Skeptologists Attack Ufologists

ByGreg Taylor
The Daily Grail
12-12-08

     The skeptical superstar team pushing for their own (spectacularly ugly-named) reality TV series - 'The Skeptologists' - have gone out of their way this week to pick on ufology, in particular two researchers: Stanton Friedman and Chris Rutkowski (or maybe they just don't like Canadian residents?). [Trent UFO] 'Skeptoid' host Brian Dunning rushed into battle with his post "Stanton Friedman Doesn't Like Me". As Dunning points out in his own post though, Stan's probably got good reason not to like him, considering Dunning has previously labeled Stan (and continues to) “an obsessed UFO wacko."

Now, ufology has plenty of problems - there's no real 'group authority', and plenty of hucksters and deluded people. I'm not criticising them here, because basically they're hucksters and deluded people...whom most people can see right through. Skeptics on the other hand, take on a heavy burden in giving themselves that name - it means they're imposing themselves as guardians or gatekeepers to science and the collective body of human knowledge. As such, when they fail to uphold fairness, and fail to understand something when criticising it, they deserve every bit of blowback that they get. And let's be clear about this - Dunning's post is an ugly piece of personal vindictiveness. Beyond his name-calling, there's pettiness (in saying his podcast is 'kicking the ass' of the Paranormal Podcast) and innuendo (Stan is apparently more "concerned with his bank account than with reason"). I also find it amusing that Dunning tries to talk up how much Stan is earning from ufology (not much actually) in contrast to the fact that "reason doesn't pay" - while posting alongside Michael Shermer and Phil Plait!

Beyond that though, Dunning's main point was regarding his investigation of the Betty and Barney Hill case - in particular, Stanton Friedman's assertion that there were "40 flat-out false claims" made by Dunning in debunking the case. I'm not sure whether the number mentioned was hyperbole on Stan's part, but as we'll see below, there is no doubt that Dunning made some major errors (or got creative in his writing). I don't agree with Stan on a lot of things, including some parts of the Hill case, but he does know the material having dedicated much of his life to studying it. Challenging him on the evidence is no trivial matter - as Phil Klass once found out to his financial detriment. (I'll post Stan's response to Dunning's original investigation at the end of this update.)

A few days after Dunning's post, Phil 'Bad Astronomy' Plait jumped on the bandwagon in a post titled "Ufonies". In it, Phil Plait takes ufologist Chris Rutkowski to task for bad logic regarding the case of amateur astronomers and UFO sightings. I've got a lot of time for Phil's everyday postings on his blog - he does a great job in educating people regarding science and astronomy. But every time he discusses the topic of UFOs, he seems to put on a sneer and enter debunking mode - and unfortunately for him, he is really, *really* bad at it. And it makes him look petty and ignorant.

In this case, he brings up Chris Rutkowski's argument against his claims - but it's a post from 2002 regarding the facts in Phil Plait's first book, Bad Astronomy - Chris did not contact Phil about his recent article which has received much criticism. Furthermore, Phil is quick to assume that Chris "doesn't know a lot of amateur astronomers" and doesn't understand the subject. This is perhaps Phil's intellectual ego stepping in - "don't argue on the topic I know best" - but it's a real lesson in why you should learn about a subject before posting about it (especially when doing so with a sneer). Because Chris Rutkowski has spent many years heavily involved with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada - he was President of one of the local chapters, and is a prior recipient of the RASC's 'Simon Newcomb Award' for science writing and education. In fact, Chris has a Bachelor of Science degree specializing in astronomy, and a Master of Education degree specializing in science education. He's known as one of the more 'skeptical' ufologists in the field, but is well-respected nonetheless.

Chris has now responded on his own blog to Phil Plait's attack on him (ironically, Chris writes about astronomers and UFOs in his new book, A World of UFOs):

Curiously, Phil quoted something I wrote to UFO Updates six year ago, noting that many amateur astronomers have reported UFOs but that most amateurs don't pay much attention to objects in the sky that aren't things of astronomical interest. In fact, many amateurs sit in warm-up rooms and do their observing remotely, looking at small areas of the sky on computer screens. Some are outside, but use their computers to find galaxies and nebulae automatically without looking skyward all that much.

Now, it is true that many amateurs spend nights outside comet hunting, star hopping and doing real astronomy, and in the course of these actions might see something that was a bit odd. But to report such an object would not be something most would do. In fact, astronomers like Phil would be one really good reason not to report them.

