lax later on? Has he ever screened appropriately, perhaps using the symbol alphabet he's supposed to be compiling? Or has this been a problem since the very beginning? As others have observed, these accusations are going to lead some to dismiss abductions entirely, or at the very least to expunge the contributions of Jacobs and Hopkins from the relevant literature. Determining if/when Hopkins started to allow himself to be deceived will be an important factor in deciding whether this extreme reactionary response to his work, and to abduction study in general, is justified or not.

That childish and irrational rant I got from Rainey, described in an earlier post, pretty much destroys her credibility, in my not-so-humble opinion. As far as "Emma Woods" is concerned, forget about the tapes, the context, and all the rest. Consider that she created a fake name to post on these forums and, I hear, she has done it elsewhere. That behavior damages her credibility seriously.

None of this means that Hopkins and Jacobs are innocent, or that there are not problems with their research methodology. But I think we should evaluate them on the merits, not on the basis of complaints from people who might in some respects be suspect in their own right.

---------- Post added at 08:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:28 AM ----------

This is probably the single most serious issue, with the most potentially damaging implications, that has emerged from these developments. If Rainey's accusations are legitimate, the next step is determining when Hopkins began to fall prey to his own credulity. Did he screen potential subjects appropriately when compiling the research for Missing Time and then become lax later on? Has he ever screened appropriately, perhaps using the symbol alphabet he's supposed to be compiling? Or has this been a problem since the very beginning? As others have observed, these accusations are going to lead some to dismiss abductions entirely, or at the very least to expunge the contributions of Jacobs and Hopkins from the relevant literature. Determining if/when Hopkins started to allow himself to be deceived will be an important factor in deciding whether this extreme reactionary response to his work, and to abduction study in general, is justified or not.

First, you must determine the big IF. Are these accusations partly true, completely true, or utterly false. You can't assume anything about Hopkins and Jacobs with regard to this controversy. I gather Jacobs may be expanding his response with more detail about where he believes "Woods" has falsified the context of those audio recordings. I'm not expecting a reply from Hopkins soon, because of his illness.

In all fairness to everyone, you have to listen to both sides. Then you decide which claims have the highest likelihood of being correct. This one-sided stuff doesn't make it for me, particularly as the result of my interactions with Rainey and "Woods," which make me very skeptical. But I am not rendering a final decision until the facts are in, and they're definitely not!
 
This is probably the single most serious issue, with the most potentially damaging implications, that has emerged from these developments. If Rainey's accusations are legitimate, the next step is determining when Hopkins began to fall prey to his own credulity. Did he screen potential subjects appropriately when compiling the research for Missing Time and then become lax later on? Has he ever screened appropriately, perhaps using the symbol alphabet he's supposed to be compiling? Or has this been a problem since the very beginning? As others have observed, these accusations are going to lead some to dismiss abductions entirely, or at the very least to expunge the contributions of Jacobs and Hopkins from the relevant literature. Determining if/when Hopkins started to allow himself to be deceived will be an important factor in deciding whether this extreme reactionary response to his work, and to abduction study in general, is justified or not.

Measuring The Prevalence of False Memories:
A New Interpretation of a "UFO Abduction Survey"

by Ted Goertzel, Rutgers University, Camden NJ 08102

Published in The Skeptical Inquirer18 (3): 266-272, 1994. (this is the original manuscript, prior to any editing done by the journal.)


Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum's (1992) assertion that 3.7 million Americans are suffering from "UFO abduction syndrome" has been criticized for methodological and logical deficiencies (Stires, 1993; Klass, 1993; Hall, Rodeghier & Johnson, 1993; Dawes and Mulford, 1993). In an attempt to remedy these deficiencies, my research methods class at Rutgers University in Camden undertook to replicate Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum's survey. Our questionnaire included the same items which they believed were indicators of UFO abduction, but added other items designed to place their items in a broader psychological context...

Despite the use of accidental sampling, the frequency of "unusual personal experiences" in our sample was close to that obtained by Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum's representative national sample. Table One gives the percentages from both samples for the five experiences which Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum used as their measure of UFO-abduction status. By their criteria of having suffered four or five of these experiences, 3.7% of our respondents qualified as "abductees." This number is quite high, especially considering the fact that the interviews were done in the suburbs of Philadelphia, an urban region which is not known for a high frequency of UFO sightings or abduction reports.

