Post by Andrei Tchentchik on Jan 19, 2020 17:55:15 GMT 2
(.#327).- Sociopsychological model of the Ovni phenomenon.
Sociopsychological model of the Ovni phenomenon.
Altocumulus lenticularis: example of a cloud that could lead to a mistake.
The sociopsychological model of the UFO phenomenon is a thesis aimed at explaining most observations of unidentified flying objects in a sociopsychological setting, that is to say in a social environment in which individuals can influence each other (either by direct communication, word of mouth, either by the amplification given by the media directly implanted in this environment). The theory of seeking an explanation in this model is based in part on Occam's razor principle, which states that the simplest explanation for a seemingly inexplicable phenomenon must be favored over more complicated theses (especially when they put forward unproven elements such as extraterrestrial visits to the Earth). This hypothesis which explains the UFO phenomenon by misunderstandings, errors of interpretation, hallucinations or false memories, receives the support of a part of the scientific community.
Origin
Michel Monnerie has made known in France the sociopsychological hypothesis with the publication in 1977 of his book Et si les UFOs did not exist? This thesis has been popularized in Britain by authors such as David Clarke, publisher of Magonia magazine, and journalists writing for Fortean Times magazine. In the United States, the sociopsychological hypothesis is defended by an organization of skeptics, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Claude Maugé, professor of mathematics and physics and journalist of the journal Inforespace, proposed to use, instead of "sociopsychological model of the UFO phenomenon", the expression "reductionist theory composite of the UFO phenomenon".
Psychosocial mechanisms
19th century engraving illustrating the phenomenon of ball lightning.
Psychological phenomena
American commissions (the Grudge project, the Blue Book project or the Condon report) conclude that most UFO sightings are the result of a misunderstanding with flying objects of human design (airplane, probe balloon, artificial satellite, re-entry atmospheric, etc.), or astronomical phenomena (comet, racing car, planet, like the planet Venus which could be confused with an artificial object, its luminosity being of magnitude -4, that is to say extremely brilliant, of as much as under particular conditions, the flicker of a star can also give the impression of movement), or even meteorological phenomena (ball lightning, altocumulus lenticularis, cloud that could be mistaken for a saucer).
According to some authors, perception is described as a cognitive construct. Hallucinations, false memories or even certain psychopathologies, as in the "Bidule case" or psychological disorders were diagnosed in both witnesses, would be cases of figure. According to this approach, the psychology of witnessing a strange or exceptional event, such as the vision of a UFO, would play a role in the content of the testimony, a hypothesis invoked in the case of extraterrestrial abductions. Susan Clancy, psychologist, explains these with sleep paralysis combined with a false memory syndrome. According to author Elaine Showalter, it could be a contemporary form of hysteria (among others such as dissociative identity disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome - a neurological disease - or the Gulf War Syndrome). A research conducted by psychologist Nicholas Spanos and colleagues seems to indicate conversely that people claiming to have been abducted by extraterrestrials would not suffer from psychopathology.
In experiments under LSD, psychiatrist Stanislav Grof observes the appearance of visions reminiscent of UFOs, as well as encounters with beings that the subject describes as "aliens".
Sociological phenomena
US skeptical journalist and ufologist Philip J. Klass has proposed a general hypothesis for waves of UFO sightings:
"When media coverage leads the public to believe that there are UFOs in the vicinity, there are many natural or man-made objects that, especially when seen at night, may have unusual characteristics in the mind. an observer full of hope. Their UFO sightings add back to the mass excitement, which encourages even more witnesses to look for UFOs. This situation feeds on itself until the media loses interest in the subject, and then the phenomenon falls. "
According to the psychologist Elisabeth Loftus, our memory is changeable, suggestible and there could be distortion of the testimony according to the questions asked by an investigator.
The case of Beert
In November 1973, five people submitted to the editorial staff of the Belgian-Dutch newspaper De Standaard a photograph of what they called the case of the century. The newspaper published the photo with an article asking if there were witnesses. The editors were assailed by phone calls from witnesses who swore they had seen exactly the same object. It was a mini wave of UFOs. After a few days the five people recognized that the picture was a fake. Experience showed that from a false case (here a hoax), one can generate other equally false testimonies by mere psychological contagion.
