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9: Do you know what you saw? UFOs and the Psychosocial Model
167 Plays9 months ago
In today's discussion, we take a deep dive into a critical aspect of ufology: the concept of evidence. Together with Dr. Jean-Michel Abrassart, a psychologist and UFO researcher, we explore the challenges associated with eyewitness accounts and their reliability.
Dr. Jean-Michel Abrassart advocates the Psychosocial Model, proposing that many UFO sightings can be explained by mundane factors. We examine specific cases, such as the Belgian UFO wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s, to illustrate the complexities surrounding UFO evidence. Throughout our conversation, we engage in a friendly disagreement regarding the significance of alternative forms of evidence, like official government documents, in indicating anomalous phenomena.
This episode goes beyond the sceptics vs. believers debate, prompting a thought-provoking question: what is UFO evidence, and how can we study it objectively?
Interesting links
Dr Abrassart’s Academia.edu page: https://independent.academia.edu/JeanMichelAbrassart
Support the podcast to keep it ad-free: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/europeanufos
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Transcript
Introduction to the Core Issue of Ufology
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello, welcome to European UFOs and a Happy New Year to all of you. You've all been really supportive last year and I'm really looking forward to an exciting 2024.
00:00:25
Speaker
we will kick off the new year with a closer look at one of the core issues surrounding what we call Uthology.
Narratives as UFO Evidence
00:00:31
Speaker
Namely, the question, what constitutes evidence? For the most part, our understanding of UFOs comes in the form of narratives such as Mr. and Mrs. X were driving down a deserted country road when they saw strange lights in the sky and had an episode of Missing Time.
00:00:48
Speaker
Usually, such eyewitness accounts, if they can't be fortified right off the bat, are considered evidence for the reality of non-human intelligences traversing our skies and abducting us at will. But this isn't without problems. The validity of eyewitness testimony has a long history of research within psychology and results are pretty unambiguous.
00:01:10
Speaker
What people think they saw often isn't what they saw.
Psychosocial Model with Dr. Jean-Michel Aprasar
00:01:14
Speaker
Notably, there's a strong resistance among some ufologists who accept this, but the case of peer-reviewed research is pretty unambiguous on the reliability of eyewitness accounts, not only when it comes to UFOs, but also crimes, etc. So, what do we study when we study UFOs?
00:01:33
Speaker
Here, with me to discuss this question, is Dr. Jean-Michel Aprasar, a psychologist, a UFO researcher, exposing the so-called psychosocial model. According to this, much, if not all, eyewitness testimony on UFOs is reducible to mundane explanations, inexplicable within our current paradigm. We explore a few case studies, such as the Belgian UFO wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s, to illustrate this problem.
00:02:02
Speaker
Finally, Dr. Alprazar and I disagree, albeit amicably, on how and to what degree other categories of UFO evidence, such as official government documents, might really point to something very strange going on in our skies.
Dr. Aprasar's Background and Interest in UFOs
00:02:18
Speaker
So stay tuned and let me know what you think about the nature of UFO evidence. Hello, Dr. Alprazar, how are you doing today? I'm good, thank you.
00:02:32
Speaker
It's very kind of you to join me on what is at least in Berlin, a very gloomy Saturday morning. I hope wherever you are is more sunny and already heading towards spring. I'm in Belgium, so it's not much better. It's kind of the same.
00:02:52
Speaker
Well, fair enough. But we've got some very interesting thoughts, topics to talk about today. So hopefully they will bring us into better, at least mental conditions.
00:03:07
Speaker
So I will start my episodes by asking my guests this, and I think it's always a really relevant question. What is your background and what subjects are you particularly trained academically? And above all, what got you hooked onto the UFO phenomenon? Yeah, so my main
00:03:33
Speaker
RAI is psychology. So I have a PhD in psychology and I did my PhD on the, on the UFO topic, which is quite rare, I suppose. Yeah, that's my, my topic on the psychology of UFO, believe and witness kind of a mix of both. Um, and also I have a master's degree in philosophy. So, um, also I have some training in philosophy. Of course, I'm very interested in epistemology and
00:04:03
Speaker
subjects like that that are related to this topic. And how did you get interested as a philosophy graduate and then a PhD in psychology in the UFO phenomenon? Was there a particular aspect of this? I think especially in animalistic psychology, abductions are a big topic, so was it through that angle that you came into this field or how did that emerge?
00:04:33
Speaker
No, actually, as I said before, I'm Belgian. And of course, I suppose most of your listeners will know that there was a huge wave in Belgium in T992. And I was a teenager at the time around 14, 14, 15. Now, I didn't see anything in the sky, even though I was in the right area for that. But I was fascinated at the time by
00:05:02
Speaker
The way the media covered the topic, it sounded kind of uncritical for me, the way they approached it. But there's lots to say about how media covers UFOs anyway in general. But then that sparkled my interest.
Skeptical Movement and Psychosocial Model
00:05:20
Speaker
So I'm sure we're going to talk more about it. But of course, at the time, there was an organization called SubEPS who studied the UFO wave.
00:05:32
Speaker
was the suburbs tended to be more and more skeptical before the UFO wave, but when the UFO started, they reverted to more in favor of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
00:05:48
Speaker
Uh, especially the main, um, uh, well, of course it was a small group of people, but I mean, the main voice, if you want, was a physicist called August Mason, um, was very, very convinced of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. So he, he was very active during that wave in the media to talk about it itself. But I was exposed to the UFO phenomenon through that, um, to that, through that time.
00:06:16
Speaker
And when I went into psychology and philosophy, at some point, of course, I had to choose a subject for my first, for the end of my master, for my short thesis. And I was starting to get interested in the skeptical movement and how they approach the UFO phenomena. So I decided to work on that. I wanted to work
00:06:44
Speaker
I mean, that time was a different time. It was like, what, the 90s and beginning of the 90s. So there was no, there was the beginning of internet, but internet was not what it is today. So it was very, very hard to find skeptical information at the time about the UFO phenomena. So, um, yeah, I wanted to, to, to go to try to see what I could find on the subject and go deeper that way. So that's, that's how my,
00:07:14
Speaker
I started with my short thesis at the end of my master that I already did about the same topic, like the psychosocial model, if you want, of the UFO phenomena. And then after that, I moved on to, I did some research in the laboratory of psychology of religion, but I studied the psychology of paranormal belief. And then I did my PhD. That's how it went.
00:07:42
Speaker
Excellent. So it's basically the kind of mass media muscle pace, you could almost call it hysteria of the late 80s, early 90s in associated with the Belgian UFO wave that got you hooked. I think I also remember it, the Belgian UFO wave, and I think it's one of those
00:08:05
Speaker
many ufologist seminal cases in Europe that we're going to touch on later but perhaps from the outset could you perhaps describe or elaborate on what you mean by skepticism because I'm sure
00:08:21
Speaker
As you well know, many of my listeners are probably, I would heartily convince that there is some ontological, i.e., objective truth to the UFO phenomenon. And I think the experience they've probably made, as you know, if you talk to your wife or your husband about UFOs, and they're not particularly convinced by it, they are already confronted with a rather skeptical position.
00:08:49
Speaker
So a lot of people would probably argue that the standard point of view in our society is one of skepticism towards paranormal and UFO phenomena. So could you perhaps elaborate on what you mean by skepticism?
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think the easiest way would be just to explain a little bit what I think the psychosocial model is because I think the skeptical position. So there is a movement called the skeptical movement. And I think the skeptical movement, the position of most of his members don't care about UFOs, but those would do. They tend to espouse the psychosocial model.
