The Ballads of Emma and James

[Gene Steinberg]

I trust you don't mean having Jacobs talk about Carol Rainey.

I do not think this subject is worth a full episode. It's a sideshow that is not really helping us get to the bottom of the UFO abduction mystery, which is why I've confined my comments about these matters to the show's introductory segment.

If you want to read Jacobs' statements, they are posted on his site. Beyond that, what is there to say?

I am more interested in having an episode that deals with a different group of abduction researchers, who can focus on the actual research and not personalities.

 

[Frank Stalter]

I trust you don't mean having Jacobs talk about Carol Rainey.

I do not think this subject is worth a full episode. It's a sideshow that is not really helping us get to the bottom of the UFO abduction mystery, which is why I've confined my comments about these matters to the show's introductory segment.

If you want to read Jacobs' statements, they are posted on his site. Beyond that, what is there to say?

I am more interested in having an episode that deals with a different group of abduction researchers, who can focus on the actual research and not personalities.

You mean this one?

A Personal Note:
​

I wrote most of the information on this web site based on more than 42 years of UFO research. In addition, since 1986 I have conducted over 1,000 hypnotic regressions with abductees. I have tried to be as objective and as "agenda free" as possible. I have no New Age, spiritual, religious, transformational, or transcendent program to promote. I try to stay as close to the evidence as I can. However, there is no possibility that I have avoided error. The majority of evidence for the alien abduction phenomenon is from human memory derived from hypnosis administered by amateurs. It is difficult to imagine a weaker form of evidence. But it is evidence and we have a great deal of it. Still, readers must be skeptical of what I say and of what all others say in this tangled arena of alien abductions, hypnosis, popular culture, and memory. Abduction researchers are mainly amateurs doing their best to get to the truth knowing that objective reality may elude them.

Nah, he doesn't have anything to promote . . .

http://www.ufoabduction.com/books1.htm

 

[Gene Steinberg]

What didn't you understand about the words "a different group of abduction researchers"? We've had Jacobs on the show several times already. There are other people engaged in this form of research.

 

[Frank Stalter]

What didn't you understand about the words "a different group of abduction researchers"? We've had Jacobs on the show several times already. There are other people engaged in this form of research.

You don't need to get huffy with me, I don't care if it's your board or not. It's your board and it's your credibility. I really don't care what you do with either. I do care when a subject I'm interested in becomes infected with fakers and others just turn a blind eye and let it pass.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

You don't need to get huffy with me, I don't care if it's your board or not. It's your board and it's your credibility. I really don't care what you do with either. I do care when a subject I'm interested has becomes infected with fakers and others just turn a blind eye and let it pass.

Both Hopkins and Jacobs have been discussed over and over again in these forums, to the tune of hundreds and hundreds of messages. Very few of them are helpful towards getting to the bottom of the abduction mystery. We're not turning a blind eye to anything. I'm more concerned by people who are embracing one side of the story in the current disputes, and turning a blind eye to the other side.

But I'm more interested in moving on, since nothing is going to be resolved by examining the seamy side of UFO research, even if it sells magazines and gets people Web hits and podcast ratings.

 

[jjflash]

Well, I have no idea if it's her or not but I can't resist a little joke: If it is her maybe she did it in her sleep.

I was s'posin' it might be one of those rascally, 'infiltrate, divide and conquer' hybrids that we are informed are so computer savvy that they have taken to the convenience of sending their threats via instant messages. When it comes to e-communications, ya apparently just can't keep a good hybrid down.

The long and short of it, folks, is going to continue to be that neither Hopkins nor Jacobs have ever presented any evidence (as defined by the professional research community) whatsoever that would validate their speculations that they continue to irresponsibly and prematurely promote as fact. If they would adhere to professional research standards, recognize established protocol, and recognize the established definitions of terms such as 'fact' in the same manners that are followed by professional researchers, their reputations would be moot points.

They have no professionally recognized evidence, and they never have had any. But pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

You also have to wonder about the people who wrote those threats and then say, well, it's not me, it's the hybrids taking over my body.