Despite this, we know from a few surveys that astronomers, both amateur and professional, do see and report UFOs, the percentage of which is variable. If they reported the same as the general population, about 10% would see them. The surveys that have been conducted have them a bit lower than this, and we could speculate on why that would be so. Nevertheless, the percentage of astronomers and amateur astronomers who have seen UFOs is significant, and not just "a handful" as Phil Plait notes.

Chris also points out that contrary to Phil's view - and that of most 'skeptics' - ufology is not made up simply of "true believers" who think UFOs are extraterrestrial spaceships:

First of all, no serious ufologist believes that the majority of reported UFOs are flying saucers. Neither Stan nor I nor anyone else involved in serious research has ever held that contention. In fact, we provide evidence to show that most reported UFOs are either misidentifications or have insufficient evidence for a conclusion. It's nice to see that Phil has arrived at the same view as we have, only 40 or 50 years behind.

It's a good point from Chris - the 'skeptics' have their straw man and they are happy to bash it good without looking at the entire topic in a scientific manner. Why not blog instead about this year's Channel Islands UFO investigation? It's too often about shooting fish in a pond for the skeptics - identify some whackos, generalise to the whole field, and write it off without letting science do its thing. Good for stroking your intellectual ego, not so great for investigating a topic objectively...

One final note: in response to a critical comment I left below his blog posting, Phil noted that "I have researched this, and the overwhelming majority of pilot reports are objects like meteors and Venus. Even the report that started the craze — Kenneth Arnold in 1947 — is now understood to have most likely been a fireball breaking up." I don't know what Phil's source for this is - the only mention I've heard about the Arnold sighting being a fireball breaking up is Phil Klass's debunking effort more than a decade ago, which didn't get much attention (for very good reasons). I certainly haven't heard that this sighting is "now understood" to have been a fireball - sources please Mr Bad Astronomy!!

Returning to Brian Dunning and Stan Friedman to finish, as promised I've posted Stan's response to the Dunning debunking below (Update: See also "Friedman on the Skeptologists":

Misrepresentations about the Hills

By Stanton Friedman
12-12-08

     "I am sure that everybody who has been following the US election campaign is well aware that much of what has shown up on the internet simply wasn’t true. Clearly some was intentionally posted to deceive. It has also been true that much that has been written about UFOs has been false. A fine example of ignorance or intentional deception appeared in a “skeptical” piece by Brian Dunning which appeared as Skeptoid No. 124 on October 21, 2008. It was sent to me by a guy who occasionally sends nasty comments after I appear on Coast to Coast...the title is “Betty and Barney Hill: The Original UFO Abduction”. It can be found on Skeptoid.com.

It is truly a splendid textbook example of propaganda and misrepresentation. BD does get the date right, Sept. 19, 1961, but very little else. “Near the resort of Indian Head they stopped their car in the middle of Rte. 3 to observe a strange light moving through in the night sky. The next thing they knew, they were about 35 miles further along on their trip and several hours had elapsed”. Talk about omissions. There was more than one stop. The large object (hardly a light) was within a few hundred feet. Barney observed it through binoculars from outside the car. He observed a double row of windows through which he could see about 10 individuals, red lights on fins on the outside, etc This was conscious recall and was described to NICAP Investigator Walter Webb during a six hour interview on October 21 1961. No hypnosis was involved.

“Then Betty began having nightmares two weeks later; in her nightmares she described being taken aboard an alien spacecraft and having medical experiments performed. As a result of these nightmares, Betty and Barney decided to undergo hypnosis.” This is absurd. Barney had developed hypertension, bleeding ulcers, was unable to sleep. He was in therapy . The original thought, that these symptoms were related to his having moved to NH leaving his sons, was dispelled by the therapist. At one session he noted that he and Betty had been searching for the location where they had seen the UFO. Then he was referred to Psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Simon, an early expert in treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder using medical hypnotic regression with amnesia induced after each session.

