50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True

by Harrison, Guy P.

  Some readers may find all this a bit hard to believe. I have no such doubts, however, because I once caught my brain feeding me a memory it thought made sense but didn't match reality. In the summer of 2011, I was driving in my car listening to Colin Cowherd's ESPN radio talk show. The topic was baseball and Cowherd mentioned Pete Rose's run at Joe DiMaggio's revered fifty-six-game hitting streak. Immediately I remembered the night Rose came up short after getting a hit in forty-four games. The scene was crystal clear in my mind. It was during my college days and I was in a friend's dorm room while that game was on his TV. I even remember pausing our conversation when Rose came up to bat so I could watch. Rose struck out and DiMaggio's record survived. But then Cowherd mentioned the date for that game: 1978. “Ha,” I thought to myself. “He blew it. He's way off. That happened in the mid or late 1980s.” The year 1978 couldn't possibly be right, because I saw Rose's streak snapped on TV in a friend's dorm room when I was in college in the 1980s. In 1978 I was a sophomore in high school. I assumed the commentator just made a simple mistake with the year. Later, however, I was curious enough about the exact year to check, and what I found shocked me. Pete Rose's hit streak was stopped in a game that took place in 1978! Even then, even after seeing the date verified by a credible source, I still remembered it incorrectly. I could still “see” myself, in college, in my friend's dorm room, watching Pete Rose strike out. But it couldn't have happened that way. I wasn't in college then and didn't even know that particular friend back in 1978. I was just a kid then, and that game was probably on past my bedtime. What happened? The likely answer is that my constructed memory of Pete Rose striking out was edited, shuffled, and put together for recall by my brain in a way that totally violated the integrity of the actual time line. Maybe I was in that dorm room with my friend in the 1980s and glimpsed a program that included video of Pete Rose's career highlights, including that specific strikeout. My subconscious mind then combined the real 1978 event with the viewing of a replay of it years later to create one memory that seemed to make sense—except that it was not accurate. The gap of at least six or eight years was compressed and eliminated—without my conscious permission, by the way. After experiencing this phenomenon firsthand, I have no problem understanding how someone around during the Roswell incident in 1947 might end up with a memory of it that also includes memories of events that occurred years later.

  It is also possible for a person to be prompted into a false memory just by exposure to a compelling presentation. This was shown by a 2011 study that revealed how disturbingly easy it is to fool human memory. Researchers found that simply showing people a commercial would lead many of them, just a week later, to remember trying the product advertised even though they never could have because the product was fictional. They call it the “false experience effect.”12 When I read about this, I immediately thought of the Roswell claim and other strange things people remember seeing or experiencing. Given the popularity of attention-grabbing alien stories that spread through popular culture like wildfire in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, how many Roswell witness accounts might be attributable to the “false experience effect”?

  It's not difficult to manufacture convincing memories of things people don't really remember at all. There is a cute little story about my youngest daughter that I occasionally share with anyone who will listen. When she was around one year old, Marissa had a fever and I carried her around the house while singing some silly made-up song in the hope of distracting her from the discomfort. At one point I paused, held her up, face-to-face at eye level, and thought about how wonderful and perfect she appeared. Even while sick she was impossibly beautiful. Her little face was the cutest thing in all the universe—and then she showered me with vomit. My little angel unleashed a relentless stream of foul demonic fluid, so much of it that I would've sworn it exceeded her body weight. And then she smiled and giggled. I stood there for a long time, soaked with milk and half-digested baby food, unsure what to do.

  The interesting thing is that Marissa, now ten years old, remembers that incident very well. But after talking with her about it, I'm convinced that her memory of drenching daddy is not of the actual event but is a constructed memory created from hearing me tell the story. A story heard today can shape tomorrow's memories. What if I had added into each retelling of that story that it was raining, there were seven puppies in our living room, and I was dressed up like an Elvis impersonator at that time? Would she “remember” those details if she heard the story several times over the years? Probably. It's easy to imagine how Roswell witnesses might have heard or read stories about aliens and then subconsciously constructed convincing memories that mix in elements of those stories with their real experiences at Roswell decades ago.

  WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A LACK OF TRUST

  The absence of good evidence and the availability of reasonable alternative explanations have not stopped millions of people from believing that a spacecraft crashed in Roswell more than sixty years ago. A staggering 75 percent of Americans reject the military's official explanation of the Roswell story.13

  This figure of 75 percent is odd because only 24 percent of Americans polled by Gallup believe that “extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth at some time in the past.”14 It seems, therefore, that a significant number of people hold the strange position of not believing aliens crashed at Roswell while also not believing the government when it says that aliens didn't crash at Roswell. This suggests that much of the Roswell story's popularity is owed to a general mistrust of government. If everything had happened in roughly the same way, minus government involvement, the incident probably would have been forgotten long ago.

  Do governments lie? Of course they do. Sometimes it's for good reasons and sometimes it's because politicians, military leaders, and civil servants want to get away with things the rest of us would not approve of. This does not mean, however, that governments lie all the time about everything. Sometimes when a government says it did not recover an alien spaceship and hide extraterrestrial bodies, it just might be telling the truth.

