Mod+ 230. Dr. David Jacobs Claims Academia Has Abrogated Responsibility to Investigate Alien Contact

Jacobs points out, and this does not seem to be borne out only by his own research, that there are these facts to contend with: people going missing, the police being called, unexplainable scars, abductions occurring with more than one person, possible evidence of implants (people have reportedly sneezed weird objects out) (possibly to monitor thoughts?), unexplained anomalies in female abductees' reproductive organs pointing to potential hidden hybrid pregnancies, etc.

Alex, what do you make of this stuff? And Frank, Bucky, Ethan, Pollux, Chuck - are you guys out there? :)

Well, speaking for myself, when the two leading proponents of the "literal" abduction narrative both have dubious reports about their commonsense and seem to have a tendency to brook no difference of opinion, it rather shakes my confidence. Apart from the assertions of guys like these, where is the actual evidence?

Don't get me wrong, Ian: there's definitely some kind of phenomenon going on here, but I'm very sceptical in the literal abduction narrative and think the hypnosis thing (particularly by non-medics) has just muddied the waters.
 
am I wrong in thinking that the whole idea of "abduction" doesn't just rely on Jacobs and Hopkins' work? Frequently enough, I seem to come across similar accounts in UFO documentaries that aren't the result of J & H's work. Also, and this is perhaps a more important point, some abductees remember similar experiences, or part of them, without having recourse to hypnotic regression therapy.

not sure that I get your point, Ian. As I mentioned in the intro to 230, the whole abduction thing is strangely hard to swallow for the UFO community (not to mention the public at large)... "sure UFOs are visiting, but all that talk of abduction is nonsense"??? So, this whole thing is hard to sort out. Perhaps if you spelled out some concise questions you'd like folks to answer.
 
Apart from the assertions of guys like these, where is the actual evidence?
Michael, I'm a newbie like you, so I can't really answer this satisfactorily. I do see "abduction"-like accounts in various UFO documentaries, sometimes that could even possibly relate to Jacobs' specific hybrid-breeding thesis, like the clip showed by Frank Matera in the Rodwell thread:
http://www.skeptiko.com/forum/threa...tes-for-alien-contactees.120/page-3#post-1625

There was this doc I posted here, that I don't think features therapy, and includes missing time, two people involved, scarring and a possible simultaneous UFO-multiple-witness sighting:
http://www.skeptiko.com/forum/threa...y-to-investigate-alien-contact.231/#post-3494

There are various other classic accounts where I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of a "literal" event (p.s. I'm not quite sure what you/we mean by "not literal" - "it didn't happen, it's in the experiencer's mind", or "something psi or beyond-psi happened but doesn't involve an actual encounter with other beings"?). For example, there's this classic 1980 account of a British policeman's encounter:

There was the 1990s Roper Poll that Jacobs refers too, and skeptics like Susan Blackmore have responded to.

There are a lot of articles and other resources referenced here:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/abduction.htm (including the Blackmore article)

I don't know the quality of it, but this guy, Roger Leir, has studied implants:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/books/book37.htm

There's also this other abduction book:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/books/book57.htm

I've got these two docs on my queue up next that may be worthwhile watching. The first is an overall examination of alien encounters/contact, with Jacobs, Hopkins, Mack, Leir and his implants ;), and others all involved:

The second one is specifically about Leir and implants:

Lots of other abduction/encounter docs here:
http://www.anonymousfo.com/documentaries/AlienAbductionDocs/AlienAbductionDocumentaries.html
 
Last edited:
not sure that I get your point, Ian. As I mentioned in the intro to 230, the whole abduction thing is strangely hard to swallow for the UFO community (not to mention the public at large)... "sure UFOs are visiting, but all that talk of abduction is nonsense"??? So, this whole thing is hard to sort out. Perhaps if you spelled out some concise questions you'd like folks to answer.
What I meant is that there are many abduction accounts (Travis Walton being one) that did not involve regression therapy. And some of those encounter accounts are very "abduction"-like. In my above post, I pointed to a ufo doc that "includes missing time, two people involved, scarring and a possible simultaneous UFO-multiple-witness sighting:"
http://www.skeptiko.com/forum/threa...y-to-investigate-alien-contact.231/#post-3494

My questions: what do people make of the missing time, of people experiencing an encounter together and corroborating each other's accounts, of scarring, of the possibility of implants? All of these "physical"/actual (I don't know how to word this) events.

p.s. I know it's "hard to swallow" for many folks. I'm just assuming many members here have had their paradigm enlarged enough to fancy all sorts of things many people would find "hard to swallow". They're willing to follow the trail of the evidence. Whatever its ultimate merits, the Roper Poll seemed to indicate that a huge number of people experience encounters. I'm not convinced either way, but I don't have any trouble viewing "abduction" as a distinct possibility.
 