BD States “Innumerable books and movies were made about the Betty and Barney Hill abduction… you almost never hear a critical treatment of their story”. He mentions none of the books . I know of three (Ref. 1, 2, 3) and one movie, NBC’s 1975 “The UFO Incident” starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons. There have been loads of very critical treatments, for example, by Carl Sagan in the bestselling “Cosmos”(Ref.4) and in an article in Parade magazine (Ref.5). BD goes on “Much of the Hill story is said to be based on these separate hypnosis sessions.. In fact that turns out not to be case at all..It is important to note that that it was more than two years after the incident that the Hills underwent hypnosis. During those two years Betty was writing and rewriting her accounts of her dreams. All of the significant details you may have heard about the Hills medical experiments came from her two years of writing “. This is a total lie. There was no writing and rewriting as can be seen by reading what she wrote, for example, in “Captured!” and the comparative analysis between the dreams and the hypnosis material.

She did dream of a star-map, but it was on a roller like maps at school and was not 3D. BD has the gall to claim “Betty probably told the story to Barney over and over again until his ears fell off over a period of two years before they ever had any hypnosis”. I have no idea what the source is for this nonsense. Nor for this ridiculous comment “When they first saw the light, Betty said she thought it was a spacecraft. Barney always said he thought it was an airplane”. Without hypnosis they described seeing it close-up near their car with a double row of windows and barely moving and without any noise. This is an airplane?

Dunning then notes that Betty’s written description of the beings in her nightmare was different from Barney’s under hypnosis But when reliving the moments together their descriptions of events matched.. “After Betty Hill heard these sessions suddenly her hypnosis accounts began to describe the same kind of character”. The simple fact of the matter is that Betty and Barney were each hypnotized separately and amnesia was induced after each separate session so they could not talk with each other about what came out under hypnosis .Betty could not have heard any of these sessions until Dr. Simon finally played the tapes for them.

Dunning then tries to relate the characters described in the hypnosis session to aliens who appeared 12 days prior to Barney’s first hypnosis session in February 1964 to an experience on the Outer Limits TV program called The Bellero Shield. As a matter of fact, they do not match. Dunning admits “The Hills stated they did not watch it”. As with most of Dunning’s claims, no basis is given for claiming they did. It should be noted that nowhere does Dunning bother to note that Betty was a social worker and a supervisor in the Welfare Department of the State of New Hampshire. Of course he doesn’t mention that Barney was on the governor’s Civil Rights Commission. Nor does he give Dr. Simon’s name or background such as that he ran a 3000 bed hospital for shell shock war veterans and that he was featured in an army film “Let There be Light” about his successful treatment of these veterans, using hypnosis in the same fashion he used with Betty and Barney to recover missing memories..

Dunning claims “Betty had commonly spoken of UFOs even before 1961, including one story she often told of her sister’s own close encounter in 1957.” Again no source is given. The fact is that her sister’s daughter, Kathleen Marden, co-author of “Captured!” has stated this is false. Betty mentioned it once to Barney and he didn’t believe in UFOs and that was the end of that.

Dunning then gives this strange summary “So here’s what we have so far: A woman who clearly had an obsession with UFOs [no evidence whatsoever] saw a light in the sky that her husband described as an airplane [when it was farther away].She then spent two years writing an elaborate story [totally false] and no doubt telling it and retelling it to her husband [totally false]. Later under hypnosis Barney was asked about the events described in Betty’s story, and surprise, surprise he retold the story she already told him a hundred times [totally false] and added a dash from the Outer Limits”

Dunning mentions radar sightings included in the Blue Book file and dismisses them naturally excluding some important data such as the supposed weather balloons having a very low radar profile. He tries to throw out measurements made on Betty’s dress by unnamed “crop circle enthusiasts” but ignores the important work done by analytical chemist Phyllis Budinger, employed by a major company for 35 years. He claims that anything found on the dress was the result of its being in the closet for 40 years. Phyllis actually had a very similar dress (her wedding dress) kept for that long and not having any of the same stuff. on it.

