Aliens On Earth.com Resources for those who are stranded here Our Bookstore is OPEN Over 5000 new & used titles, competitively priced! Topics: UFOs - Paranormal - Area 51 - Ghosts - Forteana - Conspiracy - History - Biography - Psychology - Religion - Crime - Health - Geography - Maps - Science - Money - Language - Recreation - Technology - Fiction - Other - New Search... for keyword(s)   in Page Titles in Book Title/Author in Contents of Pages ---other searches--- Metacrawler Yahoo FAST Search Google Altavista Dogpile Inference Find Northern Light IWon.com MSN Search Las Vegas Sun Location: Mothership -> UFO -> Updates -> 1998 -> Dec -> Re: Abductions and Researcher Bias

UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: Tim Brigham - Devil's Advocate <devilsad@ksinc.net>
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 22:00:27 -0600
Fwd Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 04:52:47 -0500
Subject: Re: Abductions and Researcher Bias


After following a few of the various discussions re abductions
recently on this list (especially ones focusing heavily on
social factors), thought the following might be of interest.

Source: The Devil's Advocate

www.devilsadvocate.base.org

(originally appeared in the print zine).

"Abductions and Researcher Bias" or

"Why Does every Abduction Researcher always find his own
Favorite Breed of Alien?"

by
Martin Kottmeyer

Excerpted from The Devil's Advocate #6

You have just surveyed a little over a dozen abduction
investigators who have collectively handled over 1700 cases. You
learn 4 of them say they have a generally favorable attitude
about the nature of abduction experiences; 3 of them say such
experiences are generally negative. You say to yourself this is
a nice opportunity to test whether or not there is an
investigator effect shaping the experiences of those they work
with.

You meticulously compile and collate the survey data. Finally
you get the following results:

Abductees with positive-attitude investigators more often feel
positive about their abduction experiences. Their reactions to
the entities are more often positive. The entities are perceived
more often as warm and cordial. More often one of the entities
seems familiar or caring. The abductees more often see
themselves as partners in the experience. They more often may
even identify themselves as alien. On the downside they more
often have vague anxieties after their experiences.

Abductees with negative-attitude investigators, on the other
had, more often feel negative about their experiences. They hate
and dislike the beings more often. The beings themselves are
more often perceived as cold and business-like. The abductees
see themselves more often as victims.

Do you conclude A) Clearly it makes a difference which
investigator an abductee goes to and it would be prudent to
recommend that anyone wanting to explore an abduction experience
seek a positively-opinionated investigator; or B) Despite many
claims and fears to the contrary, the investigators' hand proves
almost invisible, its touch nearly negligible in formulating the
abduction.

Though you have now resolved the pragmatic issue to everyone's
satisfaction, your work is not yet done. You also want to know
if these attitudes influence the imagery and plot of abduction
stories. You look down the data columns and what you read goes
something like this:

Positive attitude investigators have a lower percentage of
humanoids and standard Grays and a higher percentage of
human-like Nordics in their files. Their cases are less likely
to involve missing time and the experiences are shorter in
duration. Unexpectedly, examination experiences are more common,
but they are less likely to involve implants, manual handling,
and the genitals. The aliens less often give threats or orders
to forget. More often they give tours of the ship and school the
abductee. Like the Space Brothers of the contactees they warn
about future catastrophes and cataclysms more often. Their
abductees are more likely to show increased psychic abilities.
There are some puzzles. Their abductions more often involve
paralysis. The crafts are more often disc-like. The interiors
are more often cool and indirectly lit.

Negative attitude investigators, in contrast, have higher
percentages of humanoids, and standard Grays. Curiously, the
trait of vestigial noses is more common. The examinations more
often involve implants, manual handling, and the genitals are
less likely to involve sample-taking. In line with the Hopkins
scenario, there are more scenes involving nurseries and hybrids.
Their abductees are less likely to be given tours of the ship.
They are more often threatened and ordered to forget. There are
fewer warnings about future catastrophes. They more often have
body scars and marks. There is less about increased psychic
abilities or changes in habits following the experiences. There
are also some puzzles. There are more otherworldly journeys.
There are more messages of reassurance. There is less anxiety
during their capture, less paralysis. Their experiences are
longer. The crafts are less likely to be disc-shaped. The rooms
are more likely to be rectangular or wedge-shaped and less often
indirectly lit. Finally, their abductees are less likely to
suffer nausea or diarrhea after an experience.

