Space Out
by Scott Hardie on July 16, 2007
As Denise suggested I do, I've gotten partway through the Unsolved Mysteries set on UFOs. (link) It's not my favorite topic, but the show is entertaining no matter what it covers, and they put on a good show. The problem is that most of it is so hard to believe. If I can debunk the claims in my own mind before they even trot out the obligatory skeptic near the end of the segment, they're not very good. For instance, one segment deals with four campers who claimed to be abducted in northern Maine and years later had nightmares about being naked and experimented on by little gray men, and under hypnosis they all corroborated each other's stories despite being asked not to contact each other. In the commentary, the show's creator says over and over how convincing this story was and how it's one of the most credible the show ever had, and I wonder how low the standard had to be for him to say that. A quick review of the evidence:
Their story at the campsite was full of rich details about camping. So? That's what I would expect out of four men who enjoyed camping. How does good detail in one part of the story prove that another part of the story, which incidentally is lacking in detail, is true?
Under hypnosis, they told identical stories. What is it with pseudoscientists? First there are ghost hunters who claim to have proof of hauntings when a psychic says she feels "a presence" on site, as if one implausible form of pseudoscience validates another. Now UFOlogists are turning to hypnosis for proof? Good luck convincing any skeptics with that approach. But the thing is, even if we hypothetically assume hypnosis is real, what's to stop these men from concocting their story together and discussing it until the details were right among all four, then sitting down with a hypnotist and resisting the mesmerism but pretending to be in a trance? Hypnosis proves nothing.
The men passed polygraph tests. Again: Fake pseudoscience that doesn't prove anything in general doesn't prove your fantastical claims. Polygraph machines don't actually indicate truth or falsehood, they indicate what we believe are symptoms of nervousness. These men spent a decade telling their friends and families about their "encounter" before any testing. After repeating a made-up story hundreds of times, do you think they were nervous about it?
I love ghost stories and so the Unsolved Mysteries ghost set was a treasure, but deep down I don't believe any of it is true. With UFOs I'm less inclined to believe, but I still appreciate an entertaining show, and this was one of the best of its kind. I hope to see the series resurrected again someday with another host.
One Reply to Space Out
Logical Operator
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Denise Sawicki | July 16, 2007
Yeah I am not a believer either. My theory on that camping story was that the hypnotist suggested/concocted the story himself to get the stories to match up. I don't really know anything about hypnosis but it seems plausible that he could give them false memories by talking about the story while they are in a dreamlike state. I would have found it somewhat more believable if they all had different hypnotists, but like you said they could have all agreed on a story ahead of time.
Some of the other stories were even dumber of course, such as the one about a woman who was lying in bed trying to sleep when she saw a tiny UFO come in the window and she woke up with her cancer cured. I mean having her cancer cured is interesting enough, but it doesn't strike me as a UFO story. If she was lying in bed don't you think she might have fallen asleep and had a weird dream?