Proponents of the extraterrestrial thesis screamed at the scandal without being able to invalidate the correctness of the demonstration.
Case Interpretations by Model
1942 and 1946:
Battle of Los Angeles and Ghost Rockets.The battle of Los Angeles during which the DCA opened fire in 1942 for an hour on hypothetical Japanese aircraft became an urban ufology legend. According to some official explanations, the bursts of fire in the sky themselves could be taken by witnesses for aircraft. As a result, air military crews began declaring Ghost Hunters, described as colorful spheres.
1947: Kenneth Arnold
According to some sources, the observation of Kenneth Arnold, the origin of the UFO phenomenon, could be interpreted as a mistake with a flock of American white pelicans. Arnold claims to have observed a boomerang-shaped object (as well as eight other semi-circle and triangle shaped objects), not saucer-shaped objects. On the other hand, he would have described to the journalists the movement of these objects as similar to those of saucers that one would throw on the water (a displacement by ricochets). The journalist was mistaken in his article and said that the objects had saucer shapes, which gave the term flying saucers. In the weeks that followed, dozens of witnesses came forward to say that they had seen "flying saucers", describing not the form observed by Arnold but that conveyed by the press. This case is presented by skeptics as an evidential case of suggestion by the media, and their influence on the testimonies of the fortenians in general, or UFO in particular.
1947 : Roswell
The Roswell Incident was officially explained by the authorities as the crash of a Mogul balloon. Various skeptical investigators came to the same conclusion after their own independent investigations: Philip J. Klass and Kal K. Korff, to name only the two most famous of them. The Mogul project was a top-secret project that, at the beginning of the Cold War, consisted of sending balloon probes into the upper atmosphere in order to spy on the USSR to monitor possible nuclear tests. A Mogul balloon launch was made shortly before the alleged Roswell crash. The debris on the press photo where the military shows the remains of the "saucer" correspond to the debris of a project Mogul balloon.
In the 1950s, the Air Force declared that it had carried out high altitude drops of anthropomorphic manikins to test possible pilots' ejections. According to the Air Force's second report, "The Roswell Report: Case Closed," it was these mannequins who were seen on the ground by witnesses who, years later, linked these events to those of Roswell and spoke then of "extraterrestrial corpses". The report explains this phenomenon by temporal compression, an attempt to reconstruct the chronological order of events long after they have occurred. The American magazine Omni recounts the case of a nurse who claimed to have witnessed the autopsy of the extraterrestrials. According to some sources, this nurse would prove to have never existed. Martian space probe capsules launched in the years 1966-1967 and 1972 from Roswell Army Air Field had a saucer shape and took place in the area of the Roswell incident. The U.S.Air Force recalls that the memories of discovery of extraterrestrial corpses date from the late 1970s and hypothesize that these probe launches may have played a role in some "distorted testimonies".
1950: The V7
1955: Kelly-Hopkinsville
The Kelly-Hopkinsville meeting describes the terror felt by the entire Sutton family, which is akin to collective hysteria. Renaut Leclet, CNEG explains the meeting of Kelly-Hopkinsville as a mistake with nocturnal raptors.
1961: Betty & Barney Hill
The alleged alien abduction of Betty and Barney Hill is due to false memories generated by regressive hypnosis.
1969: Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter, President of the United States, reportedly observed a UFO in 1969 and completed a form for the International UFO Office in Oklahoma City as a result of a request from that organization. Jimmy Carter's observation was later debunked by skeptical Robert Sheaffer, a member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry: it would be a misunderstanding with Venus surrounded by a halo. The object observed by Carter would correspond to the position of Venus in the sky. Robert Sheaffer even explains that if it was not Venus, the object had to be right in front of the planet. Rumor has it that during his presidential campaign, Carter promised to expose the truth about any testimony that anyone would try to hide about UFOs. In an interview with the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast in 2007, he said there was no basis for this rumor. Moreover, contrary to what some ufologists claimed, he never asked George H. W. Bush, then director of the CIA, to have access to the CIA's UFO files. Also in this interview, he claims not to believe that his vision of UFO is due to visitors of extraterrestrial origin and he clearly does not believe that extraterrestrials are visiting our planet at present. He further explains that for him the subject UFO is not very important, that he filled without really thinking about the form of the International UFO Bureau, probably as a result of the suggestion of one of his sons, as a teenager .