As Hall, Rodeghier and Johnson (1993: 132) note, Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum "apparently did not assess the reliability of this measure by using the customary formulas based on internal consistency, though it would be quite simple to do so." We applied these formulas to our data and achieved a reliability coefficient of .68 (coefficient alpha) for the abduction scale, which is quite acceptable for a five item scale. This, and other standard psychometric analyses we conducted, suggest that the scale is measuring a consistent phenomenon of some kind, but it tells us nothing about what it is that the scale is measuring...

Assessing the validity of a measure is much more difficult and is really the crux of the issue. By validity, we simply mean whether the measure measures what it is supposed to measure, in this case UFO abductions.

In this case, there are at least two alternative theories which can explain why the measure is internally consistent. One is that the respondents are consistently reporting on similar experiences as UFO abductees. The other is that the individuals who score high on the scale share a psychological tendency to have false memories...

To distinguish between these two theories, we included three items in our questionnaire which asked about "unusual personal experiences" which are not part of the "UFO abduction" syndrome as posited by Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum... Three of Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum's items... actually say nothing about UFOs, but can better be thought of as tapping a cryptomnesiac tendency to have "psychic" or "New Age" experiences (Ring, 1992). If all these thirteen items are combined in a single scale, we obtain a reliability coefficient of .75...

The factor analysis strongly supports the view that these thirteen items are a measure of cryptomnesia, not of UFO abduction...

This conclusion is also strongly supported by Dawes and Mulford's (1993) innovative study at the University of Oregon which demonstrated that the dual nature of Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum's first item, which asked about waking up paralyzed and about sensing a strange person in the room in the same item, actually led to an increased recollection of unusual phenomena as compared to a properly constructed single-issue survey item. Textbooks on questionnaire writing universally warn against "double-barreled" questions of this sort because they are known to give bad results. Dawes and Mulford confirm this and further offer the explanation that the combination of the two issues in one item causes a conjunction effect in memory which increases the likelihood of false recollection.

While the Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum scale is not a valid measure of UFO abduction, they have inadvertently constructed a useful measure of another phenomenon: the tendency to have false memories. Therefore, we will henceforth refer to this measure as the cryptomnesia scale...

Many of these findings are not surprising. David Jacobs (1992) has noted high stress levels and frequency of psychosomatic symptoms among "UFO abductees" which he attributes to the trauma of the abduction experience. The question here is one of distinguishing cause from effect - do the abductions cause the stress, or does the stress cause the false memories which are interpreted as abductions under hypnosis? It is difficult to resolve this kind of cause and effect issue with data gathered at one point in time. Since our analysis suggests that we are dealing with cryptomnesia, not UFO abduction, however, we undertook a causal path analysis based on the assumption that this is a psychological phenomenon rooted in early life experiences...

Dr. David Jacobs was kind enough to speak to our class to familiarize the students with the issue, and I had the opportunity to speak with him informally after the lecture. At that time, I mentioned the "UFO abduction" case discussed in Siegel's (1992) book Fire in the Brain. Jacobs had absolutely no interest in learning of Siegel's findings, and expressed the view that no one was qualified to speak on this issue unless they had done dozens of interviews with abductees under hypnosis, as he had. He clearly fit the profile of the true believer as described in my book Turncoats and True Believers (1992). He used numerous ideological defense mechanisms to avoid confronting unwelcome evidence.

This closed mindedness can be observed in Jacobs' book Secret Life (1992). As the reviewer for the Journal of UFO Studies (Rodeghier, 1992: 186) observed: "Does Jacobs lead his witnesses? Sadly, one must answer in the affirmative." The whole weight of his argument in the book depends on hypnosis sessions which he conducted himself, and in which his strong convictions cannot help but influence the respondents.

The dogmatism of Jacobs and his associates has also been noted by others in the community of believers in UFO abductions. Abductee Karla Turner (1993: 26) has written that "it is a myth that alien abductions of humans follow a set pattern or agenda...David Jacobs...and other writers hold a diversity of intelligent, often ingenious theories, yet each makes the same error. They ignore parts of the abductions evidence--whatever details don't support their ideas." UFO investigators Stefula, Butler and Hansen (1993) confronted this dogmatism when their investigation of the prominent Linda Napolitano case uncovered serious flaws and apparent fabrications. When they shared this evidence with UFO experts including Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs, they found them completely unwilling to consider the evidence...

George Hansen asked me to ask David Jacobs for his reaction to their heartfelt memo, since he had not replied when they sent it to him. When I did so, he dismissed it out of hand, claiming that they were irresponsible members of the UFO fringe. He said the same about Karla Turner and other abduction researchers who differ from his and Budd Hopkins' understanding of the abduction phenomenon.

