Our Grip On Reality Is Slim Say UCL Scientists

The neurological basis for poor witness statements and hallucinations has been found by scientists at UCL (University College London). In over a fifth of cases, people wrongly remembered whether they actually witnessed an event or just imagined it, according to a paper published in NeuroImage this week.

Dr Jon Simons and Dr Paul Burgess led the study at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Dr Burgess said: “In our tests volunteers either thought they had imagined words which they had actually been shown or said they had seen words which in fact they had just imagined - in over 20 per cent of cases. That is quite a lot of mistakes to be making, and shows how fallible our memory is - or perhaps, how slim our grip on reality is!

“Our work has implications for the validity of witness statements and agrees with other studies that show that our mind sometimes fills in memory gaps for us, and we confuse what we imagined occurred in a situation - which is related to what we expect to happen or what usually happens - with what actually happened.

SOURCE

This should be a cautionary tale for anyone interested in the subject of UFOs. While eyewitness statements can be outright dismissed as hallucination or imagination, this does show us that sometimes seeing is not always believing.

reply to post by SaviorComplex


Nice post SC!

Humans make incredibly bad witnesses... but at least we make great pets!
I can imagine that this post will stir a few people up on the forum.

Good Work!

IRM

Originally posted by SaviorComplex

...In over a fifth of cases, people wrongly remembered whether they actually witnessed an event or just imagined it....

SOURCE

This should be a cautionary tale for anyone interested in the subject of UFOs. While eyewitness statements can be outright dismissed as hallucination or imagination, this does show us that sometimes seeing is not always believing.

... or more accurately...
... believing is not always seeing.
It does have implications though that somewhere between 3/4 to 4/5's of the reports may warrant merit, or maybe, 3/4 to 4/5's of the story/report of each individual is true.

“Our work has implications for the validity of witness statements and agrees with other studies that show that our mind sometimes fills in memory gaps for us, and we confuse what we imagined occurred in a situation - which is related to what we expect to happen or what usually happens - with what actually happened.

That's hard to believe, our mind sometimes fills in memory gaps?

I do have a friend who twists everything you say to her.

Would that be the same thing?

Somehow if this is true it is HUGE.

In my humble minds eye anyway, it would explain so much.

Like how two different people can see the same world events totally different.

[edit on 103131p://bTuesday2008 by Stormdancer777]

I think this is somewhat trickery, they deliberately set up tests in order to trick the person into saying they saw a red stop sign when there wasn't one, but the way the test is worded is decieving IMHO I've seen some of them before.

When you actually see a giant triangle flying over your head, maybe thats just WHAT IT IS. I don't buy the hypothesis that normally sane people just randomly imagine fantastic things in their waking sober life.

People against abductions always say the person who was abducted was sleeping or had sleep paralysis..they never address the ones who where wide awake when it happened or driving a car.

Pile of B.S.

Originally posted by atsbeliever
I think this is somewhat trickery, they deliberately set up tests in order to trick the person into saying they saw a red stop sign when there wasn't one, but the way the test is worded is decieving IMHO I've seen some of them before.

You don't seem to have read the article. That is not what they did.

Originally posted by atsbeliever
I don't buy the hypothesis that normally sane people just randomly imagine fantastic things in their waking sober life.

That is not what they are saying either. In 20% of the cases, they found that people's minds filled in the gaps of knowledge, and they mistook it for something they really saw.

I've seen SIMILAR tests done to prove the same point though. Its true people fill in the minor details but when you see a bloody great flying disc or triangle its pretty hard to put that down to imagination, seriously, this proves nothing against the UFO phenomenon. We're human, we make mistakes sometimes, & sometimes we DON'T.

Originally posted by SaviorComplex

Originally posted by atsbeliever
I think this is somewhat trickery, they deliberately set up tests in order to trick the person into saying they saw a red stop sign when there wasn't one, but the way the test is worded is decieving IMHO I've seen some of them before.

You don't seem to have read the article. That is not what they did.

Originally posted by atsbeliever
I don't buy the hypothesis that normally sane people just randomly imagine fantastic things in their waking sober life.

That is not what they are saying either. In 20% of the cases, they found that people's minds filled in the gaps of knowledge, and they mistook it for something they really saw.

Originally posted by atsbeliever
I've seen SIMILAR tests done to prove the same point though.

You've seen other tests that prove the same point, and you still dismiss them?

Originally posted by atsbeliever
Its true people fill in the minor details

The test would indicate that there are times when people fill in major details.