 

[Sean Elifritz]

I was s'posin' it might be one of those rascally, 'infiltrate, divide and conquer' hybrids that we are informed are so computer savvy that they have taken to the convenience of sending their threats via instant messages. When it comes to e-communications, ya apparently just can't keep a good hybrid down.

The long and short of it, folks, is going to continue to be that neither Hopkins nor Jacobs have ever presented any evidence (as defined by the professional research community) whatsoever that would validate their speculations that they continue to irresponsibly and prematurely promote as fact. If they would adhere to professional research standards, recognize established protocol, and recognize the established definitions of terms such as 'fact' in the same manners that are followed by professional researchers, their reputations would be mute points.

They have no professionally recognized evidence, and they never have had any. But pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

You can say that about anything having to do with UFOs. If that's the standard why are you even interested?

 

[jjflash]

You can say that about anything having to do with UFOs.

I can understand why you might initally think so, Wickerman, and I am of course aware that your above statement is prevalent throughout the UFO community. However and if you give it a bit more thought, it becomes apparent that the statement is incorrect. Furthermore, it becomes apparent why such thinking will continue to keep ufologists and their community on the fringe. I will explain.

There is a great deal of evidence, it just is not evidence that directly supports a literal extraterrestrial presence. There are countless credible reports of UFOs, consisting of valid supporting circumstances such as multiple witnesses, radar paints, video footage, trace evidence, and so on. Where ufologists go wrong and lose their professional peers is when they prematurely assume that such evidence necessarily indicates that aliens are among us, much less that such aliens are conducting a full scale attack. Such is simply in contradiction to critical thinking and the scientific process of establishing a fact.

Additionally and as it relates to the abduction phenom, there are many reports of interactions with non-human beings. A serious, critical review of the situation leads an individual to differentiate between the evidence and the specualtion; identify the facts. For example, one of the facts is that there are reports. However, the fact there are reports does not in and of itself provide a universal conclusion. More research is required, and there are numerous possible explanations that most certainly apply to a certain percentage of cases, explanations ranging from hoax to psychiatric conditions, 'copy cat' effect to plain ol' misinterpretations of common events, and everything in between. There may very well be a certain small percentage of truly unexplainable circumstances - and this is where ufologists are shooting themselves in the foot:

The standards of research in ufology must be raised to the bar that is set by the rest of the professional research community. We cannot demand that the bar be lowered for our liking. It is irrational and pointless to through our hands up in frustration and proclaim there is nothing that can be done, as this is simply not true; what can be done is recognize the scientific process, conduct research in professional manners, and stop jumping to conclusions that are not supported by facts. Actually, we should demand it. When there stops being a demand for sensationalized BS, there will stop being a supply of it, but not until.

 

[ArchieBedford]

The standards of research in ufology must be raised to the bar that is set by the rest of the professional research community.

Why not raise it then? Publish your research findings via a mainstream publishing house (as Leslie Kean has done) to the high standards which you claim must be applied to others, and let's all read the results, and sit in judgment.

Over to you.

 

[Sean Elifritz]

I can understand why you might initally think so, Wickerman, and I am of course aware that your above statement is prevalent throughout the UFO community. However and if you give it a bit more thought, it becomes apparent that the statement is incorrect. Furthermore, it becomes apparent why such thinking will continue to keep ufologists and their community on the fringe. I will explain.

There is a great deal of evidence, it just is not evidence that directly supports a literal extraterrestrial presence. There are countless credible reports of UFOs, consisting of valid supporting circumstances such as multiple witnesses, radar paints, video footage, trace evidence, and so on. Where ufologists go wrong and lose their professional peers is when they prematurely assume that such evidence necessarily indicates that aliens are among us, much less that such aliens are conducting a full scale attack. Such is simply in contradiction to critical thinking and the scientific process of establishing a fact.