Last edited:
It makes no sense that Mack quietly "changed his mind" given the fact that his family and friends continue investigations into consciousness via the John E. Mack Institute. Have you tried contacting Mack's former research associate Dominique Callimanopulos? She is listed as one of the board members of the John E. Mack Institute.
http://johnemackinstitute.org/board-of-directors/
good job!!!

I have created this thread: http://www.skeptiko.com/forum/threa...bout-john-mack-during-skeptiko-interview.262/
 
  • Like
Reactions: K9!
This is a very "pop culture TV" doc, but it's about the physical evidence of alien encounters:

If folks here can still stomach Jacobs ;), here's a clip where he recounts his history and path, and the historical development of alien encounter/abduction research. He has nice things to say about Mack (Mack was "extraordinarily intelligent, very insightful"), but does disagree with him because of his approach (I think I'm going to get stoned for saying this :D!) (Travis Walton is on here):

Here's another video where he goes a bit more into the content of his conclusions regarding the Hybrid Breeding Program - and what he learned starting in 2003 (after The Threat), that hybrids are being integrated into society:
 
Last edited:
My questions: what do people make of the missing time, of people experiencing an encounter together and corroborating each other's accounts, of scarring, of the possibility of implants? All of these "physical"/actual (I don't know how to word this) events.

here's where I think the parrells to NDE/extended consciousness expereinces comes in. NDEs have a physical/real component AND an unreal/non-physical component... that eventually gets reincorporated into our real/physical life.
 
There is an interesting article in Vanity Fair about a yearly meeting of abduction experiencers at Anne Ramsey Culveliers's house on Rhode Island. It also refutes Jacobs contention that Mack stop being interested in abductees. Mack had attended the yearly gathering just weeks before he was killed.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/05/americans-alien-abduction-science
But I was interested most of all in the dead man who remained an icon to many on the porch. John Edward Mack, a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, spent years trying to fathom their stories and reached an astonishing conclusion: they were telling the truth. That is, they were not insane or deluded; in some unknown space/time dimension, something real had actually happened to them—not that Mack could explain just what or how. But weeks after attending the 2004 Newport gathering, days before his 75th birthday, he looked the wrong way down a London street and stepped in front of a drunk driver.
 
There are various other classic accounts where I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of a "literal" event (p.s. I'm not quite sure what you/we mean by "not literal" - "it didn't happen, it's in the experiencer's mind", or "something psi or beyond-psi happened but doesn't involve an actual encounter with other beings"?).

Hi Ian, thanks for all the info, which I will check out. By "not literal", I don't mean something didn't happen, but I lean to the view that it's a psycho-spiritual phenomenon. The things experienced may come from the imaginal realm--as may things like the Fatima sightings, and so on. I wouldn't exclude the possibility that some such phenomena can be caught on camera, either, as in the case of UFOs. There may also be elements of sleep disorder in some cases, and of course, the odd hoaxer, although I'm convinced many reports are sincere.
 
Also, and this is perhaps a more important point, some abductees remember similar experiences, or part of them, without having recourse to hypnotic regression therapy.

This is true, although I can't help but wonder to what extent proponents of the literal narrative redefine sleep paralysis experiences, ghost sightings and related phenomena to enlarge their abduction report database.

I wonder if research/analysis has been done on abductee reports that are free from regression therapy. You'd get another distinct set of interesting data there to study and compare.

Analyses have been done, but I haven't been able to locate any specific studies, despite much effort over the past few years. I can't even find statistics from the studies, and only a hint of their phenomenological findings, if that much. Maybe my search skills need sharpening or perhaps the data just doesn't exist online.

A related issue is the frequency of abduction experiences remembered without the aid of hypnosis. A widely cited paper by Leonard S. Newman and Roy F. Baumeister attempts to answer this question in the section labeled "Generating False Memories":

Those who have heard testimony from abductees often find it difficult to believe that anyone could generate such detailed accounts if the accounts were not accurate reports of real experiences. And they might find it difficult to imagine how anyone could experience such an astonishing failure of "reality-monitoring" (M.K.Johnson, 1988; M.K.Johnson & Raye, 1981) -- the process people use to decide whether information they recall derives from an internal or external source (i.e., whether it is a memory of an actually perceived event or just something imagined or dreamt). Unfortunately, people are not particularly good at distinguishing between others' real and phony memories (Schooler, Gerhard, & E.F.Loftus, 1986), and they are not generally aware how easily false memories can be implanted and accepted -- particularly when recall takes place under hypnosis.

