Hidden Truth/Hidden Truth.iso/data/newspostings/1401-1500/1488

Internet Message Format | 1996-06-19 | 12.1 KB

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From: [e-mail] ("Mark O'Leary")
Newsgroups: alt.paranet.ufo
Subject: Re: Media Influence on UFO Reports
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 10:28:01 +0100 (BST)
Organization: CRS4, Center for Adv. Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia
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Tim Shell writes:
> Every once in a while, someone comes along and attempts to disprove
> or devalue UFO reports by siting the fact that immediately prior to or
> concurrent with the beginning of modern UFO awareness the popular
> media was filled with UFO themes and imagery.  There's no attempt to
> prove a direct, unambiguous link between a particular sighting and a
> specific image presented in the media.

Really? What about the characteristic eye-shape of 'greys' which matches
with the 'wrap-around-eye' aliens from that Outer Limits show that was
broadcast shortly before the first report of grey-type visitors? That looks
like a pretty "direct, unambiguous link" to me. How about the first UFO
described as *skipping* like a 'saucer' being quickly followed by numerous
reports of flying *saucer-shaped* craft?

>  Instead, what's presented is a vague suggestion that witnesses are
> somehow influenced by what they might have been exposed to in the media
> and it ends up expressed in their report.
>
> I would like to have someone explain to me exactly how reading a story
> in Amazing Stories Magazine or seeing a movie like "Close Encounters
> of the Third Kind" has directly influenced a specific UFO report.  I doubt
> that it can be done.  The fact is, if a person steps out the door of a
> theater hosting an all-night alien invasion film festival and sees a
> saucer zoom by overhead, there's no logical way to link the two events.
> It might be suggested that the person's mind was filled with UFO imagery,
> then when something ordinary such as bird or balloon flew over they
> interpreted what they saw as a bona fide UFO.  But can that be proven?
> A test might be conducted in which you make 1000 people watch alien
> invasion movies all night then float a balloon over them to get their
> reaction.  Perhaps a few of them might interpret the balloon as a UFO,
> perhaps most of them.  So the original UFO witness *might* have mis-
> interpreted their sighting, and they probably saw something mundane.
> But there's fundamental difference between *might* and *did.*

So, if I read the above correctly, you're saying that it is quite likely
that UFO imagery does affect the interpretation of ambiguous aerial
phemonema, that testing would like prove this correlation, but that this
isnt disproof of every sighting.

Oddly enough, this doesn't disagree with the skeptical point of view -
no-one advocates a 'one-size-fits-all' explanation of UFOs.

> And simply because something like spotting a "real" flying saucer is
> highly improbable, doesn't mean it's impossible.

Again, you are putting the skeptic line: the ETH is highly improbable. Until
evidence shows up that gives a strong reason to change that probability
assignment, it seems sensible to most to proceed on the assumption that it
isnt happening.

> True, some people are highly suggestible.  But even if a specific UFO
> witness is proven by every psychological test available to be highly
> suggestible and prone to interpreting ordinary objects as extraordinary,
> short of a videotape of the "actual" balloon or bird floating over the
> witness, there's still no way to prove that in the specific case of their
> UFO sighting they misinterpreted the object.

All you are saying here is that for as long as it remains a UFO (it wouldn't
be unidentified if we had incontestable film of the 'actual' event), then
the eyewitness account of a proved-unreliable witness remains highly
improbable but not 100% disproven. Presumably other explanations may seem
highly probable but not 100% *proven*. This is exactly the situation in the
debate today. The ETH proponents are clinging to the 'highly improbable but
not 100% disproven' cases, and refusing to accept the highly probable
explanations, because they cannot (yet) be 100% proven. [OK, clumsy
phrasing, but you see the point, I hope].

> Then there are the numbers.  Given that a certain percentage of the
> general population is highly suggestible to media influences, why is
> it that UFOs are the misinterpretation of choice?  Stories, movies and
> TV programs have also featured flying dinosaurs such as pterodactyls
> for at least as long as they have aliens and UFOs.  Why aren't there
> more reports of pterodactyls?

Simply because UFOs caught the public imagination more than dino's did. The
biological sciences have always been less popular than physics, media-wise
8(.

For example, other than Doyles 'Lost World', Crichtons 'Jurassic Park', I
can think of any other popular fiction that puts dinosaurs at the narrative
focus. I'm sure you don't want me to start a list of popular fiction that
features alien visitors - I think my drive would fill before I finished
typing the message.

Having said that, there *is* a currently running thread of 'pteradactyl
sightings', both in the USA and the N. of England. I beleieve the USA ones
have mostly been explained by test flights of a radiocontrolled model used
to test pteradactyl aerodynamics. The ones around Durham I have no idea
about. Maybe there *are* pterodactyls there (or maybe Jurassic Park has just
opened at the cinemas there - they do tend to lag a little (I lived there
for 4 years).

>  Because people have been led to believe
> that UFO reports are more reasonable and accepted?  Possibly.

.... led to beleive by the UFO-proponents, yes.

