"The Roswell Incident" by Charles Berlitz and William Moore

 Did a flying saucer containing extraterrestrials crash-land near Roswell, New Mexico, USA in 1947?

This is the book that popularised the idea that it did. The primary author, Charles Berlitz, grandson of the man who founded the language school, had already written several books on paranormal phenomena including the highly successful The Bermuda Triangle.

The problem is that the evidence is utterly unconvincing. There is no physical evidence (a lack explained away using conspiracy theories). It is entirely based on witness testimony. Worse, the vast majority of this testimony is secondhand. The rancher (called Brazel, bizarrely the nephew of the man who shot Pat Garret, the man who shot Billy the Kid) who allegedly picked up the debris of a 'flying saucer' (or man-made balloon) is dead so we have to rely on what his children, and friends, say that he told them.  Sometimes the chain of witnesses becomes protracted, such as when the rancher's son repeats a story he was told by "a fellow who worked with me on a job in Alaska for a while" or when the rancher's neighbour's wife had a brother who was allegedly on the plane that flew the wreckage to a military depot.

If this was a court case with no forensic evidence and predominantly hearsay evidence it would be thrown out of court. So Berlitz and Moore do what any decent lawyer would do in these circumstances: they use rhetoric to blow smoke into the reader's eyes. For example, they give third-person evidence in the first person. They proclaim that their witnesses are reputable tellers of the truth. And they bring on 'expert' witnesses such as Meade Layne and Reilley Crabbe of the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation which sounds impressive until you discover (not from this book) that this Foundation researches 'scientific' topics such as human auras, telepathy, spirit communications and seances.

There is one first hand witness: Major Jesse A Marcel who was “ranking staff officer in charge of intelligence at the Roswell Army Air Base at the time of the incident.” (Ch 4) The authors make a great deal of (impressive) military credentials including his medals, being shot down, though I'm not sure that any of that attests to his honesty or his reliability as a witness; indeed, being in charge of intelligence might suggest a willingness to manipulate the truth. The authors don't speculate on why Major Marcel waited 31 years before claiming that the wreckage he saw was from a UFO. But he certainly saw the debris that was collected from the ranch and he now (after 31 years) testifies it was "definitely not a weather or tracking device, nor was it any sort of plane or missile.” A number of other witnesses claim the debris was not from a weather balloon but since the authors aren't prepared to say what weather balloon wreckage was like, the reader cannot make up their own mind.

I believe that something crashed. It was probably a high altitude surveillance balloon. Project Mogul was a top secret experimental attempt to use balloons to listen for shock waves coming from Russian nuclear tests; these were the early days of the Cold War. A balloon had been launched on June 4th 1947 and contact with it was lost close to Brazel's ranch. Crucially, the balloons used for Mogul were not weather balloons, using different materials such as polyethylene (which had only begun large scale manufacture in the US in 1944 and was therefore probably unknown to the witnesses). So the 'it was not a weather balloon' can be true and still not require the considerable leap of faith to believe that the wreckage was of extraterrestrial origin. 

What about the little grey men who were supposed to have been captured, dead or alive, and whose corpses are still believed by enthusiasts to be kept in an air force base somewhere? This book discusses them too but never points out that they aren't actually linked to Roswell. Their story also originated in Mexico but in Aztec in 1949. Two men called Newton and Gebauer were selling devices that claimed to use extraterrestrial technology to locate deposits of oil, gas and gold. The technology, they claimed, came from a flying saucer from Venus that had landed near Aztec in March 1948. 

Berlitz and Moore don't mention Newton and Gebauer. Of course not. They spend a lot of time and trouble asserting the credibility of their sources so the fact that this pair were subsequently convicted of fraud might undermine their case. Instead, Berlitz and Moore move on to asserting that there must have been a military cover-up because the military won't admit to having alien corpses in cold storage. 

It's not just the silliness of the claims they make that annoys me, it is the inadequate partiality of the way they treat the evidence. If something doesn't help their case they will scrutinise it, asking questions such as: why did he do this? or why did she not do that? But anything that supports their beliefs will be swallowed without scrutiny.