The latter point is crucial because, although formal hypnotic procedures are not used to uncover every episode of UFO abduction, most of the currently available accounts are in fact products of the hypnotic state (Rimmer, 1984). Exact figures are impossible to come by, but of the 104 cases identified by Bullard (1989a) as "high quality," 71% were associated with hypnosis. Other estimates of the number of abduction memories discovered with the aid of hypnosis typically have hovered around 80% to 90% (e.g.,Cooper, 1988; Maccabee, 1985). Similarly, all 13 people whose stories were presented in Mack's (1994) book had constructed their stories with the aid of hypnotic regressions. Any discussion of the UFO abduction phenomenon would thus be incomplete without careful consideration of hypnosis -- the tool used to reveal the abduction stories.

(Toward an Explanation of the UFO Abduction Phenomenon: Hypnotic Elaboration, Extraterrestrial Sadomasochism, and Spurious Memories, 1996)

The paper is informative in other respects as well, although I think applying sadomasochistic fantasies to the majority of the abductee population is going way too far.

Jacobs also states this point: "In contrast to victims of false memory syndrome, abductees often remember events without the aid of a therapist. They can remember events that happened to them at specific times in their lives. They have always known that the event happened, and they do not need a therapist to reinforce their memories". (p. 39)

True. I just wish Jacobs and other researchers who used regression would have recorded their subjects' accounts in great detail before regressing them. If they did in fact record them, it would be helpful if they'd release them.

[Jacobs adds: "Approximately 20 percent of abductions include two or more people who see each other during the abduction events." p. 39]
This figure sounds much too high to me. Another abduction researcher, John Carpenter, wrote a paper entitled, "Multiple Participant Abductions" that I haven't been able to locate yet. It was presented to the Seattle UFO Research Conference in 1993. Since Jacobs mentions Carpenter in his book, maybe he got the figure from him.

I should point out that John Mack mentioned Carpenter's study in his book, "Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens", saying:

Even research like psychiatric social worker John Carpenter's accounts of experiencers abducted simultaneously, where the reports corresponded in minute detail, depends on the evaluation of subjective
experience (Carpenter 1993).[page 424]

I'm not sure what he means by "depends on the evaulation of subjective experience", but I have a feeling it means two people could look at the same abduction report and come to different conclusions about whether it was shared by two or more participants.

Doug
 
Last edited:
Hey, my lament got the ball rolling! ;) Thanks for all your replies so far.

Hi Ian, thanks for all the info, which I will check out. By "not literal", I don't mean something didn't happen, but I lean to the view that it's a psycho-spiritual phenomenon. The things experienced may come from the imaginal realm--as may things like the Fatima sightings, and so on. I wouldn't exclude the possibility that some such phenomena can be caught on camera, either, as in the case of UFOs. There may also be elements of sleep disorder in some cases, and of course, the odd hoaxer, although I'm convinced many reports are sincere.

I have trouble conceiving of the UFO phenomenon taken as a whole (not alien encounters themselves) as not having some "literal"/concrete (i.e. vehicles, likely with occupants) aspect. There's just so much overwhelming evidence with solid expert witness testimony and radar & visual sightings. The Leslie Kean stuff, Rendlesham, UFOs deactivating nuclear weapons, etc. (Call this my belief A.)
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc498.htm
http://www.skeptiko.com/forum/threads/ufo-documentaries.195/

I couldn't begin to foresee that it's possible to get a grip on the encounter phenomenon, but because of my belief A, it makes it seem more plausible to me that some encounters are with "real" occupants (whether these beings are beyond the mere physical is another question). Especially when experiencer encounter/abduction accounts frequently make mention of encountering a "vehicle". (Just as I was posting the last Jacobs youtube video, for example, I noticed this comment in the comments section: I wouldn't have been a true believer until I realized my wife had been abducted for months on end, before we met. She saw the craft outside her flat, just parked there in the air. Immediately went inside and into bed, it was only 5pm and still light out. This stuff is real, and we need to study it more. And for "Jesus" sake, don't dismiss it before you take a really close look. Same thing with the 1980 policeman video above.)

