WEBVTT - Extraordinary Claims 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.600 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:12.520 Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. All Right, I think 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.920 that the panel has been uh verc patient, I'm sure 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:18.599 very interested, and everything has been said, and perhaps we 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:21.440 might ask who would like to start the questioning? Back 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:24.880 to thinking, Well, I'd like to begin the questioning, if 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:30.120 I may, with with one general line of inquiry. Our 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:33.760 present understanding of the evolution of of life on Earth 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.840 is that it's a slow process of evolution by natural selection. 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.800 The human beings are the product of several billions of 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:47.600 years of random mutation accidental effects leading up to what 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:51.680 we are now. Other planets certainly have environments quite different 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:55.840 from those on the Earth, and therefore we would expect 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.080 it beings that evolved there would have even greater differences, 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:02.320 and that would not look closely like human beings. And 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.839 that's why I was interested to see that the characterization 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:12.520 of the inhabitants of the supposed extraterrestrial space vehicle where 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:17.000 we're a few minor difference, is very closely human. Head, 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:21.320 two eyes, smell like a nose, mouth, hands, feet, and 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.000 so on. This seemed to me that much more likely 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:29.440 that this was putting projecting human experience onto perhaps something else. 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:33.080 I think the thing that strikes me most is the 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.600 fact that not only did these creatures breathe the Earth's 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:39.199 atmosphere with no difficulty, but you were able to breathe 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:43.440 the spacecraft's atmosphere with no difficulty. Is that a question, No, 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:45.880 it's our common Well, that's all I can say is 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:48.760 did you notice any respirators or anything of that? Not 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:54.360 my position, um certain out of psychologists, but some aspects 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:59.120 of the story that Mrs Hill told, particularly the needle incident, 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:05.480 seemed to me recognizable having read Freud. I discussed it 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:09.200 with Betty herself too, and that Betty is as a 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:13.040 qualified state social worker, is aware of the dream symbolism 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:15.320 and that sort of thing. Oh man, I had something 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.800 said something that I've discovered sense the hypnosis, And I 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.960 don't know is this would apply to it, doubts, But 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:26.360 in hospitals, when it's necessary to obtain a blood sample 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.919 from a small infant, it is done through the navel. 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:34.160 I think that you might uh correct me, and this 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.080 is wrong at least point out the one fact that 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.360 you said it was a very large needle, larger than 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.480 anything that you had ever seen before long that it 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.040 had been plunged into your navel. I can't say that 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:47.359 it was plunged in. What it was that they started 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:50.680 to insert it and I had pain, and I was 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:53.640 under the impression they stopped, But there was no blood 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:57.400 or physical evidence of puncture. I wasn't aware of this 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:02.160 until nineteen Well, whenever it happened, if it did happen, 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:11.680 you didn't detect any wound on your body. That's Carl 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.960 Sagan expressing his skepticism to Betty and Barney Hill on 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:20.200 The David Schomberg Show in nineteen seven. I think a 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:23.840 skeptical mindset has to be brought to bear on any 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:28.960 claims regarding UFOs, and quite frankly, the UFO proponents that 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:32.480 I spoke with for this podcast expressed the same opinion. 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:37.560 But there's significant disagreement on what exactly constitutes evidence in 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.600 this context and at what point you can conclude that 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:46.400 abductions are happening. Carl Sagan asserted that extraordinary evidence of 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:51.640 extraterrestrial visitation was required. A half century after the Hill 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:55.960 experience kicked off a succession of abduction accounts. What is 0:03:56.000 --> 0:04:00.720 the state of the evidence. I'm Toby Ball and This 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:22.320 Is Strange Arrivals Episode eleven, Extraordinary Claims. In the nineteen 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:27.480 eighties and nineties, interest in UFO abductions peaked partly because 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:31.800 of the work of Bud Hopkins, John mac and David Jacobs, 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:36.039 and partly because the concept had been adopted by popular culture, 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.279 most notably in the X Files and Close Encounters of 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:44.680 the Third Kind. However, it was all fueled by the 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:48.600 sheer number of people who truly believe that they've been abducted. 