Additionally and as it relates to the abduction phenom, there are many reports of interactions with non-human beings. A serious, critical review of the situation leads an individual to differentiate between the evidence and the specualtion; identify the facts. For example, one of the facts is that there are reports. However, the fact there are reports does not in and of itself provide a universal conclusion. More research is required, and there are numerous possible explanations that most certainly apply to a certain percentage of cases, explanations ranging from hoax to psychiatric conditions, 'copy cat' effect to plain ol' misinterpretations of common events, and everything in between. There may very well be a certain small percentage of truly unexplainable circumstances - and this is where ufologists are shooting themselves in the foot:

The standards of research in ufology must be raised to the bar that is set by the rest of the professional research community. We cannot demand that the bar be lowered for our liking. It is irrational and pointless to through our hands up in frustration and proclaim there is nothing that can be done, as this is simply not true; what can be done is recognize the scientific process, conduct research in professional manners, and stop jumping to conclusions that are not supported by facts. Actually, we should demand it. When there stops being a demand for sensationalized BS, there will stop being a supply of it, but not until.

Decent prose but I still don't get your point. The data Hopkins and Jacobs has provided for abductions is just as good as anyone else's. The difference between them and some others has been that they espouse a more literal and sometimes negative outlook of it. But that part is just their opinion, their reading of it. Sure, there are those that think these are space brothers; glorious, caring beings of light spreading unconditional love one clandestine anal probe at a time. But that's just an outlook as well and those people have no more data going for them than the negativists do.

I personally consider the cases of Betty and Barney Hill, Pascagoula, Allagash, Travis Walton, and Kelly Cahill (Budd Hopkins tried to add to this elite group with the Cortile case but I've always been skeptical of it) to really be up there. These are the cases that convince me that there is something legitimate to the phenomenon at all. But even those fall far short of what the "professional research community" demands. All of it does.

 

[ArchieBedford]

"...a different group of abduction researchers"? There are other people engaged in this form of research.

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <wunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <wontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> Yes there are, but not a huge number. My shortlist of researchers looking into the abduction phenomenon over the past years/decades, some of whom employ hypnosis for memory recovery some of the time, might include:


Yvonne Smith at CERO in LA (sometimes criticised as a self-promoter but reliable and sound)

June Steiner at OPUS in the Bay area (reliable, sound, pretty good, works away quietly and diligently)

John Carpenter in Missouri (excellent)

Jed Turnbull in NYC (reliable and sound)

Dolores Cannon in Arkansas (nice lady, good intentions, questionable conclusions)

Mary Rodwell in Australia (busy with hundreds of cases, good intentions, questionable conclusions)

Elaine Douglas (friend of Don's so won't say too much)

Barbara Lamb (believe she's stopped working with abductees but used to be good)

Dr. Edith Fiore (practicing psychiatrist, good but doesn't connect the dots)

Ann Druffel (ex-MUFON & doesn't do much now but did in the past)

Kevin Randle (OK for balance but not too smart when evaluating abduction evidence)


and if you want to get to the less substantial ones you could include people like Joe Montaldo, a number of MUFON teams including those collected together over the years by Ray Fowler, and a lots of people who do not advertise or publish anything and are off the radar.

Anyone got any other suggestions?


Thre's two separate processes here, as with any research:

1. Data collection and validation

2. Data interpretation and forming of hypothesis



Just about everyone who ever spends serious time and investigative rigor working at this issue comes up with exactly the same data from abduction cases worldwide, with minimum variation from case to case. Hypotheses as to what it all means based on interpretation of said dada is where they diverge.[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

 

[stephen dedalus]

The standards of research in ufology must be raised to the bar that is set by the rest of the professional research community. We cannot demand that the bar be lowered for our liking. It is irrational and pointless to through our hands up in frustration and proclaim there is nothing that can be done, as this is simply not true; what can be done is recognize the scientific process, conduct research in professional manners, and stop jumping to conclusions that are not supported by facts. Actually, we should demand it. When there stops being a demand for sensationalized BS, there will stop being a supply of it, but not until.

This is a well-articulated call for a re-evaluation of what passes for evidence in researching anomalous phenomena. In this and previous posts, you bring a powerful critical acuity to bear on some suspect assumptions that pollute the field.