Dunning is equally cavalier in trying to toss out the star map work done by Marjorie Fish. Surprisingly he mentions her by name, then totally misrepresents what she did . He says she read a book [Of course he doesn’t mention that it was John Fuller’s “Interrupted Journey” and that she visited Betty to get more data] “It’s seven or 8 random dots connected by lines”. More nonsense, there are 15 dots. The lines make sense: nearest star to nearest star. “She then took beads and string and converted her living room into a 3 dimensional version of the galaxy based on the 1969 Gliese star catalog”. The fact of the matter is she built 26 different 3D models of the local galactic neighborhood, out 55 light years, at most, from the sun. The biggest model was a 3foot cube.. hardly living room size, and was used as a teaching tool by Dr. Walter Mitchell, Chairman of the Astronomy Department at the Ohio State University. He and Marjorie and Betty are all in the movie“UFOs Are Real” (Ref. 6) The galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. Most of the work was done before the Gliese catalog was published. Nobody doing what she did before the Gliese was published could have identified the stars because the correct distance data had not been available.. Of course he says Zeta Reticuli when there are 2 stars, Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli.(The constellation is Reticulum). He makes no note of the facts that they are the closest to each other pair of sun-like stars in the neighborhood (1/8th of a ly apart), and a billion years older than the sun and 39.3 light years from Earth and that all the pattern stars are sun-like though only 5% of those in the neighborhood are, and that all the sun-like stars in the 3D volume represented by her models are part of the pattern and that they are all in a plane. He claims that anybody could have made a crude drawing using the Gliese data.. not published until 8 years after the event!! He makes claims about Carl Sagan and other astronomers’ comments, but neglecting to say they don’t stand up to careful review such as provided by Astronomy writer Terence Dickinson (Ref. 7 and 8)

He concludes this mockery of journalism and science: “The Betty and Barney Hill abduction story has every indication of being merely an inventive tale from the mind of a lifelong UFO Fanatic. It is unsupported by any useful evidence and is perfectly consistent with the purely natural explanation.”.

I have been unable to find any biographical data about Dunning though there is a well known flautist with the same name. His piece (There are many other false claims besides those noted above) stands as a monument to laziness, misrepresentation, bias and ignorance. It is almost pure baloney, an inventive tale from the mind of an anti-UFO fanatic. No, I have no idea why he and other debunkers are so determined to ignore the UFO evidence."

More . . .

* Special Thanks To Greg Taylor & The Daily Grail

See Also:

Stanton Friedman's Ongoing Task in Educating The Ignorant (Debunkers)

UFOs & Science: If One Can't Attack the Data, Attack the People - It's Easier!

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Stanton Friedman's Ongoing Task in Educating The Ignorant (Debunkers)

Brian Dunning Running for Top UFO Debunker

By Stanton Friedman
www.stantonfriedman.com
12-12-08

Editor's Note-For the purpose of clarity in regard to Mr. Friedman's rejoinder to Brian Dunning's article, the latter is published here in it's entirety; accreditation is to Mr. Dunning and "Skepticblog."-FW

     Debunker Brian Dunning must be congratulated for adhering so closely to the basic rules for debunking:

A. What the public doesn't know, I won't
tell them.

B. Don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up.

C. If one can't attack the data, attack the people. D. Do one's research by proclamation, investigation is too much trouble.

He demonstrated these in his off the wall attack on Skeptoid on the Betty and Barney Hill case about which I have written a detailed critique. Then he reacted like a spoiled brat caught with his hand in the cookie charge by insulting me after hearing on a radio station that I had said his piece was loaded with false claims. He said Friedman was "the principal Author of the Roswell, Travis Walton, and Betty and Barney Hill UFO mythologies". I haven't written any mythologies and certainly didn't write a book about Travis Walton. More : "he wrote the most significant books inventing the most popular stories". Wow , I am impressed. He must be jealous of my being a nuclear physicist.. "in fact his only career since 1970, was writing UFO books". I must be a very slow writer. My first book, "Crash at Corona", co-authored with Don Berliner, was published in 1992. My second book "TOP SECRET/MAJIC" was published in 1997. "Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience", co-authored with Kathleen Marden, Betty's niece, was published in 2007.

My most recent book "Flying Saucers and Science" was published in June, 2008. He quite obviously hadn't read "Captured!" and I seriously doubt if he has read any of the others either. He thinks TV producers should "call a spade a spade and call me an "Obsessed UFO Wacko". He then makes the out of this world claim that his claims in his skeptical piece "are corroborated by Stanton Friedman's own books." This is hogwash to the 4th power!

He says "the Facts of the case aren't really in question [so why didn't he get them right?], it's the interpretation of the facts that are. Betty Hill spent two years writing a UFO story and sharing it with her husband, and then when asked about that story under hypnosis, Barney Hill was able to rattle it off pretty much as she wrote it". This is a total and complete lie as he and anybody else would know if he had read "Captured". I can only wonder what the source for this completely wrong claim was. Dunning calls me "a successful author busy with book tours and UFO conventions". Fact is I have never done a book tour. I have spoken at over 600 colleges and 100 professional groups. After 1970 and prior to "Crash at Corona", I was involved in a lot of professional activities. I worked on the commissioning of the Pt. Lepreau nuclear generating station. I measured radon levels in houses and wells in the Fredericton area. I did a study for the Canadian Electrical Association on "The Recovery and Utilization of Waste Heat from Power-plants"(visiting a number of facilities) and another for them on "The Use of Electron Beams to Treat Flue Gas." I did a study "Future Technology Scenarios for New Brunswick" for the Province, and other studies on food irradiation, and seed stimulation. I gave professional papers at meetings of the European Society for Nuclear methods in Agriculture in Piacenza,Italy, and Warsaw, Poland, among others.