Our Lady at Zeitoun (1968-71) is the one Marian apparition case that I've looked into and am really impressed by. I have no trouble conceiving an imaginal realm theory to potentially explain a case like this. But I contrast these ethereal experiences with the very solid-looking vehicle sightings and I'm tempted to think we're not talking about the same thing (not that "solid-looking" automatically means physical, but I see no reason to jump to the "liminal" conclusion).

This is true, although I can't help but wonder to what extent proponents of the literal narrative redefine sleep paralysis experiences, ghost sightings and related phenomena to enlarge their abduction report database.

I'm sure you're correct, but I think it's unlikely those explanations would account for all cases. I think you're saying the same thing.

A related issue is the frequency of abduction experiences remembered without the aid of hypnosis. A widely cited paper by Leonard S. Newman and Roy F. Baumeister attempts to answer this question in the section labeled "Generating False Memories":

Thanks for this, Doug. That's really interesting info, along with the rest of the research you included in that post. :)

On the topic of the Roper Poll, I disagreed with Jacobs who tends to think the opposite of what the proponents here seem to be saying (and probably reflects his physicalist assumptions about the nature of reality): he thinks a lot of apparitions, ghosts, etc., are actually alien visitations. I think that makes his calculations of the frequency of abduction experiences too high - but whatever that frequency is, I get the impression it's still high.

This extremely well-made and -researched site says the following:
About 2% of the American public have had possible abduction-like experiences (questionable estimate taken from a 1991 Roper poll of 6,000 people, of which 119 answered "Yes" to 4 out of 5 "key indicator questions", rather than report actual alien abductions), other estimates put it at 0.3% of the population.
That's still a lot of people.
The summary on this site about the state of abduction research is well worth reading:
http://www.hyper.net/ufo/abductions.html

On the topic of abductee reports without hypnosis, David Jacobs makes an interesting point. He thinks we shouldn't trust them as much (they need to have, ahem ;), "competent" hypnosis applied so that we get the real story), because, and this fits the theory that he's evolved (and his theory has evolved out of his, in theory, rigorous hypnosis work [but I recognize biases may subtly, or not-so-subtly, influence even rigorous-intended/empirically-driven methodology]), they involve screen memories and other deceptive devices implanted by the aliens. I'm saying Jacobs' point is interesting, worth considering, but not that I necessarily favor it. I would be inclined, like you, to study and value those cases without hypnosis. (Keep and value both sets of data.)

On the whole, in regards to encounters, I personally favour keeping all these possibilities open, and the phenomenon may involve a plurality of sub-phenomena. I'm sure I'm not saying anything new and briliant here.
 
Last edited:
In my previous post, I made brief mention of John Carpenter, a licensed clinical social worker from Missouri and a former director of abduction research for MUFON. The blurb in the link above says:
His life-long curiosity in UFOs led to his volunteering his services for over 120 cases of possible UFO abduction. Using clever interviewing and thorough hypnotic investigation, he has collected amazing patterns of data which clearly depict a consistent and coherent scenario of extraterrestrial contact. He presented six papers at the prestigious MIT Abduction Study Conference in Boston in 1992. His published papers have brought him international recognition and speaking invitations on five continents. He has presented at conferences from Australia to England, on national and international radio, television, and film documentaries.

What the blurb leaves out (it hasn't been updated) is that Carpenter was forced to resign his position in March 2001 for having sold 140 abduction case files to Las Vegas billionaire investor, entrepreneur and UFO-research philanthropist Robert Bigelow. In many cases, he included personal medical records. Bigelow paid him $14,000 for the lot.

Some of the best reportage of the Carpenter Affair can be found in several detailed articles written by Jack Brewer, who owns the blog The UFO Trail. Below are some passages from one very long article that I think are relevant to the case as well as to the field of abduction hypnosis:

The Carpenter Affair: For the Record
By 1997, Carpenter's former hypnosis subject and then-wife Elizabeth, a self-described abductee, had privately informed some other abductees their files had been sold. Responses would eventually range from absolute rage to complete denial that Carpenter would have done such a thing.

A group of abductees who felt betrayed decided to explore legal action and retained lawyers. In a series of events that spanned three years and continue to be unclear, no charges or civil action were brought against Carpenter and the case was dropped. Some were under the impression a statute of limitations expired, some thought lawyers representing the abductees would have had a great deal of difficulty quantifying damages, while yet others suspected more devious causes.

In 2000, after legal options dissolved, Elizabeth created a website and published details of the Carpenter Affair. If her intentions were to inform the public and force discussion, she was successful.

News of the Carpenter Affair first began to reach the public in early 2000, and Gary Hart became a principle reporter of the circumstances.