1969: Buzz Aldrin
The media spread the idea that Buzz Aldrin would have observed a UFO during the Apollo 11 mission, based on an interview he gave at the time. Buzz Aldrin later told Science Channel in 2006 that the idea that he would have seen a UFO comes from editing his interview. Indeed, the part where he explains what he saw was cut off: the conclusion of Buzz Aldrin and the crew of Apollo 11 was that what they observed was one of the panels resulting from the separation of an upper stage of the launcher.
1981: The case of Trans-en-Provence
The trauma of plants crushed by the landing of a saucer may have various causes and not necessarily "abnormal". The sociopsychological model explains the traces on the ground by a tire shifting, perhaps due to a concrete mixer (or another vehicle), used in the masonry work that took place at that time.
1987: The case of Nort-sur-Erdre
This case was explained by the combination of two sounds, one of which was a transhorizon radar, more commonly known as "caviar moulinette".
1989-1991: The Belgian Wave
Two gendarmes from the Eupen Brigade drive on the N68. At 5:20 pm, they claim that the meadow is lit up like a football stadium. Above this meadow, they declare to see at an altitude of ± 120 meters a large platform in the shape of an isosceles triangle with a broad base (between 30 and 35 meters) whose underside is endowed with "three enormous lighthouses". In the center of the ventral side, a sort of red rotating light flashes. Finally, they state that the object moved slowly (at an estimated speed of 50 km / h), parallel to the road to pivot abruptly on the spot and depart in the opposite direction, towards Eupen, still along the N68.
The local media will be very echoing this appearance. There were no other witnesses on a busy road, and no motorists stopped. According to the sociopsychological model, the media hype explains the wave. This would be a panic generated by the media.
The photographs, as well as the amateur videos, taken from these objects do not make it possible to recognize the eventual object (triangular fires can very well be those of an airliner). In addition, some F-16s of the Belgian Air Force tried to intercept the alleged object, but without succeeding, the pilots realizing that their target displayed speeds ranging from 418 km / h to 4,800 km / h (out of range of the F-117A) alternating with fixed phases of on-place as we do not know in the aviation of the twentieth century. But studies have shown that a fixed radar echo could very well be explained by a defective radar, suggesting that considerable speed could have the same cause.
2004 : Campeche
The observation from Campeche, Mexico is the observation by an infrared camera of an aircraft of the Mexican Air Force 11 UFO in Mexican airspace.
An explanation given by Robert Sheaffer is that the infrared camera has filmed flares from oil wells (detectable at a great distance by an infrared camera because of the heat released by the flares). According to Robert Sheaffer, the military radar of the city of Carmen did not record anything. Brad Sparks assumes that some, if not all, radar detections could be radar detections of trucks passing on a nearby highway or a passenger plane taking off from a nearby airport. Captain Alejandro Franz made a reconstitution flight to test the oil well hypothesis, following the flight path of the military aircraft and filming in the same direction. According to him, the result confirms the oil well hypothesis. The replenishment flight was documented by National Geographic.
Hypothesis of science fiction narratives
The magazine of 1930. Amazing stories, representing extraterrestrials and their spaceships.
A reconciliation was made between testimonials and certain sci-fi scenarios. For Bertrand Méheust, the same cultural or folk phenomenon pushes the man to tell the same stories through science fiction and comics on the one hand, through the stories of flying saucers and kidnappings on the other hand. For Michel Meurger, on the contrary, UFO stories are just a transposition of science-fiction stories and a way to bring them to life. It would then be a continuation of Greek thought that opened the door to belief in one's own myths.
