Oct

15

It Came From Outer Space.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

October 15, 2007 |

Susan Clancy’s book Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens is guaranteed to upset some people because it’s so frank and skeptical. Clancy herself, though, is no stranger to controversy, and explains in the book that some of her first research was into how people who claimed to be victims of child abuse may have been prone to confabulation. These people didn’t necessarily have a malicious intent; they may have, under the influence of overzealous therapists, imagined abuse, and imagined it so vividly that it seemed it really occurred. In the case of abuse, of course, we have to tread very carefully because abuse really does occur. Whether or not anyone has really been abducted by aliens, on the other hand, is still an open question.

I disagree with Carl Sagan’s statement that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but only to the extent that, in my view, any claim requires evidence, and, in the case of alien abductions or even the existence of aliens any evidence would be extraordinary.

Clancy’s book, though, is exactly the kind of study alien abduction studies need because it’s an attempt to ask hard, unflinching questions about whether these events are real or simply imagined. She points to numerous discrepancies and revisions in the recountings of the experiences of Betty and Barney Hill, one of the earliest and certainly most famous abduction stories. In fact Betty and Barney Hill’s experience, so widely reported and discussed, became, understandably, a template for other reports of alien abductions. Unfortunately there were numerous mistakes made in the original reporting of their story, including Betty Hill’s story being heavily edited and revised and then reprinted as though it had never been changed. Clancy’s book may be an easy target because she only interviewed a small number of abductees and may be seen as having gone into the research with a less than open mind. As she and other researchers have shown, though, the human memory is not an accurate recording device, and those who believe in alien abduction have not been helped by manipulated and, in some cases, fabricated evidence.

While we have to admit the possibility that, even if they weren’t really abducted by aliens, many people who claim to have been abducted may have experienced a traumatic event. Unlike most who have a horrible experience, though, none of the abductees she interviewed saw their experience as a negative thing. As she explains, “Their lives improved. They were less lonely, more hopeful about the future, felt they were better people. They chose abduction”

What makes Clancy’s book important is that the field of alien abduction research, currently on the fringe, deserves respectability because it has the possibility of telling us so much about ourselves. And, if it turns out that we are being visited, the ramifications can’t be underestimated. In the absence of evidence, though, we have to be open to all possibilities, especially the possibility that alien abduction stories are science fiction, not science fact, no matter how believable they may seem to those who experienced them.


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