The information contained in Hart's reports and formal complaints was originally obtained from a variety of sources, he told The UFO Trail, including Carpenter's ex-wife, Elizabeth. “I found Elizabeth to be truthful in my many talks with her,” Hart explained, adding that the same could not be said for Carpenter.

Another source of information was Leah Haley. She supplied Hart with evidence during his original investigation and much more recently provided The UFO Trail with copies of a document she gave Hart for inclusion in his 2001 report to the State of Missouri.

“Perhaps the most important point in all of this is that MUFON's ethics code was all for show,” Hart reflected. “They had and apparently still have no intention of holding anyone, even a board member, to their code of ethics.”

A 2001 two-page document prepared by Leah Haley (below, right) for inclusion in Gary Hart's complaint to the Missouri Division of Professional Registration further called into question the portrayal of the situation as described by Mr. Stoner's office and Mr. Carpenter. Ms. Haley explained how John Carpenter originally presented himself as a mental health professional, repeatedly assured her that all information discussed would be kept confidential and provided her with an assessment of her mental condition. Such circumstances would of course not lead one to interpret Carpenter was acting in a recreational capacity. Moreover, Haley paid Carpenter.

“The total amount I paid John for the 15 sessions was $825,” Haley wrote in 2001. “I have canceled checks for these payments.”

She concluded, “Had I known that John would sell my case files or disclose information he did not have permission to disclose, I would never have gone to him.”

Haley greatly revised her opinions of her experiences, the validity of regression hypnosis used as a memory retrieval tool and, unfortunately but understandably, the integrity of some members of the mental health industry.

The charges, the complaint added, were substantive and represented an abuse of power and position occurring over many years. Hart's complaint suggested that Carpenter's unprofessional activities rendered his entire body of research worthless, as one could not determine truth from fiction within abductee accounts or Carpenter's conclusions. That was particularly the case, it was stated within the complaint, “given the exceptionally dysfunctional behavior this report documents as having occurred between John and his abductee contacts.”

Hart's complaint to MUFON cited how Carpenter had stated his title as a MUFON official, presented his professional business card and used his licensed medical position to establish trust with witnesses. In many cases, it was stated, Carpenter then obtained personal medical records, combined them with taped hypnosis sessions and sold the personal case files, among other indiscretions and unauthorized entrepreneurial ventures detailed and demonstrated within the complaint.

Jim Moseley's September, 2000, Saucer Smear contained a piece on the saga. Mr. Moseley cited long and rambling Internet posts made by both Carpenter and his former hypnosis subject and new wife, Debra, that attempted to explain and justify Carpenter's actions.

To the best of my knowledge, MUFON never directly informed its membership or even the 140 former clients of Carpenter of the circumstances. It is a strong possibility that a large majority of the 140 still do not know about the Carpenter Affair.

The Missouri licensing board investigated Hart's complaint and handed down a five-year probation period on Carpenter's license as a clinical social worker. The period was completed in 2006 and the license is currently under no disciplinary status.

(continued below)
 
(continued from above)

In order to understand the culture of the UFO community of the 1990's, one should be aware that a great deal of attention was given to alleged alien abduction. This subsequently included wide tolerance of the use of regression hypnosis as a memory retrieval tool and related concepts. Researchers such as Budd Hopkins, Dr. John Mack, Dr. Karla Turner and others were giving the masses much to consider.

Our English counterparts at the British UFO Research Association enacted a moratorium on the use of hypnosis in 1988 which continues today, but little could have been further from the procedures conducted by American abduction researchers. Much more is publicly known today about the challenges inherent to using hypnosis as a memory retrieval tool than was the case 20 years ago, and that should be taken into consideration when reviewing certain circumstances. In all fairness to Carpenter and abduction researchers of the 1990's, it bears mention that rarely can one push edges of the envelope and avoid controversy at the same time. It is also of course much easier to assess past circumstances than it is to accurately gauge the bearing today's choices will have upon tomorrow.

Whatever one may choose to personally think about John Carpenter, the facts of the matter are his actions were reviewed by applicable bodies, consequences resulted and Mr. Carpenter served his debt as ruled. That is the case whether or not any given party may feel consequences were either excessively strict or negligently soft.

The Carpenter Affair nonetheless continues to be relevant for a number of reasons. The investigation conducted by Gary Hart demonstrated, among other things, an extremely detrimental lack of clarified boundaries between hypnotist and client. Expectations of acceptable behavior were not clearly defined and were virtually nonexistent. Attempting to use information obtained during regression hypnosis as evidence of alien abduction stands on an extremely slippery slope under the best of conditions, but given the circumstances of Carpenter's activities, The UFO Trail tends to agree the work was rendered worthless as Hart previously observed.