The analysis of Bertrand Méheust
In Science fiction and flying saucers, Bertrand Méheust shows that saucer stories were already in pre-war science fiction: dwarf with big head, paralyzing rays, saucer-shaped machines. These types of representations were not so common before 1940, and even after, the aliens were then presented as superhuman individuals with exaggerated physical forms, such as Brick Bradford, populating worlds. inhabited by a humanoid fauna whose representation is inspired by stories of chivalry, but adapted to a technological universe (the European Middle Ages being highly prized by the Americans, great masters of the pre-war SF). Such characters are very big and exaggeratedly muscular in the comic strip called the "U-ray". According to the type of story, we also see monsters of all kinds including octopus inspired by the description by HG Wells of the Martians of his "War of the Worlds", with big heads it is true, but devoid of body and provided with sprawling filaments.
Bertrand Méheust explains car breakdowns in comparison with stopping carts in folklore. For Eric Maillot, common sense tells us that the driver of the car, scared by an event he does not identify (real stimulus but misinterpreted), stops spontaneously his car without remembering. But, for pro-HET supporters, the blackout would be due to radiation emanating from an extraterrestrial craft.
The analysis of Michel Meurger
Michel Meurger presents the stories of people claiming to have been abducted by extraterrestrials as mere reproductions of earlier science fiction stories. He sees similarities between sci-fi scenarios and stories of UFO witnesses. He cites as an example the story in Science Wonder Stories, in which a small macrocéphale man is shot by a guard at the White House, then autopsy in great secrecy. The autopsy reveals, in this fictional narrative, a hypertrophied brain, a reduced lower jaw and an almost asexual being. The analogy with the autopsy of Roswell's alleged extraterrestrial is obvious according to Meurger. The extraterrestrial dissected by humans represents the inversion of a fantasy present in the ufological stories of abductions, which are only a continuation of the myth, present in the nineteenth century, of "criminal surgeons" or "doctors of the night" ". At that time, American blacks, living in overcrowded cities, represented their anxieties with a new imaginary linked to science.
Michel Meurger also mentions a parallel theme, that of the surgeon practicing experiments on animals to grossly humanize them in The Island of Dr. Moreau by Herbert George Wells.
F I N .
Sociopsychological model of the Ovni phenomenon.
Altocumulus lenticularis: example of a cloud that could lead to a mistake.
The sociopsychological model of the UFO phenomenon is a thesis aimed at explaining most observations of unidentified flying objects in a sociopsychological setting, that is to say in a social environment in which individuals can influence each other (either by direct communication, word of mouth, either by the amplification given by the media directly implanted in this environment). The theory of seeking an explanation in this model is based in part on Occam's razor principle, which states that the simplest explanation for a seemingly inexplicable phenomenon must be favored over more complicated theses (especially when they put forward unproven elements such as extraterrestrial visits to the Earth). This hypothesis which explains the UFO phenomenon by misunderstandings, errors of interpretation, hallucinations or false memories, receives the support of a part of the scientific community.
Origin
Michel Monnerie has made known in France the sociopsychological hypothesis with the publication in 1977 of his book Et si les UFOs did not exist? This thesis has been popularized in Britain by authors such as David Clarke, publisher of Magonia magazine, and journalists writing for Fortean Times magazine. In the United States, the sociopsychological hypothesis is defended by an organization of skeptics, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Claude Maugé, professor of mathematics and physics and journalist of the journal Inforespace, proposed to use, instead of "sociopsychological model of the UFO phenomenon", the expression "reductionist theory composite of the UFO phenomenon".
Psychosocial mechanisms
19th century engraving illustrating the phenomenon of ball lightning.
Psychological phenomena
American commissions (the Grudge project, the Blue Book project or the Condon report) conclude that most UFO sightings are the result of a misunderstanding with flying objects of human design (airplane, probe balloon, artificial satellite, re-entry atmospheric, etc.), or astronomical phenomena (comet, racing car, planet, like the planet Venus which could be confused with an artificial object, its luminosity being of magnitude -4, that is to say extremely brilliant, of as much as under particular conditions, the flicker of a star can also give the impression of movement), or even meteorological phenomena (ball lightning, altocumulus lenticularis, cloud that could be mistaken for a saucer).
