The taboo in mainstream science against the study of UFOs and alien encounters has been on-going for more than 50 years. It’s well known that the fear of ridicule and the label of charlatan has kept scientists who might otherwise take an interest in the subject from actively pursuing it.
However, if your intent is to assume alien abductions don’t exist, it’s apparently acceptable to create poorly researched studies to explain away the phenomenon. One example of such biased science and questionable science journalism appeared November 11, 2014 on the Scientific American website.
The article suggests that alien abductions might be the result of trauma related to ‘accidental awareness.’ That’s a term for patients who wake up during surgery and are aware of what’s happening to them. Those patients sometimes experience various psychological problems in the aftermath of their experiences during surgery.
So why are alien abductions linked to poorly administered anesthesia? It’s because the bright lights and the masked medical team working over the patient supposedly look similar to what abductees experience when aliens perform mysterious procedures on their bodies. A study on the subject was published in a psychiatry journal in 2008 by David V. Forrest, a Columbia University psychoanalyst.
Scientific American picked up on the subject because of a recently released report on accidental awareness by the Royal College of Anaesthetists. The report documents the potential for lasting, perhaps permanent, psychological damage to afflicted patients. However, when the Royal College inquired about alien abduction, none of the hundreds of patients interviewed said they had any such experiences.
Yes, none.
Amazingly, Scientific American reported that fact, but continued on about the supposed link between accidental awareness and alien abductions.
The article’s contention, based on David Forrest’s study, hangs on the thinnest thread of so-called evidence. Here it is: Barney Hill, who along with his wife Betty are considered the first modern abductees, mentioned in an interview that the experience he underwent while on the alien craft reminded him of the time he had his tonsils removed. That’s it. No mention of any previous surgeries for Betty, who also was subjected to alien medical procedures.
Beyond the lack of supportive evidence for the claim, there’s also the assumption that alien abductions aren’t real. So much for the scientific method. To quote from the article: “Assuming Barney Hill wasn’t actually brought aboard a spaceship that night in 1961, he may have experienced a flashback to his tonsillectomy.”
Since such research eliminates the possibility of actual alien abductions, then they must be something else: fantasies, hoaxes, and hidden memories of traumas, such as sexual abuse or now accidental awareness.
In other words, anything but a real alien abduction. Our take: When it comes to alien abductions, don’t assume anything.
Here’s a good comment that came via e-mail.
There are so many alternative “explanations” for alien abductions that it boggles the mind. One of the things I discussed with Budd Hopkins asnd David Jacobs was my personal offense at the implications that I had been abused by a parent or some relative and subconsciously “created” the abduction scenarios because I couldn’t deal with the truth. And this business about patients coming awake during anesthesia is ludicrous, in my opinion. When a patient has anesthesia, that patient is connected to various types of devices that monitor everything happening with the patient, and the devices are constantly monitored by the attending anesthetist or anesthesiologist. Any patient who awakens during such an event will send the monitors into a “screaming” kind of “something is very wrong here” that never would go unnoticed by the attending. The patient may be paralyzed and unable to speak or move, but the mental terror produced by the awakening in such a state would send those machines into high overdrive due to that very inability to communicate that “Hey, I’m awake! Do something!” Blood pressure and heart rates would spike, just to mention a couple.
Some of my abductions and encounters have happened in broad daylight, and some in night time. I understand that we don’t have answers. And sometimes I have only partial memories, and sometimes I’m aware that the ETs have planted “false memories” as a means of covering what they’ve done with me or to me. There have, however, been sufficient PHYSICAL things resulting from the encounters, such as Carey’s bleeding throat and my own pulse-point bruising and puncture marks that fade much more quickly than an ordinary bruise would, etc…..these kinds of incidents are inexplicable and it’s pretty difficult to ascertain some other explantion. Many of the skeptics’ explanations are outrageous and almost funny. I certainly know that there are people who, for one reason or another, “create” abduction and encounter stories that aren’t true and they do it on purpose, often for recognition or fame. I tend to think the real folks….at least those of us who have been ‘hurt’ in one way or another, have a tendency to want to keep it out of sight and remain, as I did for almost all my life, in the “abduction closet”, for the very reasons of being considered cranks, crackpots, or simply crazy. Hopefully one day we will learn more than we know now. Meanwhile, the skeptics will continue to badger and belittle the experiencers with their objectionable ideas. c
You are not alone in this. There are many more than we ever thought possible. At some point the excuses and alternative theories such as this one are going to seem as dumb to everyone else as it does to us.
I hope you’re right. But I’m not holding my breath. If the midterm elections tell us anything, it’s that most Americans don’t connect the dots. They listen to sound bytes, and those bytes become their news – and their reality.
That’s the world of science for you. I’ve another example – a cutting in front of me now that says “Could this be the proof that ghosts are all in the mind?” Okay not aliens or abductions, but these sort of researchers seem to want to ‘prove’ that such things do not exist rather than trying to prove that they do.
So true, Mike! If they put the time into proving the existence of ghosts and/or aliens that they put into disproving them, who knows what they might discover?