00:09:37
Speaker
So that's the way I call it. Usually in English, it's on Wikipedia, they use psychosocial hypothesis, but I didn't like the word hypothesis, so I changed to model. I don't think hypothesis is the right word for that because I think we have enough approved for data to show that it's not a hypothesis, but a model, a way to explain it.
00:09:59
Speaker
Anyway, the way to call that model is subject to the debate anyway. There's no very good term. So in France, in Belgium, there was discussion about how to call it anyway. Some other
Cultural Influences and Perception Errors
00:10:16
Speaker
French writer called Claude Monge called it the redictionist composite model.
00:10:22
Speaker
It's a redictionist because you reduce the phenomena to prosaic stimuli and it's composite because we reject the idea that this is one explanation for the UFO phenomena. There's a plethora of many stimuli that can generate a UFO observation. So you chose that word.
00:10:40
Speaker
I decided to go with psychosocial model because it's more aligned to what it's already used in the anglais-sachsan world. In France, some people think that reductionist composite model is better anyway. So that model, I mean, it's a way to look at the UFO phenomena. And I think that is different from the way
00:11:12
Speaker
UFO believers, which is that term, or UFO proponents, or look at the UFO phenomena. So I think we are almost in front of two paradigm, right? Two different paradigm. So it's a paradigm, if you want. So that's why I use the word model instead of hypothesis. It's a way to look at the phenomena.
00:11:31
Speaker
And for me, the way I like to explain it, I wrote a book for children in French where I explained that for primary school students. It's very easy to understand. I say the UFO phenomena is like a stack of hay. And some people think there is a needle in it. I'm not convinced there is a needle in it, but we're not sure. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't.
00:11:58
Speaker
But as a skeptic, for me, the psychosocial model, we don't really care about the needle. We care about the stay of the hay. I mean, sorry, English is not my native language.
00:12:13
Speaker
We care about the hay, and we are interested to explain why so many people think they saw a UFO when we're sure they didn't actually. We know for sure that most of the sightings are not alien spacecraft. In France, there is a French organization studying officially the UFO for the government from the equivalent of NASA.
00:12:39
Speaker
And they have a very good database. I haven't looked in a few months, but last time I looked, I think the truly unexplained case. So that means case that we really don't know how to explain so far that have good data. So we are not able to explain them because we don't have the data. We have good data and they're really strange. It's like something like 3% of the database.
00:13:07
Speaker
So I'm like, as a skeptic, the stack of hay is the 97%. Why so many people think they saw something anomalous when actually we know they didn't? So I would say, for me, that's a way to explain what the skeptical approach of the phenomenon. I think that aspect, why so many people
00:13:37
Speaker
think they saw something when we know they didn't. They saw something anomalous when we know they didn't. It's fascinating as a psychologist or as someone working in the human sciences. And there's really something to study and there, beyond the, is there a needle? And to reply to your first question, why did I do my PhD on that? It's like,
00:14:03
Speaker
I'm somehow frustrated by so many people who study UFO phenomena by focusing so much on the quest for the needle.
00:14:14
Speaker
The rest is so fascinating. Why are you so I know I don't it's in a way, of course, I know why because they're hoping there's something truly anomalous, but it's kind of in a way I have some kind of frustration. I'm like, the UFO phenomenon as a social phenomenon is really truly fascinating. So why not study that right?
Layered Psychosocial Model
00:14:33
Speaker
Also, also,
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for explaining this. So the psychosocial model, which to be honest, before preparing for this podcast, I wasn't really familiar with, I think I've heard of it before, but never really had the chance to explore it a bit more deeply. So could you perhaps take us through its different components? Because from what I understood, it's a layered model. So there are different explanatory layers.
00:15:06
Speaker
that can either be used distinctly or in conjunction with one another to account for a phenomenon. So could you just basically on a high level take us through these different layers? So one of the reasons
00:15:25
Speaker
people object to skeptics or people in my field, my way of looking at the phenomenon don't like the word psychosocial mother is because it makes people think that it's purely sociological and psychological when obviously, most of the time, there is a physical stimuli in the sky. So that's why that vocabulary is sometimes rejected. But of course, most
00:15:49
Speaker
there is something in the sky. And just for me, when I chose to, went for that word, I'm like, okay, we know there's something in the sky, but the phenomena is mostly in the head of the people and more than what's really in the sky. So there are, the models in a way state that there are several things that can explain an observation.
00:16:14
Speaker
from a psychological and sociological point of view. But the first is what we call simple mistake. And that's the vast majority of people. The simple mistakes are people see something in the sky and they just don't recognize what it is. So that means that they will describe the object quite accurately, just they've completely failed to identify what it is. And so we call that simple mistake.
00:16:43
Speaker
because there will be complex mistake later on, but the vast, really vast majority of the cases are that. So we can observe that when we do field studies. So I'm part of a group doing investigation. It's called the Knee-Gui. So it's the committee for, I'm translating from French, but from the study of UFO case in the Northeast of France, if you want. And that group, I will study observations, you know,
00:17:12
Speaker
you know, in that area. And we can observe that most people, they can describe exactly
Eyewitness Testimony vs. Machine-Measured Data
00:17:20
Speaker
what they saw. And it's really precise what they say, just wrong about
00:17:24
Speaker
being anomalous. And then the most probably interesting part for me is that there are complex case mistakes. And the complex mistakes is that for those, there are starts to be distortion in what the report is. And so at the end of the processes, the story we get in UFO books, if you want,
00:17:54
Speaker
The description of the object does not reflect what the object really looked like. There are some extreme cases.
00:18:05
Speaker
in the French UFO wave in the 1950s. Well, it's not a well-documented case, but I like to use it as an example. It was published in a newspaper, but someone saw a UFO landing near his house, and he took a gun and started shooting at it, and it was actually his neighbor changing the battery. Wow, that makes for his neighborhood.
00:18:33
Speaker
It's just interesting because it seems so absurd, but we know it happens because in crypto geology, we have also lots of cases like that. For example, people who said we saw Bigfoot and we saw clearly Bigfoot. It was Bigfoot. Then they bring back some air.
00:18:53
Speaker
And we do some DNA analysis and it was a bear or deer. So it's, it's clear that they saw something and their mind, it was Bigfoot, but actually, and if it's a deer DNA, a deer doesn't look like a Bigfoot. Like we start to be really in the realm of very big mistakes in perception. So we know scientifically those happens, um, even though.
00:19:18
Speaker
I think in the population, usually people think that what we see is accurate or it's difficult to
00:19:28
Speaker
to think that we can be that mistaken.
Media Influence and Misinterpretation
00:19:30
Speaker
But then, so we have that process from what the witness, when the witness sees something to when it's published in a book. So the distortion or the change can happen when he perceived the stimuli. There can be some illusions. Classic one would be he's in his car and he see the UFO chasing him and actually it's the moon. So we all know there's a,
00:19:56
Speaker
illusion of movement with the moon. Other distortion can happen, of course, because of the culture. We know what a UFO from UFO documentaries or science fiction movie, we know what it's supposed to look like. And then those those people will change what they see, based because of their condition, if you want. Then, of course, there's when the
00:20:20
Speaker
They will start remembering it. Each time they remember, they will start changing the description of what they saw. In sociology, the classical example is someone is fishing and then
00:20:32
Speaker
I got a fish that big and it shows like 10 centimeters and the following week it's that big and that big and that big and the fish gets bigger and bigger. Then of course after that there is when he's going to return to the journalist or ufologist or whatever he's talking to when he explains it it's going to change and the questions the ufologist or the journalist will ask will influence what he says
00:20:56
Speaker
Lots of studies in psychology have shown that if you ask leading questions, the details will change.
