Friedman Writes on Clancy and why the Curse of Klass Continues!

Stanton Friedman is certainly a heavy in the UFO biz. Hes a trend setter, where Freidman goes, much of the UFO biz follows. He’s written a couple of well received books, Crash At Corona: The U.S. Military Retrieval And Cover-Up Of A Ufo for one (Not The Day After Roswell as Paul points out, my bad!) He’s a true professional UFOlogest who makes his living giving lectures on the subject. And Friedman defends his turf too, like when Harvard Psychologist Susan Clancy published her popular book on alien abductions? He weighed in with this review.

I reviewed this book in the Odd Empire some months ago. When I glanced at his take I had the strangest feeling that I’d reviewed another book altogether. He claimed the book had “gross inaccuracy s” It was biased and prejudicial? I honestly don’t remember that.

There were some errors in the book and the author was quite up front about having some preconceived notions on the subject (much like Friedman admitting he had a few preconceived notions about the book in his review.) But one blogger stated that he thought the book was fiction.

What? I didn’t get that at all!

It is true that Clancy, like the rest of the psychological community does not look too well on alien abduction as more than an adult manifestation of night terrors. They are biased in that regard truly.

Friedman writes;

“She (Clancy) goes on, “Even better, alien abductees were people who had developed memories of a traumatic event that I could be fairly certain had never occurred. A major problem with my research on false memory creation by victims of alleged sexual abuse was that it was almost impossible to determine whether they had in fact, been abused. I needed to repeat the study with a population that I could be sure had “recovered” false memories.” Alien abduction seemed to fit the bill.” (italics OE) She notes how she would use the same techniques with the abductees as with the sexual abuse people, and addressed the corroboration issue since it was certain the event hadn’t happened.It is hard to imagine so-called research starting out with such strong bias. Is this what passes for research at Harvard University?”

Certainly if we are talking about research aimed at validating one or more cornerstones in UFOlogy, in that case most of the time it’s assumed that abduction accounts are accurate descriptions of real events despite their complete lack of physical traces or corroborating testimony. (this last is something that Friedman asserts has happened however I can honestly say that, according to my rather limited findings, not a single corroborative account has passed muster against tainting or “story corruption.”

I’m just saying people, don’t kill the messenger!

Friedman writes;

“She does admit her preconceptions that people thinking they had been abducted played Dungeons and Dragons as a kid, were computer programmers or sci-fi buffs and had attended Star Trek conventions. What is really crazy here, to me as a scientist, is that normally one expects somebody beginning research in a new area to do a literature search first.”

Here’s what Clancy actually wrote:

Robert (an abductee) shattered my preconceptions about what abductees would be like. He didn’t fit into any of my stereotypes. He had’nt played Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. He wasn’ a computer programmer (hey!) or a sci-fi buff and he’d never attended a Star Trek convention. He had a beautiful wife and drove a Volkswagen station wagon. He liked to ski, watch French movies and cook Thai food.

Friedman’s right, it is inexcusable!
But wait! What’s this on the very next paragraph?

Not only did Robert teach me to keep an open mind; he jump-started my research by introducing me to his network of fellow abductees.”

Hmmm, bias transformed into a rather humble statement acknowledging this very human failing. Clancy is saying in effect. I’m sorry, yes I have some bias, some prejudices, some presuppositions on this subject, and I’m wrong to have those!

Mr Friedman’s opinion regarding the intent of the statement was clearly out of context, Disappointing because you see, I have some respect for Freidman’s work.

I have very little respect for this kind of argument.

I wonder how much more stuff like that is in his review?

Friedman writes;

Here is a typical example of her gross inaccuracy. Speaking of a meeting with a number of abductees she says, “Highlight of Saturday evening was a conversation with two brothers from Manchester, New Hampshire. These men were relatively well known abductees who had written a book about their experiences. One night in the late 1960s they had been canoeing on a lake in Maine and had seen some weird lights across the water. A few years later one had fallen down an elevator shaft at work; he’d suffered brain damage, developed epilepsy and became severely depressed. The simple fact of the matter is that there were four people involved, not two; the event took place in August, 1976, not in the 1960s. The book The Allagash Abductions was written by an experienced investigator, engineer Raymond Fowler, not by the brothers. It was based on data obtained independently from each of the four. The book is, of course, not referenced though she has 14 pages of noted references including 146 items. Her own “research” papers were each cited several times.

