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From: "Greg Sandow" <gsandow@prodigy.net>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 23:55:48 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 00:31:24 -0500
Subject: Re: Books - 'The Threat'

I was catching up on some past messages, and noticed Dennis Stacy
taking my name in vain.

> Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 22:33:07 -0600 (CST)
> To: updates@globalserve.net
> From: Dennis <dstacy@texas.net>
> Subject: UFO UpDate: Books [was: 'The Threat'...]

> One might begin, for example, with the conclusions Jacobs
> extrapolates from the Roper Report, which lead him to proclaim
> that "millions" of Americans may have been abducted. (See pp
> 124-5 of The Threat.)

> The unfortunate fact of the matter is that no such claim can be
> made in the first place, let alone supported by the resulting
> evidence. This should be self-evident by a simple reading of the
> poll questions and the responses to same.

> In other words, why not simply ask: do you think you have ever
> had a close encounter with a UFO, and following that, do you
> think you may have been taken aboard same?

> Instead, Hopkins and Jacobs ask a series of questions -- none of
> which has to do with a distantly perceived ufo -- and then
> conclude that anyone positively responding to a certain number of
> indicators inequivocably(sp?) indicates an abduction by alien
> extraterrestrial beings -- that is, respond yea to, say, six out
> of ten questions, and you therefore corroborate our theory and
> assumptions of what abductions are all about, no ifs, ands or
> buts. You've been abducted by literal ETs, no other theorists
> need apply.

> All very neat, if extremely messy. But let's suppose you wanted
> to take an equally oblique approach in determining what numbers
> of Americans are heavy drinkers. The direct approach would be to
> ask such questions as a) do you drink more than such and such a
> day, b) starting at what time of day, and so on.

> The Jacobs/Hopkins approach, however, is to ask whether you might
> not have smelled beer on one occasion, sipped champagne on
> another, imbibed Wild Turkey on a third, downed a scotch on a
> fourth -- and thereby conclude that one is both an alcoholic and
> abductee.

> To put it bluntly and parsimoniously: *nothing* in the Roper
> Report supports Jacobs's latest contention -- let alone his
> cataclysmic and catastrophic warnings that we are now hovering on
> the edge of alien absorption.

> For all the money spent on it, the Roper Report means nothing
> whatsoever.

> Over to Greg and the rest of the list,

> Dennis


You can ask direct questions about drinking, because people know
whether they've had a drink or not. But you can't ask with equal
confidence about abductions, because (assuming that abductions
take place at all) people don't always remember being abducted.
They're apt, instead, to remember things like lights in their
rooms, beings by their beds, and missing time.

The mail Budd Hopkins gets bears this out. You don't find many,
if any, people writing to say "Yes! Those beings you write about
took me, too!" Instead, they say "All my life I'd had experiences
I couldn't understand. I've seen lights in my room (etc.). I read
one of your books, and thought, maybe this is the explanation.
I'm hoping you can tell me whether or not it is."

It's against this background that the Roper Poll was conducted.
The reasoning Budd and Dave Jacobs used was more or less this:
Since nearly all abductees remember having a number of
experiences, like lights in their rooms, we should ask how many
people have had these experiences. That might give us a rough
notion of how many people have been abducted."

There's a logical fallacy if you take this absolutly literally.
Just because nearly all abductees have had these experiences, you
can't conclude that nearly all people who say they've had these
experiences have been abducted.

Still, we're familiar with this sort of inductive reasoning in
other contexts. If you come home and find your house has been
turned upside down, and your valuables are missing, you conclude
you've been burglarized. Doctors look for symptoms, and reason
backwards from the symptoms to the dis ease. Assuming, again,
that abductions are real, we don't know for sure that all the
indicators Budd and Dave asked about in the Roper Poll mean for
sure that people have been abducted. But they might, on the
analogy with being burglarized.

In any case, there's nothing more to go on. If you believe in
abductions and you want to know how many people might have been
abducted, you can't ask directly, because people won't remember.
But you can ask about memories that are nearly universal among
abductees, and move on -- as best you can -- from there.

Greg Sandow