Having said that, however, I think it is also important to recognize the limitations of science, which is both an epistemology and a method, and to apply the same penchant for critique to the "professional research community" and its investigative protocols that you apply to some of the more questionable factions within abduction research. The scientific method is a research protocol that is very useful for collecting and interpreting certain data, but we must acknowledge the possibility that some phenomena and some potential data--whether because of some inherent quality that renders them difficult to observe using any research method, or because our current technology lacks the capacity to reliably and consistently detect them--may be inaccessible to a researcher committed to the scientific method. If such phenomena exist, then any member of the professional research community, or anyone who adopts their research standards, would be bound to dismiss that phenomenon as scientifically unknowable.

The fact that science is both a method and an epistemology means that anything that is deemed scientifically unknowable as a consequence of its resistance to the scientific method is likely to be dismissed as nonexistent, or at best a fiction or fantasy of the deluded. Instead of adopting a conceptual model in which science is understood as an approach that is useful for revealing certain aspects of reality but less useful or perhaps even useless for investigating other aspects of reality, we tend to assume that the parts of reality to which science enjoys access are the only parts of reality that actually exist, and that all else is either fiction or error.

The implications of the dual nature of science (method/epistemology) for abduction research or any anomalous research are highly significant: insisting that abduction researchers adhere to the same standards as the professional research community may be committing yourself to dismissing the abduction phenomenon as a fiction (which it very may well be, but I don't think we know enough yet to reach that conclusion).

There is a tendency in your thought to use vertical metaphors and the hierarchy that such metaphors imply when comparing the professional research community to ufological research. While I think in many cases that hierarchization is more than justified, I also wonder if it is always a fair comparison. Instead of raising and lowering a bar that serves as a uniformly applicable set of research standards for any inquiry, perhaps what is needed is a horizontal conceptualization of the problem, in which different methodologies are applied to the investigations that they are best equipped to further. If the UFO phenomenon is as complex and subtle as many here suspect, it is highly likely that whatever answers we may produce will be the result of multidisciplinary, multimodal approaches that bring apparently contrary, incompatible investigatory or hermeneutic strategies into dialogue with one another. Nuts and bolts paradigms may need to find a way to make themselves speak meaningfully and productively to Trickster theory, folklore, and narrative theory, and vice versa. Or, if such interdisciplinary work is not feasible, we may need to understand the phenomenon as a collection of phenomena, each of which makes sense according to a method suited to explain it, but none of which can be fused into a synthesis that reveals a fundamental answer that could make any sense to us. There is no guarantee that the truths we can hope to produce will be anything other than fragmented, contingent truths, useful in a limited capacity but ultimately unable to explain anything in its totality.

For a serious critique of science, let me recommend Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. This is a very useful text for understanding the limitations of the scientific method, for illustrating the absurd conclusions that adherence to the scientific method has historically led researchers (phlogiston theory, anyone?), and for understanding that at its heart, science is a way of producing contingent truths by applying interpretive paradigms to data sets and manufacturing facts based on that application.

Again, there is much of merit in your call for more serious standards in ufological research. At the same time, if taken to an extreme, we may find that insisting on the same disciplinary rigor we see in mainstream science will render anomalous phenomena a mere fiction, and leave ufology without a subject to study.

 

[Elendil]

Add to that Against Method by Paul Feyerabend, goes even way beyond Kuhn.

The thing is - higher standards are extremely necessary indeed. Regarding abduction research, there are a couple of things that Randle even mentioned last year on the show. Cases should be better organized, every claim double checked and every little thing documented. For example, Person A from Town X claims to have been abducted. Person B which is related to A and lives in the same household can corroborate some things because she couldn't find A during a certain time period and she even notified the police. The neighbors saw a UFO at the exact same date, along with some other residents of the town. The case should have statements by both persons, the copy of the police report, the transcript of the hypnotic regression (if any) and photos of eventual scoop-marks plus the analysis of the area around the house along with the broken branches from the top or any other marks. The neighbors' claims should also be included, along with the press clipping from the local media about the sighting of the UFO. I always wanted to see something like that in abduction literature. It never happened. Maybe I was reading the wrong books. Truth be told, I still didn't manage to get my hands on whole lot of them.

I tend to think that well investigated cases which are carefully scrutinized by the researchers themselves won't have a posse of skeptics shitting all over them. At least the skeptics will have a much harder time finding any holes + the case might come in the hands of an open-minded person who might some well researched stuff along with some puzzling data. And maybe that person will be a chemist, psychiatrist or some other kind of expert who could be willing to lend a hand and help out.

