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From: Greg Sandow <gsandow@prodigy.net>
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 16:42:27 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 21:17:32 -0500
Subject: Re: Abduction - The Issue Of Reality


>Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 20:28:03 -0500
>From: Mendoza <DarkSecretPB@compuserve.com>
>Subject: Re: Abduction - The Issue Of Reality
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>

>That would be a nice fat research job for someone, and life in
>abduction research would actually be _more_ interesting if
>abductologists took the view of proper ufologists, that 95 out
>of 100 claims were likely to fall apart on close inspection. (I
>think Mark Cashman first suggested this might be a fruitful
>approach.) But as abductologists have now decided why the aliens
>are here, and even that they'll be out of the closet within the
>next couple of generations or even the next five years, I doubt
>it'll be one of the familiar crew who'll adopt this line.

I've remarked elsewhere that there's no reason why abduction
reports should show the same IFO/UFO percentages as UFO
sightings. When police are known to be looking for someone, and
people call in saying they've seen the suspect, many or most of
those reports are mistaken.

But when people report burglaries to the police, I doubt there
are many mistakes. When you come home and find your door open,
your things ransacked, and valuables missing, you've been
burglarized, not much doubt about it. Similarly, assault charges
filed with police may sometimes be lies, but surely aren't
mistakes.

These comparisons leave many questions unanswered, of course,
about abduction reports, which are muddled by hazy memories and
the well-known lack of physical evidence. Still, it's worth
noting that "abductologists," at least the ones I know, don't
simply work with anyone who walks in the door and says
"hypnotize me, I think I've been abducted."

I've said this before, too, but evidently it bears repeating.
Many people contact abduction researchers (again, the ones I
know), but the possible abductees likely to get return phone
calls are the ones reporting a particular constellation of
consciously remembered experiences (lights in the room,
presences by the bed, missing time serious enough to have caused
an urgent search by family and/or police, and so forth).

Whether these experiences are as tangible as the signs of
burglary -- or whether they can reasonably be interpreted as
abduction indicators -- is quite another story. But abduction
investigators (again, the ones I know) don't proceed in the way
Peter implies. They'd be the first to tell you that not everyone
who thinks he/she is abducted really has been.

One last word. If a tone of impatience is creeping into my
comments, it's because Peter, bless him, puts things very much
his own way -- and that way, according to me, is slanted to make
abduction investigators look far more careless than they really
are. (Luckily, he does so far less in his book than he does
here.)

This doesn't make him intellectually dishonest -- just
exasperating.

With a smile,

Greg Sandow