00:21:05
Speaker
And then after that, of course, the journalist will publish in a journal or a book. And then when he explains, it's going to change again. And then you can have the addition of all these elements at the end of the day when the version you have in print is extremely different from the version. It can be extremely different from the version you had at the beginning, from the real object.
00:21:27
Speaker
So as I said, I'm not saying that's the old UFO case, I'm saying it's a minority of UFO case. Most people describe accurately what they see, and we can easily find the object they actually saw in the sky. And after that, in the model, there are other, there are the false memories. Some people, we know in psychology that some people actually have completely false memories.
00:21:55
Speaker
That's something that can be important for the alien abduction phenomena. And then it's a kind of a type of subject in the theology, but there's also hallucinations. I wrote a paper about that. It's always the, I mean, it's something people don't want. Saying that it's not nice for the witness or whatever, but people do have a hallucination in the real world
Credibility and Neutrality in UFO Studies
00:22:20
Speaker
that happens. It's not something such uncommon. So some cases,
00:22:25
Speaker
very a minority, a very few, but some cases should be explained by hallucination. The fact that it never comes up is almost suspicious for me. Anyway, because of course, schizophrenia or some, there are some psychiatric trouble that will lend to paranormal beliefs. Actually I met, I was investigating a case a few, like 15 years ago. I went to see the witness and he was under medication from a psychiatrist and
00:22:55
Speaker
His testimony was he was seeing ball of lights in his room floating above his bets once a week. And for him, it was clearly alien communications. Okay, for me, it was hallucination. But those cases don't tend to be published in the literature because of the obsession of we are looking for the needle and that's clearly not the needle. When for me, that's part of the phenomena too, right? So we lack information about those cases.
00:23:25
Speaker
He was completely convinced that it was alien communication and was on forums and websites to write about his contacts with aliens.
00:23:38
Speaker
Here you go, that's the summary. And then after that, the question of oxers, that's the last aspect, I guess. Yeah, thanks a lot for this overview. I think so with this case study, you just mentioned someone's having a
00:23:57
Speaker
psychological pathology. I think probably a lot of you researchers aren't trained to even recognize that. So it's very essential to actually have people also with a psychological background studying this phenomenon. And it's also it's always a problem I have with the alien abduction phenomenon.
00:24:19
Speaker
And, you know, going through regression and hypnotherapy, because they're exactly, and I think that has been exposed quite well by many researchers, there are a leader, there's the issue of leading questions.
00:24:34
Speaker
starting with Betty and Barney Hill to more recent cases, I think it is a very difficult subject to really engage with objectively, unless you have a firm backing in psychology.
Cultural Narratives and Scientific Approach
00:24:50
Speaker
But anyways, I wanted to ask you about the hallucination issue here. So for me, I don't have a background in psychology, but for me, hallucinations are
00:25:02
Speaker
intrinsically associated with individuals. So it seems to be an individual phenomenon, whereas the UFO phenomenon per se is more of a collective phenomenon. So how do you reconcile these two dimensions? Yeah, it's a good question. Of course, if you have hallucinations, you should be by yourself. I mean,
00:25:30
Speaker
In, in, in, that's why the golden standard, if you're looking for the needle should be, you should at least have a few witness seeing the same thing independently, not, not, not talking to each other, because if they talk to each other, they will influence each other. So ideally you should have a few witness that come testify without having information crossed between them, the golden standard, but no.
00:26:00
Speaker
In the literature, there is talk of what we call foliar deux. It's in French, but it's in English too. They use the French for foliar deux, so that means madness for two people, of people living together. So it's like a psychotic or people having really deep mental problems, talking to each other and influencing their worldview.
00:26:25
Speaker
So in that case, it's considered that they could have hallucinations, the same style of hallucinations almost together. I'm not completely convinced, but in the literature, it exists. Now, the UFO phenomena is, of course, sociological influenced by American culture at the beginning.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, but of course, people who have mental illness, they, like us, see what's available in the culture to movies and documentaries and so on.
Case Studies and Misinterpretations
00:27:07
Speaker
And what they will experience will be deeply influenced by their culture. So it's no wonder that some of them will either see something that is completely based on UFO folklore or
00:27:25
Speaker
will interpret what they experience as your full folklore, if that's what you, I'm not sure if I answered your questions.
00:27:34
Speaker
And yeah, it's more like a terminological question, I suppose. So just to give you a concrete example, 1997, the Phoenix lights in Arizona, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of people saw a huge football sized triangle UFO in the night sky with this in according to your model be a
00:28:00
Speaker
fully adieu type of phenomenon or more kind of an illusion that's kind of overshadowed by cultural baggage.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah, we have to see case by case. Of course, if you have many witnesses, it's a way to rule the pure hallucination. As I said, I think you cannot have a pure hallucination with many witnesses. It's a fascinating question. There were some cults, for example, where in France there was a very dangerous cult and we know the leader would show
00:28:45
Speaker
what was described by the member of the cults as a sword of flame. When the cops arrested him, it was a neon tube. So you see that a group could perceive something really wrong. So you see in some circumstances, it could be possible. But yeah, if there's lots of independent witness who are not connected to each other, no, of course not
00:29:09
Speaker
they would have to be at least a physical stimuli. I think in the Fatima, the dance of the sun is the classical example for that. There's lots of witness, but more skeptics consider that explained by they looked at the sun for a long time and then looking at the sun for a long time is a terrible idea for your eye.
00:29:30
Speaker
that based with what they were expecting and what the church told them they should see. They had that impression of the sun dancing. So we are back to the idea that there's an objective stimuli, in that case, the sun mixed with the sociological situation where they are in. But I wouldn't explain that with an hallucination, of course.
00:29:58
Speaker
So the psychosocial model has a very
00:30:06
Speaker
significant impact on how we treat one, if not the main, data source in ufology, namely eyewitness accounts. So I was just going to pick your brains on how do you make sense of the narrative because I think it's becoming increasingly popular amongst ufologists. Always this phrase
00:30:29
Speaker
Well, the UFO was seen by trained staff by, you know, highly credible people. Is that somehow to be reconciled with your model or is your model
00:30:45
Speaker
Does the psychosocial model predict that basically there is a propensity within human psychology to misidentify and misinterpret phenomena? And that even if we think people are credible, they may not necessarily be credible or objective observers. Because the implications for this, if eyewitness accounts are, let's say, 90.5% of the data set we have are quite significant.
00:31:16
Speaker
Yeah, for me, a credible and it depends what you mean by credible. I never imply that the witness is lying or trying to, of course, this may be the some case some people do, but that's not I think as a skeptic or in the psychosocial model, when we approach a case, we never start with the idea or the the witness is disingenuous, is trying to lie to us. That's never the first thing we think.
00:31:44
Speaker
I mean, the case of folks area happens, but obviously, but especially if you, if someone says, I saw something and he wants some people to come and do an investigation. I mean, the most likely what isn't, he's not, he's not going to try to deceive us, but for me, there are no, it's every, you're right. That phrase doesn't, it's, it's kind of annoying for me. For me, there's no experts.
00:32:13
Speaker
There's no credible expert, people who could recognize spaceships in the sky. That doesn't exist. It's like a myth. It's a narrative that the UFO community use to justify an argument from authority that I think doesn't hold up. We know that pilots make mistakes that has been documented. There are cases where we are sure the pilots saw something mundane and they thought it was alien. So we know it happens.
00:32:40
Speaker
A phrase I often use when I want to explain that to children is a Japanese saying, even monkeys fall from trees. So that means that everyone, an expert in climbing a tree can fall. So it's a way to say, there's lots of pilots in the world and there are different things that, of course, pilots can make mistakes.