So it is clear Brian Dunning is a skilled liar, not a skeptic. He deserves "Debunker of the Year" award. And he should apologize to his readers and me for gross misrepresentation.
See Also:

UFOs & Science: If One Can't Attack the Data, Attack the People - It's Easier!

The Roswell Exhibit: Conservative Scientists Resort To Ad Hominem Attacks Against Noted Ufologist Stanton Friedman

Stanton Friedman Doesn’t Like Me

By Brian Dunning
12-4-08

     A reader wrote me on Facebook that he was listening to the “Paranormal Podcast”, another of the usual promoters of nonsense inexplicably allowed to remain in the Science & Medicine section of iTunes. The guest was Stanton Friedman, the principal author of the Roswell, Travis Walton, and Betty & Barney Hill UFO mythologies. Anyway, at 25 minutes into the episode (#56, but don’t bother listening as it’s only a 15 second blurb), Stanton mentioned that he “came across a piece on the Internet” the other day that got “40 flat-out false claims” about the Betty and Barney Hill story, and added with a condescending chortle that he “couldn’t believe it.” It was the online transcript of my Skeptoid episode on that story.

The Paranormal Podcast host, Jim Harold, acknowledged that he had heard of Skeptoid. Of course you have Jim, because it’s kicking your ass in iTunes, probably much to your dismay.

Stanton was probably predisposed to have a problem with me. I’ve called him “an obsessed UFO wacko”, which I think is accurate. I grew up watching Stanton Friedman; he’s on just about every TV documentary about UFOs, and of course he wrote the most significant books inventing the most popular UFO stories. I used to listen to him in awe: The TV always said “nuclear physicist” under his name, so of course, anything he said had to be true. (I didn’t know that his real career, in fact his only career since 1970, was writing UFO books. I guess the TV producers feel that calling him a nuclear physicist gives him more credibility than calling a spade a spade and saying “Obsessed UFO Wacko”.)

I browsed through the transcript looking for 40 factual errors. This is a daunting task, because there aren’t more than 20 or 25 points made that you could call factual claims. Most of them either came from or are corroborated by Stanton Friedman’s own books. The facts of the case aren’t really in question, it’s the interpretation of the facts that are. Betty Hill spent two years writing a UFO story and sharing it with her husband, and then when asked about that story under hypnosis, Barney Hill was able to rattle it off pretty much as she wrote it. I say “Duh,” Stanton Friedman cries “Proof that aliens abducted them!”

If I thought he might care (which I don’t presume to), I would love to challenge Stanton to list even just 25 of the “40 flat-out false claims” I made, keeping in mind that virtually all the statements of fact I made are corroborated by his books. Not interpretations or innuendos, but statements of facts. Not that it’s a 40 minute drive from Ashland to Portsmouth, not a 45 minute drive, but substantive errors. He argues that I distorted the facts (my “false claims”) in order to discredit his fiction. This is an easy argument to make when you have an unchallenged platform on a podcast. An intelligent opponent would point out that the significant facts are not disputed, and that it’s the interpretation of the facts that makes all the difference.

He won’t accept this challenge, of course, mainly because he’s a successful author busy with book tours and UFO conventions, and I’m just one of many farts in the breeze of reason. Reason doesn’t pay, and since he’s more concerned with his bank account than with reason, he’s right to ignore piss-ant blogs like this. But it won’t be long before The Skeptologists are on his ass, and he’ll find that condescending chortles only take him so far.

Anyone can take a mundane newspaper headline and expand it into a dramatic fictional UFO abduction tale. If it’s done well, it will be gobbled up by an uncritical public. It’s those of us who caution against the folly of pseudoscience and faith in the supernatural who have the hard job.

More . . .

