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

The second problem from my POV is he's very very VERY sure he's right. His approach is right - the other researchers are wrong. Further, he can tell when the information the experiencers are giving him is right - and when it's wrong. And he doesn't need any other credentials or a broader background - he's already figured it all out without knowing those things. That's a level of self-confidence I can't even imagine, and I can't help contrasting that with Jacques Vallee who said rather plaintively a few years ago (paraphrasing) that he had hoped he would have a fair grasp of the UFO mystery by now, but that hope has thus far been in vain:(.

agreed. if you wanted someone to shape opinion in this direction he'd be an excellent candidate :)
 
He doesn't come across to me as inflexible but as very meticulous and prudent. He's obviously read the whole literature and some of his colleagues' work. I honestly feel like he's followed a methodology with the mindset of a historian/trained-investigative hypnotist.

you make some good points in tracing his history... and there's no way to know what's really in his mind/heart, but I do find it curious that he isn't more curious. He's an academic, a scholar, a researcher... a curious mind, eh? Why isn't he telling us about the latest developments in forensic hypnosis, or at least impressing us with all he knows about it? Why is he satisfied with a willful ignorance about NDEs, OBEs, DMTs and the rest?

Maybe he wants to be the old lion that's come in from his last hunt... that fine... but then he oughta move aside gracefully and let the work go on rather than lob grenades.
 
Personally, I found him far more credible than Mary Rodwell. He seemed all about discerning the real facts from mere appearance, while Rodwell, on the other hand, was all about affirming the inviolability of each person's experience. So while she raised an immediate series of red flags for me, Jacobs gained a lot of (provisional) trust from me. I'm looking forward to the second installment with him.

interesting perspective, Robert... I can sure see where you're coming from. but consider this... what if we asked the same from NDErs... just the facts... "ok, you saw Jesus... and what color was the robe... wait a minute, there's no such color -- is that really what you saw?"

we know that the NDE accounts have this same element of strangeness, this illusory quality, while still being a/the most profound experience. so, maybe we need to recalibrate our criteria for "realness" and "facts".
 
Emma Woods

Thanks for this Doug... can't really disagree with any of it. First, as you point out, Jacobs creidbitiy is damaged beyond repair by the Emma Woods stuff. I even condiered not going forward with this interview the more I got into it. But, there are some the other factors:
1. there ain't much else... the unbelievable lack of serious research into abductions keeps bringing us back this guy and his 30 year body of work. we can look at it with a jaundice eye, but we gotta look.
2. Emma. Jacobs has taken a lotta body shots so I think he's allowed to punch back a little bit. his counter is that "Emma" is kooky, and one of those obsessive/stalker types. Moreover, he claims (and there seems to be at least a tiny bit of truth here) that she has very selectively distilled many hours of recordings down to a few very devastating (no getting away from that) clips.
3. A lot of the things he says regarding methodology make sense. Many of his accounts sound very credible. Proceed with caution, but proceed.
 
I know everyone's talking about specifics and this may be a no-brainer but how about this "proof" that interactions between humans and alien intelligences occur. Be interesting to see what people think.

1. From UFO (UAP) reports as detailed in say, Leslie Kean's book an alien technology is operating around/on Earth.
2. Any alien intelligence will be either millions of years older or younger than us due to the age differences of stars (assuming they are from our physical universe as a default).
3. From 1 they are older and also technologically.
4. To assume they have "just arrived" pre-selects our present "intelligence epoch" (say the last 150 years when we’ve had electrical/nuclear technology) as special which is unjustified.
5. To be here, over at least a minimum of several centuries (but realistically at minimum thousands of years from 1 and 2) implies some kind of program - which could be many!
6. To utterly ignore the most intelligent species on Earth over, say millennia, is untenable.
7. Close interactions between aliens and humans occur and because of the technology mismatch only under their control.
8. If 7 Is correct one can suggest that any interactions cannot but be for biological or related reasons as the mismatch in intelligence precludes other reasons (but I don’t rule out, in some form, educational).

I think 1, 2, 3 and 4 cannot be refuted if one is truly open to the data. But together they imply 5 and 6 from which 7 follows. 8 is speculative as we have to guess what they are up to.

