Reason: You state in the book that pseudo-science is proliferating "more than ever." What's the evidence for that?
Clancy: We live in a scientific age, and still most people out there do not know how to think objectively or scientifically. Thinking in terms of probability or parsimony does not come naturally to any of us. And even when we do think scientifically, we're still capable of believing in things like alien abductions.
I think we're scientifically more sophisticated today than we have ever been, but there is no evidence that our belief in ghosts, or aliens, or macrobiotic diets, or the power of echinacea to kill colds has decreased. We are as interested in mysticism today as we were five decades go. Or forever as far as I can tell.
Reason: Popular culture is full of myths, but people don't normally walk around insisting they're true. Why alien abduction?
Clancy: It's an excellent question. You have a bunch of weird experiences and you're trying to understand them: Why choose aliens? It seems so bizarre. And I think it just comes down to the fact that these people think it's possible, then they have their memories, and once they have their memories, it feels too real to them to not be memories.
Reason: You refer to alien abduction as a "culturally available" script. If abduction is yesterday's script, what's tomorrow's?
Clancy: I think it's God. There is a cultural movement toward going back to God and wanting to have personal experiences with God. There was a very interesting Newsweek cover a few months ago about the increase of evangelism in which people are having kind of a direct physical contact with God. We want to be touched with the spiritual, we want to feel the divine, and I think some people are doing it with aliens and other people are doing it with God. I think this is a manifestation of a cultural need to get in touch with something spiritual, kind of moving away from science towards mysticism.
Reason: You're very upbeat, in the end, about the power of the alien abduction narrative to fill a spiritual need. But creating false memories can be devastating in cases that society takes more seriously; people end up in jail.
Clancy: We have a tendency--we want to demonize the hypnotist. But you need to realize that the patient has a role. You don't go to an abduction researcher unless you believe in alien abduction. Therefore you are engaging in a mutually interesting, beneficial account with the hypnotist. You couldn't plant an abduction memory in somebody who didn't want to believe it or believe it was possible in the first place. Two people engage in a social interaction that results in these memories. When people go into these hypnosis sessions, they're implicitly wanting to get these memories out. And the researchers are aiding and abetting. It's two people together.
Reason: Your interviewees seem to always be proselytizing, in a way, by trying to convince you that you too were abducted.
Clancy: I don't know what I left out because I didn't want to get sued. But the worst experience in all this research was a woman who was a "channeler," which is like a medium between aliens and humans. She told me, among other things, that I was interested in this research because I was part of a select alien sisterhood. She said I had actually had a baby. I had been pregnant in the past, and the aliens took the baby—the baby is part alien—and now the baby was nine years old. And did I want to talk to my baby? That was truly too much for me. I was like, "No, I do not want to talk to my baby."
Reason: Surely you too have some weird beliefs?
Clancy: Yes, and they're terrible. I think smoking three or four cigarettes a day won't kill you. And I think a martini a day is good for you.
Kerry Howley is an assistant editor of Reason.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.