Many of them falsely. The use of circumstantial evidence may be the leading cause of false convictions, at least in the courts of Common Law (which most of the West operates under). The big question is here whether the eyewitness accounts are believeable or are they not believeable due to hallucinations, drugs, dreams, suggestive state, or what have you.
Now as to what to make of the eyewitness reports, there is no precedent...but that doesn't mean such reports can be dismissed out of hand.
And before all those eyewitness accounts for which there is a precedent, there is always the first one...for which there is NO precedent.
Okay, I'm game. What was the first eyewitness account? :) Let us see if the ball has moved over time.
As far as I can tell, this particular mystery has rather conveniently slipped between the cracks.
Not for many. However, I would say again: where's the beef? If hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, if some claims are be heralded, of people are involved one way or another in this phenomemon, where are the carcasses? Where are the bones, the cellular and mitochondrial DNA (or equivalent). They just arrested a guy for serial killings because his son was taken in and the son's DNA was a partial match only for one DNA sample. So they followed the father and got his DNA from a slice of pizza that he only partially ate and discarded. They'll convict him on that, too, upheld all the way to SCOTUS if required.
So with that said, where's the beef? I'm an original Trekkie and find the idea of space aliens to be appealing. Nice idea. But I think of them in the same terms that I think of Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan. Cartoonishly fascinating, but at the same time, unreality.
But because I don't have the answer does not mean the question itself is not valid.
Not that many questions by themselves are invalid. Many answers are, though...
Just a point of reminder...I don't believe what folks are experiencing are space aliens.
Secondly, read the accounts of John Mack, Harvard psychiatrist and professor (in fact, founder of the psychiatric department of Cambridge Hospital.).
Hallucinations...possibly. But they have been strangely uniform from person to person...and that would suggest a common source cause. Drugs...no (Mack tested for this variable). And mental illness...Mack eliminated anyone from his huge sample who exhibited any symptoms.
You need to submerge yourself in the evidence instead of guessing from a distance.
There are those who have taken the risks of alienation (what?) to investigate this matter empirically.
Your comment "most of them falsely" is something you have conjured without evidence.
Study John Mack and even read what those who have opposed him have said about him.
You strike me as a serious but open minded person (that is open to empirical reasoning and examination of evidence).
You might be afraid...we all are! To be unafraid when confronted with such earth-shattering possibilities would indicate a dissociative problem...and I don't think is what any of us on this thread have exhibited proof of.
BTW, I pinged Quix on this thread because he is by education a shrink and will correct me if I have strayed from good scholarship in my analysis.