One particular relevance of such circumstances is that the work continues to be periodically cited, while completely omitting mention of the environment and conditions in which hypnotic narrations were obtained. At this point and in actuality, some of Carpenter's former hypnosis subjects have revised their opinions of the validity of the information induced during their sessions.

Even more importantly, the circumstances were not isolated incidents. Other hypnotists have been demonstrated to similarly and detrimentally blur the lines between hypnotist and friend, investigator and therapist, entrepreneur and truth seeker, authority figure and lover. There is much material available on extreme errors in research methodology and resulting flawed conclusions associated with the work produced by ufology hypnotists. In spite of that being the case, their work continues to be selectively cited as justification for fantastic and unsupported assertions. Their work is also counter productively cited as reason to continue the futile use of regression hypnosis while their activities actually included many of the same emotionally unsafe and dysfunctional dynamics as did Carpenter's.

As Hart documented in his formal complaint to MUFON, one well known researcher informed him "everyone does it," referring to researchers commonly both selling case files and having sexual relations with alleged abductees they investigated and hypnotized.

The well of regression hypnosis was tainted at the emotional and financial expense of, by any other name, research subjects, and to the benefit of some hypnotists. It was done while details of the activity and its minimal efficiency were and continue today to often be misrepresented.

Gary Hart emphasized during our interactions and while entertaining my questions that he felt a most relevant aspect of the Carpenter saga was the MUFON lip service given its code of ethics and official procedures. Some of the policies that were consistently violated, Hart pointed out, included failing to properly inform and obtain consent from research subjects of the terms and conditions of their participation, a policy that Carpenter himself suggested be implemented yet obviously neglected to practice. MUFON leadership not only failed to correct the circumstances, but supported their continuation for whatever combinations of reasons.

“We can only do the best we can to help prevent this from happening again,” Hart concluded.

More to come...

Doug
 
(continued from above)
Even more importantly, the circumstances were not isolated incidents. Other hypnotists have been demonstrated to similarly and detrimentally blur the lines between hypnotist and friend, investigator and therapist, entrepreneur and truth seeker, authority figure and lover. There is much material available on extreme errors in research methodology and resulting flawed conclusions associated with the work produced by ufology hypnotists. In spite of that being the case, their work continues to be selectively cited as justification for fantastic and unsupported assertions.

Doug

thx for this excellent post! I did talk with Jack Brewer from UFO Trail in connection with my interview with Jacobs. I found him to be well informed and well spoken. But I see a huge baby-and-the-bath-water problem here. I feel for the folks who were wronged... who's private sessions were sold off and shared without their consent. And I grant that there are some bad hypnotherapists, bad protocols, bad inductions and the rest... but I'm very, very skeptical of this "chuck it all in the waste bin" kinda stuff. The fact remains that if anyone was, at any time, ever abducted by aliens then we have a complete paradigm changer. I think we all gotta pinch ourselves, wake up, and remember that we live in a world that insists that this is not only impossible, but that anyone who claims it is delusional.
 
thx for this excellent post! I did talk with Jack Brewer from UFO Trail in connection with my interview with Jacobs. I found him to be well informed and well spoken. But I see a huge baby-and-the-bath-water problem here. I feel for the folks who were wronged... who's private sessions were sold off and shared without their consent. And I grant that there are some bad hypnotherapists, bad protocols, bad inductions and the rest... but I'm very, very skeptical of this "chuck it all in the waste bin" kinda stuff. The fact remains that if anyone was, at any time, ever abducted by aliens then we have a complete paradigm changer. I think we all gotta pinch ourselves, wake up, and remember that we live in a world that insists that this is not only impossible, but that anyone who claims it is delusional.
Have you tried contacting people at JEMI? They were certainly quick to respond to my question about what Jacobs had said about Dr Mack. Perhaps they can point you to someone ethical who has continued on in this area of study. I think after what Jacobs said in the podcast, it would be nice to have a podcast interview with someone from JEMI to refute Jacobs. That would give it more weight than just a written comment on the podcast page. And maybe we'd get that cool discussion on consciousness I was hoping to hear! :)
 
Interview with alien abduction researcher and Temple University History Professor Dr. David Jacobs examines his over 30 years of research. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. David Jacobs author of, UFOs & Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge. During the interview Jacobs talks about science’s responsibility to investigate the topic: Dr. [...]