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:54.280 UFO researcher Alajandro Rojas there are, and I don't think 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:57.520 the general public realizes this, tens of thousands, if not 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:02.359 hundreds of thousands of people that report these experiences, that 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:06.039 believe they're having interactions or abductions with aliens. And some 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:09.680 of these people are very credible lawyers, police, people in 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:14.000 the military. That I think makes it very significant. During 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:18.480 this time, there was a change in the standard abduction story. 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:22.479 Instead of driving lonely roads at night, the abductee would 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.800 be in bed asleep and it would be pulled from 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:28.880 their bedroom up to a craft where they'd be subjected 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:34.560 to examination and experimentation. The new narrative was consistent with 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:40.000 the medically recognized condition known as sleep paralysis. Skeptoid host 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:44.680 Brian Dunning. Sleep paralysis is when you wake up, Usually 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:47.440 it's shortly after you've fallen asleep or shortly before you 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:50.720 wake up. You're conscious, but you're unable to move, and 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:53.640 you see you often see some sort of an entity 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.520 there in the room with you, and that entity often 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:59.760 sits on you or pushes down on you, and you 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.279 feel a weight on your chest holding you down and 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:05.640 you can't move. That's a classic case of sleep paralysis. 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:11.200 It's a very thoroughly documented actual phenomenon. This is not new. 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:16.480 Samuel Johnson defined the conditions of sleep paralysis as a 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:21.120 quote unquote nightmare in his Dictionary of the English Language 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:26.039 in seventeen fifty five. The term nightmare eventually evolved to 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:31.400 today's meaning of a bad dream. Now where the Betty 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:34.080 and Barney Hill story comes into it and impacts the 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:38.520 history of sleep paralysis is what character people have seen 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:43.200 sitting on their chest during these episodes prior to this, 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:47.400 Prior to the nineteen sixties, in Western society, it was 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:50.400 always the old hag. That's where we get the turn 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:53.680 feeling haggard from. You feel Haggard today because you were 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:56.159 up last night, because the old hag was writing you 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:59.080 around like a donkey. People would wake up and they 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:03.440 would see this hag a crone which type character sitting 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:06.240 on them, are standing over them. After the Betty and 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.400 Barney Hills story changed and this idea of the gray 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:14.680 alien entered sort of the pop consciousness, suddenly we had 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:18.600 alien abductions. People would wake up reporting gray aliens in 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.040 their bedroom. Thees I think was when this really peaked. 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:31.320 University of California, Irvine professor Elizabeth loftis sleep paralysis. It's 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.560 very scary if you don't know what it is, and 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:37.320 they end up, you know, in the hands of somebody 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:41.920 like Hopkins or John Mack who manages to convince them 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:45.040 that this is a sign that they were abducted and 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:52.320 that's what they need to deal with. And through suggestive interventions, interviewing, hypnosis, whatever, 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:57.640 they helped these patients clients, whatever they are, conjure up 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:03.240 images that then feel as if memories. Even among supporters 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:07.000 of the idea that UFO abductions are occurring, there is 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:10.680 an acknowledgement that at least some reported abductions are the 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:15.840 result of sleep paralysis. It's a fascinating topic, and Betty 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:20.320 and Barney Hill story had a huge impact steering the 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:22.920 history of sleep paralysis in the United States, which I 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:26.880 think is just marvelous. Belief that aliens have visited the 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:33.439 Earth remained strong in the US. In twenty century Fox 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:38.559 Home Entertainment commissioned to survey regarding UFOs and aliens. It 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:41.880 found that almost thirty nine percent of Americans believed that 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:45.880 aliens have visited the Earth. An eighteen percent believe that 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:51.920 aliens do abduct people. But despite this, alien abductions seemed 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:55.120 to have slipped from the public consciousness in recent years. 0:08:56.160 --> 0:09:00.600 Author Terry Matheson, I remember you could go through a 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:04.679 supermarket checkout line without seeing at least one tabloid with 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.040 a picture of an alien on the front cover and 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:10.680 a news story about somebody who has been abducted by aliens. Now, 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:13.240 I can't remember the last time I saw anything like that. 