The Truth Is in There - Susan Clancy on recovered memories, alien abductions, etc.

Reason ^ | December 8, 2005 | Kerry Howley

[muawiyah]

She's on to something ~ particularly the martini thing.

I was just reading an article about how to "create" false memories in subjects through some relatively simple distraction techniques.

This was part of a scientific experiment.

Car salesmen do this all the time.

[IRememberElian]

If we don't believe "recovered memory" BS, how can we lynch weirdoes?

Oh, who cares? Nobody ever believed it anyway! Let's go string 'em up! For the children.

[Tribune7]

bump

[Emmett McCarthy]

Years ago, I noticed that the "symptoms" of childhood sexual abuse were the very same "symptoms" of alien abduction. Didn't leave me much choice but to write 'em both off.

At the time, I was married to a woman who claimed to have been sexually abused as a child. I think she would have been easier to live with if she had been abducted by aliens. In fact, I'm still kinda hopin' that "alien abduction" thing might actually happen, but, hell, they wouldn't keep her either.

[snarks_when_bored]

Reason: What's your favorite alien abduction story?

Clancy: It's really so boring after you've heard one. For the most part they're all the same. I was in my bed and someone took me out of my bed and then I ended up on some kind of table (a black table usually) and then there are these creatures looking down at me and then they did so and so to me. The plot is always the same. The details differ—what the aliens look like, what exactly was done, what the purpose of the experiments were.

---

Harry: I had my dream again, where I'm making love and the Olympic judges are watching. I've nailed the compulsories so this is it, the finals. I got a nine eight from the Canadian, a perfect ten from the American, and my mother disguised as a East German judge gave me a five six. Must've been the dismount.

Sally: Well basically it's the same one I've been having since I was twelve.

Harry: What happens?

Sally: No, it's... it's too embarrassing.

Harry: So tell me.

Sally: OK, there's this guy.

Harry: What's he look like.

Sally: I don't know...he's just kind of faceless.

Harry: Faceless guy, OK, then what?

Sally: He rips off my clothes.

Harry: Then what happens?

Sally: And that's it.

(They stop walking)

Harry: That's it? A faceless guy rips off your clothes and that's the sex fantasy you've been having since you were twelve. Exactly the same.

Sally: Well, sometimes I vary it a little.

Harry: Which part?

Sally: What I'm wearing.

(Harry pauses, looks away, starts walking again)

Sally: What?

Harry: Nothng.

[King Prout]

interesting. pingworthy?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[cpdiii]

Small children have seen their parents murdered in most hideous manners. They do not repress this and they do remember this.

The science of recovered memories is pure Bravo Sierra. Men and women have been sent to jail on the basis of this junk science.

[Alex Murphy]

From WKRP in Cincinatti, episode "Bailey's Show"

Bailey: Now Mrs Woodroffe, can you tell me briefly why you would like to be interviewed on our show?
Mrs Woodroffe: Yes, I feel I have a certain responsibility to other Earthlings.
Venus: Think I'll split.
Bailey: Okay.
Mrs Woodroffe: You see, my hatchback supreme broke down on a deserted stretch of highway. Now, that's when I saw the incredibly bright light and felt myself compelled to walk toward it.
Venus: Think I'll stay.
Mrs Woodroffe: Before I knew it, I was surrounded by a group of strange people in gold lamé suits.
Venus: That would either be the Temptations or the Four Tops.
Bailey: Go on, Mrs Woodroffe.
Mrs Woodroffe: Well, anyhow, to make a long, internationally-copyrighted story short, I was beamed aboard their spaceship - what they call a Getgone - and transported to Hachacha #3. That's what you people call Mars.
Venus: Did this place have heavy metal screens on the windows?
Mrs Woodroffe: Yes!
Venus: Lucky guess!

[GottaLuvAkitas1]

"Years ago, I noticed that the "symptoms" of childhood sexual abuse were the very same "symptoms" of alien abduction. Didn't leave me much choice but to write 'em both off.

At the time, I was married to a woman who claimed to have been sexually abused as a child. I think she would have been easier to live with if she had been abducted by aliens. In fact, I'm still kinda hopin' that "alien abduction" thing might actually happen, but, hell, they wouldn't keep her either."

LOL That's cold!

[snarks_when_bored]

I missed that episode...thanks!

[neverdem]

"Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness". (Gulag Archipelago alert)

Pregnant Women Warned By FDA to Avoid Paxil

Israelis to be allowed euthanasia by machine

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.

[PatrickHenry]

interesting. pingworthy?

Yes, interesting. Pingworthy? Not exactly. But this certainly has implications for a number of topics. I'll ping "the few."

Alien Abduction Ping List Don't ask to be added to or dropped from this list; I know what you like.

[Cvengr]

She told me, among other things, that I was interested in this research because I was part of a select alien sisterhood. She said I had actually had a baby. I had been pregnant in the past, and the aliens took the baby—the baby is part alien—and now the baby was nine years old. And did I want to talk to my baby? That was truly too much for me. I was like, "No, I do not want to talk to my baby."

This reveals more about the researher than she probably will ever consider.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Clancy: We live in a scientific age, and still most people out there do not know how to think objectively or scientifically. Thinking in terms of probability or parsimony does not come naturally to any of us. And even when we do think scientifically, we're still capable of believing in things like alien abductions.

I think we're scientifically more sophisticated today than we have ever been, but there is no evidence that our belief in ghosts, or aliens, or macrobiotic diets, or the power of echinacea to kill colds has decreased. We are as interested in mysticism today as we were five decades go. Or forever as far as I can tell. "

Sadly true. And applicable to even more than was mentioned here.

[Elsie]

Then there's the C vs E thing.... ;^)

[DainBramage]

If Bush would close the borders these damn aliens couldn't abduct and experiment on Amuricuns!!!

[Taliesan]

I think we're scientifically more sophisticated today than we have ever been, but there is no evidence that our belief in ghosts, or aliens, or macrobiotic diets, or the power of echinacea to kill colds has decreased. We are as interested in mysticism today as we were five decades go. Or forever as far as I can tell. "

An interesting article in a journal that apparently thinks itself an advocate of rigorous thought. (No, I don't believe in recovered memory or abductions).

A truly rigorous thinker would consider the probability that there is a mystical element in the human psyche because there is a supra-material component in the universe, and this mystical element produces so much nonesense because the supra-material is not amenable to the scientific method and is, thus, hard to know.

Doesn't a truly rigorous thinker have to RULE OUT the possibility that the mystical element in the human psyche has a function, before assuming it has no function? If you find an organ that malfunctions do you conclude it therefore has no function?