According to some authors, perception is described as a cognitive construct. Hallucinations, false memories or even certain psychopathologies, as in the "Bidule case" or psychological disorders were diagnosed in both witnesses, would be cases of figure. According to this approach, the psychology of witnessing a strange or exceptional event, such as the vision of a UFO, would play a role in the content of the testimony, a hypothesis invoked in the case of extraterrestrial abductions. Susan Clancy, psychologist, explains these with sleep paralysis combined with a false memory syndrome. According to author Elaine Showalter, it could be a contemporary form of hysteria (among others such as dissociative identity disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome - a neurological disease - or the Gulf War Syndrome). A research conducted by psychologist Nicholas Spanos and colleagues seems to indicate conversely that people claiming to have been abducted by extraterrestrials would not suffer from psychopathology.
In experiments under LSD, psychiatrist Stanislav Grof observes the appearance of visions reminiscent of UFOs, as well as encounters with beings that the subject describes as "aliens".
Sociological phenomena
US skeptical journalist and ufologist Philip J. Klass has proposed a general hypothesis for waves of UFO sightings:
"When media coverage leads the public to believe that there are UFOs in the vicinity, there are many natural or man-made objects that, especially when seen at night, may have unusual characteristics in the mind. an observer full of hope. Their UFO sightings add back to the mass excitement, which encourages even more witnesses to look for UFOs. This situation feeds on itself until the media loses interest in the subject, and then the phenomenon falls. "
According to the psychologist Elisabeth Loftus, our memory is changeable, suggestible and there could be distortion of the testimony according to the questions asked by an investigator.
The case of Beert
In November 1973, five people submitted to the editorial staff of the Belgian-Dutch newspaper De Standaard a photograph of what they called the case of the century. The newspaper published the photo with an article asking if there were witnesses. The editors were assailed by phone calls from witnesses who swore they had seen exactly the same object. It was a mini wave of UFOs. After a few days the five people recognized that the picture was a fake. Experience showed that from a false case (here a hoax), one can generate other equally false testimonies by mere psychological contagion.
Proponents of the extraterrestrial thesis screamed at the scandal without being able to invalidate the correctness of the demonstration.
Case Interpretations by Model
1942 and 1946:
Battle of Los Angeles and Ghost Rockets.The battle of Los Angeles during which the DCA opened fire in 1942 for an hour on hypothetical Japanese aircraft became an urban ufology legend. According to some official explanations, the bursts of fire in the sky themselves could be taken by witnesses for aircraft. As a result, air military crews began declaring Ghost Hunters, described as colorful spheres.
1947: Kenneth Arnold
According to some sources, the observation of Kenneth Arnold, the origin of the UFO phenomenon, could be interpreted as a mistake with a flock of American white pelicans. Arnold claims to have observed a boomerang-shaped object (as well as eight other semi-circle and triangle shaped objects), not saucer-shaped objects. On the other hand, he would have described to the journalists the movement of these objects as similar to those of saucers that one would throw on the water (a displacement by ricochets). The journalist was mistaken in his article and said that the objects had saucer shapes, which gave the term flying saucers. In the weeks that followed, dozens of witnesses came forward to say that they had seen "flying saucers", describing not the form observed by Arnold but that conveyed by the press. This case is presented by skeptics as an evidential case of suggestion by the media, and their influence on the testimonies of the fortenians in general, or UFO in particular.
1947 : Roswell
The Roswell Incident was officially explained by the authorities as the crash of a Mogul balloon. Various skeptical investigators came to the same conclusion after their own independent investigations: Philip J. Klass and Kal K. Korff, to name only the two most famous of them. The Mogul project was a top-secret project that, at the beginning of the Cold War, consisted of sending balloon probes into the upper atmosphere in order to spy on the USSR to monitor possible nuclear tests. A Mogul balloon launch was made shortly before the alleged Roswell crash. The debris on the press photo where the military shows the remains of the "saucer" correspond to the debris of a project Mogul balloon.