Continue reading...
I have not read this thread yet, but just finished the interview, which I think is the most interesting one I've heard in a long time. He was a great guest and your questions were interesting. For what it's worth, I agree with him on the "spiritually transformative" abduction experiences as remembered via hypnosis. This doesn't mean I don't think it's possible, but I am suspicious that the method is not enough to justify the claim.

AP
 
But I see a huge baby-and-the-bath-water problem here. I feel for the folks who were wronged... who's private sessions were sold off and shared without their consent. And I grant that there are some bad hypnotherapists, bad protocols, bad inductions and the rest... but I'm very, very skeptical of this "chuck it all in the waste bin" kinda stuff. The fact remains that if anyone was, at any time, ever abducted by aliens then we have a complete paradigm changer. I think we all gotta pinch ourselves, wake up, and remember that we live in a world that insists that this is not only impossible, but that anyone who claims it is delusional.
These are exactly my thoughts. I also thank Doug for everything he's uncovering, but your point remains Alex.

I agree the data-through-hypnosis should be reviewed with care. But as I have written, and Doug has corroborated, there are also a lot of accounts out there of abduction memories where no hypnosis took place (whatever the percentage is - Jacobs says it's 20%, but it could be lower).

In the case of Jacobs, I realize many people's views here of him are profoundly tainted, but I'm struck by the specific details that repeat themselves in the accounts he gives - and I would argue that gives some sort of merit to (part of) his data. And as he gives portions of transcripts, you can see he's not asking for those specific details. For example, when he writes about sessions where abductees recall their experiences on board whatever they were on (!) (presumably a "ship"), they describe being with other alien or hybrid-children and playing with them (they were children themselves at the time) with alien adults supervising, and he doesn't ask for certain specific details, but they will provide them: for example, that those alien children never get into disputes or pushing & shoving, even though they may be very playful, laughing, screaming, etc. There are these consistently repeated specifics embedded within the hypnotically-accessed material of the abductees that the researcher/hypnotist isn't asking for.

For what it's worth, I agree with him on the "spiritually transformative" abduction experiences as remembered via hypnosis. This doesn't mean I don't think it's possible, but I am suspicious that the method is not enough to justify the claim.

Andy, being the empirically-minded and always impartial-intending person you seem to be :), I'll be really interested in your thoughts about this thread. And if you're interested, please get The Threat and read chapter 3 on this topic. (Or if someone explains to me how I can do it, I could scan that chapter and send it to them privately - in a way that doesn't take 30 MB.)

To address Jacobs' own work and "literal narrative" specifically, I wrote this to Doug privately but I'll share it here too. Personally, I think Jacobs probably makes some good points in his critique of what was probably less methodologically sound hypnosis techniques by folks like Mack - hypnosis for research/empirical objectives, not therapeutic! (as we can painfully see with the Emma Woods case). It's a separate but good question that he may not always have abided by that attempt-at-neutrality, and whether his zealousness may at times have made him blind to his own flaws and too fixated on his "conclusions" (which I think is very possible-to-likely). But even if I answer yes to that second question, I find it an extremely unreasonable stretch to dismiss the very significant repetition, both in broader aspects of the phenomenon and in specific details, of this material - and some or a large part of it is congruent with Hopkins' and others' work, and memories from abductees who did not undergo hypnosis or work with these researchers.

Maybe I'll write about this a bit later. But regarding Jacobs' specific findings, the hybrid breeding program (and possible integration into human society), what if despite of all of his possible personal shortcomings, and whether it sounds too 1950s-ish or appears inferior to more intellectually and spiritually refined and complex views, this is to some extent true? That's he on to something? Just for the sake of curiosity about what the truth is (and there are many other reasons to be interested, obviously!), I want to remain open to that possibility.

(And, if it were true, this wouldn't necessarily preclude co-existing wider spiritual implications/realities over and above this specific reality.)
 
I'll be a little disappointed in this thread and the follow-up, if some folks, including my many proponent friends, some of whom have already spoken up here :) (and it's cool we come at this with different perspectives, it goes to show the forum doesn't get dull if there's no from-the-ground-up "skeptical" involvement), don't end up engaging in a discussion of the actual abduction hypothesis material.

:)
I don't discuss this much, but I have some very old childhood experiences that are consistent with these UFO stories. That said, to my knowledge, I have no conscious memories of anything like what you read about in these abduction/UFO books. What got me thinking about this was my first UFO book, which happened to be Communion, by Whitley Strieber. He was writing about "lost memories", when I suddenly realized I had something like that in my background.