>  But
> why would a person who knows enough about UFOs to have their
> perceptions radically altered not know that UFO witnesses are, by and
> large, still looked upon by the majority of people as "kooks?"  It's
> possible to hypothesize about an individual's psychological make-up
> til the cows come home, but that's all it boils down to in the end --
> conjecture and supposition -- and Occam's double-edged razor must
> eventually be put to use.  After a while, it becomes more reasonable
> to simply accept that the UFO witness saw something extraordinary,
> and what they more or less accurately described is what they saw.

That is *not* the simplest hypothesis, as you yourself ran through the logic
of it earlier in the post. The "more reasonable" case is to accept that they
saw something *ambiguous* (in the sense that they didnt have the data to
make an identification as an ordinary object) and, since it is within human
nature to require an identification (human vision itself is 50/50 split
between the data from the senses and the mental model triggered by that
data: if you can't identify something, its actually harder to 'see' it) a
label is applied. Since theres insufficient data to label it as something
ordinary, the extraordinary is all that is left. Which particular flavour of
extraordinary object comes down to cultural and media-led (as you put
it) conditioning. Before Sci-Fi fiction, this was usually flights of angels
or the virgin mary, since then its 'flying saucers'. They may know that
putting this label on something groups them with people even they considered
'kooks', but once the unconcious labelling process has happened, they cant
deny the evidence of their own mind. The choice is then either to shut up or
to speak out - presumably the latter is the position with more 'integrity'.
However, its characteristic that its quite difficult to make someone abandon
their view of the world once they've built it...

> The suggestion that media imagery so dramatically influences UFO
> reports that few if any can be trusted has arrogance at its heart.  It
> says, "Unlike myself, most people are weak-minded fools, ignorant
> of such things as lenticular clouds, bright planets, meteorites, and
> weather balloons.  Obviously they couldn't have possibly seen what
> they describe.  They must have watched too many movies."

This is not a fair representation. The debates which ensue where such
mundane phenomena as this are brought out as appropriate are conducted with
people who are presenting the witness testimony with only one possible
interpretation, very seldom with the witness themselves. It also remains
true the most people *are* ignorant of lenticular clouds, can't identify
venus in the night sky, and have never seen a weather balloon. It's only
those with an interest in astronomy, meteorology or the UFO phenomena that
find these as everyday objects.

>  Well, how can a person be both weak-minded enough to mistake a bird for a
> flying saucer, but enough of a savant to remember specific details about a
> UFO they may have seen in a movie or TV show they saw years before?

The unconcious picks up and regurgitates strange details. Read some of
Oliver Sacks case histories, for instance: the mind is capable of incredible
feats of memory relating to seemingly trivial things.

> And if alien movies are so influential, why is it that the most
> successful alien movie of them all, "E.T." never inspired a wave
> of reports featuring glowing, stumpy-bodied creatures that glow
> and want to "phone home?"

Because these no mystery or menace in the ET figure. It's cute, sanitised
UFO fare. The cute and friendly ET-types have been monopolised by the
new-age channellers, and they don't see them, they just get their cute and
friendly messages. The whole ET movie serves to underline how deeply
ingrained UFO and alien visitation imagery is in our subconcious: the focus
of the movie is more on the relationship of a young boy with someone
different from him than it is on the "gosh, wow. Aliens exist!" side of
things - the film only works *because* no-one has a problem accepting that
there *could* be a little guy with glowing fingers from another planet. If
that was a revolutionary idea, then a whole lot more of the plot would've
had to be spent on establishing ETs bona-fides.

> I'm a reasonable person.  Show me one specific instance where a
> media image influenced a UFO report.

I gave two at the top of this post.

>  Then show me how it happened with all the others, because one explained
> UFO report doesn't explain any others.  That's *logic,* and you can't get
> around it.

It's your strawman that a single explanation has to explain "all the
others".

To make my position on it clear, I'd say:
1) The face shape of the greys is a result of the media (in this case a
sci-fi tv show) - and presumably the artist for the tv show who designed the
aliens was drawing on subconcious archetypes of what people find menacing
anyway, so it 'felt right' to a lot of people.
2) The preponderance of 'saucer-shaped' craft in the late 50s is a result of
media coverage, this time due to people latching on to the phrase 'like a
saucer' which was used to describe its motion, not its form.
3) The general establishment of the ETH in popular culture leads to this
label being applied to a lot of ambiguous sightings.
4) There are numerous over factors that cause people to report alien craft
in the sky - the media input is just one in a broad spectrum. In some cases
its far more important than others.
5) Despite all these factors that would tend to suggest that UFOs reported
as alien vehicles are accounts that ought not be taken at face value without
supporting evidence, it cannot be conclusively proved that none of such
accounts are accurate in every detail. It is just highly probable (as we
have agreed above).

> Tim "tired of this spurious 'argument'" Shell

The spurious argument is largely yours, since you assume that the media hype
must explain *all* sightings, or is being used by skeptics to explain all
sightings.

M.

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