00:33:08
Speaker
There's lots of pilots in the world and we have the psychology is like a ghost curve in statistics, you know, and in, in that curve, but at the, at the two extreme, you have people who will see stuff and in the middle and they, they want, um, that's another way of looking at things. Um, what else? Oh yeah. The training they're trained. No, they're not trained. I mean, they train to pilot planes, but since we don't know.
00:33:38
Speaker
what a true alien spaceship looks like. By definition, nobody can be trained to identify alien spaceship.
Scientific Skepticism and Concluding Thoughts
00:33:49
Speaker
Nobody can train for that. On top of that, in the sky, they're trained to recognize other planes, sure, obviously.
00:33:59
Speaker
But in the sky, you don't have background elements to help you perceive the size or the speed. So you don't know if the object is close to you or far from you, and the speeds is the same. You don't know. Because you don't know the size, you don't know the speed. You cannot guess the speed either accurately. They can, when it's a plane, because they know the type of plane, and then they know the size because they have seen the object on the ground.
00:34:28
Speaker
Like if I see, let's say there's a car flying in the sky, I know the size of a car. So I have a reference. But by definition, when they're looking at anomalous object, they cannot know what they're looking at. So they don't have the size, so they don't have the speed. So it's not that it's just nobody can be trained to identify
00:34:54
Speaker
object that they don't know what it is on the background of the sky. It's not possible. Yeah, that's what I would say about that.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yes, I think it definitely adds another layer of complexity. If you're supposed to identify something that you don't actually know what it is, definitely that is the case. And I also suppose that, again, I don't have a background in psychology, but that the psychological literature is replete with publications on misidentifications of mundane objects. I just remember seeing documentaries on telly about, you know, how
00:35:33
Speaker
people would misidentify even the most everyday objects under certain conditions. I don't know if you could confirm this or comment on this, but I think that human psychology in general and our ability to perceive reality isn't the best if you compare it to other species on this planet.
00:35:58
Speaker
But yeah, as psychologists like to say, we don't see with our eyes, we see with our brains, and the brain makes mistakes. Because we construct what we see, we have preconceived notions of what we're going to see, and then build on that, we change what we actually see.
00:36:19
Speaker
When what we're seeing is something that we don't know what it is flying in the background of the sky, it becomes really tricky. But you don't even have to go into the psychological literature to see that just think about the hunting season in your country. I'm sure every single hunting season there are stories of hunters who have shot at people running. And they said, I saw it was a deer. And I shot a guy. He was just jogging with a sweatshirt. And you're like,
00:36:48
Speaker
how could you mistake someone jogging, you see? And usually when there are those articles coming up, people say, yeah, but he must have drunk a lot, you know? He was, yeah, but yeah, you know, UFO witness, what do journalists say about them? They must have been drunk a lot, right? So actually, it's the same kind of thing that shows that we can
00:37:12
Speaker
forget that story about being drink, but after that, lots of people drink all the time. So I'm always like, it would be strange if people, UFO witness never saw a UFO with having drink alcohol just before, but it's just, we don't need that explanation. It's like, um, and then, but, um, we can see from those that people make terrible mistake for hunting mistakes. It's terrible because, uh,
00:37:40
Speaker
of course, they start shooting a human being thinking there are other things that humans and everybody can see that during the hunting season in France. Every week, there's a new article on that style. And it just shows how human testimonies are viable. I mean, it's not testimonies here, it's human perception is viable. Because they have that preconceived notion, I'm going to see a deer and then
00:38:06
Speaker
their brain changed what they see. And of course, the stimuli is ambiguous because it's the forest, maybe a little bit dark and so on. But it's the same thing from UFO. People tend to see UFO at night when it's possible to have a kiss in their light. But usually, most people, it's going to be night, the condition of observation, maybe they're coming back from work, they're tired. So there are lots of factors that will interfere with their perception.
00:38:37
Speaker
Gosh, what a depressing death. You just go for a walk in the forest, minding your own business as you get mistaken for a deer. Not very nice. Yeah. But yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense that our perhaps limited sensorial apparatus in conjunction with vivid imagination does lead to a lot of misinterpretation. So I think that is also
00:39:05
Speaker
a trope in ufology, but one that's worth repeating, because as you said, we actually need to look at the haystack. And if there is something anomalous in that fair enough, that the bulk of the data is the eyewitness testimonials that are often of, let's say, dubious quality.
00:39:30
Speaker
Maybe we should say something about memory because the issue, as I said, it's not only perception, but it's also memory is an issue. And Elizabeth Loftus, you can look at her work. She did some amazing experiments about that. For example, she would show a video tape of a car crash.
00:39:50
Speaker
And then she will have her PhD student ask questions to the witness who just saw the crash on TV and she will just change the wording of the phrase like did the crash hard on the car or just hit the car or just bummed the car.
00:40:09
Speaker
They will manipulate the phrasing and just with the manipulation of the phrasing, what the witness will report will change. So it's mind blowing. Of course, that have lots of implication for police work.
00:40:23
Speaker
Often when I interact with UFO proponents, they would say, yeah, but in low, in low, the witness can decide if someone goes to the death row, for example. That's an argument I hear sometimes. If in your country, a witness is enough to send you to a death row, you have a big issue. I think you're in a country who is really problematic.
00:40:47
Speaker
which is really problematic. But I think most, it's not true. First, of course, first answer, law and science are two different subjects. So you shouldn't compare like the passing judgment and the law system is not a scientific system. So that's first, first counter to that. And the second one, for real, most
00:41:12
Speaker
I hope that in most countries, most judges and lawyers know that witness only shouldn't send you to this row. And you should have at least a few physical, tangible evidence against you on top of witness and not only witness. Because all those research in psychology, they are pretty definite on the question that witnesses are not enough to convince someone.
00:41:40
Speaker
But after that, of course, one of the issues that in this role, we know some people have been convicted based on witness. And then, for example, for raping, and then decades later, when DNA analysis was available, suddenly they were released. So we know those kinds of mistakes have been made based on witness testimonies. And it's tragic. It's not something that should be praised.
00:42:07
Speaker
No, absolutely. And as you said, we're dealing with two kind of different frameworks. So the judicial system is one that is based on a moral and, if not ethical code, whereas science, as Lisa, we define it these days.
00:42:28
Speaker
Western and the Western world is one of studying the objective reality of how the world works. So yeah, so I'm also completely with you there that, you know, just saying that we should, so if 95% of the data we have on UFOs come from eyewitnesses, then just saying that, okay, in court, they would be accepted really skirts the issue, because, or rather,
00:42:58
Speaker
we have to think about how we want to think about studying the phenomena. Do we want to approach it from an ethical preconceived point of view, or do we want to study it objectively and scientifically? And then these two systems don't really go too well together. Speaking of ethical concerns and so on, just to give you a bit of a
00:43:25
Speaker
background here. Since I've started this podcast, no month passes actually where I don't get at least two to five emails from people who are quite disconcerted because they've been in touch with anomalies, they've had weird encounters in their bedroom, i.e. abductions,
00:43:51
Speaker
And I, because I'm not trained in psychology, and I also don't really know what to make of the phenomenon in general, I've made up my mind yet, which was probably a good thing. I find it very hard to advise these people, because at least in Germany, one currently based, there is no institute or no official authority where I could direct these people to. So obviously, I could tell them, okay, you know, you might need psychological help.
00:44:19
Speaker
But that will, the way it's currently phrased in ufology, probably be misinterpreted. So I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on this, because for these people, these two to five people that email me each month, it's a real visceral experience and a real problem because they have no one to turn to.