Betty and Barney Hill:
The Original UFO Abduction

By Skeptoid #124
Podcast transcript
October 21, 2008

     It was shortly before midnight on September 19, 1961 when Betty and Barney Hill had the experience which was to shape all of modern alien folklore. They were driving from Canada to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Near the resort of Indian Head, New Hampshire, they stopped their car in the middle of Route 3 to observe a strange light moving through in the sky. The next thing they knew, they were about 35 miles further along on their trip, and several hours had elapsed.

Betty telephoned their close friend, Major Paul Henderson at nearby Pease Air Force Base, to report a UFO sighting. Major Henderson found that this was corroborated by two separate UFO reports from radar data from two different Air Force installations nearby. All three reports are officially recorded in Project Blue Book. Then Betty began having nightmares two weeks later. In her nightmares, she described being taken aboard an alien spacecraft and having medical experiments performed. As a result of these nightmares, Betty and Barney decided to undergo hypnosis. In separate sessions, they described nearly identical experiences of being taken on board the alien spacecraft by what we now call gray aliens: Short beings with huge black eyes and smooth gray skin. Both of the Hills had a whole spectrum of tests done. Betty was shown a star map which she was able to memorize and reproduce later, and which has been identified as showing Zeta Reticuli as the aliens' home planet. After the experiments they were taken back to their car in a dazed condition, and sent along their way.

Innumerable books and movies were made about the Betty & Barney Hill abduction. It was the introduction of the gray alien into popular culture. It was also the beginning of the entire "alien abduction" phenomenon. The physical evidence of the star map and the radar reports are said to have both withstood all scrutiny. In fact you almost never hear a critical treatment of their story.

Much of the Hill story is said to be based on these separate hypnosis sessions. In fact, that turns out not to be the case at all. It's important to note that it was more than two years after the incident that the Hills underwent hypnosis. During those two years, Betty was writing and rewriting her accounts of her dreams. All of the significant details you may have heard about the Hills' medical experiments came from Betty's two years of writings: A long needle inserted into her navel; the star map; the aliens' fascination with Barney's dentures; the examination of both Betty and Barney's genitals; and the overall chronology of the episode, including being met on the ground by the aliens, a leader coming forward and escorting them to exam rooms, the aliens' general demeanor and individual personalities, and the way they spoke to Betty in English but to Barney via telepathy. Betty wrote all of this based only on what she claims were her dreams, and probably told the story to Barney over and over again until his ears fell off over a period of two years, before they ever had any hypnosis.

During those two years, Barney's own recollection was somewhat less dramatic. When they first saw the light in the sky, Betty said she thought it was a spacecraft, but Barney always said he thought it was an airplane.

Betty's written description of the characters in her nightmare depicted short guys with black hair and "Jimmy Durante" noses. It was only in Barney Hill's hypnosis sessions that we got the first description of skinny figures with gray skin, large bald heads, and huge black eyes. After Betty Hill heard these sessions, suddenly her own hypnosis accounts began to describe the same type of character, and from that moment on, she never again mentioned her original Jimmy Durante guys. Many modern accounts wrongly state that her original nightmares also described grays.

Although the popular version of events is that Barney Hill's hypnosis description is the first appearance of a so-called gray alien in modern culture, that first appearance actually came twelve days earlier, on national television, in an episode of The Outer Limits called The Bellero Shield. The alien in that episode shared most of the significant physical characteristics with the alien in Barney's story: Bald head, gray skin, big wraparound eyes. The Hills stated they did not watch it and didn't know about it.

Remember: Before examining the specific claims made in a fantastic story, you should check the source of the story for credibility. Barney Hill died only a few years after the alleged incident, but Betty Hill stuck around long enough for her credibility to be pretty thoroughly demonstrated. Skeptical Inquirer columnist Robert Shaeffer wrote:

I was present at the National UFO Conference in New York City in 1980, at which Betty presented some of the UFO photos she had taken. She showed what must have been well over two hundred slides, mostly of blips, blurs, and blobs against a dark background. These were supposed to be UFOs coming in close, chasing her car, landing, etc... After her talk had exceeded about twice its allotted time, Betty was literally jeered off the stage by what had been at first a very sympathetic audience. This incident, witnessed by many of UFOlogy's leaders and top activists, removed any lingering doubts about Betty's credibility — she had none. In the oft-repeated words of one UFOlogist who accompanied Betty on a UFO vigil in 1977, she was "unable to distinguish between a landed UFO and a streetlight." In 1995, Betty Hill wrote a self-published book, A Common Sense Approach to UFOs. It is filled with obviously delusional stories, such as seeing entire squadrons of UFOs in flight and a truck levitating above the freeway.

