Skeptiko – Alex Tsakiris – Dr. David Jacobs: Investigating Alien Contact

Interview with alien abduction researcher and Temple University History Professor Dr. David Jacobs examines his over 30 years of research.

Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. David Jacobs author of, UFOs & Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge. During the interview Jacobs talks about science’s responsibility to investigate the topic:

Dr. David Jacobs: What the scientific and academic communities are doing is they are simply abrogating the responsibility to study this subject. You have to understand. For example, the UFO phenomenon and the abduction phenomenon together are global in nature. In the abduction phenomenon, you have people coming from all around the world, from all different walks of life, having wildly different backgrounds from Ph.Ds and M.Ds and psychiatrists and psychologists to people who have dropped out of school in the 12th grade. I had one person who was 12 years old. They’re all saying the same exact things from around the world. Yet there’s no interest in this whatsoever.

Let me tell you a few other things that just astonish me every time I think about it. In the abduction phenomena, people are physically missing from their normal environments when they are abducted. Police have been called, search parties have been sent out, kids hunt for their parents, parents hunt for their children during abductions. They’re not there. And this phenomenon, it’s not happening yet this is what people are reporting all the time.

Not only that, but people are abducted in groups and can confirm each other’s abductions. Now oftentimes these are family groups where they might be in cahoots together but sometimes they’re not family groups. They’re neighbors and they can confirm each other’s abductions. Or even strangers who they meet on the street and they know immediately they’ve seen this person before. Yet it’s not happening.

People who return from abductions and have unusual marks and scars on their bodies. I have seen this—fully formed scar tissue literally the next day. I have seen this in person. I had a session with a woman once who was perfectly fine. She saw me the next morning and she had two one-inch scars on each hand in exactly the same place that were not there the day before, to my unbelievable, breath-taking amazement. That is not possible and yet this phenomenon is not happening.

So if I grant that it’s not happening, that people are not being abducted, then abduction researchers have stumbled upon one of the most important areas of human cognition that has ever been found.

Alex Tsakiris: So you’re saying whether one accepts the reality of these experiences as reported by many, many people — and as reported to many different researchers, not just Dr. David Jacobs, but many people have encountered folks who claim to have had this abduction experience.

You’re saying it’s really a challenge to the academic community to either accept those accounts at face value or reject them and find some deeper neurological or psychological problem. But in either case it’s something that demands resolution.

Dr. David Jacobs: Yes. What you’re saying is individuals. What I’m talking about sometimes in my list is groups. Once you say the word “groups” of people, then suddenly all psychological explanations fail. But this is part of the phenomenon. Once again, there’s never been anything like this in history.

Published on November 27, 2013

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