The survey data promise some relief from this subjectivity, thanks to the objectivity of random sampling and statistical analysis. However, even when the data are collected and reported accurately as they apparently were in this case, the biases of the investigator can enter into the interpretation. In this case, only a strong belief in the prevalence of the abduction phenomenon led the researchers to interpret questions about seeing ghosts or having "out of body" experiences as indicators of abduction. Our data show that there is no objective basis for that assumption. The observed correlations are part of a broader psychological syndrome which includes non-UFO related phenomena. Of course, none of this proves that UFO abductions have not occurred in a small number of cases. In fact, two of our respondents volunteered that they had experienced such events. (We made no attempt to verify their accounts.) However, the public can rest assured that there is no evidence that millions of Americans are being abducted. Further research on the psychological phenomenon of cryptomnesia, however, is warranted. Both our survey and Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum's representative national sample suggest that it is an identifiable syndrome affecting several million people in American society.
 
I think if you are seriously wanting to evaluate the usefulness of hypnotic regression you should have professionals on the show who have no knowledge or interest in alien abduction research and let them discuss the merits of its use.

You know, if this business is as wide spread as it is alleged to be, there must be countless doctors out there treating them. They all don't go to alien abduction researchers. For the show to be of any use at all you need the opinions of mental health professionals who aren't "true-believers" who have treated these folks as opposed to opinionated amateurs who are operating outside of their professions.
 
First, you must determine the big IF. Are these accusations partly true, completely true, or utterly false. You can't assume anything about Hopkins and Jacobs with regard to this controversy. I gather Jacobs may be expanding his response with more detail about where he believes "Woods" has falsified the context of those audio recordings. I'm not expecting a reply from Hopkins soon, because of his illness.

In all fairness to everyone, you have to listen to both sides. Then you decide which claims have the highest likelihood of being correct. This one-sided stuff doesn't make it for me, particularly as the result of my interactions with Rainey and "Woods," which make me very skeptical. But I am not rendering a final decision until the facts are in, and they're definitely not!

I've tried to carefully qualify my statements about this so far. I make liberal use of "if." "If Rainey's accusations are legitimate." "Determing if/when Hopkins started to allow himself to be deceived..." and so on. Throwing out decades of research is not something to be undertaken lightly.

I think that listening to both sides is precisely what most of us would like to be able to do. But as you've indicated, Hopkins's illness seems to preclude the possibility of getting a substantial rebuttal from him. During Jacobs's recent damage-control appearance on Coast to Coast with George Knapp, he claimed that he can recognize "hybrid syntax" and was therefore able to identify the now-infamous IM messages as coming from a genuinely alien threat. Claims like these need to be elaborated upon before they can be taken seriously. An expanded response on the ICAR website would be most welcome.

Even if everything coming from Woods and Rainey is suspect, it is still healthy for us to question established and entrenched positions. While there have been some hyperbolic and premature dismissals--some "final decisions"-- of Hopkins and Jacobs based solely on the personal attacks against them, I think most people come out of this simply wanting to know more about their methodology. We'd like more transparency.

Any authentic inquiry thrives on having its methods and findings challenged. If nothing else, Hopkins and Jacobs can use this episode as an opportunity to refute the challenges to their methodological rigor, and they will emerge from this with their position strengthened. But if they are guilty of methodological laxity, we can't be afraid to re-evaluate the worth of their contributions in whole or in part.

It's also important to remember that none of this has to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Nuance is a must. Locating real flaws in Hopkins's or Jacobs's methodology doesn't necessarily and automatically lead to a total dismissal of every word they've ever written (although ultimately it might--we'll have to wait and see). What these two researchers offer is an interpretive paradigm that can be applied to the data set of "abduction experience." Most research paradigms continue to be modified and refined throughout their lifespans, and I see no reason why theirs should be any different. Maybe Jacobs is right about everything but the presence of hybrids on Earth. Maybe Secret Life had it right but The Threat took a wrong turn. Maybe Hopkins was careful when researching Missing Time but less so when researching the Cortile case. Perhaps the consequence of the criticisms coming from Woods's camp and Rainey's camp will be an adjustment, rather than an abandonment, of the stock abduction narrative.