00:44:43
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a field in psychology that's called the Anomalistic Psychology, so it's the study of anomalous phenomena, and one can argue that the UFO phenomena is part of it. For real, if you look at the textbooks about Anomalistic Psychology that have been published by the APA, for example, the American Psychological Association, which is the biggest association of Americans and psychologists, the scientists.
00:45:07
Speaker
They mostly focus on abductions, as you said, and not really on the rest of the UFO phenomena. So there is an interest in psychology about the abduction phenomena, including what you're describing, which is the true suffering of those people, psychological pain they are in. And then in that film, they advocate
00:45:36
Speaker
that there should be some psychotherapist specialized in animalist phenomena. And those psychotherapists would be presenting themselves as agnostic toward the phenomena. So they would not take position in favor or against the existence of the phenomena, but just to give psychological help to them. And in France, there is one small group who does that, who is a group of trained psychologists
00:46:05
Speaker
There is at least one PhD and one university teacher. And their group is just, we are psychologists trained and we have an interest in anomalous phenomena. And we won't take position about what you're telling us, but if you are suffering, we will try to help you.
00:46:27
Speaker
And I think for me, that's the best approach. But unfortunately, it's very uncommon nowadays. So it's difficult to find those. I have no knowledge of people like that in Germany. Maybe there is some parapsychology group in Germany. Maybe there is. I don't speak German, so I'm not familiar. I know there are some parapsychology group
00:46:52
Speaker
They do interesting work in Germany, so maybe they could help you and see if that kind of person exists. No, that's what I would say.
00:47:03
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. I think it's always really important, irrespective of what one may think about the phenomenon as such, to try to be empathetic and to offer support where it's possible. So yeah, I really appreciate your answer and your openness there.
00:47:25
Speaker
Well, this is a podcast about UFOs and we love case studies. Is there a particular case study you could kind of give us to understand the psychosocial model a bit more in practice? Because amongst my listeners, and they're also active UFO researchers and who like you also have a critical position, so it would be great if you could
00:47:54
Speaker
Give them an insight into how you would approach a case if someone called you and said, Hey, I just had a weird encounter. Please investigate. Well, there's been some.
00:48:08
Speaker
very interesting work done by, not by me exactly, but by the group I belong to. And it's the SARS operation. They call it the SARS operation. The SARS is, if you don't know, is an astronomical cycle that brings back the moon 18 years, a few months and a few days, exactly in the same position that it was before in the sky. So it's not the same season,
00:48:39
Speaker
For that, you would have to wait a long time more. But it's still the same position in the sky. So the SARS operation was the idea. It happens like 20 years, maybe more than that. But it's still kind of ongoing. So the organization received lots of cases, of course. And some of them, we look at them and we're like, yeah, it kind of seemed to be a simple mistake with the moon.
00:49:09
Speaker
But at the beginning, they were not sure. So they were like, it could be the moon, but we're not sure. So what they would do is that they would write the date. And 18 years later, they would re-contact again the witness and bring them back exactly at the same spot in the countryside or wherever it was and show them and say to them, is that what you saw that night? And it works really well.
00:49:38
Speaker
If you want to replicate that other organizations, you can start because, sorry, kind of just interrupt this. So it's not because of the lunar cycle. So every 18 years or whatever, the moon returns to the same spot. And then you can kind of have a, have a possibility to falsify potential identifications. Yeah, that's exactly that. And the name of the cycle, it's called SARS. S A R O S. That's the name in astronomy of that.
00:50:08
Speaker
return of the moon at the same spot. So you can find easily, even in Wikipedia, I should have a page about it, about the astronomical cycle, if you're interested. But anyway, just going to tell you the moon goes back at the same position. Of course, there can be some issues with that technique. For example,
00:50:26
Speaker
18 years the landscape can i change the building the obscuring the view and so on but in many many cases the witness would be we go there with one of us and he would look and say yeah that's what i saw it's really interesting with cases where.
00:50:44
Speaker
There was a they were in the car and then they located the moon of the UFO exactly in some I turned on to the right and the UFO was to my left. And so you look on the map and then you do the same road with them in the car and you see the moon is exactly in the same position. So it's a very interesting way to prove that that people do mistake indeed, which seems amazing, but they do mistake the moon with UFO.
00:51:14
Speaker
It's a good scientific way to do it. My organization have been doing that for years. Currently, they don't tend to bring back everybody to their location. Only if there's a case, we're not sure it was really the moon or that. Because they've been doing that for two decades, so they're like, that's a good way. We've done it enough, we're sure. We're sure people do confuse the moon with UFOs.
00:51:41
Speaker
And we know by reading what they say and looking in, you have some astronomy program, you can easily see it was in the right direction that day.
00:51:54
Speaker
Um, yeah. And, and the one article I published recently and, um, Vincent, I don't know if you've seen that book, uh, UFO people, uh, about the psychosocial model. Um, so it was published by Vincent. I hope I'm not butchering his name.
00:52:18
Speaker
But that book is really, really interesting if what we are talking about relates to, talks to you. That's really that same kind of approach. I'm looking for the title exactly. What was it? The Realability of UFO Witness Testimonier. So in that book, I have an article, which is a case study.
00:52:47
Speaker
I'm only the second writer, so it's a proposed explanation by one of my colleagues called Eric Mayo, which one of the main, a big investigator in France, about the Amarant case. Just a quick summary, if you are interested by that case, everything is in that article, in that book, and that book is free on PDF, on academia, you don't even have to buy the book.
00:53:17
Speaker
The Amaranth case was a very famous case in France because it currently, so the French, the JAPAN, the official organization to study the UFO is well managed by someone
00:53:35
Speaker
who try to stay neutral in the debate, so I think they do a really, really good job, and their teams. If you don't know, that group is only one person, one secretary, and the team are just voluntary, so lots of my friends are in the team, but they're just doing that on their free time.
00:53:54
Speaker
Don't imagine it's a huge laboratory with lots of people. The laboratory is actually composed of one person, one secretary, and that's it. But then he calls for help from other investigators. But before that, in the 90s, that organization
00:54:16
Speaker
was led by someone who was really a big UFO extraterrestrial proponent. And we, most of us, we thought he wasn't critical enough or he was not doing such a good job. And there was that case at that time that he pushed a lot in the media as being like really impressive case. And the case is one person
00:54:40
Speaker
In a suburb area and he see a UFO landing in his garden for half an hour And he gets close to the UFO And then the UFO takes off and leave So, of course, it sounds very impressive But there are a few problems right away. As I said, there's only one witness which is never good also, we are in a
00:55:09
Speaker
suburban area with lots of people and there are no other witness. So that's strange for a UFO that landed for half an hour. So that's the basic of the case. Yeah, there was some big discussion about, it's called the amaranth. The amaranth is a kind of plant.
00:55:29
Speaker
And there was a lot of discussion because some people claim that the plants were affected by the presence of the UFO. The Amaranth plants were affected biologically. That could be verified scientifically. So we discussed about that in the case too. The analysis is not so convincing.
00:55:52
Speaker
But that's the reason why that case was also big, because people were like, we have physical proof of biological alterations of the plants. So that must be there was really a UFO there, a spaceship there. But then when we address that, we show that the analysis is not as conclusive as people would
00:56:18
Speaker
claim it to be. But so we don't think it's true that the plants have been biologically altered. Then if we have that case, that's an interesting case. Obviously, we have one witness. So here you see you could be tempted to say he had an hallucination for half an hour. And there were some discussions in that direction with some people. There were some
00:56:48
Speaker
indications that maybe could be that, but my co-writer, so the main writer of the article, Eric Mayo, he went for, okay, let's think it's not that. It's like a method, that's a good example to explain how the psychosocial model, a methodological principle is we should find something else than the hallucination or hoax.