She also once wrote in a 1966 letter "Barney and I go out frequently at night for one reason or another. Since last October, we have seen our 'friends' on the average of eight or nine times out of every ten trips." But is it possible that Betty's obsession with UFOs could have been caused by her trauma from a genuine abduction? Yes, it's possible that it could have pushed her further in that direction, but Betty had commonly spoken of UFOs even before 1961, including one story she often told of her sister's own close encounter in 1957.

So here's what we have so far: A woman who clearly had an obsession with UFOs saw a light in the sky that her husband described as an airplane. She then spent two years writing an elaborate story and no doubt telling and retelling it to her husband. Later, under hypnosis, Barney was asked about the events described in Betty's story, and surprise surprise, he retold the story she'd already told him a hundred times, with an added dash from The Outer Limits episode of twelve days before. So far, we have a tale that's hard to consider reliable.

But then there are those three items said to be physical evidence of the Hill abduction: first, the star map hand drawn by Betty by memory from one shown to her aboard the spacecraft; second, the purple dress she was wearing on that night, kept for forty years in her closet, torn and covered with mysterious dust; and third, reports in the Air Force's official Project Blue Book stating that radar confirmed the presence of a UFO on that night at two separate Air Force facilities in the area, both within hours of the Hills' claimed abduction. Let's look at those first.

The first report was from Pease Air Force Base, about 82 miles southeast of Indian Head, at 2:14am. The Hills got home in Portsmouth at 5:00 in the morning on September 20. Their story states that they came to after their medical experiments about 35 miles south of Indian Head, near the town of Ashland. From Ashland to Portsmouth is about an hour and 45 minute drive, so they came to in their car around 3:15. This chronology puts Pease AFB's UFO radar evidence squarely in the middle of the Hills' three hours of medical experiments aboard the spaceship, which they say was sitting on the ground the whole time. If the Hills' story is true, the Pease AFB report must be an unrelated event.

The second report is from North Concord Air Force Station, a small hilltop radar station (closed in 1963) that was about 40 miles north of Indian Head, at 5:22pm on September 19. This is about seven hours before the Hills observed their light in the sky. It clearly does not corroborate the Hills' sighting. The reports in Project Blue Book note each target's extremely high altitude and low speed, and conclude that each was probably a weather balloon.

Next we have Betty's purple dress, the zipper of which she found to be torn. She then hung it in the closet. Two years later, after the hypnosis, she got it out and said there was strange pink dust on it. She hung it up again, this time for forty years, when a group of crop circle investigators examined it. They concluded the dress had an "anomalous biological substance" on it. While a good stretch of the imagination might consider this to be consistent with the abduction story, it's also consistent with perfectly natural explanations, namely, 40 years of dust mites, moths, and mold. I don't find the Great Purple Dress Caper to be good evidence of anything.

So the only thing we're left with is Betty's star map. In her original written stories, she described the aliens' star map as three dimensional. Under hypnosis, she redrew it on paper, in two dimensions. It's seven or eight random dots connected by lines, and it's quite rough and by no means precise. Several years later, a schoolteacher named Marjorie Fish read a book about the Hills. She then took beads and strings and converted her living room into a three dimensional version of the galaxy based on the 1969 Gliese Star Catalog. She then spent several years viewing her galaxy from different angles, trying to find a match for Betty's map, and eventually concluded that Zeta Reticuli was the alien homeworld. Other UFOlogists have proposed innumerable different interpretations. Carl Sagan and other astronomers have said that it is not even a good match for Zeta Reticuli, and that Betty's drawing is far too random and imprecise to make any kind of useful interpretation. With its third dimension removed, Betty's map cannot contain any useful positional information. Even if she had somehow drawn a perfect 3D map that did exactly align with known star positions, it still wouldn't be evidence of anything other than that such reference material is widely available, in sources like the Gliese Star Catalog. We would not conclude that an alien abduction is the only reasonable way that Betty could have learned seven or eight star positions during those two years.

And so, there we have it. The Betty & Barney Hill abduction story has every indication of being merely an inventive tale from the mind of a lifelong UFO fanatic. Despite the best efforts of authors to bolster it with mischaracterized or exaggerated evidence, it is unsupported by any useful evidence, and is perfectly consistent with the purely natural explanation.

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