The same insistence on nuance holds true for the testimony of Woods and Rainey. As you've asked, Gene, "Are these accusations partly true, completely true, or utterly false[?]" Maybe all of what they've said is true. Maybe none of it is. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Maybe some accusations are legitimate while others are fabricated. Maybe all of them contain a grain of truth that is embellished or exaggerated for effect. Maybe Rainey is either a jilted ex out for revenge or a whisteblower with real concerns and agreeable motives, or maybe she's both. Maybe some of Woods's audio has been manipulated and some of it hasn't. Maybe all of the wounds in the video Wickerman posted are self-inflicted. Maybe all of them come from actual abduction experiences. Maybe some of them come from abductions and some are self-inflicted. This is a sloppy and complex ordeal, and we can't risk oversimplifying that complexity without also risking our chances of coming out of this better equipped to understand what's happening.
 
Here we have somebody claiming that Jacobs implanted all of these horrible memories into her yet there she is sporting a body looking like it was ran through a meat grinder. Either something not very pleasant happened or she inflicted these wounds on herself in which case why should she be listened to anyway?

It is not that black and white.

January 13, 2011, jjflash wrote (to Emma Woods):

At this point in time, what do you think are the most likely explanations for your experiences of high strangeness?

Woods replied:

I do not know. I have an open mind about it. I think that it could be aliens from elsewhere in our universe visiting us, but I also think that it could be something else entirely, that we may not even be able to comprehend.

 
It is not that black and white.

January 13, 2011, jjflash wrote (to Emma Woods):

At this point in time, what do you think are the most likely explanations for your experiences of high strangeness?

Woods replied:

I do not know. I have an open mind about it. I think that it could be aliens from elsewhere in our universe visiting us, but I also think that it could be something else entirely, that we may not even be able to comprehend.


Meh, you're too late. I had already deleted the comment because I realized it wasn't worded all that well.
 
And now, folks: Emma Woods, the video:

This woman has really been through a hard time with these experiences! In this regard my heart goes out to her. What a pity she couldn't have found a better way to challenge Dr Jacobs methodology/conclusions if she felt they were not resonating with what happened to her. Mabye we could all have learned something valuable instead of all this negative attack which will take our understanding of the issue at hand no further and probably backwards. If these marks are truely related to her 'abductions' then you can see why she was desperate to get help from a researcher in this field and why he has concluded it is a physical phenomenon in her case.
 
Throwing out decades of research is not something to be undertaken lightly. I think that listening to both sides is precisely what most of us would like to be able to do. But as you've indicated, Hopkins's illness seems to preclude the possibility of getting a substantial rebuttal from him. During Jacobs's recent damage-control appearance on Coast to Coast with George Knapp, he claimed that he can recognize "hybrid syntax" and was therefore able to identify the now-infamous IM messages as coming from a genuinely alien threat. Claims like these need to be elaborated upon before they can be taken seriously. An expanded response on the ICAR website would be most welcome. Even if everything coming from Woods and Rainey is suspect, it is still healthy for us to question established and entrenched positions. While there have been some hyperbolic and premature dismissals--some "final decisions"-- of Hopkins and Jacobs based solely on the personal attacks against them, I think most people come out of this simply wanting to know more about their methodology. We'd like more transparency. Any authentic inquiry thrives on having its position challenged. If nothing else, Hopkins and Jacobs can use this episode as an opportunity to refute the challenges to their methodological rigor, and they will emerge from this with their position strengthened. But if they are guilty of methodological laxity, we can't be afraid to re-evaluate the worth of their contributions.

I totally agree with this and would really love to see a good and structured response from both Jacobs and Hopkins and then decide whether to totally dismiss them off. But, important issues have been raised and should be raised.

@jjflash: Thanks, reading about Jacobs not welcoming different data is very welcome and enlightening. It evens out the picture somewhat. But on the other hand, I can't escape the conclusion that Goertzel's research also has certain problems. I'd like to know by what criteria is someone deemed a cryptoamneziac. How do you measure that someone is recollecting false memory and not something which really happened? I mean, most of the tests I'd stumble upon would be based upon word lists and other mundane stuff. While it's certainly plausible that someone might mix up the names of birds in an experiment, I find it less plausible that someone would falsely remember a vivid and horrifying experience which also includes a strong emotional response. Maybe the added questions, the ones that should have tapped into "psychic" and "New Agey" experiences, indicate a different layer to a real phenomena? It's old news that alleged abductees also might experience other paranormal phenomena.