The stuff about Mortellaro and the gynecologist from the last thread raises some serious questions if true. Only researchers without the least stain on them will be able to move this thing forward. Stuff like this is just to easy to dismiss, any little mistake will do. If the article from Hopkins' ex is true, that means his whole work is basically deeply stained.

Just about everyone who ever spends serious time and investigative rigor working at this issue comes up with exactly the same data from abduction cases worldwide, with minimum variation from case to case. Hypotheses as to what it all means based on interpretation of said dada is where they diverge.

I'm sorry Archie, but that is not quite true. There seems to be a lot of discrepancy between certain researchers. For instance, Karla Turner reported stuff I never heard Hopkins or Jacobs talk about. There also seems to be a lot of difference between certain countries. Was it Chris or Jerome Clark who mentioned the difference between the US and the other countries on the show? The stuff how the Greys seem to be prevalent in the US and not so much in other places. You know, the hairy dwarfs from Brazil...

 

[ArchieBedford]

I'm sorry Archie, but that is not quite true. There seems to be a lot of discrepancy between certain researchers. For instance, Karla Turner reported stuff I never heard Hopkins or Jacobs talk about. There also seems to be a lot of difference between certain countries. Was it Chris or Jerome Clark who mentioned the difference between the US and the other countries on the show? The stuff how the Greys seem to be prevalent in the US and not so much in other places. You know, the hairy dwarfs from Brazil.

Yeah, the hairy dwarf cases from South America are very, very strange. There's just a handful of them, in 50 years, and Jacques Vallee wrote one of them up in "The Invisible College." Who knows what is going on there? There are all kinds of odd cases. Some of those investigated by Tim Good in Puerto Rico and other places are truly bizarre. However, the grey-alien abduction narrative is found everywhere: I myself have come across many in the UK, Germany, Turkey, even Ghana. I know someone who travelled in southern Africa for eight months last year filming and has a couple of hundred hours of high quality interviews on file from what seem to be classic grey alien abduction cases throughout Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and Zambia. There should be a film incorporating most of these data in the next year or so.

At the end of the day, all these accounts are being investigated and written up by amateurs in their own time and with their own money. Few are professional scientists. The fact that some might fall short of the most rigorous standards of scientific skepticism does not mean the baby should therefore be thrown out with the bathwater, and that this data should be discarded. It just means, simply, that for some people the evidence is less than perfect and needs further validation. I do not see any evidence that all this data from encounters/abductions around the world has been refuted or falsified yet, by anyone - which is not saying that it's all true, but that there is a persistent phenomenon with consistent markers which begs for explanation.

Another thing you need to bear in mind is that for many of these abduction researchers/investigators their primary objectives are not generally to do battle with and ultimately convince skeptics, especially the kind of skeptics who can't even be bothered to review the primary data, let alone get off their lardy butts and proactively investigate themselves. Their primary objectives are to understand the phenomenon for themselves, and to make the lives of people who undergo these (sometimes traumatic) experiences a little easier by linking them up with others who have undergone the same often repeated trauma.

Remember the late John Mack's question to the 1992 MIT Conference:

"If what these people say is happening to them is not happening, then what is?"

To date, no "psychological" explanation like sleep paralysis or hypnagogic states even begins to explain the data.

Yet another problem is the stigma and ridicule which surrounds this outlandish subject. This means that the vast majority of abductees insist on anonymity and are extremely cautious about coming forward in the first place, especially those with professional positions. By definition this means that validation and presentation of all the facts in the public arena is going to be impossible in the vast majority of cases, as people just do not want to be publicly known: this must be respected. It's hard enough for an airline pilot who has an encounter with a UAP witnessed by all the crew and validated on radar to come forward, as his career will be in jeopardy. Multiply that exponentially for a leading public figure, a surgeon or a senior career military professional who has abduction experiences - and many do.

 

[paraschtick]

Just to throw in my sixpence re: the Emma/James scenario ... gubbins.