Do you conclude A) The results make more sense than not. Those
details that don't make sense seem less central to the drama of
the story and might be resolvable by further study; or B) The
meaning of any relationship between attitude and description
escapes ready comprehension.

You have likely already guessed that this study is not
hypothetical. It was part of a much larger study conducted by
Thomas E. Bullard and recently published by the Fund for UFO
Research under the title The Sympathetic Ear: Investigators as
Variables in UFO Abduction Reports. The results reported here
are my reading of data columns P and N of his Table 37. If you
picked A for your conclusions, your assessment matches mine. If
you picked B, you conclusions match the author of the study.
They are quotes respectively from the summary after the title
page and from page 89. I singled out that part of the study,
most of which is excellent by the way, as the most relevant test
of Philip Klass's observation that Leo Sprinkle's abductees
report kinder, gentler aliens than Budd Hopkins. He felt it was
not coincidence that the personal beliefs of the investigators
seemed to color the experiences of their subjects. While Bullard
cites Klass's opinion as what is under test, he seems to forget
the specifics of what Klass says as the argument goes along and
ends up fighting against some exaggerated position that no
skeptic I know of ever advanced. Bullard's data replicates what
Klass says and the central pragmatic issue of whether it is
advisable to point abductees to positively-minded investigators
is demonstrated as prudently correct.

Why does Bullard offer the conclusions in the B quotes? It
appears to be that he regards the puzzles in the data as so
paramount that they vitiate any claim for a real investigator
effect. Some details are completely unaffected by the attitude
of the investigator. Though fair enough as a question of what is
involved in a full portrait of the abduction phenomenon, the
fact remains that the data does not contradict the specific
claims that have been made by the critics he cites.

It would be interesting to know how many readers of this study
accept Bullard's conclusion without looking at the table of
results. The main reason I bothered to double-check things was
because the two lines I quoted seemed too unlikely. One can't
read the UFO abduction literature without seeing the hand of the
investigator is all too visible. Some examples:

# Christie totally accepts the idea of Space Brothers and has
participated in workshops were she chats with beautiful space
beings. She attends a meeting between her boyfriend and Budd
Hopkins and is eventually regressed, yielding an experience
involving needles in her nose and vagina. Hopkins concludes that
her change of mind proves the Space Brothers are a myth and that
abductions are traumatically real (Int'l UFO Reporter, Jan/Feb.
1987);

# John Mack repeatedly asks abductees why hybrids, if they are
to repopulate a post-holocaust earth, seem so listless and wan.
Next we learn Jerry has an abduction where the hybrid is seen as
beautiful, angelic, young adults. Peter proclaims they do not
appear listless to him, but have a vitality all their own.
(Abduction, p. 415);

# David Jacobs finds aliens that are totally non-human and avers
that contactee claims are a convenient touchstone for deciding
which reports are probably bogus. (Secret Life, pp. 236, 284.)
Richard Boylan's subjects gets a variety suggestive of at least
a dozen races and they often share human characteristics like a
reverence for life and the importance of caring for children. A
chapter devoted to messages from these experiences is filled
with material identical to that of the contactees of the Fifties
right down to an advocacy of vegetarianism. (Close
Extraterrestrial Encounters, chapter 14, 15.)

Each would doubtless insist their methods are superior, their
results more believable, than the prior views. Doubtless, too,
their subjects agree. Somebody's wrong here. I would not be
shocked if everybody's wrong here. Since ufologists are to some
extent getting what they believe, be careful which views you
side with. I wonder if we could convince Camille Paglia to take
up ufology. I'd love to see what sort of aliens she'd find.




1-3-'97



)+(
www.ksinc.net/~devilsad/ufo.htm The Devil's Advocate
www.ksinc.net/~devilsad/ring.htm Operation MindPhuck
"Better to go hungry than to feast on lies."
)+(