Well, once again this is taken so far out of context that the Odd Emperor thinks he’s simply stating of the obvious, or perhaps I don’t have a grasp of the English language (and the obvious, as many people accuse me.) However, it seems to me that Clancy really said “I met with two brothers who were well known abductees.” This is true, along with two others they were the subject of a book written by Raymond E. Fowler (who also wrote among other things “The Andreasson Affair.” (a book I found extraordinarily biased but that’s the subject of another column or two.) She did get the book author wrong and she doesn’t actually mention how many people were involved in the abduction, Friedman’s correct, it was four.

Pretty sloppy research I must say.

But then, when I look at the context of the statement, I find this was a casual meeting at some sort of abductee’s weekend retreat in which she relates bumping into a number of people including “Vivian,” a channeler who thought Clancy herself had been abducted, a fellow who painted elaborate alien-sex porn, a Shaman from South America who insisted the Mayans were too advanced for their time bemuse they built elaborate temples (just like the Inca, Aztec, the Cahokia, Montauk, and the Olmecs to name a few.) She met a computer engineer who thought the resemblance of PC chip architecture and Mayan bas-reliefs is a little more than a coincidence.

(Those darn Mayans!)

She also met a fellow by the name of Bud Hopkins.

But, once again there is that pesky context thing. Her accounts are related in the first-hand point of view as casual encounters with people and snippets of conversation. Not as Friedman suggests, accounts of a factual nature. The passages (making up around two pages in a 170+ page book) are in a chapter entitled “How Do You Wind up Studying Aliens?“They are merely anecdotal accounts of her early experiences with the UFO community.

Friedman Writes;

Clancy not only seems to consider herself a truly knowledgeable abductionist, but also an expert on UFOs in general. “So far as we know there is no evidence that aliens exist.” “You can”t disprove alien abductions. All you can do is argue that they’re improbable.  Obviously she didn’t intend this next comment to be referring to herself: “The Confirmatory bias° the tendency to seek or interpret evidence favorable to existing belief or reinterpret unfavorable evidence is ubiquitous, even among scientists. Amen, and she provides many examples of her own tendency. “We don t accept the alien abduction explanation because there is no external evidence to support it. Isn’t it amazing that she never discusses physical trace cases, at least 16% of which involve reports of strange beings? She doesn’t mention the many cases in which abductees separately indicate that missing time was confirmed. She never mentions Marjorie Fish’s star map work connected with the Betty and Barney Hill case, though she does mention the case

First off, Clancy makes no claims to be much of anything other than a Psychologist. In fact she made many statements to the effect that she really didn’t know too much about abductees.

Second? Fish’s so called star-map while interesting is not physical evidence. It’s ancillary evidence at the very best (Fish managed to find a close match to Betty Hills line drawing of a star map from an alien aircraft by making a 3D string model of nearby stars.)

Third, I’m a little confused of this 16% statement from Friedman, 16% of what kind of cases involve reports of strange beings? I’d say that just about 100% of UFO abduction cases involve strange beings but Friedman’s the expert and I’m just the Odd Emperor!

Friedman goes on in this vein for quite a while, taking Clancy’s statements out of context here and there. He’s outraged that her handling of the history of UFOlogy is so slipshod that she would think Kenneth Arnold was flying a jet aircraft when he was flying a prop plane. He’s got a point; any historian will tell you that there were probably no more than a few dozen military jets in 1947 let alone private civilian planes.
Writes Friedman;

Clancy says that The Roswell Incident claimed that “Pieces of aliens had been among the debris. This was attested to by more than seventy witnesses who had some knowledge of the event. This is totally false; no such claim is made in the book, to which I was a major contributor. She really blasts off: “The evidence for a crashed spaceship and dead extraterrestrials was entirely anecdotal consisting of firsthand reports from people who wished to remain anonymous and even more tenuous second and third hand reports (so-and-so told what’s-his-name who told me that such-and-such really happened thirty years ago). This nonsense comes from a woman claiming to have read everything about UFOs and aliens. I am a physicist who has written more than eighty UFO articles and two books relating to Roswell and was a major contributor to The Roswell Incident. No, I am not referenced at all. There are lots of real people named by me and Don Berliner and Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt °none referenced and other serious researchers as opposed to Clancy’s pseudoscientific claims. The video “Recollections of Roswell has firsthand testimony from twenty-seven witnesses all named.