And I find it kinda funny that an SI article would quote Karla Turner in order to make a point towards Jacobs. KT claimed a lot of stuff which can go hand in hand with Hopkins and Jacobs, but went even further. Boy, did she go further...
It's almost like someone went digging on the net and found a quote which could be used against Jacobs but didn't bother to check the background. I really wonder how would SI react to KT's aliens showing abductees their clones going to work instead of them and then threatening the abductees to replace them. Someone is flabbergasted by Jacobs' hybrids sexing it up? Try KT on for size - less hypnosis and even more wild stuff. Not that I'm dissing the lady - she really seemed like a sincere woman, even though she had ties with some shady characters. Darrel Sims, cough, cough...
Guess that the quest for a stainless steel researcher in this field still goes on...

@Wickerman: That kinda puzzles me. Emma Woods should be in her mid forties or something. This one looks like a lot younger chick. Nice boobs too...:)
 
And now, folks: Emma Woods, the video:

Thanks Eddie - not seen this particular sequence before.

Those are absolutely slam-dunk identical markers I have seen in so many other genuine abductees, including one I met recently whose body marks are indistinguishable from those in this video. You can understand why this woman in New Zealand was so keen to work with David Jacobs, and was initially so persistent in petitioning him to talk to her. I'm not surprised the psychiatrist had no idea what was going on with her: they almost never do. They are usually a complete waste of time when it comes to this phenomenon; clueless.

Sometimes crazy people are abductees too.
 
@jjflash: Thanks, reading about Jacobs not welcoming different data is very welcome and enlightening. It evens out the picture somewhat. But on the other hand, I can't escape the conclusion that Goertzel's research also has certain problems. I'd like to know by what criteria is someone deemed a cryptoamneziac. How do you measure that someone is recollecting false memory and not something which really happened? I mean, most of the tests I'd stumble upon would be based upon word lists and other mundane stuff. While it's certainly plausible that someone might mix up the names of birds in an experiment, I find it less plausible that someone would falsely remember a vivid and horrifying experience which also includes a strong emotional response.

Let's try to keep this in proper context, please, Elendil: Goertzel's article addressed the work his class at Rutgers did in specific reference to the now infamous Bigelow-funded Roper Poll authored by Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum. Goertzel did not address specific recollections related to vivid and horrifying experiences. More on the poll:

Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis? (Skeptical)

Susan Blackmore, Skeptical Inquirer Magazine, May/June 1998

...The claim that 3.7 million Americans have been abducted was based on a Roper Poll conducted between July and September 1991 and published in 1992. The authors were Budd Hopkins, a painter and sculptor; David Jacobs, a historian; and Ron Westrum, a sociologist (Hopkins, Jacobs, and Westrum 1992)...

The Roper Organization provides a service for other questions to be tacked on to their own regular polls. In this case, 5,947 adults (a representative sample) were given a card listing eleven experiences and were asked to say whether each had happened to them more than twice, once or twice, or never. The experiences (and percentage of respondents reporting having had the experience at least once) included: seeing a ghost (11 percent), seeing and dreaming about UFOs (7 percent and 5 percent), and leaving the body (14 percent). Most important were the five "indicator experiences": 1) "Waking up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or presence or something else in the room" (18 percent); 2) "Feeling that you were actually flying through the air although you didn't know why or how" (10 percent); 3) "Experiencing a period of time of an hour or more, in which you were apparently lost, but you could not remember why, or where you had been" (13 percent); 4) "Seeing unusual lights or balls of light in a room without knowing what was causing them, or where they came from" (8 percent); and 5) "Finding puzzling scars on your body and neither you nor anyone else remembering how you received them or where you got them" (8 percent).

The authors decided that "when a respondent answers `yes' to at least four of these five indicator questions, there is a strong possibility that individual is a UFO abductee." The only justification given is that Hopkins and Jacobs worked with nearly five hundred abductees over a period of seventeen years. They noticed that many of their abductees reported these experiences and jumped to the conclusion that people who have four or more of the experiences are likely to be abductees.

From there, the stunning conclusion of the Roper Poll was reached. Out of the 5,947 people interviewed, 119 (or 2 percent) had four or five of the indicators. Since the population represented by the sample was 185 million, the total number was 3.7 million -- hence the conclusion that nearly four million Americans have been abducted by aliens.

Why did they not simply ask a question like, "Have you ever been abducted by aliens?"? They argue that this would not reveal the true extent of abduction experiences since many people only remember them after therapy or hypnosis. If abductions really occur, this argument may be valid. However, the strategy used in the Roper Poll does not solve the problem.

With some exceptions, many scientists have chosen to ignore the poll because it is so obviously flawed. However, because its major claim has received such wide publicity, I decided a little further investigation was worthwhile.