It is interesting to read this book as a textbook exercise in fallacy, rhetoric and gullibility. Otherwise, it is rather silly.

September 2024; 163 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Abducted" by Susan A Clancy

Why do people believe they have been abducted by aliens?

The author is a sceptic in that she believes that “there is no objective evidence that an alien spacecraft has ever visited Earth or that anyone has ever been abducted.” (Ch 6). Aside from that, this account is remarkably balanced. She has clearly taken these stories seriously. She claims to have read every account of alien abduction published and more or less everything written about abduction narratives. She's watched almost all of the films and TV shows. And she's personally interviewed dozens of people who believe they have been abducted. I feel confident that this book is an unbiased, even sympathetic account of alien abduction experiences.

Firstly, they're not mad. Abductees are no more likely to have psychiatric disorders than you or me. They are, however, often creative, imaginative and prone to fantasy.

Secondly, most of those who believe they have been abducted do not have any memory of the abduction. Most of them have had strange experiences (such as sleep paralysis which is a state where sleep overlaps with wakefulness so that people continue to dream even while awake) which they are desperate to explain and which they have subsequently realised are similar to the experiences reported by someone else who claims to have been abducted. There is more than a hint of 'confirmation bias' about this. When asked why they can't remember, they often claim that the aliens had erased their memories.

Thirdly, those who claim to remember abduction experiences have in almost every case reconstructed their memories with the help of "imaginational therapies" such as hypnosis. Clancy is clear that such reconstructed memories are unreliable. She asserts that it is a myth that hypnosis is like a truth serum; in fact it puts patients into a suggestible state when they are liable to confuse imagination with reality. "The key to generating false memories ... is the protected imaging of an event in the presence of authority figures [such as a hypnotist or 'alien expert'] who encourage belief in and confirm the authenticity of the memories that emerge.” (Ch 3) She points out that the 'memories' recovered during hypnosis are usually incoherent and only later woven into a coherent narrative. In fact, many abductees question the reality of their early memories. “After my first regression, I wondered if I was making it all up ... I still don't remember it like a real memory, like I remember walking to class yesterday.” (Ch 3) She also points out that many of the 'memories' generate intense emotions such as terror and that the very intensity acts as a validation to their perceived truthfulness: “What happened to me was - overwhelming. It was more real than my sitting here talking with you right now.” (Ch 5)

When asked why she doubts abduction reports when they are so consistent, she replies that they aren't. The narrative arc is similar but the individual details vary quite a lot. She also points out that there were no reported cases of alien abduction until 1962, after the first films and TV shows had offered fictional narratives about abduction.

In the end, she concludes that “Aliens are ... the imaginative creations of people with ordinary emotional needs and desires. We don't want to be alone. We feel helpless and vulnerable much of the time. We want to believe there’s something bigger and better than us out there. And we want to believe that whatever it is cares about us, or at least is paying attention to us. That they want us (sexually or otherwise). That we're special.” (Ch 4) Abductees can regard their abduction experience as the most traumatic thing that ever happened to them, or the best thing. Having the abduction explanation not only explains the problems they face (such as depression or insomnia) but also absolves them of responsibility (it's not my fault ...). “Every single abductee at some point during an interview said, ‘Things make sense now.’” (Ch 5) She points out the similarity between Christianity and abduction: “Alien abductions feature all-knowing, nonhuman, advanced entities whose presence resists the explanatory power of science. The entities bring moral guidance. They tell us that time is running out, that we must change our selfish ways or our planet will be destroyed. They have come to Earth for our sake, and they are working for humanity’s redemption.” (Ch 5)

Selected quotes:

• “Nursery schools were being shut down and teachers imprisoned because, after lengthy and suggestive questioning, children were describing bizarre episodes of abuse, some involving flying clowns and broomsticks and the killing of large animals.” (Ch 1)
• “Being abducted is creepy; it's painful; it involves terrifying sexual and medical experimentation; and claiming to have been abducted is a sure way to be labeled daft. Why on earth would people subject themselves to this without strong reasons?” (Ch 1)
• “Abduction beliefs poignantly reveal that the desire to find meaning and purpose in life is more fundamental than many of us realise.” (Ch 1)
• “If anecdotal evidence or the words of attractive authorities could be relied on, we’d have to accept that Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster exist, that Elvis Presley, James Dean and Jimi Hendrix are alive, that psychoanalysis causes schizophrenia, and that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time of the 2003 invasion.” (Ch 2)
• “Our lives, after all, are only what we remember of them. It's unnerving to realize that our stories, feelings, memories of the past are reconstructed over time, and that we make up history as we go along.” (Ch 3)
• “The idea that a patient is an unbiased report of his or her experiences and the therapist is an unbiased listener, and that together they are engaged on an archaeological expedition of the past, runs counter to everything memory researchers know about the malleable, unstable nature of memory and especially about the way our memories are altered by our expectations and feelings.” (Ch 5)
• “Science demands reason, argument, rigorous standards of evidence and of honesty ... you must prove your case in the face of determined, expert criticism; diversity and debate are valued. The most we can hope for are successive improvements in our understanding, the chance to learn from our mistakes. Absolute certainty will always elude us. Nothing is ever known for sure, and there are no sacred truths.” (Ch 6)

Authoritative, exhaustive and hugely readable. Possibly the last word in the debate.

June 2024; 155 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The 37th Parallel" by Ben Mezrich

Most of this book tells the purportedly true story of Chuck Zukowski, a self-taught UFO investigator, as he gathers evidence, both anecdotal and physical, about UFO sightings and strange animal mutilations, which he considers to be a corollary. The human interest comes from the fact that his growing obsession with UFOs has to be tolerated by his (sceptical) wife, who ends up working two jobs so that he can work half a job and still afford the travel costs and to purchase the increasingly expensive equipment (and lab costs etc) that his researches demand. The book culminates by showing that most of the phenomena that Chuck talks about are located within 1 degree of latitude from latitude 37oN, a sort of UFO highway (or perhaps runway) that stretches more or less across the entire US.

It is written in a lively tone, following Chuck, full of lots of details about his family life, his possessions, etc, to give the whole thing massive verisimilitude. This is of huge importance; given that I was, like many other readers, hugely sceptical about the UFO side of things, it is important to establish solid grounded fact for the mundane part of the book; it makes the rest seem more real. There are some great throwaway lines:

• “for all he knew she had a cemetery full of dead people on speed dial.” (Ch 1, 2)
• “Some of the best portable equipment that overextended credit cards could buy.” (Ch 3, 15)
• “The tracker had claimed that on that night he and his girlfriend - a woman with the Hollywood ready name Trudy Truelove - ‘ were lying in the back of my pickup truck, buck naked, drinking beer and having a good ol’ time when all hell broke loose’.” (Ch 17, 123)
• “lately, even her silent stares had the feel of liquid nitrogen.” (Ch 25, 191)

The final page of the book, in which Chuck may find key evidence, is heavily redacted, with big black boxes censoring key words. It’s a brilliant way to end!

Selected quotes:

• “Supposedly, Sedona had numerous hotspots where vortices appeared, resembling electrically charged tornadoes that spiraled up and down with a [page break] spiritual energy. The Native Americans would use these specific locations to communicate with spiritual beings, and to communicate with their ancestors in the stars.” (Ch 4, 49 - 50)
• “The Apache referred to their ancestors as ‘star people’, pale, white, skinny humanoids with blue eyes who travelled in craft described as ‘birds with many colors’ that’ glowed with the sun’.” (Ch 10, 69)
• “The way the aliens had moved was always described in the exact same way: hunched forward, shuffle step, feet always touching the ground.” (Ch 14, 98)
• “Bigelow ... firmly believed that future generations would look at the current belief system as ignorant and egocentric.” (Ch 19, 147)
• “Chuck knew that the human mind was built to seek out patterns and that much smarter men than he had driven themselves crazy chasing symmetries that seemed to make sense in the dead of night, but were nothing more than shapes and shadows in the bright light of day.” (Ch 28, 233)

Lively and thought-provoking

February 2022; 247 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God