  GO DEEPER…

  Books

  Frazier, Kendrick, Barry Karr, and Joe Nickell, eds. The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Cover-ups. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997.

  Kaufman, Marc. First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life beyond Earth. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011.

  Kittinger, Joe, and Craig Ryan. Come Up and Get Me: An Autobiography of Colonel Joseph Kittinger. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011.

  Klass, Philip J. The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Cover-up. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997.

  McAndrew, James. Roswell Report: Case Closed. Grand Prairie, TX: Books Express Publishing, 2011.

  Ryan, Craig. Pre-Astronauts: Manned Ballooning on the Threshold of Space. Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 2003.

  Saler, Benson, Charles A. Ziegler, and Charles B. Moore. UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2010.

  Other Sources

  Skeptic 10, no. 1 (2003).

  We had demons from ancient Greece, gods who came down and mated with humans, incubi and succubi in the Middle Ages who sexually abused people while they were sleeping. We had fairies. And now we have aliens. To me, it all seems very familiar.

  —Carl Sagan

  The extraordinary claim that aliens have not only made contact with people but also abducted or restrained some of them in order to conduct strange and horrifying procedures is one of the more important paranormal beliefs, in my opinion. Often mocked and dismissed without a second thought, these beliefs are so extreme that they deserve close scrutiny. It is one thing to imagine that the position of stars and planets influence daily human life or that some fuzzy light in the sky is an alien spaceship, but it is something else entirely to believe that extraterrestrials came into your bedroom and experimented on you. To “remember” a visitor from space having sex
with you, extracting semen from you, or placing an electronic device up a nostril or in your anus takes things to an entirely new level. Perhaps these remarkable stories, made by many people at least since the 1960s, can tell us something important about paranormal claims in general. Maybe there is a lesson here about the power of cultural influence and the remarkable ability of a human mind to create its own “reality.”

  First of all, let's be fair and address whether or not alien abduction incidents could have happened. The only sensible answer to that is that it is possible. There are trillions of stars in the universe, and the discovery of planets orbiting stars has become routine in recent years. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old and it's very large. We might be alone, but it seems unlikely given all the chances for life out there. There likely are trillions of worlds within the three hundred billion or so galaxies spread across the observable universe. Of course there could be extraterrestrial life, but we might be the only intelligent life capable of space travel. Maybe we are the first intelligent life so far. Maybe we are the last. But if there is life in the universe and it's smart enough to figure out an efficient way to travel here, then maybe we have been visited. And maybe some humans were selected for study. This is an extraordinary claim and, as we shall see, there is nothing remotely approaching proof, but it is possible. For example, on a scale of “what has a better chance of being real,” I certainly would place alien visitations ahead of astrology, ghosts, and people who have conversations with dead people. At least the idea of extraterrestrials existing doesn't conflict with the laws of nature. For this reason I tend to be a bit defensive on behalf of people who believe in alien abductions. Why are these stories a big joke to so many people when other more unlikely claims enjoy considerable respect? Shouldn't abduction believers get at least as much respect as, say, the 75 percent of Americans who believe in angels?1

  While there is no evidence at this time indicating that life, intelligent or otherwise, exists anywhere else but Earth, the only sensible position is to maintain an open mind on that issue. Having an open mind, however, does not mean one should let every wild belief creep in. Since childhood I have had a strong attraction to both astronomy and science fiction. The possibility of alien life thrills me. I couldn't ignore an alien abduction story if my life depended on it. But after I have heard the story and there is no evidence to back it up, then I know it's just a story and nothing more. Anecdotes are not evidence. Never forget that stories alone do not prove anything.

  The problem with the idea that aliens have been abducting people is that after all these years, after all these claims, there is nothing to show for it. To date, there is not one verifiable case ever of an abductee who produced hard evidence or shared important information that could only have come from a technologically advanced extraterrestrial species. There have been claims about people having alien devices implanted in them. Great! Send one of these gadgets to the New York Times science desk and we will finally know the truth. There also have been many stories about extraterrestrials giving abductees vital messages to share with all of humanity. Fine, but don't just tell us about how the aliens want us to live in peace and harmony. Anyone could make up that stuff. Let's hear something only an advanced alien species would know, like how to cure cancer, how to travel faster than light, or an explanation for dark matter.

  Anyone who cares about evidence, logic, truth, and reality has no choice but to conclude that alien abduction claims are probably not true. This does not mean, however, that all those who make the claim are lying or are not worth listening to. I believe researchers and the general public should pay more attention to people who say they were abducted, not because I think their stories are accurate, but because they offer us an opportunity to learn more about delusions, sleep, false memories, and the influence of culture on beliefs. These cases are excellent examples of how easy it is to believe in things that are not real. If a person can somehow end up with vivid and authentic-feeling memories of a home invasion by a gang of big-eyed aliens with ray guns, then there should be no underestimating the brain's ability to betray us when it comes to thinking about much more mundane things like psychic readings, alternative medicine, lights in the sky, ghosts, the Bible code, and so on.