Full article:

http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc817.htm

So, Elendil and others, Blackmore's article provides us with some context of the questions contained in the Roper Poll. People were not asked about vivid and horrifying experiences, as you presented for consideration, Elendil. Poll participants were qualified as being alien abductees based on responses to a survey that never so much as informed them they were being polled about aline abduction... which brings us back to Goertzel's article, as it relates to Elendil's question, "How do you measure that someone is recollecting false memory and not something which really happened?".

Please note that among other ways Goertzel explained his research findings, he specifically referenced the work of Dawes and Mulford (at the University of Oregon):

"This conclusion is also strongly supported by Dawes and Mulford's (1993) innovative study at the University of Oregon which demonstrated that the dual nature of Hopkins, Jacobs and Westrum's first item, which asked about waking up paralyzed and about sensing a strange person in the room in the same item, actually led to an increased recollection of unusual phenomena as compared to a properly constructed single-issue survey item. Textbooks on questionnaire writing universally warn against 'double-barreled' questions of this sort because they are known to give bad results. Dawes and Mulford confirm this and further offer the explanation that the combination of the two issues in one item causes a conjunction effect in memory which increases the likelihood of false recollection."

More specifically and may be viewed through the link provided below, Dawes and Mulford confirmed conjunction effect in memory as follows:

...in supporting a conclusion that post-traumatic stress from kidnapping by aliens is a major mental-health problem in this country (allegedly affecting at least 2 percent of the population),
Hopkins and Jacobs (1992) cite the rate of affirmative responses to a recent Roper Poll question: "How often has this happened to you: Waking up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or presence or something in the room ?" Their rationale for considering affirmative responses
particularly diagnostic of alien kidnapping involves the conjunction of the two components in the question...

As part of a (much) larger study, we asked that same Roper Poll question of 144 subjects (mainly University of Oregon students and some townspeople interested in the $20 pay for two hours). Forty percent answered that this had happened to them at least once. A randomly selected control group of 144 subjects in the same study were asked simply how often they remembered waking up paralyzed. Only 14 percent answered that this had happened to them at least once...

Thus, due to a conjunction effect in memory, the added phrase "with a sense of a strange person or presence . . . in the room" actually "broadens the scope" of the question, rather than narrowing it.
Hopkins and Jacobs are, of course, correct in maintaining that the additional phrase _should_ "narrow the scope." It's just that the phrase doesn't. What they have discovered, therefore, is not evidence of alien kidnappings, but of a common irrationality in the way we recall our lives.

http://skepticfiles.org/ufo2/memtrick.htm

To try to clarify even further, it is not possible that the sample of recollections be accurate when just 14% reported recalling waking up paralyzed (when the question is posed singularly), while 40% - nealry 3 times as many - reportedly recall waking up paralyzed and sensing a presence in the room (when the question is posed in a conjuntive manner). Dawes and Mulford therefore further established (as was already accepted within the professional research community) that the conjunctive question is, in fact, leading. Furthermore, Goertzel was indeed correct in his evaluation that this tactic at best showed incompetence and a lack of fundamental knowledge on behalf of the authors (Jacobs, Hopkins and Westrum) of the survey, and at worst intentional deception.
 
Although the Roper Poll provides a sensationalist talking point, has it ever been taken seriously by anyone in the scientific community or the ufological community at large (except for Hopkins and Jacobs, that is)? It apparently met with disdain and outright hostility when the results were presented by Hopkins at the M.I.T. Abduction Study Conference in 1992. C.D.B. Bryan recounts the incident in his book Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: "Following Hopkins's Roper Poll presentation, the M.I.T. lecture hall is in an uproar. Scientists in all corners of the large room protest that the survey is 'full of holes!'; that it was 'a waste of time, money, and opportunity'; that 'your whole findings are based on the assumption that your "key indicators" will strongly predict who might be abductees, and these "indicators" do not have any scientific basis to suggest they are sound'; that 'no systematic pre-tests were carefully done to find out how the respondents interpret what they've been asked.' When someone insists that because of the looseness of the questions and the conclusions drawn from them, the need exists for experts to design questions for future polls, John Mack responds somewhat plaintively, 'How can we get our colleagues to validate the poll when they totally reject the concept?' (46).

While Mack has a point about a priori assumptions within the scientific mainstream precluding any real dialogue between abduction researchers and conventional researchers, his complaint sidesteps the considerable weaknesses of the Roper Poll. Some of the scientists who rejected the poll were themselves believers in the reality of abductions, like McGill University Psychology Professor D.C. Donderi (46), so the protests weren't only coming from the hardline skeptics.