00:57:15
Speaker
I mean, we, we start with the, at first we examine the case. We think the witness is sincere, he's not lying. And it's not a hallucination. What, what, how can we explain such a case? And it was a few decades ago, so a long time ago, and actually, um, Mylar balloon were not so popular at the time, uh, well known from the public.
00:57:42
Speaker
And yeah, the explanation we explore in that article is that actually it was a Mylar balloon who came and landed on the plant, the famous plant. So that's why it was like floating in the air in front of him in the garden and then the wind took it
00:58:03
Speaker
took it away in the sky and yeah we did we showed that that explanation can account for every single details of what is said by the witness so that would be a mistake of that kind.
00:58:17
Speaker
So that would be kind of in the realm of individual misinterpretations of mundane phenomena. But then you also did some work on the Belgian UFO wave of
00:58:34
Speaker
late 80s so 89 I think it started went to about the mid 90s and 94 and here I guess it's a bit different because it's one of those as we like to say ufology flaps um over an extended period of time um so what's your take on that um how how did this kind of collective idea that Belgium was visited by UFO's comment
00:58:59
Speaker
Usually, I'd say 89, 92, but even 92 is a little bit optimistic. Really, it was already dying out at the time. Sometimes you read dates that are really stretched away, so it was not that long. My take, so Philip Klass, which is a very famous UFO skeptical investigator, had a room for the UFO wave.
00:59:31
Speaker
to explain how UFO wave happens. And for me, that rule should be the baseline explanation, and you should try to disprove that that's what's going on.
00:59:56
Speaker
So that rule is that, as I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the quotes by heart in my head, but it states that when the journalist makes a population in a regional area believe that there are UFOs active at that point,
01:00:12
Speaker
lots of people will start looking more in the sky and as they do they will see prosaic objects that they will interpret as UFO and then they will send that to the journalist and the journalist will talk even more about it which will prompt even more witness and it's a cycle like a psychological contagion. I don't like the word hysteria for that psychological contagion but at some point it's going to peak because the journalist will lose interest and start
01:00:40
Speaker
saying we're done with that subject and they start not talking about it anymore and then the flap will go down. That's the basic curve of the class law for UFO wave. And for me that's the baseline which people should look at UFO wave. So for the Belgian UFO wave,
01:01:00
Speaker
August Mason and Co. were not interested in looking at it from a skeptical point of view at all. They were looking for proof of extraterrestrial visitation. As I said, just before the wave, they were going toward more skepticism, but when the wave started, they went back into their old position. But when we look at the UFO wave, people think it's impressive, but actually,
01:01:30
Speaker
There's an argument I like to find, it's called in historical science, the argument from silence. The argument from silence is when you look at something, you should consider what kind of proof you should have if that event really happened. And if you don't have that proof, you should consider that it didn't really happen.
01:01:52
Speaker
And I think there is an argument from silence to have about the UFO wave. So if there was really an alien invasion of Belgium in 89, we should have a lot of pictures. I know not that everybody had cell phones and so on, but people had.
01:02:07
Speaker
had a photographic device at the time, even video cameras sometimes. And we should have tangible proof and lots of stuff like that. Or we just have witnesses. We have mostly witnesses. Why? Because for the pictures, there were some pictures. But there were, even by the sub-apps, quickly explained as mistake with airplanes and helicopters and so on. The only picture that was weird was the Petit Rochon picture.
01:02:36
Speaker
which is the very famous picture of the UFO wave. People like me and other physicists, we said, that picture is fishy. You should be careful. But the subsets, when they put it on the cover of their book and so on. And then in 2015, the person who took the picture explained how he did it. So it was a hoax. He confessed the hoax, explained the technique.
01:03:04
Speaker
And after that, there were some weird UFO radar detection. There was with pilots from JetPilot, but they didn't see the UFO. And only, there were two flying and only one of them had something weird going on and the other one didn't have anything. So obviously the, each,
01:03:31
Speaker
The fact that there was no visual contact by the pilot, you think it was in one of the plane didn't detect anything. It's, it's, it's kind of a glitch on the other one. It was even, even the suburbs in the second book that nobody read August Mason conceded that was probably in detection of a inversion of temperature of the ground on the ground. So he, he came back on that one.
01:03:55
Speaker
So when you look at it, all the physical evidence disappeared. Like there's no, there's almost for something that's supposed to be huge, right? And that you should have lots of physical evidence and actually at the end of the day, you have nothing.
01:04:09
Speaker
So, yes. And I think this is exactly what a social science perspective can do for the subject is basically show the power of cultural narratives. And it's, you know, I mean, Bruno Latour famously analyzed how
01:04:32
Speaker
Laboratory results are always contingent upon what we, in what kind of cultural climate we live. So yeah, I think there's that, I think this type of thinking needs to make more inroads into ufology. Yeah, so.
01:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, there's one argument I should address too, because it's the classic counter argument. What I said is that the beginning of the wave was abrupt and sudden. And the first day of the beginning of the wave, there were lots of sightings. So the first the beginning in open was really, yeah, that day there were lots of 100 something.
01:05:14
Speaker
So of course there must have been something in the sky that day. So maybe there could be some militarists or people, helicopters and so on. But we can debate what was in the sky that day. But the main observation was, so the arguments from the suburbs would be that was so quick and so intense, it cannot be sociological because people didn't communicate with each other.
01:05:44
Speaker
You see what I mean? They all saw something that night. So the thing is, the main observation was from two cups. So we come back to that history of the narrative of really reliable observers.
01:06:00
Speaker
I'm always like, okay, maybe you have a high opinion of cops. No, I'm going to judge you. I'm always like, why cops would be so good at recognizing stuff in the sky? I don't know. It blows my mind. I can understand the archival pilots. I'm completely with you there. Never got that argument. Never got it. But then there was a...
01:06:29
Speaker
something they saw in the sky moving and they chased the object. And then the object disappeared from view. And then they arrived near a dam, a very famous dam that I've been there many times. It's called the La Gillette Dam. And the objects, according to them, was over the dam and it was not moving anymore. And they look at it for a long time, half an hour. And that's the seminal case. But the thing is, we think
01:06:58
Speaker
What happened is that they saw something in the first phase of the observation and then they lost sight and then over the dam it was not the same thing anymore. So before it was probably a helicopter, we're not sure, something moving, but then over the dam the location in the sky is almost exactly at the Venice spot.
01:07:18
Speaker
they saw Venus and Venus wasn't moving and they said it wasn't moving. So they were pretty accurate what they say. Just their mistake was to conflate. They thought that was the same object on the two moments. So that's the famous case. But then what happened is that that case was published in the media. And then after that, the witness came called the suburbs. So
01:07:44
Speaker
They read the article in the media and then they call the suburbs. So saying that those witness are independent is not true anymore.
01:07:57
Speaker
If you will, if you said if you want the article in the journal told the people in open, by the way, didn't you see something strange in the sky that night? And some people, unsurprisingly, saw something in the sky that night. But saying that the start was abrupt.
01:08:15
Speaker
because there was no communication between them. It's not true. It's tricky because obviously, as soon as a journal article is published that says the cops saw that, did you see something similar? You see, it's leading the witness in one direction. And then when they call the suburbs, they're already influenced by what they read in the journal. And they say, that day I saw that, but it's already completely contaminated by the article.