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:17.080 It seems to have just dropped off the radar. As 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:20.080 I've mentioned earlier in this series, I think this is 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.760 largely due to the escalation in the scope and strangeness 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:27.840 of abduction stories. When you are constantly one upping the 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:31.360 previous story. There comes a point at which the narrative 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:36.040 becomes so incredible that it can't plausibly be made more extreme. 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:41.120 There is a limit, and for abductions that limit seemed 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:44.960 to be hit during the Hopkins era. Matheson has a 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:50.080 similar take. It relies on the book Morphology of the 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:54.200 Folk Tale by Vladimir Prop, which looked at how folk 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:59.160 tales are structured. Prop argue that there are only certain 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:03.800 of that can follow from a previous event. Take a 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:08.600 fairy tale, for example, Cinderella's mother dies. Okay, what's going 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:12.679 to happen? There are two possibilities. The father will marry again, 0:10:12.880 --> 0:10:17.520 or he won't. Then he marries again. The stepmother will 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:21.640 be good and loving or hard and ruthless. Well, it 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.200 makes a better story if she's the latter. And he 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:27.679 went on and on showing how there are certain developments 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:31.199 in every story, that the story is limited by the 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:33.960 number of things you can profitably put into as a 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:37.280 subsequent event. And I think that gets us back to 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:40.960 this whole thing about what happened to the abduction mess. 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:43.840 The myths ran out of things to add on that 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:48.480 would be believable. The alien abduction has receded from the 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:52.600 public consciousness. That doesn't mean that research on the phenomenon 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:59.640 has ceased. After the break, strange arrivals will return in 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:16.400 a moment. Meant you might remember the name Dr Don Dndree. 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:21.120 We heard about him much earlier in the series. He 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:24.680 was one of the authors, along with Bud Hopkins, of 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:29.480 a paper about alien symbols. He's a retired associate professor 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:32.800 at McGill University and he's active in the field of 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:37.480 UFO investigation. I spoke with him because I wanted to 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:40.360 find out what is currently happening in the field of 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:44.280 abduction research. He struck me as a little like Bud 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:48.480 Hopkins and his beliefs, but far more measured and with 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:52.920 a significant background in science. Dr Dondrey has boiled his 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:58.760 theories into three simple propositions about alien abduction. The first 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:02.040 proposition is some of of people report as UFOs are 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:07.080 extra terrestrial vehicles, they actually are from somewhere else. Proposition 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:11.160 to some of those vehicles have et crews what in 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:15.880 popular languages called aliens or extraterrestrials. And point three, some 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:20.120 of those crews catch and release people to study us. 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:23.360 That's commonly called an alien abduction. I think all of 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:27.280 those three propositions are true, but notice that each of 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:29.960 them has a sum in it, so not every account 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:33.720 is true. But some of what people report as UFOs 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:37.360 are ET vehicles. Some ET vehicles, not all of them, 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:40.840 have ET crews, and some of those ET crews, to 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:42.920 put it in plain language, mess around with us. They 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:47.199 grab people, bring them aboard, do examinations and other things, 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:49.880 and put us back. So that's the story. That's what 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:54.360 I think is happening. I wondered why, as a scientist, 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:58.960 let him to assert these propositions, given the lack of 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:02.640 physical evidence of abductions, what could you point to as 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:07.120 evidence that these events were actually taking place. There are 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:10.520 many reports like this goes back many years, and those 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:15.720 reports have basically been classified, studied, and documented. Many of 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:18.440 them are military people. Many of them are people in 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:23.679 positions of public authority like cops ore CNP officers in Canada, 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:27.360 military people in the United States, many of them accompanied 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:32.880 by videos and radar plots. So the evidence is cumulatively overwhelming. 