To add some meat to this is a paper from two clever fellows that solves the distance problem to do with spreading of alien intelligences over vast distances.

Eternity in six hours: intergalactic spreading of intelligent life and sharpening the Fermi paradox

http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/intergalactic-spreading.pdf

yea, good questions Keith... but the problem is that we could extend it with a zillion more, each taking us in a different direction... e.g.
1. are they us?
2. or, are they related to (or the creators of) us?
3. how many different kinds of "they" are there... how many different programs/agendas?
4. what about these persistent (I mean, really, really persistent) reports about gov involvement?
and how about a really big one..
5. what is there relationship to the white light thingie (i.e. God)?
 
Thanks for this Doug... can't really disagree with any of it. First, as you point out, Jacobs creidbitiy is damaged beyond repair by the Emma Woods stuff. I even condiered not going forward with this interview the more I got into it. But, there are some the other factors: <snip>

I'm glad you did the interview, Alex, if only to motivate me and others to share our views about David Jacobs' work and the controversy with Emma Woods.

Doug
 
Wow, Doug. This further information casts Jacobs and Budd Hopkins in a more damning light than I was able to infer from listening to the recordings Woods made. I may have more to say later, but I'd just like to add a link to the video that Carol Rainey produced that she mentions in her article (with the initial working title Something Hidden)

Thanks Michael. You know, I believe psi proponents have been spoiled by an abundance of competent and trustworthy researchers. I think many of us are all too quick to grant researchers in less mature fields the same respect that parapsychologists have earned.

I also believe that every field has its share of cranks, quacks and frauds, and that less mature fields tend to have more of them.

Doug
 
FYI I managed to talk with Jeremy about Jacobs.

Great! I only wish he and Jeff Ritzmann would restore their podcasts with Emma Woods, Carol Rainey and other people with knowledge of the AA controversy. I listened to many of them years ago but haven't been able to locate them in my more recent research. I hope they're not gone for good.

Doug
 
Great interview, Alex. I really like where you directed the conversation...

Submitting for the record--

'Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects'
- Jacques Vallee

I dislike your approach. In the same way that I'd dislike the approach of someone who posted Jacobs' perspective in a thread discussing a Vallee interview. You're not discussing anything in the interview, just taking the opportunity to introduce your viewpoint on the subject in general. And your closing sentence does make it clear that you are convinced that you know what's up with this phenomenon.
 
I can't for the life of me understand how anyone could take David Jacobs' work seriously after reading Emma Woods' account of her sessions with Jacobs, and listening to her devastating audio clips

Really? So someone who performs a chemistry experiment ignoring all guidelines and causes an explosion is someone whose entire body of work is suspect? Such an approach is both inane and simplistic. It is also common. Yet it is not in keeping with knowledge-seeking. Open-minded knowledge-seeking means taking each study as it is and researching it. Maybe Jacobs did err/fudge/falsify with Woods. That means little about any other situation. Let's go further . . .even if a person has falsified everything in instances 1 - 7, it doesn't mean they did so in instance 8.
 
My take on the interview and the personal criticisms about Jacobs in this thread. Most of which - as usual - have nothing to do with the interview.

-
“Lack of academic participation creates a vicious cycle that prevents the development of standards that would attract greater academic participation and thus greater credibility.”
That's not the perspective of someone intentionally falsifying research or someone who wants to get away with "shoddy" methods.

- He goes on to give valid possibilities why many shy away from the area.

- He goes on to give clear and valid responses to each question.

Okay. Now that I've read it I can say that the man has more valid points than any of the criticisms I've seen in this thread. I wish greatly that people had commented about what was in the interview rather than bringing up all sorts of peripheral stuff to try and support their own preconceptions.
 
I must say, Dr. Jacobs began his interview well, but then he became uncomfortably rigid and dismissive, and unfortunately John Mack isn't about to refute his assertion that John Mack became disillusioned with his own approach, which concentrated on non-physical explanations of this phenomenon.

There seem to be two approaches here:

1) We are dealing with beings from outer space.

2) John Mack's approach, which was that this phenomenon is somehow part physical, part mental.

