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
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Not in My Back Yard
I love Unsolved Mysteries. The show told such interesting stories in perfect bite-size pieces, and knew how to make the hair on your neck stand up. I wish they were more objective in their reporting and didn't rely on pseudoscience as evidence (using psychics to prove ghosts and polygraph results to condemn criminals), but damn they put on an entertaining show. Go »Ten Best of 2006
The feature is done. It was frustrating not being able to see more movies this year, and the brevity of the feature reflects that. Comments about the list, or mentions of your own favorite films last year, are welcome in the replies to this post. Go »Eschew Obfuscation
For any FIN players wondering where in the hell the game is: I used my little free time over last weekend writing a mini-post – three whopping paragraphs – and at the end of the weekend I just couldn't bear to publish it so short. (The title of this post was the planned title of that post.) I have now rearranged my social so that weekends are more free, and one thing I plan to do with the time is resume writing FIN, starting this weekend by expanding my three paragraphs into more like three pages. Go »Only in the Web Era
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Last night, Kelly and I joined some friends from work at Tropicana Field to watch the Rays lose to the Blue Jays, something we do from time to time. In the second inning, I caught a foul ball that came wildly bouncing around our section. Everybody in our group got a kick out of it, and I savored the feeling. Go »
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?