He’s correct, the statements are dismissive. But, are they inaccurate? Are they really nonsense? She actually cites the book as the source and I seem to remember something to that effect in the story myself. To this assertion by Friedman I honestly don’t know (but will probably find out.) I do know that, if we were to use “Friedman logic, judging from past experiences we can safely conclude that most of his statement in this review and in much of his writing may be accurate but are very likely taken out of their proper context.

Good thing I don’t use that kind of logic!

This is the problem I have with Friedman’s review (and to a lesser extent the sheep-like approval of it by the UFO community at large.) He was not reading the same book I was. To Freidman, Abducted is a popular book about the history of UFOlogy, detailing the massive contributions by luminaries such as Bud Hopkins, Stanton Friedman and so many others. Covering in great detail the stupendous accounts of abductee heroes like Travis Walton or Betty and Barney Hill and reveling new and spine-tingling secrets of the horrific and frightening alien abduction events that unfold nightly to unwitting US citizens as they innocently watch David Lettermen.

No wonder he was disappointed, that’s not what the book was about at all! I glanced at the flyleaf of my copy and found this;

“Clancy argues that abductutees are sane and intelligent people who have unwittingly created vivid false memories from a toxic mix of nightmares, culturally available texts and a powerful drive for meaning that science is unable to satisfy.This book is not only a subtle exploration of the workings of memory, but a sensitive inquiry into the nature of belief.”

It seemed to me that this was the book I read. It was not some Berliz or John Keel-like sensational account of strange alien encounters. It was an account of a physiologist embarking into a five year inquiry of alien abductee claimants and some of her experiences thereof. I didn’t agree with everything Clancy said, I agree that her history of UFOlogy was glossed over and was not 100% accurate in some spots. However, I’m not sure skewing an author for making mistakes in a few brief passages is really fair. I thought that material was there to be illustrative, not as the main meat of the book. It seems to me that Friedman (et-al) is not doing himself (themselves) any favors by panning Clancy based on cherry-picking a few errors while missing the point of the book in full. It seems to me that the message here is,“we as UFOlogests reject any opinion which does not put forward the fact that aliens abduct people.

Being opened minded thrusts both ways and I find that most UFOlogests seem to have problems with that skill. Being opened minded is not about believing in UFOs, it’s about not believing. It’s about dispassionately looking at the data, trying to fit some together to get a better grasp of things and allowing the information to drive your conclusions.

I honestly don’t; know if Clancy does this. There is nothing in her book suggesting that she does not and I’m not upset that she admits to being bias. We are all biased about something.

Friedman on the other hand is using an age-old technique called the”straw-man” argument. It is almost as old and silly as the fallacy-ad hominem.) Straw-man attempts to discredit a point by taking some (usually irrelevant) fact and using it to discredit the main argument. What this really says is, “hey! I actually agree with Clancy’s main points (or I’m unable to argue against them.) This is a terrible way to make a point and Friedman should know better! I think this is a very unbecoming of one of the luminaries in UFOlogy to use such transparent debate forms. What I think is really unfortunate is how many so-called researchers just march along in lockstep with this kind of thing.

And this is a mild form of “valid” argument in UFOlogy. An acceptable form, It truly makes me sick

Too bad really.

As much as I disagree with Phill Klass (at times.) I think Friedman’s screed against Clancy illustrates his UFO Curse in the worst possible way;

“No matter how long you live, you will never know any more about UFOs than you know today. You will never know any more about what UFOs really are, or where they come from. You will never know any more about what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs that you know today. As you lie on your own death-bed you will be as mystified about UFOs as you are today. And you will remember this curse.”

I hate to say it but, for this reason among many others, the words of Klass ring true.

I’m not saying you have to like Clancy’s take on the abduction thing. Heck I don’t like it very much (although admittedly I think her ideas are far more probable than Friedman’s.)

She’s done what very few UFOlogests have done. She’s studied the UFO abductee, profiled them and found some interesting congruencies. What she found doesn’t sit well with UFO researchers, not because it’s wrong. She could be right, only more research of this type will tell. But it’s not going to come from UFO researchers.

It’s going to come from people like Clancy, and that’s what they are really upset about.

Shair and Enjoy!