The Faith-Based Science of Susan Clancy

The literate world is well aware that a controversy about the reality of the UFO phenomenon has raged for decades. Arrayed on one side are the enthusiasts - the casual, the serious and the bizarre - along with thousands of highly qualified pilot-witnesses, high-ranking military personnel, intensely interested scientists, and even an astronaut or two.All regard the hundreds of thousands of global sighting reports as a scientific problem of major significance, and all demand that science finally conducts a thorough, objective investigation.Centrally opposed to this position are a large number of mainstream scientists, most of whom are not only indifferent to the subject of UFOs, but also grossly uninformed about theweight of the evidence. Allied with them is a strange amalgam of groups that includes official spokesmen for the United States Air Force, Bible Belt Fundamentalist preachers such as Pat Robertson, and a small but vociferous band of self-described "rationalist" debunkers (who probably look upon their religious brethren as hopelessly superstitious).

Clearly, the battle against a scientific investigation of the UFO phenomenon makes strange bedfellows. A few years ago, when those of us in the research community heard rumors of a two-tiered scientific investigation to be undertaken at Harvard University by experimental psychologists Richard McNally and Susan Clancy, we were curious but wary. Dr. McNally, we were told, intended to test a group of self-described UFO abductees for the presence of certain symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Hewould employ as a model a similar test used years before, in which a group of Vietnam veterans tape recorded their traumatic war experiences and then, at a later time, were scientifically measured for signs of stress as they heard their taped accounts played back. Dr. Clancy planned to employ a word memorization test, which was supposed to reveal a subject's tendency towards false memories. Unfortunately, neither McNally nor Clancy intended to carry out any actual investigations of UFO abduction reports or examine any physical evidence. They would remain in the laboratory, limiting their project to the ostensibly scientific testing of their abductee subjects' veracity. Early in the Susan Clancy enterprise, any hopes I had for her objectivity evaporated when I learned that her purported abductee subjects were to be self-selected. She had placed ads in a number of newspapers,a......