Still, Goertzel and Dawes and Mulford are doing valuable work here, keeping people methodologically honest.
 
So, Elendil and others, Blackmore's article provides us with some context of the questions contained in the Roper Poll. People were not asked about vivid and horrifying experiences, as you presented for consideration, Elendil. Poll participants were qualified as being alien abductees based on responses to a survey that never so much as informed them they were being polled about aline abduction... which brings us back to Goertzel's article, as it relates to Elendil's question, "How do you measure that someone is recollecting false memory and not something which really happened?".


You misunderstood me, I was talking about cryptomnezia. As far as I've seen on the net - the criteria for cryptomnezia are tests based on mundane stuff - lists of words and objects and so on. If I'm not mistaken, Susan Clancy used a similar test to determine the inclination towards creating false memories among her subjects. Questionnaires of that sort are based on mundane things, things which don't stick out with anything special. The abduction phenomenon reportedly often includes traumatic and bizarre memories, something vastly removed from the mundane. Something I'd reckon would easily stick out in the sum of your life's experience.

So, I don't think that a test such as that is quite the best tool to measure creation of false memories under specific circumstances, as in those with a certain amount of trauma and a high amount of emotion. If I remember correctly, please correct me if I'm wrong, I think Stuart Apelle mentions that in one of his articles: it's difficult to say something about creating false memories under such circumstances because there is little or no research about that. No wonder, I suppose it ain't easy to create an experiment capable of inducing such trauma. So, if Clancy made the conclusion that people had an incline towards creating false memories of abductions after having a test based on mundane things, I don't think she is necessarily right. Also, if Goertzel thinks that the Hopkins-Jacobs-Westrum survey is not an indication of alien abduction - that is fine, the H-J-W conclusion really sounds outlandish, and the survey obviously should have had more rigorous standards. But is then that survey automatically a measure for cryptomnesia, as Goertzel suggests? If a lot of people say they have paranormal experiences - according to Goertzel that means we have a shitload of false memories on our hands, because a real phenomenon behind that seems to be out of the question, just as it was for Clancy.

Goertzel takes the path analysis with the assumption that there is an underlying psychological phenomenon. The other option - a non-psychological phenomenon - is not even in the picture. The three added questions correlated with the UFO-stuff, right? Maybe that doesn't mean that we are talking about cryptomnesia (at least not in all cases), but a really complex phenomenon, as it is reported quite often that abductees tend to experience other psychic or paranormal stuff. I also can't really tell if the "double-barreled" question increases recollection per se. I'd rather say that it adds to the confusion while the subject is doing the survey. Maybe such a combination increases the possibility of people recklessly turning their attention on a part of the question which resonates more with their experience and then replying with a yes. I have a hard time believing that such a question would make 40% of people really recollect something which didn't happen - as in create a memory which didn't exist before. That would mean that basically any complex sentence could induce a suggestion. Maybe a good amount of people caught the "strange presence" part and recalled that they had a feeling of a strange presence sometime in their lives (which could have been just a stupid feeling) and responded with a yes. Whatever the case, that question is likely a flaw in the H-J-W survey and probably gave a lot of bad data. But I find it hard that it could induce such a huge cryptomnesic response. Please correct me if I understood something from the Goertzel text wrongly.

There also seems to some a priori presumption. Goertzel quotes Robert Baker: [FONT=Tms Roman 10pt,Times New Roman][SIZE=-1]"seeing complex visual images in one's head that you cannot remember ever having seen before or...suddenly hearing voices from unknown and unrecollected sources is not only a much more common occurrence than is generally known but is also one of the more interesting and intriguing anomalies in the field of `normal' human behavior." [/SIZE][/FONT]
I understand that Goertzel is into the explanation that the phenomenon is psychological but maybe that is not the whole truth. Maybe there is something beyond that. On the other hand, maybe even not. I tend to think that more answers can be found while investigating the cases as opposed to doing statistical analysis with the a priori assumption of the psychological. Let's not forget that Goertzel quotes Karla Turner in order to prove Jacob's dogmatism. He's got a point there, but also forgets to mention two things:

1.) KT and Jacobs agreed on a lot of stuff regarding the phenomenon - the entities exist and are basically the same as reported in Jacobs' cases, the experience includes certain technological elements: UFO craft, gadgets...and so on.
2.) The Goertzel-added three questions basically play into something that KT was a proponent of: abductees experience many weird and paranormal stuff, including psychic abilities. In her story, that goes hand in hand with the UFO experience as reported by the Hopkins/Jacobs camp. When Goertzel found correlation between those three and the UFO questions, that might play into the abductee account as presented by Karla Turner.