Dr. Jacobs seemed to want to dismiss the evidence that more mental versions of this phenomenon exist - e.g. using DMT - or cases where the victims report communication by ESP. However the problem is that neither version of the UFO story is accepted by conventional science, and it doesn't make much sense to throw out part of the data to get the answer you want!

I think there are reasonable grounds for thinking that purely physical UFO phenomena don't make sense. As someone said, the 'experiments' don't make sense, given that the aliens must be vastly more advanced than us. If they know enough to know that we are almost compatible with them biologically (so that it makes sense to breed with us) surely they would know enough to create a clone from a single cell, and breed from that.

If they actually wish to keep their presence secret, they aren't doing a very good job, and conversely, if they want us all to know they exist, surely they could accomplish that rather better!

I admit that UFO phenomena baffle me, but I do wonder if human ideas can, if thought about by enough people, produce some sort of physical manifestation. In this case, the ideas would have come from SF literature/films.

David
 
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Really? So someone who performs a chemistry experiment ignoring all guidelines and causes an explosion is someone whose entire body of work is suspect? Such an approach is both inane and simplistic. It is also common. Yet it is not in keeping with knowledge-seeking. Open-minded knowledge-seeking means taking each study as it is and researching it. Maybe Jacobs did err/fudge/falsify with Woods. That means little about any other situation. Let's go further . . .even if a person has falsified everything in instances 1 - 7, it doesn't mean they did so in instance 8.

We're talking about serious ethical violations in a field of research. I submit that reputation is all-important when you're probing the unknown, especially so in a field with few researchers. You have only to consider the Levy, Soal and Sargent fraud cases to understand that parapsychologists share my view. These researchers lost their positions and careers, and all their data was considered off-limits to later researchers.

Sargent's case is particularly troubling, since it involved speculations of fraud without convincing evidence. Even a strong whiff of fraud may be enough to ruin one's career, but that's life in the real world. No responsible researcher wants to build on a foundation that might be unstable.

Doug
 
My take on the interview and the personal criticisms about Jacobs in this thread. Most of which - as usual - have nothing to do with the interview.

- That's not the perspective of someone intentionally falsifying research or someone who wants to get away with "shoddy" methods.

- He goes on to give valid possibilities why many shy away from the area.

- He goes on to give clear and valid responses to each question.

Okay. Now that I've read it I can say that the man has more valid points than any of the criticisms I've seen in this thread. I wish greatly that people had commented about what was in the interview rather than bringing up all sorts of peripheral stuff to try and support their own preconceptions.

Well, it wasn't to try to support my own preconceptions: I had none, because I've never encountered Jacobs before. I agree with David's comment, and the info that Doug supplied has cast significant doubts on Jacobs--not only in respect of Woods', but several other people's cases. Appears to me that at some point, though he can say the right sort of words to sound objective, his objectivity could well have become compromised.
 
Great! I only wish he and Jeff Ritzmann would restore their podcasts with Emma Woods, Carol Rainey and other people with knowledge of the AA controversy. I listened to many of them years ago but haven't been able to locate them in my more recent research. I hope they're not gone for good.

Doug
they are hard to find, but out there. I think he went too far with his Jacobs attacks... he brought some wacky ideas into the story... muddied the waters.
 
I wish greatly that people had commented about what was in the interview rather than bringing up all sorts of peripheral stuff to try and support their own preconceptions.

I kinda think all this Emma Woods stuff is fair game. seems like everyone's looking at both sides.
 
I kinda think all this Emma Woods stuff is fair game. seems like everyone's looking at both sides.
Hmm . . .I can't say that I think of it as not "fair." But I don't see everyone looking at all sides. Fair or not, I see people trotting out the blocks they have used to build their preconceptions. To some degree we all do that, however many seem to do it to the exclusion of open-mindedness. And as I mentioned, the common approach that a person wasn't credible in one experiencing means they're more likely to not be credible in others is often false. Of course such "black and white" approaches are easier Given Jacobs desire for more academic involvement in abduction research, that approach is even more misplaced.

That said, much of my take is also based on my preferences for discussing what's on the table - in this case the interview. Had the thread been one debating abduction research or even Jacobs work in general, I wouldn't have the same take.
 
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