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:38.400 There's no lack of evidence that is both instrumental. That is, 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:41.400 people are not just saying something, but they're showing you 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:45.320 a video showing you a radar plot showing you, and 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.840 this is acceptable, a drawing that they made from memory 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:53.560 right away. A scientist or a naturalist goes about his 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:56.560 or her work exactly the way I'm describing. You go 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.800 out into nature, you look at something, you write it down, 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:01.800 you take a picture of it, a video of it, 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:05.280 you catch it. Or in the case of science, you 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:08.440 set up an experiment in which you control some conditions 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.240 and you see what happens. They abduct people from their houses, 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:14.199 from their cars, They test them, they examine them, they 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.720 put them back. That is, from my point of view known. 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:21.280 What their motives are is unknown. That they mess with 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:26.240 us is known, and that's not good. During our conversation, 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:31.000 Dondree asserted that he believed that abductions were happening. He 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:33.800 did not venture a guess about the number of abductions 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:37.920 that might be occurring, though I asked. He also didn't 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:42.200 put forth any particular cases as being exemplary, though he 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:45.960 has written about many cases. His message to me was 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:51.840 simply this abductions are happening to be transparent. I don't 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:54.520 believe they are. And this has nothing to do with 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:59.000 Dr Dondree, who is smart, sane and very gracious when 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:01.600 talking to a person with much less knowledge of the 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:07.560 field and an admittedly skeptical outlook. Instead, it might have 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:10.680 to do with the way that I'm wired. Let's go 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:14.200 back to the very beginning of the podcast. I talked 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:16.720 about the lights that a group of us saw across 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.320 the expanse of a New Hampshire lake. Two of us 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:25.920 concluded that they were alien spacecraft. The other two, myself included, 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:30.280 conceded that we couldn't identify what the lights were, but 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:32.680 we were sure they had nothing to do with aliens. 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:38.280 Why is it that in the face of identical experiences 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:43.400 we would draw such different conclusions. Is it down to psychology? 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:47.280 I asked the University of New Hampshire's Mark Ken about this. 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:53.080 There have been a few neat experimental analyzes that are 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:58.520 showing some reliable differences that are intriguing, like, for instance, 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:03.360 a memory test where we give people a list of words. Say, 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:08.720 for instance, the words might be pillow, blanket, night moon. 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:11.840 The one thing that's not in the list is the 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:15.760 word sleep, but everything around that list talks about sleep. 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:18.200 Or we could do the same thing with everything around 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:21.520 the world word music, or everything around the word suite. 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:26.960 If you give people these lists to memorize, both skeptics 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:29.920 and believers will come up with the same number of 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:32.840 words right that we're on the list, so we have 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:36.360 very similar memories there. But the believers will also tend 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:38.520 to remember the words that were not on the list, 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:41.720 the target word that was not there, more than skeptics do. 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:46.400 Not only does the believer group remember a word that 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:50.080 wasn't on the list, but that word that they falsely 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:54.200 remember is the explanation that pulls together the other words 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:59.600 into an understandable whole. Next, he talked about an older 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:04.680 study that examined how believers and skeptics reported observing paranormal 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:11.560 activities about a century ago, when psychology was getting started 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:15.240 and the spiritualism movement was getting started. So it's not UFOs, 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:19.320 but this is seances. You could experimentally set up a 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:22.560 seance such that you knew because you set it up, 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:26.280 that this thing was going to move by itself as 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.000 you had your hands held around the table and we're 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:32.920 talking to the dead people. Now, the question was with 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:37.040 the believers reports seeing the things that actually happened, but 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:41.280 also other things that didn't, and what skeptics actually declined 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:45.240 to report the seemingly supernatural things that they saw. It 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.600 turned out that for those experiments, again it was the 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:52.760 believers who were more likely to see things and report 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:56.120 things that didn't happen. The skeptics actually did, on average, 0:17:56.320 --> 0:18:01.400 tend to report the unexplainable things that did happen. Finally, 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:05.840 he talked about how preconceived ideas are very difficult to change. 