48064033   
   XPost: alt.alien.visitors, alt.alien.research, alt.astronomy   
   XPost: alt.conspiracy   
   From: garymatalucci@gmail.com   
      
   Are UFO Debunkers “Little Nobodies Seeking Celebrity Status?”//What We   
   Can Do About It!   
   With much help from the Budd Hopkins article “Losing a Battle While   
   Winning the War.”   
   The UFO phenomenon has been viewed with increased seriousness over the   
   past 40 years.  This once lightly regarded subject has slowly but   
   inexorably moved toward the mainstream of public awareness.   
   Back in the 60’s and 70’s, what little media or scientific attention   
   there was, was usually of the silly-season, why-bother-with-this-   
   foolishness variety.  Physicist Edward Condon’s outrageous misreading   
   of the data his own committee had assembled marked the high point of   
   the media’s attention to the UFO phenomenon.  After Condon’s grandiose   
   dismissal of the evidence, if UFOs were discussed at all, they were   
   most often though of as a weird psycho-social phenomenon, particularly   
   by the mental health community.  Unfortunately, in the 60’s and 70’s,   
   there was little consistent mainstream attention to the phenomenon.   
   But through the 80’s and into the 90’s that has been changing   
   drastically.  Press attention has become the norm.  Now, instead of a   
   UFO researchers having to plead with the media for a speedy squint at   
   the accumulating evidence, it is the aging squad of self-designated   
   DEBUNKERS who have to beg for press coverage.  Phil Klass, for one,   
   appears irate at his diminished circumstances.  In his ever rarer   
   media appearances, he bares his hatred for UFO witnesses ever more   
   nakedly, until, as one viewer recently remarked, he has become on the   
   TV screen a perfect blend of form and content.  It must be galling to   
   be viewed by strangers as an embittered crank, a dinosaur in the   
   evolution of public awareness.   
   The beginning of this basic change in public and media attention can   
   be dated to the spring of 1987 when three major publishers - “Atlantic   
   Monthly Press, Random House and Morrow”- published books on the UFO   
   abduction phenomenon.  The nearly simultaneous appearance of Whitley   
   Strieber’ “Communion,” with it’s compelling cover illustration of a   
   staring alien head, Gary Kinder’s “Light Years,” and Budd Hopkins   
   “Intruders,” accomplished together what no single one of those books   
   could have done alone: force the abduction issue by the sheer weight   
   of numbers into the public consciousness.  The New York Times, 20/20,   
   and the Washington Post treated the abduction subject seriously and   
   respectfully.  Important later books like Dr. David Jacobs, “Secret   
   Life” and Ray Fowler’s “The Watchers” built further upon the public’s   
   interest, and since then the momentum has never slackened.   
   The response of the mental health community to the idea that UFO   
   abductions are real, event-level experiences has been equally   
   gratifying.  Over ninety-five thousand psychiatrists and psychologists   
   have received copies of the “Roper Survey of Unusual Personal   
   Experiences,” a booklet detailing what might be called the UFO   
   abduction syndrome.  Over one thousand, two hundred of these have sent   
   the publisher requests for further information about abduction   
   workshops, lectures and so on.  Dr. David Jacobs, psychotherapist John   
   Carpenter, Dr. John Mack and Budd Hopkins have addressed a number of   
   these subsequent workshops.  They have also spoken to other gatherings   
   of mental health professionals, their numbers by now are probably   
   approaching ten thousand individuals.  Thirty, twenty, even ten years   
   ago this kind of widespread professional interest would have been   
   unthinkable.   
   The level of serious scientific discussion of the UFO abduction   
   phenomenon, at the Temple University and M.I.T. conferences, for   
   example, has been increasingly profound and rewarding.  As the   
   “invisible college” of concerned scientists and medical practitioners   
   has increased its membership, the sophistication of data gathering and   
   analysis has also grown perceptibly.  Some credentialed professionals   
   are now willing to admit publicly that an extraordinary phenomenon   
   such as UFO abductions demands an extraordinary investigation.   
   Ignoring the evidence is no longer intellectually respectable.   
   In a kind of last-ditch stand, the dwindling band of self-anointed   
   debunkers have intensified its campaign to intimidate witnesses, to   
   create a climate or ridicule and disparagement for anyone who dares to   
   come forward to describe personal UFO encounters - particularly   
   abduction experiences.  In the world of criminal law, the intimidation   
   of witnesses is a felony; in the court of public opinion there is no   
   such stricture.  It is perfectly legal for someone like Phil Klass to   
   describe nervous, traumatized men, women and children, victims of UFO   
   abductions, as “Little nobodies, people seeking celebrity status.”  In   
   a stunning bit of unconscious self-description, Klass assured ‘The New   
   York Times” that otherwise these “little nobodies” would never get to   
   appear on Oprah Winfrey’s show.  His attack, cruel and self-revealing   
   though it was, was nevertheless effective.  This writer has to wonder   
   if the UFO debunkers  themselves are the “little nobodies, people   
   seeking celebrity status, or just plain school-yard bullies!”   
   Over the years, hundred of people that Budd Hopkins have dealt with   
   who recalled UFO abduction experiences have come form virtually every   
   socio-economic and educational level.  A NASA scientist, nearly a   
   dozen police officers, six psychiatrists, many doctors, lawyers,   
   businessmen, military officers and so on, from various layers of   
   society have declined to come forward to describe their experiences   
   publicly.  A first-hand account by any one of these people would lend   
   great credence to the mass of anonymous eyewitness reports, but each   
   has too much to lose by doing so in the present climate of witness   
   intimidation.   
   What can we do to reverse the tide and begin to create a climate more   
   congenial to scientific research?  Clearly, the issue is one of   
   ethics.  The problem is how to force the fanatics on the other side to   
   give up the tactic of intimidation which has served them so well.  One   
   way to help bring this about is to absolutely refuse to deal with   
   anyone on the (thankfully) short list of character assassins who   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)