01:08:44
Speaker
So you basically, according to this model, which I think is a very good one, you have basically at the start of it, a misidentification just gets picked up by the media on which then in turn starts this self-reinforcing cycle of misidentification. So not so.
01:09:04
Speaker
Yeah. Once it started, the suburbs was really popular. The journalists, they were a group and there were two physicists in there. So they seemed very legitimate. So the journalists will ask them about it and they will publish article and the cycle spiraled, you know, until it's at some point, the journalists, they're like, OK, that's good. And then it started to go down. And even the suburbs trying to to go again to the journalists didn't work anymore. And that's the UFO. That's why I think with what I say,
01:09:34
Speaker
said i think i'm not interested in the needle in the haystack because i don't think there is a needle in the haystack but if you're interested in the needle in the haystack
01:09:46
Speaker
witnesses are not the way to go. You need tangible proof. You need something physical. I always say, if you claim that the Loch Ness Monster exists, don't bring me witnesses who said they saw the Loch Ness Monster. You have to bring me in biology, in zoology. At this time, if you think there's a new species unknown, like a monster in the Loch Ness, you need to bring a specimen either alive or dead.
01:10:14
Speaker
something, same thing for the Bigfoot. Witnesses are not enough in zoology to prove the existence of the Bigfoot. You need tangible proof. So we are in the same situation for the UFO phenomena.
01:10:27
Speaker
I think you just said something very important that if one is interested in that needle in the haystack, one basically needs to adopt a certain position or the very fact that one is interested in that needle is basically an ontological position. I was just going to ask you about this to get a bit philosophical in the last few minutes of this episode.
01:10:53
Speaker
Do you think the approach most animalistic psychologists slash perhaps psychologists take these days and saying that, oh, or even sociologists, we're treating the UFO phenomenon as something that is worthwhile studying from within our own discipline to learn something, you know, epistemologically speaking about how certain aspects of the human condition work
01:11:21
Speaker
Or do you think we should really study the UFO phenomenon to get an objective truth behind the phenomenon? So I'm just wondering, because it's something ever since I've been engaged academically with this field, I think it's this kind of exercise that a lot of scientists do is their interest in the phenomenon, but they're only studying it
01:11:44
Speaker
Kind of in a removed way by saying okay we're not going to deal with the reality of it you know people may think whatever they want to think we're interested in the effects on how it works.
01:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's more about the sociology of science than anything else. I think for me, that was advice to me all the time when I was doing my PhD, to look serious. If you're a serious researcher, you shouldn't address the ontological question. Just stay away. Don't take position, which is really...
01:12:18
Speaker
Unfortunate, I think. For me, it's unfortunate. I think I've talked about my ontological position in this interview a lot, so you know what I think.
01:12:35
Speaker
Of course, they could be a needle in a haystack and at some point we can find some proof, but we're not there. So that's my position. I'm waiting for something more tangible than we had so far. So I'm not afraid of talking about the ontological position I have, but
01:12:51
Speaker
it was explicitly said to me by my teachers and stuff you shouldn't do that you should you should pretend to be above the the crowd like a neutral like just like an eagle flying over the subject and you just study yeah you you don't you don't it's like yeah and they say that for me not because of uh methodological imperatives but as a way to look serious when you submit a publication in your journal about that topic if you if
01:13:20
Speaker
The journal doesn't also doesn't want to i don't know maybe i'm wrong about that but that's my feeling about it like the journal doesn't want to take risks so it's like.
01:13:32
Speaker
psychological journal don't want to publish studies about psi, you know, telepathy and stuff, because it would look bad on the journal. So they're afraid if they start publishing article about the ontological aspect of the UFO phenomena, they will, it's a risk for them and it's easier for them to just avoid taking it.
01:13:52
Speaker
I don't know, maybe you have another take on it, but that's mine. Yeah, I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Diana Pasulka. She's become one of the big, well, scientific faces of, you know, at least since 2017 and also with her
01:14:11
Speaker
recent book Encounters and before that American Cosmic, where she basically takes the academic point of view of a religious studies scholar. And whilst I really appreciate her work, I do find it
01:14:28
Speaker
difficult in the sense of that she's a very media-facing individual, so she's very heavily invested in Twitter or X and on various podcasts and so on, but she always has this narrative of, look, I'm a religious studies academic, I study it kind of
01:14:49
Speaker
you know, in a removed neutral fashion. But then she goes on these podcasts advocating, you know, or implying that she's more and more convinced of the, you know, that there truly is something anomalous there. So that's why I do really appreciate your candidness about this, because I find that position that she's adopting, again, nothing against her academic work, but I do find it a bit disingenuous, because either
01:15:19
Speaker
you have a certain position or you don't. In fact, I don't think science is the right platform to
01:15:35
Speaker
and to kind of hide that position. So I'm not particularly in favour of that. Yeah, there's more to say about that. Then there's a case like that, exactly like that in France. Actually, before me, probably was the most famous
01:15:53
Speaker
as human science person talking about UFO in the media, called Pierre Lagrange, who is a sociologist. And his approach of the UFO phenomenon is exactly what you describe. He says, I'm neutral. I'm a philosopher of science. And I'm going to look neutrally at the debate about the UFO phenomenon between the proponent and the skeptic. And basically, his PhDs about skeptics are pseudoscientific and proponents are not, in a way.
01:16:23
Speaker
But what I had, yeah, there's lots of to say about that, that claim to neutrality. It's the thing is, some of my friends who are I've been in ufology for a long time in France, they knew him when he was a teacher, and he was already a very
01:16:43
Speaker
very fervent believer in extraterrestrial hypothesis before starting sociology. So we all know then as a sociologist how okay you're trying to be neutral I mean it okay in a publication I can do a publication saying in that paper I will take that position that I'm neutral but for real you're not neutral but in that paper I will I will pretend it's like a make believe
01:17:12
Speaker
problematic framework, I will take that, assume that position of neutrality beyond, but then in the media, he goes in the media and he's like, I'm neutral, but then I think that skeptics are deadly wrong. So I'm like, what kind of neutrality is that? And yeah, it comes, he's been deeply inspired by Bruno Latour, who you mentioned before, and Bruno Latour in some of his writing advocate that neutrality in the direction I understand fully,
01:17:41
Speaker
About history of science so you look you say you will look at the history of the debate between. Two physicists camp for example and your sentries major sentries and obviously you know which can one we know you look at the controversy but we know today. Who was right at the time.
01:18:05
Speaker
But as a sociologist, you will say, I'm going to look at that literature and I will assume a position when I pretend I don't know who won. I will look at it and I'm going to be neutral.
01:18:17
Speaker
For historical work, it makes perfect sense to me. It's very interesting to say, I'm going to look at that literature and pretend I don't know who won that controversy, that debate. But doing that with a current controversy or current debate, I think is really tricky.
01:18:37
Speaker
I'm kind of, yeah, I'm like you, I'm like, pretend to be neutral for something that is ongoing now. Okay, as I said, if you do one article and you say, in this article, I will do that, but pretend to do that all the time, including when you appear on podcast and you clearly take position at that point, I think it's really problematic.
01:19:01
Speaker
Exactly. I think it's just a bit confusing and leaves people a bit of gas to what you're actually on about. By way of concluding this,
01:19:13
Speaker
I would like to ask you what it would take to convince you that there is an objective reality that is anomalous within our current understanding of physics and the world. What would it take you to convince you that that is the case? And perhaps just
01:19:35
Speaker
A few thoughts on my end about this. As you, I do have a critical position, however, I do also think that there is, and that's perhaps where we differ, an objective, anomalous aspect to what we call the UFO phenomenon or UAP.
