French UFO Abductions: Far Too Few? was a short talk by Ron Westrum and is both interesting and annoying at the same time.
Annoying in that Westrum looks at abduction reports with his main sources of knowledge being, it seems, Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs -the non peer reviewed work of both men has fallen into disrepute and considering this -remember that I supported Hopkins from his early work and Jacobs- that is a big problem.
The other big problem is that Westrum chose France. Now logically Close Encounters of the Third Kind do not work like that: there is no real border when it comes to UFOBs (alleged constructed craft) and one audience member does try to ask "Why just France?" because you are dealing with one country on the Western European continent and Westrum points out how small the population of France is compared to that of the United States -hence the odd playing with numbers.
We get the casual racism expected in ufology and which seems to stump Westrum for a response. Such as why don't the French report aliens -"Maybe they're English (the aliens)!" and why not as many abductions as in the US? "Maybe it's the garlic!"
sigh
Back in the late 1980's -updated in the early 1990's- I produced a chunky paper titled Close Encounters of the Third Kind in France and I believe there were over 200 reports listed and in the last few years I have stumbled upon reports not listed at the time. There have been some interesting French TV documentaries on UFOs and for the most part not sensationalist or jokey. There seems to be evidence of missing time in some cases and in others of "Ruth Syndrome" (as outlined in detail in UFO Contact?) That book also included some early French CE3K cases and Contact: Encounters With Extraterrestrial Entities? looks at the fact that France has official UFO investigators team and looked at other French cases. In Unidentified - Identified France was referred to again -as was Belgium its closest neighbour. What I found disappointing was that Westrum seemed to not have much knowledge on France and CE3K/abduction cases there.
My books have tried to show that these reports are not just from the United States where there is a far bigger publicity machine. Reports just as detailed and interesting.
"Why France?" indeed since there are detailed reports from Germany -pages 80-130 of Contact look at reports from Germany of CE3Ks and alleged abductions -some having never been published in English before.
The question is not "Why are aliens not abducting thousands of French people?" but "Why do ufologists in the United States claim there are 200-400 alien abduction cases per month?"
If you go onto You Tube you will see that figure quoted. But Jacobs and Hopkins claimed that hundreds of millions of people around the world have been abducted and that figure is pure hog-wash. Two men carrying out non peer reviewed work made that claim based on guessing and adding to guessing and not on anything evidence based. I believe Westrum's talk and reference to chatting with Jacobs on the subject proves this.
As for why French percipients might not report abductions perhaps it is because abductions are very rare rather than ten every hour? Also, many alleged abductees in the United States are alone at the time and there are tell-tale signs as to why they may be experiencing what they report. Rather like "UFO Waves" that are actually more amalgams of all types of phenomena than extraterrestrial craft it seems the whole "abduction phenomenon" is vastly exaggerated and not as common as we are led to believe.
Westrum seems to accept that these cases are real in some sense and if he believes and trusts the work of Hopkins and Jacobs he is not getting the real picture. That comes from years of research.
Trying for a statistical analysis of something often misreported and represented by hoaxes, psychological events or reports fabricated by ufologists (for which there is ample evidence) is pointless. Looking at why most seemingly genuine reports do not conform to "the Greys" or the scenarios established by certain ufologists?
"We have no idea so let's do a statistical analysis of something we have no real information on" is not a good idea.
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