In the 1950s, the Air Force declared that it had carried out high altitude drops of anthropomorphic manikins to test possible pilots' ejections. According to the Air Force's second report, "The Roswell Report: Case Closed," it was these mannequins who were seen on the ground by witnesses who, years later, linked these events to those of Roswell and spoke then of "extraterrestrial corpses". The report explains this phenomenon by temporal compression, an attempt to reconstruct the chronological order of events long after they have occurred. The American magazine Omni recounts the case of a nurse who claimed to have witnessed the autopsy of the extraterrestrials. According to some sources, this nurse would prove to have never existed. Martian space probe capsules launched in the years 1966-1967 and 1972 from Roswell Army Air Field had a saucer shape and took place in the area of the Roswell incident. The U.S.Air Force recalls that the memories of discovery of extraterrestrial corpses date from the late 1970s and hypothesize that these probe launches may have played a role in some "distorted testimonies".
1950: The V7
1955: Kelly-Hopkinsville
The Kelly-Hopkinsville meeting describes the terror felt by the entire Sutton family, which is akin to collective hysteria. Renaut Leclet, CNEG explains the meeting of Kelly-Hopkinsville as a mistake with nocturnal raptors.
1961: Betty & Barney Hill
The alleged alien abduction of Betty and Barney Hill is due to false memories generated by regressive hypnosis.
1969: Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter, President of the United States, reportedly observed a UFO in 1969 and completed a form for the International UFO Office in Oklahoma City as a result of a request from that organization. Jimmy Carter's observation was later debunked by skeptical Robert Sheaffer, a member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry: it would be a misunderstanding with Venus surrounded by a halo. The object observed by Carter would correspond to the position of Venus in the sky. Robert Sheaffer even explains that if it was not Venus, the object had to be right in front of the planet. Rumor has it that during his presidential campaign, Carter promised to expose the truth about any testimony that anyone would try to hide about UFOs. In an interview with the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast in 2007, he said there was no basis for this rumor. Moreover, contrary to what some ufologists claimed, he never asked George H. W. Bush, then director of the CIA, to have access to the CIA's UFO files. Also in this interview, he claims not to believe that his vision of UFO is due to visitors of extraterrestrial origin and he clearly does not believe that extraterrestrials are visiting our planet at present. He further explains that for him the subject UFO is not very important, that he filled without really thinking about the form of the International UFO Bureau, probably as a result of the suggestion of one of his sons, as a teenager .
1969: Buzz Aldrin
The media spread the idea that Buzz Aldrin would have observed a UFO during the Apollo 11 mission, based on an interview he gave at the time. Buzz Aldrin later told Science Channel in 2006 that the idea that he would have seen a UFO comes from editing his interview. Indeed, the part where he explains what he saw was cut off: the conclusion of Buzz Aldrin and the crew of Apollo 11 was that what they observed was one of the panels resulting from the separation of an upper stage of the launcher.
1981: The case of Trans-en-Provence
The trauma of plants crushed by the landing of a saucer may have various causes and not necessarily "abnormal". The sociopsychological model explains the traces on the ground by a tire shifting, perhaps due to a concrete mixer (or another vehicle), used in the masonry work that took place at that time.
1987: The case of Nort-sur-Erdre
This case was explained by the combination of two sounds, one of which was a transhorizon radar, more commonly known as "caviar moulinette".
1989-1991: The Belgian Wave
Two gendarmes from the Eupen Brigade drive on the N68. At 5:20 pm, they claim that the meadow is lit up like a football stadium. Above this meadow, they declare to see at an altitude of ± 120 meters a large platform in the shape of an isosceles triangle with a broad base (between 30 and 35 meters) whose underside is endowed with "three enormous lighthouses". In the center of the ventral side, a sort of red rotating light flashes. Finally, they state that the object moved slowly (at an estimated speed of 50 km / h), parallel to the road to pivot abruptly on the spot and depart in the opposite direction, towards Eupen, still along the N68.
The local media will be very echoing this appearance. There were no other witnesses on a busy road, and no motorists stopped. According to the sociopsychological model, the media hype explains the wave. This would be a panic generated by the media.