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:10.919 This study he describes involves medical students. Some of the 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:15.680 students believe in Darwinian evolution and some in Lamarchian evolution. 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:18.560 I had to read up on what the difference was 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:22.840 for our purposes. You just need to know that these 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.000 are two different theories on how traits are passed down 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:30.040 through generations. Darwin's theory has turned out to be the 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:35.879 scientifically valid one. Lamarck has been disproven. Medical students should 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:41.320 definitely understand this and see evidence of it during their studies. Hence, 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:45.240 says of the students they tested them going into medical 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:49.560 school on their belief system and regarding evolution, and they're 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:54.720 specifically looking at beliefs that are Lamarchian versus beliefs that 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:58.320 are Darwinian. Then they're going through medical school where they 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:03.280 are using by oology on a regular basis, and they're 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:05.960 learning all these different things and they measure them coming 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:08.720 out of med school and the people who came in 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:13.320 with Lamarckian beliefs left with Lamarchian beliefs. So for the 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:17.840 Lamarchian students, despite a period of study during which their 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:22.000 views on evolution are demonstrated to be wrong, they still 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:26.440 persist in their beliefs. Even when we get information that 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:30.000 disconfirms our beliefs, we tend to process it in a 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:36.160 way that doesn't challenge those beliefs. We get this new 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:38.840 information and we put it in the same old boxes. 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.199 We put it in the same cubbyholes. It takes a 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.600 lot for us to build a new cubbyhole to put 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:48.879 things into. This dynamic cuts both ways. Of course, it 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:52.000 can be hard to shake believers from their beliefs, But 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:54.800 from the believer point of view, the same can be 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.920 said of skeptics. And that's a common criticism that abduction 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:03.439 proponents level at scientists. They aren't willing or aren't able 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:07.520 to expand their notion of what could be real. Dr 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:13.359 Don Dondry. If you take a giant ship out to 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:16.520 Tierragui ol Fuego, which is the south end of South 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:20.280 America and you and your big wooden ship from Europe 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:24.440 go exploring. The natives don't even pay attention to the ship. 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:27.760 What they pay attention to is these little robots that 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:30.679 come out from the ship, because they've never seen a rowboat, 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:33.879 but they have these little rafts, so the robot for 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:37.160 them is an improvement on the raft. They can imagine 0:20:37.200 --> 0:20:40.479 that the ship is something out of their imagination. They 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:43.760 don't even pay attention to it. So science, in quotes, 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:50.600 doesn't pay attention to what science has no clue at understanding. 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:56.679 That goes for point nine percent of all the professional 0:20:56.720 --> 0:21:01.240 scientists employed in say the US and Canada. It's basically 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:05.520 a forbidden topic because it doesn't fit in science. The 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:09.520 facts don't fit in science. There's no theory connecting those 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:13.639 facts with what else we knew, and so scientists shrug 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.960 their shoulders, let the craziest deal with it. That's it. 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:22.880 There is no science. I can understand the frustration. It's 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:26.080 not just that the scientific world is dismissive of this work, 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.280 but that doing scientific work on this topic is very difficult. 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:34.920 Simply put, there's essentially no money to fund the research. 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:39.080 There isn't a major government grants program to which someone 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:43.200 interested in investigating the reality of alien abductions can apply 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:47.719 for funding. But here's the thing. It's been almost fifty 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:51.560 years since the Hill abduction, and to my knowledge, there's 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:54.520 no single piece of physical evidence that you can point 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:58.560 to and say, look, this proves that an abduction occurred. 