UFO Abduction?

Discussion in 'UFOs, Ghosts and Monsters' started by Beer w/Straw, Jan 21, 2018.

  1. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Because whether you are eaten by the Riddler's giant clam or abducted by a UFO, it's no laughing matter if you are the one involved.
     
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  3. river

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    UFO abduction is not joke , the riddler clam is a joke
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Not if YOU were swallowed by that clam! Are you saying you know for a fact that the Riddler's clam has never eaten anyone?
     
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  7. river

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    do you Know that is has ?
     
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    You miss the point here.

    You are the one making the assertion - that alien abduction is a serious topic.
    That's only true if anyone has ever been abducted.
    Much like - if anyone has been eaten by the Riddler's clam, that too would be a serious matter.

    But you'd first have to show it ever happened.
     
  9. river

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    peoples experiences , thousands of them
     
  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, and those anecdotes have not been confirmed. Though many have been confessed as hoaxes.
     
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Nope! Just like you don't know for sure that anyone has been abducted by UFO's.

    But both COULD have happened.
     
  12. river

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    By confirmed what is your definition of confirmed ?
     
  13. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    It's not my definition; it's science being scientific.

    Anecdotes need to be supported by some sort of independent evidence.
     
  14. river

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    Well what science has seriously investigated UFO abductions ?
     
  15. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    How would you suggest UFO abductions should be investigated?
     
  16. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    They've all been investigated.

    Every anecdote about abduction has been recorded somewhere. Unfortunately, beyond writing them down, there's little else to be investigated.

    As for extant, examinable physical evidence, I think it's safe to say every example that has been presented has been studied (even if that's zero).
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Here's a sampling:
    ====================
    Abducted by a UFO: prevalence information affects young children's false memories for an implausible event
    Henry Otgaar
    Ingrid Candel
    Harald Merckelbach

    Kimberley A. Wade
    First published: 14 March 2008
    https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1445

    Abstract
    This study examined whether prevalence information promotes children's false memories for an implausible event. Forty‐four 7–8 and forty‐seven 11–12 year old children heard a true narrative about their first school day and a false narrative about either an implausible event (abducted by a UFO) or a plausible event (almost choking on a candy). Moreover, half of the children in each condition received prevalence information in the form of a false newspaper article while listening to the narratives. Across two interviews, children were asked to report everything they remembered about the events. In both age groups, plausible and implausible events were equally likely to give rise to false memories. Prevalence information increased the number of false memories in 7–8 year olds, but not in 11–12 year olds at Interview 1. Our findings demonstrate that young children can easily develop false memories of a highly implausible event.
    ====================
    International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis
    Past-Life Identities, Ufo Abductions, and Satanic Ritual Abuse: The Social Construction of Memories

    Nicholas P. Spanos,Cheryl A. Burgess &Melissa Faith Burgess
    Pages 433-446 | Received 23 Mar 1993, Published online: 31 Jan 2008


    Abstract
    People sometimes fantasize entire complex scenarios and later define these experiences as memories of actual events rather than as imaginings. This article examines research associated with three such phenomena: past-life experiences, UFO alien contact and abduction, and memory reports of childhood ritual Satanic abuse. In each case, elicitation of the fantasy events is frequently associated with hypnotic procedures and structured interviews which provide strong and repeated demands for the requisite experiences, and which then legitimate the experiences as “real memories.” Research associated with these phenomena supports the hypothesis that recall is reconstructive and organized in terms of current expectations and beliefs.
    ===================
    Qualitative Sociology

    March 2004, Volume 27, Issue 1, pp 3–34| Cite as
    The Flexibility of Scientific Rhetoric: A Case Study of UFO Researchers
    Abstract
    The case of ufology demonstrates that cultural packaging—a sort of once-removed indication of scientific authority—can be key in creating knowledge accepted as scientific. This adds a new dimension to the argument that scientific legitimacy is constructed, not just from scientific methodologies and institutional location, but also of language, culture, rhetoric, and symbols. Fringe researchers can make their cases for legitimacy using a variety of strategies—few of which involve actual research. Outside of the scientific community, scientific-sounding explanations and proclamations of expert statuses hold sway. Ambiguities about what constitutes science can be capitalized upon by groups like the UFO research community that assembles shards of legitimacy using science as a cultural template.
    =====================
    APA PsycNET Direct

    Memory distortion in people reporting abduction by aliens


    By Clancy, Susan A.,McNally, Richard J.,Schacter, Daniel L.,Lenzenweger, Mark F.,Pitman, Roger K.
    Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol 111(3), Aug 2002, 455-461

    Abstract
    False memory creation was examined in people who reported having recovered memories of traumatic events that are unlikely to have occurred: abduction by space aliens. A variant of the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm (J. Deese, 1959; H. L. Roediger III & K. B. McDermott, 1995) was used to examine false recall and false recognition in 3 groups: people reporting recovered memories of alien abduction, people who believe they were abducted by aliens but have no memories, and people who deny having been abducted by aliens. Those reporting recovered and repressed memories of alien abduction were more prone than control participants to exhibit false recall and recognition. The groups did not differ in correct recall or recognition. Hypnotic suggestibility, depressive symptoms, and schizotypic features were significant predictors of false recall and false recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
    =====================

    Do you want any more, or is that enough for you?
     