You go away for three months and ... nothing changes. Strange that. Anyhow, even if this mysterious James character was Emma Woods, I could perfectly understand why she would come back under another pseudonym considering how she was treated on here previously, and how she was banned from commenting and defending herself from the attacks and opinions of others. I'm not saying that it wasn't a daft thing to do, or it undermines her side of the story, but I can understand it. Certain personages around here haven't exactly been on her side in this saga, and have somehow fooled themselves into believing a historian with no medical training and no licence to practice hypnotherapy who has admitted to extremely serious lapses in morality ie the instilling of Multiple personality disorder into somebody's brain whilst under hypnosis etc.. That one thing opens up an enormous can of worms if you are a person whose moral compass is still pointing in the right direction.

So ... just a quick comment whilst I try to get up to date on things in this wacky world of yours ...

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Actually, you're not seeing the whole picture. If "Emma" is posting her under an assumed name to support herself, that act of deception has to make you wonder if she has been deceptive elsewhere. It casts suspicion on her story. At no time has she contacted me or any of our forum moderators asking to be allowed back in the forums. Instead she creates a fake name. Curious, but evidently you're not able to look at the can of worms that opens.

 

[dyingsun]

I find it sad that her 'go to' psychologist couldn't help her.

 

[stephen dedalus]

I find it sad that her 'go to' psychologist couldn't help her.

So do I, but the matter is complex. If her claims of anomalous experience are the result of a known mental illness that could and should have been diagnosed and treated, then her psychologist failed her. But if she has in fact undergone genuinely anomalous experience, then I don't know if any mainstream psychologist could have helped her. For what it's worth, the "Introduction" section of her website claims that the therapists with whom she worked both before and after Jacobs consider her psychologically normal: "For about ten years between 1992 and 2002 I saw a therapist, Justin Armstrong (pseudonym), who helped me work through some of the personal issues that arose because of having these experiences. Mr. Armstrong considers me to be psychologically normal and not delusional or suffering from mental illness (see Therapy Assessment.) My current therapist, likewise, considers me to be psychologically normal." The veracity of these claims is certainly subject to debate, but right now it's all we've got. If true, however, they suggest that "Justin Armstrong's" failure to help her was both sad and inevitable: how could a psychologist with conventional training hope to offer any authentic assistance to someone enduring experience that isn't supposed to be real?

The real tragedy here is that there doesn't seem to be anyone in either the mainstream psychological community or the ufological community who can satisfy our demands for both professional credentials and the degree of open-mindedness that would facilitate a real assessment of the veracity of abduction claims or the efficacy of hypnosis as an investigative tool (though perhaps someone on Archie's above list might do so?). Woods's initial therapist could only go so far: "He said that he did not understand what was happening to me, but that it was obvious to him that something unusual was going on that warranted investigation." This is probably the best we can hope to get from anyone responsible enough to know when they've butted up against the borders of their knowledge and to call it quits as a result. The fact is, when it comes to researching anomaly and specifically abduction, everyone is an amateur. Even the most experienced abduction researchers are reaching their conclusions based on a highly unreliable means of collecting data, a fact to which Jacobs himself attests on his own website: "The majority of evidence for the alien abduction phenomenon is from human memory derived from hypnosis administered by amateurs. It is difficult to imagine a weaker form of evidence. But it is evidence and we have a great deal of it. Still, readers must be skeptical of what I say and of what all others say in this tangled arena of alien abductions, hypnosis, popular culture, and memory. Abduction researchers are mainly amateurs doing their best to get to the truth knowing that objective reality may elude them." Whatever legitimate accusations we may confront Jacobs with, we can't say he's blind to the tenuousness of his research paradigm and the hypothoses to which it has given rise.

 

[Kandinsky]

An 'innocent' show suggestion...how about Jeff Ritzman, The Clueless One, Bud Hopkins and David Jacobs for a 'round table' discussion? Sounds like fun huh?

Each side could bring on a 'mystery guest to support them.' This way, Hopkins/Jacobs could bring in Gene and Archie and Vaeni/Ritzman could bring on 'Woods' and Dr Lillienfield. It'd be like a ufology death-match.

"So Miss Woods, what happened after you...."

Unexpected music:

"It's time for a word from our sponsors!"