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:02.399 There's nothing that's been found that would seem to warrant 0:22:02.440 --> 0:22:07.159 a government's funding of research into abductions. Yet despite this 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:12.000 lack of evidence, there remains the public perception that extraterrestrials 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:16.600 are visiting US. I talked with Kendrick Fraser, who is 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:21.280 the founder of the magazine Skeptical Enquirer, the magazine for 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:25.200 Science and Reason. I asked him about the difference between 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:31.760 the public perception of extraterrestrial visitors and scientists perception. It's 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:35.880 an incredible gap of understanding between what the scientific view 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:39.680 of this subject is and what the popular believer's point 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:43.040 of view is. What's also interesting to me is both 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:50.560 are motivated by the same curiosity. Astronomical scientists deeply what also, 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:55.800 I think to discover any signs of intelligence life in 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:59.680 the universe, and we have many programs trying to do that. 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:03.960 At the same time, they know that in the public 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:10.240 this is a strong belief and desire also. But scientists 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:15.280 are trained to be critical of evidence and not to 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:19.719 accept things on face value, whereas many people in the 0:23:19.720 --> 0:23:23.560 public who are interested in these things put their skeptical 0:23:23.640 --> 0:23:28.159 side aside because they want to believe in this so much. 0:23:28.320 --> 0:23:30.240 And we have found this is to be a great 0:23:30.359 --> 0:23:35.440 danger in science. Think about Carol Rainey's assessment of Bud 0:23:35.480 --> 0:23:39.720 hopkins work on the Linda cortill A case. He wanted 0:23:39.880 --> 0:23:44.000 so badly to prove what he believed to be happening. 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:48.600 He wanted to prove that it was actually happening, and 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:53.359 that he had evidence. This seemed to me a recurring 0:23:53.480 --> 0:23:57.840 issue in the abduction research field. In the absence of 0:23:57.880 --> 0:24:02.760 physical or substantial third person an eyewitness evidence, researchers would 0:24:02.800 --> 0:24:07.159 latch onto whatever corroboration they could. Thus the use of 0:24:07.200 --> 0:24:17.159 regression hypnosis as evidence, or Marjorie Fish's construction of the 0:24:17.200 --> 0:24:20.480 star map models. This has to be worked out, so 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:22.880 I have to figure out the absolute magnitude through all 0:24:22.960 --> 0:24:25.879 these stars, or the photos of body marks sent to 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:29.399 Bud Hopkins. These are very characteristic and this is the 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:32.919 scoop mark rather than the straight line cut. It's science like, 0:24:33.720 --> 0:24:38.159 but not with the same rigorous standards as science. The 0:24:38.200 --> 0:24:42.600 collective enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking working together 0:24:42.760 --> 0:24:46.639 keeps the field on track. So as exciting as this 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:50.480 subject is, as interesting it is, as fascinating it is, 0:24:50.960 --> 0:24:55.080 those are signs that wishful thinking can go and take 0:24:55.160 --> 0:25:00.159 us out of reality. And it's something most scientists and 0:25:00.440 --> 0:25:05.400 certainly psychological scientists are well aware of. But it's something 0:25:05.480 --> 0:25:09.040 that I think more people who are fascinated with the 0:25:09.080 --> 0:25:13.760 subject as fans need to be aware of exercise critical 0:25:13.800 --> 0:25:18.040 thinking and skepticism towards these ideas. Scientists haven't found any 0:25:18.080 --> 0:25:22.959 evidence of extra trastial intelligence, and yet the mythology is 0:25:23.040 --> 0:25:25.360 that we have and and they're coming, and they're here, 0:25:25.480 --> 0:25:27.520 and they've been here, and they're here all the time. 0:25:28.520 --> 0:25:32.800 The Betty and Barney Hill case requires this skepticism. The 0:25:32.840 --> 0:25:36.720 reality for me is that most, but not all, components 0:25:36.720 --> 0:25:43.600 of their story have convincing non extraterrestrial explanations. The regression 0:25:43.640 --> 0:25:48.400 hypnosis elicited the story of Betty's dreams. The Hills mistook 0:25:48.440 --> 0:25:51.080 the light on top of Cannon Mountain for a UFO 0:25:52.359 --> 0:25:55.800 slow driving and numerous stops account for the missing time, 0:25:57.320 --> 0:25:59.920 but the explanations for parts of the story seem a 0:26:00.080 --> 0:26:04.400 little less plausible. Well, I understand that wind up watches 0:26:04.440 --> 0:26:08.119 were easily broken, it seems like quite a coincidence that 0:26:08.200 --> 0:26:11.199 both Betty and Barney would break their watches at the 0:26:11.280 --> 0:26:15.760 same time in this way, and even the best explanations 0:26:15.840 --> 0:26:18.760 of the craft hovering above a field near Indian Head 0:26:19.280 --> 0:26:22.600 rely on Betty and Barney to be at near hallucinatory 0:26:22.680 --> 0:26:28.119 levels of fatigue and stress. The reality, though, is that 0:26:28.160 --> 0:26:31.280 the onus is not on skeptics to disprove every point 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:35.840 of the story. For an event this incredible, there needs 0:26:35.880 --> 0:26:38.920 to be real evidence, not just a story that is 0:26:39.000 --> 0:26:43.000 hard to explain away at points. The absence of a 0:26:43.040 --> 0:26:46.240 completely satisfying answer to what they saw in the field 0:26:46.640 --> 0:26:50.479 does not mean there was an alien spacecraft. The burden 0:26:50.520 --> 0:26:56.560 of scientific proof lies with proponents of extraordinary stories. I 0:26:56.760 --> 0:26:59.800 remember that Carl Sagan said, at the heart of science 0:27:00.080 --> 0:27:04.480 is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes and 0:27:04.600 --> 0:27:09.000 openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, 0:27:09.600 --> 0:27:13.640 and the most ruthlessly skeptical scrutiny of all ideas old 0:27:13.720 --> 0:27:16.480 and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from 0:27:16.560 --> 0:27:23.480 deep nonsense. Although I am skeptical of the reality of 0:27:23.520 --> 0:27:27.280 the Hill abduction story, I think it's important to acknowledge 0:27:27.280 --> 0:27:33.600 their contribution to popular culture. They and particularly Betty, created 0:27:33.640 --> 0:27:37.239 a narrative of alien abduction so compelling that it has 0:27:37.280 --> 0:27:41.560 proven durable for half a century. Through all the changes 0:27:41.600 --> 0:27:46.199 over the years, the core of abduction tales, whether purportedly 0:27:46.320 --> 0:27:50.320 real or fictional, has remained true to the story of 0:27:50.359 --> 0:27:56.159 the events of September nine. It's an astonishing legacy of 0:27:56.240 --> 0:27:59.760 cultural influence to emerge from a late night drive through 0:27:59.800 --> 0:28:05.800 the mountains of New Hampshire. Next week, on a bonus 0:28:05.800 --> 0:28:10.880