  18. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Very interesting

    One question - who vetted the researchers?

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  19. RADII Registered Senior Member

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    There have been a number of studies done of self-reporting abductees, in fairly rigorous fashion, by a number of PhDs, but primarily from a psychological perspective. There has been care given to applying controls (e.g.: 'control' group, 'actors' group, 'abductees' group) & fairly good statistical reduction, but papers or books published get received with some [perhaps healthy] skepticism.

    A few studies:
    The UFO Abduction Syndrome
    TED DAVIS DON C. DONDERI
    Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
    BUDD HOPKINS
    Intruders Foundation, New York

    “UFO Abduction Syndrome” (Hopkins, Jacobs, & Westrum, 1992) - seminal study I believe.

    THE ABDUCTION EXPERIENCE: A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THEORY AND EVIDENCE STUART APPELLE Department of Psychology State University of New York College at Brockport, Brockport, NY 14420-2977
     
  20. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Yup.
    They did the best they could.
     
  21. RADII Registered Senior Member

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    It's actually pretty consistent across studies (i.e.: common characteristics) & you can draw some good correlations across datasets. Still the population size is too small to be real diagnostic, & there is that dependence upon self-reporting, which is de facto bias that is difficult to correct. I am, however, finding some interesting stuff as the population size(s) increase.

    Full disclosure: I do not study UFO reports, I provide an analytic service which does deep mining on said datasets.
     
  22. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. The same has been noticed about UFO craft sightings, alien greens/greys, and even about ghost sightings.
     
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  23. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    "In the early 1990s, John Mack commenced a decade-plus study of 200 men and women who reported recurrent alien encounter experiences. Such encounters had seen some limited attention from academic figures (R. Leo Sprinkle perhaps being the earliest, in the 1960s). Mack, however, remains probably the most esteemed academic to have studied the subject.

    He initially suspected that such persons were suffering from mental illness, but when no obvious pathologies were present in the persons he interviewed, his interest was piqued. Following encouragement from longtime friend Thomas Kuhn, who predicted that the subject might be controversial, but urged Mack to collect data and ignore prevailing materialist, dualist and "either/or" analysis, Mack began concerted study and interviews. Many of those he interviewed reported that their encounters had affected the way they regarded the world, including producing a heightened sense of spirituality and environmental concern.

    Mack was somewhat more guarded in his investigations and interpretations of the abduction phenomenon than were earlier researchers. Literature professor Terry Matheson writes that "On balance, Mack does present as fair-minded an account as has been encountered to date, at least as these abduction narratives go."[4] In a 1994 interview, Jeffrey Mishlove stated that Mack seemed "inclined to take these [abduction] reports at face value". Mack replied by saying "Face value I wouldn't say. I take them seriously. I don't have a way to account for them."[5] Similarly, the BBC quoted Mack as saying, "I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking people. [But] I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can't account for in any other way, that's mysterious. Yet I can't know what it is but it seems to me that it invites a deeper, further inquiry."[6]

    Mack noted that there was a worldwide history of visionary experiences, especially in pre-industrial societies. One example is the vision quest common to some Native Americancultures. Only fairly recently in Western culture, notes Mack, have such visionary events been interpreted as aberrations or as mental illness. Mack suggested that abduction accounts might best be considered as part of this larger tradition of visionary encounters.

    His interest in the spiritual or transformational aspects of people's alien encounters, and his suggestion that the experience of alien contact itself may be more transcendent than physical in nature—yet nonetheless real—set him apart from many of his contemporaries, such as Budd Hopkins, who advocated the physical reality of aliens.

    His later research broadened into the general consideration of the merits of an expanded notion of reality, one which allows for experiences that may not fit the Western materialist paradigm, yet deeply affect people's lives. His second (and final) book on the alien encounter experience, Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters(1999), was as much a philosophical treatise connecting the themes of spirituality and modern worldviews as it was the culmination of his work with the "experiencers" of alien encounters, to whom the book is dedicated."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Mack
     

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