Off course, it is clear that H-J-W survey is likely faulty and that it can't be taken for granted. But it still makes me raise an eyebrow in wonder how many people report anomalous experiences. If we take 80% off the numbers to accomodate for various weirdos, nut-jobs, attention-whores and many other kinds of mistakes, we still have quite of a nice heap on our hands. I'd like to see a similar survey done again with more rigorous criteria. Just as I'd like to see a huge follow up investigation on the real claims and cases with the attempt of finding corroborating evidence between independent witnesses + some material proof if possible, including rigorous standards to satisfy any healthy skepticism. Dreaming on...
 
Check this out.

Laurel and Hardy come to mind...

But seriously, do they think they have it all figured out? I'd love to see them say all that to the late John Mack. Making a video of your own rant...quality stuff. Gene is obviously not humbled enough by their self-evident genius.
 
Laurel and Hardy come to mind...

But seriously, do they think they have it all figured out? I'd love to see them say all that to the late John Mack. Making a video of your own rant...quality stuff. Gene is obviously not humbled enough by their self-evident genius.

Well said.:)
 
I've really had enough of the "show" vs. "show" nonsense.

The real questions to me are, "Is hypnotic regression a valid tool for memory retrieval?" What do the medical professionals say? I think the message is pretty clear from what I have been able to gather. Are we really going to attempt to justify its use, particularly by history professors and artists, in light of that?

Can alien abduction experiences be induced? Yes they can. Al Lawson had eight subjects hypnotized by a clinical hypnotist, Dr. William C. McCall at California State University in Long Beach. ”All of the imaginary subjects described many details which are identical to ones found in the literature. These patterns range from the obvious (saucer shaped) to rare and even obscure though well-established details of high strangeness. See Vallee, Messengers of Deception, See Lawson, “What can we learn from hypnosis of imaginary abductees?"

Know that abduction experiences can be induced all alien abduction reports generated through hypnotic regression should be highly suspect until such a time as a method is developed to differentiate between real (whatever that actually turns out to be) and induced experiences. There should just be no question about that glaring necessity and what it does to any and all information gathered using hypnotic regression.
 
I think or rather guess that hypnotic regression might be helpful in cases of traumata caused by severe suffered accidents and suffering abuse of any kind, and that especially if it happened at an early age of the person. IF it can not be helped in any other type of therapeutic approach. Vague here, but this whole thread reeks vague. And I almost made a bad joke.
 
Know that abduction experiences can be induced all alien abduction reports generated through hypnotic regression should be highly suspect until such a time as a method is developed to differentiate between real (whatever that actually turns out to be) and induced experiences. There should just be no question about that glaring necessity and what it does to any and all information gathered using hypnotic regression.

Maybe Ricky. The whole concept of memory recovery linked to these UFO encounters/missing time experiences being assisted by hypnosis goes back to Benjamin Simon treating the Hills in the early 1960s, then Betty Andreasson-Luca similarly recovering memories in the 1970s assisted by psychiatrist Fred Max working with Ray Fowler's MUFON team. People do not generally seek out this kind of help for no reason: they typically undergo some anomalous experience with a UFO, have a couple of hours of missing time and want to remember what happened. Memories ARE intentionally blocked, somehow. What else are people supposed to do - pretend the experience never happened? Be content to have incomplete memory of it?

Whatever people post on an internet chat forum will always be irrelevant to these people. All over the world people are going to continue to seek out hypnosis, and continue to request it. You can't legislate against this, or dictate your opinions to people. If they get no help from anyone experienced with investigating the phenomenon, they might try self-hypnosis or get assistance from someone they know personally, with no experience or knowledge, to try to recover the memories. It can be done; I've experienced it myself. It's hard sorting the wheat from the chaff, hypnosis has pitfalls and dangers, but it will continue to be used (not by Budd Hopkins BTW who has retired, but by hundreds of others all over the world).

We can rant away all day against perceived risks, but it is unlikely to count for anything with the people who matter. Hypnosis CAN work very effectively as a tool to memory recovery, and does. Just because people are occasionally injured in automobile accidents does not therefore mean that all vehicles should be permanently taken off the roads.

---------- Post added at 02:25 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:22 AM ----------

What do the medical professionals say?

They say all kinds of things, and have no consistent voice on the matter.
 
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