Skip to main content

Captured by Aliens? - Nigel Watson ***

Some might regard a 'history and analysis of American [alien] abduction claims' as more science fiction than science fact, but Nigel Watson makes a reasonable case that either the abductions are real - in which case we're talking astrobiology - or they are in the minds and imaginations of the alleged abductees, in which case it's an interesting psychological phenomenon.

 As someone who really enjoyed the X-Files, it was fascinating to see how much of that TV show appears to have been based on 'real' claims. Far and above my favourite show was a season three episode called José Chung's "From Outer Space". Not only is it extremely funny, it explores well the multiple layers of how incidents can be seen from different viewpoints in totally different and entirely contradictory ways - and this seems absolutely typical of the experts that Watson calls on (some believers, others sceptics) in looking at how abductions have been handled.

The backbone of the book is the Barney and Betty Hill abductions in 1961, which seem to have started the phenomenon in its modern form, though there were earlier equivalent instances. The Hills crop up in most chapters, but along the way we also discover Victorian 'airship' sightings, the 'contactees' of the 1950s - who rather than being abducted claim to have had a more voluntary exchange of information with aliens and visits to their ships (who were almost all like ordinary humans and tended to come from Mars or Venus) - and the evolution of the key parts of abduction stories, from intrusive medical examinations to lost time.

 This is all interesting stuff, though Watson does sometimes go into more detail than we really need. However, what can feel a little odd is that Watson will describe an abduction as if it were a fact - something that actually happened physically as described - then immediately after will tell us why it is unlikely to be true (or in some cases how it proved to be a hoax). It's as if the author is actually sceptical, but doesn't want to admit it. A good example of apparent acceptance of something unlikely was his description of the author Whitley Strieber, whose book Communion is alleged to be non-fiction.

 Watson comments 'If Communion was the only book that Strieber wrote on these experiences, then we could agree with the skeptics that this was a piece of fiction written to exploit UFO believers. However, Strieber has written several more books on his encounters and it is obvious he is grappling to understand and explain the nature of his other people's alien encounters.' So the reason someone who wrote a book which Watson tells us 'sold millions of copies' would write more books is clearly not to make money but understand and explain a phenomenon?

 In a summary at the end, Watson pulls together a devastating set of arguments, from the lack of physical evidence to the dependence on hypnotic regression which has been totally disproved as means of recovering memories, but rather implants fake memories. These arguments to any logical observer mean that there is absolutely no reason to believe in the existence of alien abductions. Watson also impressively demolishes a series of objections to criticisms of the Hill's abduction experiences that again show that there is no reason to accept them as credible. Yet even after all this he offers three possible analyses - that the aliens really exist (but are inscrutable), that they exist but not in the normal physical sense, or that they are a psychosocial phenomenon - made up consciously or unconsciously. I suspect he doesn't want to alienate (pun not intended) believers. But only that third option makes any sense from the information presented.

 This, then, is a useful book (if expensive for a slim paperback) to get a flavour of what the whole abduction business is about and how it has been treated by sometimes self-proclaimed experts, and Watson provides some powerful analysis - but that analysis perhaps could have been deployed in a more consistent fashion through the book.
Paperback:  
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader.  We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard.  This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here.  We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...
Post a Comment
Read more