Abducted by Clancy
Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (2005)
by Susan A. Clancy
179 pages - Harvard University Press
The author pretty much assumes from the beginning that these events didn't literally happen, and tries to understand why people feel so strongly about what they claim happened to them. The author is very big on supporting the principles of scientific inquiry, but ironically enough she seems to be somewhat blind to this when it comes to her own book. A lot of the conclusions and remarks she makes have very little basis in actual testing or observation, and are just conclusions she jumps to because they make sense to her. At other times it seems like the scientific method is used more as a smokescreen, such as the time when she talks about a series of tests that were made while monitoring the subjects using MRI, but then when she talks about the results of the tests, it's all about what the subjects said, and no reference is made to anything that might have been picked up in the MRI, though it sure impresses you when mentions that an MRI was used at the beginning. I think too often people trumpet 'science' and then science just happens to be whatever it is that most of the scientists have as their own personal opinions, tastes, feelings, and prejudices, even when they have nothing to do with the scientific method.
It was still a pretty interesting book to read, and sometimes pretty funny too, and probably better written than most of the 'unexplained phenomena' stuff out there. I don't believe that extraterrestrials are flying around on our planet and abducting people (and, in fact, I have strong doubts that there's anything else out in space that we would recognize as alien intelligence or alien civilization), but perhaps ironically, I think I'm a touch more likely to believe abduction accounts after reading this. The author touched on it briefly, but I would have liked to have heard more about comparisons between these current experiences and other phenomenon people have experienced in the past in regards to shapes in the sky or beings they've encountered such as spirits, fairies, demons, etc.
by Susan A. Clancy
179 pages - Harvard University Press
- This is a creepy idea, and many people understandably resist it. Our memories are who we are. They inform our personal history, our life stories, our sense of ourselves. Our lives, after all, are only what we remember of them. It's unnerving to realize that our stories, feelings, memories of the past are reconstructed over time, and that we make up history as we go along. (pg.69)
The author pretty much assumes from the beginning that these events didn't literally happen, and tries to understand why people feel so strongly about what they claim happened to them. The author is very big on supporting the principles of scientific inquiry, but ironically enough she seems to be somewhat blind to this when it comes to her own book. A lot of the conclusions and remarks she makes have very little basis in actual testing or observation, and are just conclusions she jumps to because they make sense to her. At other times it seems like the scientific method is used more as a smokescreen, such as the time when she talks about a series of tests that were made while monitoring the subjects using MRI, but then when she talks about the results of the tests, it's all about what the subjects said, and no reference is made to anything that might have been picked up in the MRI, though it sure impresses you when mentions that an MRI was used at the beginning. I think too often people trumpet 'science' and then science just happens to be whatever it is that most of the scientists have as their own personal opinions, tastes, feelings, and prejudices, even when they have nothing to do with the scientific method.
It was still a pretty interesting book to read, and sometimes pretty funny too, and probably better written than most of the 'unexplained phenomena' stuff out there. I don't believe that extraterrestrials are flying around on our planet and abducting people (and, in fact, I have strong doubts that there's anything else out in space that we would recognize as alien intelligence or alien civilization), but perhaps ironically, I think I'm a touch more likely to believe abduction accounts after reading this. The author touched on it briefly, but I would have liked to have heard more about comparisons between these current experiences and other phenomenon people have experienced in the past in regards to shapes in the sky or beings they've encountered such as spirits, fairies, demons, etc.