In 1979, my family moved from Las Vegas to Santa Barbara. We left some of our things with my grandfather in Kingman, Arizona that we had to retrieve later. On the trip back from Kingman, my mom drove at night to avoid the desert heat. Some time after passing through Las Vegas, several hours later, we saw a bright glow on the other side of some hills. It looked similar to the glow made by the lights of Las Vegas at night when approaching from the Hoover Dam. I asked my mom if we were headed into another big city like Vegas, but she said we weren't. We were in the middle of the desert, with no towns of any size within a hundred miles.

As we got closer over the next twenty minutes or so, the light remained strong. It was clearly a local light source on or near the ground, but I took a look in the sky to find the moon, against the possibility it was a late moonrise that we were mistaking for an artificial lightsource. But the moon was where it was supposed to be, high in the sky. I asked my mom the time, and she responded that it was 2 am. I asked against the possibility it was a sunrise, with the moon still visible in the sky. At 2am, there was no chance of that.

Eventually we cleared the rise and saw below us a very tiny town. It had about two streets with maybe twenty to thirty decrepit buildings, and that was it. By the time we got there, we saw that we were now below the light. This was evident both from the illumination falloff and the shadows it cast. An interesting feature of this is that the streetlights on the two little roads were turned on, but the little pools of light they cast were almost totally washed out by the brighter light above us.

My mom pulled over so we could look at this phenomenon more closely. We parked on the side of the highway, about twenty feet from a hurricane fence. The little town was about thirty feet below us, with the one intersection in town about a quarter mile away. It was now about 2:15 am, but we were no closer to determining what this light source was, though we were now directly under it. Looking up, I couldn't see anything that could have lit up the desert like this, but did see that the light was coming from above. It had to be local, because the surrounding desert was dark.

After what seemed like fifteen minutes of pondering this, the light was gone, the sun was up, and my mom decided to continue on our drive. The farm report on the radio gave the time as 9:00 am.

This is how I had always remembered it, 15 minutes of sitting there talking, then leaving after the light was gone. Stopped at 2am, left at 9am. I never thought of doing the math. When I read the Streiber book, I suddenly realized there was seven hours missing time in there. I wanted to see how my mom and sister would remember it, so I called them both. I was very careful not to ask leading questions. To my surprise, they both remembered it exactly the same way, including the part where they hadn't bothered to notice the missing seven hours. We all thought we had been continuously conscious for this period, with no rest, yet somehow we'd missed the sunrise and disappearance of the light. It was this quality that surprised me more than anything else.

My earliest memory is a dream of "monsters" abducting me and other humans, bringing us to a laboratory, and performing medical experiments (or simple surgeries). This was in 1969, long before I had heard of alien abductions. In 1970, I thought I saw one of these creatures in my room, was very frightened and called for my mom. When she ran in, I saw it run to another part of my room where she couldn't see it. As for scars, I do have one of those too. One morning in 1987 or so, I woke up to discover a fully healed scar on my abdomen that hadn't been there the day before. When I showed it to a doctor, he said it looked like a healed biopsy. I told him I'd never had a biopsy, which left him stumped. Because of its size, about the size of a nickel, he said I would have known of a biopsy or injury in that spot. With no other alternatives, he said he had no idea, but it looked like a biopsy. I've shown it to other doctors, who gave the same answer.

I don't know what to make of these things in my life. I think the material I started reading on the subject in about 1989 is interesting, even compelling, particularly because it describes things that are consistent with the couple items I've mentioned here, all of which happened before I was introduced to them in the literature. I am not willing to claim these as anything more than odd events that aren't inconsistent with abduction reports, but they could well be something else. However, that group experience with my mother and sister is tough to wave away. Both of them were just as shocked as I was when I pointed out the time discrepancy. Neither had thought of that before. For three people to have responded in the same odd way to an event like that is pretty compelling. That said, none of us saw a UFO.

AP
 
Thanks for sharing that Andy! :)

Now all you have to do is get regression therapy, preferably with Jacobs, and see if you haven't become part of the breeding program. How many children do you have again?*

Seriously, thanks for sharing.

EDIT: On the point of the physical evidence and the other confirming features that something is actually happening during these "abductions", and on the specific point I made earlier of people confirming specific details from one case to another they couldn't have known or a predictably repeating, it's worth while to look at the "Alien Contact/UFO Abductions: A Global Phenomenon" video I posted here:
http://www.skeptiko.com/forum/threa...nvestigate-alien-contact.231/page-5#post-3844
at 22:15 Jacobs starts talking about those corroborating features.

(*this was a joke, obviously)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top