01:19:56
Speaker
And I think it's basically, if you look at the data set, we have different components. So today we talked a lot about the subjective experience part of it. So eyewitness testimony, which I said earlier probably makes up 95% of the data set we have. But I think then there are also three other important pillars in ufology and the ufological data set that we should consider.
01:20:24
Speaker
One of these is machine-measured data. The second is authoritative official statements. So let's say an ex-intelligence officer comes forward, says something, or we have a FOIA request, Freedom of Information request, when we see an official document that corroborates something or alludes to something.
01:20:46
Speaker
And the final pillar are cultural traditions, narratives. These are the last aspect, granted, as perhaps goes more into the direction we've been talking about, where you could also treat it separately as a cultural tradition of reporting these issues.
01:21:06
Speaker
If this broad classification, so subjective experience, machine measure data, authoritative official statements and cultural narratives, if that basically is kind of the way we can compartmentalize data, where do you think we would get
01:21:27
Speaker
some insights into hate this is truly anonymous because from what i got it today the kind of eyewitness testimony on a completely with you there is highly dubious. Yeah before me it's a very difficult question but first off i would say i.
01:21:45
Speaker
If there was something, I'm completely open to the idea that could be something anomalous as ball lightning and stuff like that. In France, there is a working with that French organization official, there's a ball experts studying those. And I'm not a ball lightning expert or lightning is a lightning expert. And I don't, I'm not expert at all in that field. And I find what he does interesting. Some people don't criticize, but that's fair anyway. But
01:22:12
Speaker
I really have no issue with that saying some sightings could be done because of some kind of weird ball lightning that we don't know yet or some stuff like that. There could be some needle of that style according to me easily. For the rest, cultural narratives, yeah, I'm
01:22:36
Speaker
Cultural narratives, I'm fairly convinced that can be explained completely sociologically. I mean, UFO knows are the continuation of fairy stories from before. I don't believe in fairies either, but they're just the continuation. Classically, before there were trolls and now there are big foods. Alien abductions are very similar to fairy stories before that just show the psychology of humans at work is consistent through time. For me, there's nothing surprising. Just the name I've changed or the interpretation.
01:23:06
Speaker
We don't believe that they're fairies in the woods anymore, but culturally, we believe that they're aliens. So that's the interpretation we currently use for talking about. So that now, disclosure, I'm really not into disclosure. I think it's really the completely wrong approach to things. I don't believe the US government has any special knowledge.
01:23:31
Speaker
about the UFO phenomena. I think squarely the UFO phenomena is a scientific question. If an answer comes at some point, it's from the scientific community. I couldn't care less about what some American soldier knows about it or thinks he knows about it or believes he knows about it in America. I'm a little bit harsh probably, but really,
01:23:53
Speaker
The idea of a global conspiracy for hiding the truth is just silly to me. There's no reason China would play along the Americans to hide and if there's lots of UFO in the sky all the time, the Chinese should have had.
01:24:10
Speaker
capture one by now. So all that stuff is just groundless for me. So it's just fascinating sociologically that there's that belief and disclosure that is very similar to the belief in end times. Next year it will come or at some point the government will tell us the truth. When for me, whatever says the government, the US government is losing anywhere, you will never second something that will make happy the UFO proponents. And
01:24:40
Speaker
Yeah, so not that. So yeah, for me, it would be, of course, measurements by machines that are way more objective than witness. So it will come from that. So yeah, clearly, I think the city and the NASA and other, they have some way to detect stuff. So that would be clearly the way to go for me. And just quickly, for me,
01:25:09
Speaker
Finally, as I said, intimately, I think, yeah, just, I always say, bring me what, there should be a UFO landing in front of, of, of the European parliament, or there should be, we should have physical evidence, obviously alien technology or obviously alien biology, we can examine that would convince me. Um,
01:25:35
Speaker
And last, and then at late we finish, I think epistemology, epistemology, the UFO ufology is floated because looking for anomalies is a very terrible way to do science. And, you know, with the Loch Ness Monster,
01:25:53
Speaker
The geographic area is limited. So at some point we are sure there's no Loch Ness Monster. It's a little bit more difficult with Bigfoot, but still at some points it's clear there's no Bigfoot. But with UFO there will always be the possibility that something is there. So I think a science based on anomaly research is a very problematic methodological approach and
01:26:18
Speaker
I prefer parapsychology because they can do laboratory work. You can do an experiment that can be replicated or not. But ufology has lots of bad points. The geography is too vast. It's not like a lake or the American continent or American country. It's too broad. Space is too broad. And you cannot bring it to the laboratory when you can replicate.
01:26:44
Speaker
As a science, ufology is really problematic. So yeah, I'm not expecting much. Here we go. Yeah, thanks a lot for your candidness and transparency here. So basically the reason I listed these different evidential categories, you know, from subjective experience of machine learning to authoritative official statements is
01:27:05
Speaker
because what we're trying to do here, and I really appreciate it, is having a mutual dialogue and understanding. I think we can agree on, and this is what I mean, when we have these different categories, we can say, okay, we agree on that probably machine-based data is the way forward, and then there are also areas where we differ. So for me, for instance, authoritative official statements like the David Grush
01:27:34
Speaker
thing that's unfolding in the States at the moment. For me, that is also highly interesting and part of the puzzle. So I give a different weight to that evidential category. But yeah, so that's why I brought up these different categories, because I think we are all interested in whatever the phenomenon is, but we perhaps approach
01:27:58
Speaker
these different categories differently and give different weight to them. Well, thanks a lot. It's really very informative to me and I will aim to bring on more.
01:28:14
Speaker
I don't even know if the word skeptic is the right one, but more serious researchers, not to say that the people I've had on so far weren't serious researchers, but also let's say researchers with a different academic position on this phenomenon, because I believe that the truth, if I was a highly problematical word, is probably somewhere in the cracks in between of what this phenomenon really is.
01:28:41
Speaker
By way of conclusion, where can people find out more about your work and your publications? The easiest is Academia. I have an Academia page, so they can look for my name, Jean-Michel Abrazar, and they will have
01:28:56
Speaker
most of my publications there. Also, I just to mention, we, one of the skeptic organization in Brussels, we started a peer review journal to talk about anomalous phenomena and also critical thinking.
01:29:11
Speaker
and I already published an article in French there, but if some of these listeners can write in French in a proficient manner, don't hesitate to submit an article. I'm looking forward to more articles about the UFO phenomena.
01:29:28
Speaker
Also, it's a completely peer-reviewed journal, and we're open from any disciplines. If you talk about UFO from a historical profile review, from a folkloristic portfolio, from a psychology, biopsychology, whatever, we're open to it.
01:29:45
Speaker
Yeah, and also, yeah, for example, we received an article about the Arielle Zimbabwe case recently, so it's currently peer reviewed. And that one will be in French and in English on our website. So anyway, very interesting. Looking forward to reading that one. It's a case I've been always intrigued by. Very interesting. Cool. And what's what's next for you? Are you working on anything particular at the moment?
01:30:13
Speaker
To be honest, I'm really working on that scientific journal that we launched a year and a half ago. That's something I wanted to do for a long time, having a peer review scientific journal where people could publish articles on those topics. Like we had about the Beast of Gevaudan also, which is a
01:30:35
Speaker
So I'm really happy it's starting to pick up. It's lots of work. We are a team, but I'm focusing on that right now, just reading the article, sending to the peer review. It's already a lot of work.
01:30:52
Speaker
Well, perfect. Thanks for taking the time on a Saturday morning to chat with me about critical position source ufology. It's really appreciated. Cool. Well, thank you. Thanks a lot. And hopefully talk to you again soon. All right. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye bye.