The photographs, as well as the amateur videos, taken from these objects do not make it possible to recognize the eventual object (triangular fires can very well be those of an airliner). In addition, some F-16s of the Belgian Air Force tried to intercept the alleged object, but without succeeding, the pilots realizing that their target displayed speeds ranging from 418 km / h to 4,800 km / h (out of range of the F-117A) alternating with fixed phases of on-place as we do not know in the aviation of the twentieth century. But studies have shown that a fixed radar echo could very well be explained by a defective radar, suggesting that considerable speed could have the same cause.
2004 : Campeche
The observation from Campeche, Mexico is the observation by an infrared camera of an aircraft of the Mexican Air Force 11 UFO in Mexican airspace.
An explanation given by Robert Sheaffer is that the infrared camera has filmed flares from oil wells (detectable at a great distance by an infrared camera because of the heat released by the flares). According to Robert Sheaffer, the military radar of the city of Carmen did not record anything. Brad Sparks assumes that some, if not all, radar detections could be radar detections of trucks passing on a nearby highway or a passenger plane taking off from a nearby airport. Captain Alejandro Franz made a reconstitution flight to test the oil well hypothesis, following the flight path of the military aircraft and filming in the same direction. According to him, the result confirms the oil well hypothesis. The replenishment flight was documented by National Geographic.
Hypothesis of science fiction narratives
The magazine of 1930. Amazing stories, representing extraterrestrials and their spaceships.
A reconciliation was made between testimonials and certain sci-fi scenarios. For Bertrand Méheust, the same cultural or folk phenomenon pushes the man to tell the same stories through science fiction and comics on the one hand, through the stories of flying saucers and kidnappings on the other hand. For Michel Meurger, on the contrary, UFO stories are just a transposition of science-fiction stories and a way to bring them to life. It would then be a continuation of Greek thought that opened the door to belief in one's own myths.
The analysis of Bertrand Méheust
In Science fiction and flying saucers, Bertrand Méheust shows that saucer stories were already in pre-war science fiction: dwarf with big head, paralyzing rays, saucer-shaped machines. These types of representations were not so common before 1940, and even after, the aliens were then presented as superhuman individuals with exaggerated physical forms, such as Brick Bradford, populating worlds. inhabited by a humanoid fauna whose representation is inspired by stories of chivalry, but adapted to a technological universe (the European Middle Ages being highly prized by the Americans, great masters of the pre-war SF). Such characters are very big and exaggeratedly muscular in the comic strip called the "U-ray". According to the type of story, we also see monsters of all kinds including octopus inspired by the description by HG Wells of the Martians of his "War of the Worlds", with big heads it is true, but devoid of body and provided with sprawling filaments.
Bertrand Méheust explains car breakdowns in comparison with stopping carts in folklore. For Eric Maillot, common sense tells us that the driver of the car, scared by an event he does not identify (real stimulus but misinterpreted), stops spontaneously his car without remembering. But, for pro-HET supporters, the blackout would be due to radiation emanating from an extraterrestrial craft.
The analysis of Michel Meurger
Michel Meurger presents the stories of people claiming to have been abducted by extraterrestrials as mere reproductions of earlier science fiction stories. He sees similarities between sci-fi scenarios and stories of UFO witnesses. He cites as an example the story in Science Wonder Stories, in which a small macrocéphale man is shot by a guard at the White House, then autopsy in great secrecy. The autopsy reveals, in this fictional narrative, a hypertrophied brain, a reduced lower jaw and an almost asexual being. The analogy with the autopsy of Roswell's alleged extraterrestrial is obvious according to Meurger. The extraterrestrial dissected by humans represents the inversion of a fantasy present in the ufological stories of abductions, which are only a continuation of the myth, present in the nineteenth century, of "criminal surgeons" or "doctors of the night" ". At that time, American blacks, living in overcrowded cities, represented their anxieties with a new imaginary linked to science.
Michel Meurger also mentions a parallel theme, that of the surgeon practicing experiments on animals to grossly humanize them in The Island of Dr. Moreau by Herbert George Wells.
F I N .