  Dr. Susan A. Clancy, author of Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens spent five years of her life studying hundreds of people who believe they were abducted by aliens. After listening to some of the most bizarre and disturbing stories ever told, Clancy settled on very down-to-earth explanations for why these people believe what they believe. She is not convinced that her interview subjects or anyone else have been abducted by aliens. She also does not think the vast majority of abductees are mentally ill, lying, or unintelligent. “Yes, they held some strange beliefs without any strong evidence to support those notions,” she writes in her book, “But don't many of us do the same thing? They weren't much weirder than the people I see at family reunions…. The truth is that almost all of us can believe things without much evidence. The only thing unique about the alien abductees I have met is their particular belief.”2

  According to Clancy, what is going on in many of these cases is likely an incident of sleep paralysis mixed with false memories. Something real happened—a nightmare on steroids—and then that event was “explained and confirmed” by a hypnotherapy session. A person could walk away from such treatment with the powerful memory of an alien abduction that no lecture on the virtues of critical thinking could easily undo.

  She also discovered that belief in abduction is not the starting point. In most cases people were disturbed by weird things they couldn't explain like mysterious bruises on their bodies, specific events such as waking up and finding their pajamas on the floor, or general feelings of being an outsider in society. Clancy says that often the belief is part of an “attribution process,” an attempt to answer questions. “Alien abduction belief,” she explains, “reflect attempts to explain odd, unusual, and perplexing experiences.”3

  So how do people end up with the false memory of an alien abduction in their mind? It can happen far more easily than you probably think. Psychologist and memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus conducted experiments in the 1990s that showed how easy it is not only to modify a person's memory but to give them an entirely false memory as well.4

  A standard component of the typical abduction scenario is that the victim's memory of the event is “wiped clean” by the aliens—although they never make a complete job of it. A nagging suspicion that something terrible has happened haunts the person who then seeks out someone to help put the pieces together, maybe a hypnotherapist who specializes in retrieving memories of alien abductions. But there is a problem with the popular perception of hypnosis and memory recovery: it's not supported by good science. “A wealth of solid research, conducted over four decades, has shown that hypnosis is a bad way to refresh your memories,” argues Clancy. “Not only is it generally unhelpful when you're trying to retrieve memories of actual events, but it renders you susceptible to creating false memories—memories of things that never happened, things that were suggested to you or that you merely imagined. If you or your therapist have preexisting beliefs or expectations about ‘what might come up,’ you're liable to recall experiences that fit with those beliefs, rather than events that actually happened. Worse, neither you nor your therapist will realize this, because the memories you do retrieve seem very, very real.”5

  After decades of work on false memories, Loftus concludes this: “Just because it's vivid, detailed, expressed with confidence and emotion, doesn't mean it's true.”6

  The smart way to proceed when confronted by an extraordinary claim or event is to look for the easy answers first. If I walk out in my driveway tomorrow morning and find that my car is missing, my first instinct will be to suspect that it was stolen, it was borrowed, or somebody is playing a trick on me. I would have to eliminate all those possibilities, and many more, before I arrive at the possibi
lity that it has been taken by aliens.

  If the extraordinary event happens to be waking up in your bed, finding yourself surrounded by strange beings and unable to move, then it seems to me that sleep paralysis with hallucinations would be an easier explanation than bringing extraterrestrials into it. Have no doubts, sleep paralysis is a real phenomenon, and it's not as rare as you may think. Some 20 percent of people are believed to have experienced at least one sleep paralysis episode with hallucinations. It happens when the natural transition between deep sleep and waking up is somehow derailed. The brain can still be in a sleep state with motor output from the brain blocked, as is normal during sleep so that body movement is restricted, but the person “wakes up” and feels paralyzed. Add to this the possibility of a dream in progress, and one could be in for a very scary ride. In an awakened state, or something close to it, a dream might be impossible to separate from reality.7

  Andrea, a thirty-something Canadian schoolteacher, has had so many sleep paralysis episodes that she has learned to simply relax and ride them out. She says that it is easy for her to understand how people can be terrified and misled by a sleep paralysis experience. “It's happened so often now—about a dozen times in my life—that it's lost a bit of its edge,” she explained. “Also, I'm quite sure I'd heard of it before it happened to me, so I didn't suffer long with the, ‘Oh-shit-what's-happening-to-me?’ feeling. I can't remember one stand-out episode, really, but I do know you still definitely hear and smell things. So, if you didn't know what was happening, you'd be able to hear noises in the house, the TV, voices, and things like that. It would be so terrifying if you didn't know what was going on, and being conscious but unable to move does make you feel like you're being crushed somehow. You so badly want to open your eyes, but can't. You try to imagine what's going on in the room, and it would be pretty easy to think of something terrible, since this terrible thing is happening to you. My only concern is, How long will this last? I'm pretty good at calming myself and getting back to sleep, thankfully.”