Originally posted by atsbeliever
this proves nothing against the UFO phenomenon. We're human, we make mistakes sometimes, & sometimes we don't.

No one is saying that this dismisses every UFO report; that caveat was in the same post.

Originally posted by abecedarian
It does have implications though that somewhere between 3/4 to 4/5's of the reports may warrant merit, or maybe, 3/4 to 4/5's of the story/report of each individual is true.

Seems intuitive, but - unfortunately - this isn't true. Consider a random and made-up stat like "1 in 100 people are seriously mentally ill". This doesn't mean that the majority of people in a 100-strong psychiatric ward shouldn't be there. It is simply that lots of "1 in 100"s are gathered together.

It doesn't mean some sightings aren't genuine, of course. But it does mean it shouldn't surprise us if some people adamantly believe they've seen something that they actually haven't.

I would believe many people do this when they're telling stories, similar to children? Many abductees may also have false memories implanted that may have been 'taken' advantage with this 'flaw.' We are apparently also raised in a world of fictional gaps from the beginning. Is this our actual free will and just another illusion?


Another thread had discussed false memory syndrome. I could believe this can also be true to the extent with an actual abduction by those more prone to typically 'fill in the gaps.'


I think we could than include many scientists and doctors who would also fall into this category, since they are also 'people.'


I've noticed as far as with words, I've noticed this with sales at stores and with misplaced items. Now I typically check the labels and barcodes to save myself the embarrassment at the check out register. This has also happened with using instructions, maps etc. I think this has something to do with timetables imposed on us who are slower than others for whatever reason.

I used to think the word deliberate was a compliment. My boss assured me that it wasn't meant to be. This was when I started to analyze more critically his own abilities, which made me realize I couldn't work with him either.

strange how people always seem to imagine the same things isnt it?,world wide people always see the same phenomenom sharing similiar charectoristics even when they were never aware of its existence prior.

shared experience from multiple unrelated sources is a good indicator that real observations are occcuring.

instead i would ask,why do these imaginary objects usually seem to have charectoristics and design which is condusive to the science of flight?,spinning is used in levitation experiments now with superconductive magnets!

Originally posted by aleon1018
I would believe many people do this when they're telling stories, similar to children? Many abductees may also have false memories implanted that may have been 'taken' advantage with this 'flaw.' We are apparently also raised in a world of fictional gaps from the beginning. Is this our actual free will and just another illusion?


Another thread had discussed false memory syndrome. I could believe this can also be true to the extent with an actual abduction by those more prone to typically 'fill in the gaps.'


I think we could than include many scientists and doctors who would also fall into this category, since they are also 'people.'


I've noticed as far as with words, I've noticed this with sales at stores and with misplaced items. Now I typically check the labels and barcodes to save myself the embarrassment at the check out register. This has also happened with using instructions, maps etc. I think this has something to do with timetables imposed on us who are slower than others for whatever reason.

I used to think the word deliberate was a compliment. My boss assured me that it wasn't meant to be. This was when I started to analyze more critically his own abilities, which made me realize I couldn't work with him either.

i do believe that abductions are false memories,intendid to hide the fact that its nanotechnology which is responsible for creating the technological implantations seen in humans.

content from an external source

Budd Hopkins' Response
to the ABC Peter Jennings "Seeing is Believing" TV Program
Courtesy of the Intruders Foundation

During the past year Jenning's producers interviewed me a number of times, and because I sensed what they had in mind, I made, as a preemptive strike, a number of careful, highly specific observations about the UFO abduction phenomenon. All of these crucial points - recorded by ABC on videotape - were designed to underline the physical reality of UFO abductions and to demonstrate the implausibility of current skeptical explanations.

To its shame, ABC suppressed ALL of these observations.

I knew, of course, that the skeptics' favorite explanation du jour is impossibly simple: abduction reports, they believe, are all due to misperceived "sleep paralysis." Ranking as a distant second is another erroneous belief: abduction reports, they say, "ONLY emerge under hypnosis," and since hypnosis is "totally unreliable", all abduction reports must be discarded. In the light of these tediously familiar errors and misstatements, I made certain in my taped interviews to explain the following:
In the first two decades of our research, ALL of the central abduction cases involved people who were outside their houses when they were taken NONE were lying paralyzed in their bedrooms. They were driving cars, walking, fishing, hunting and even, in one famous case, driving a tractor on a farm. "Sleep paralysis" as a blanket explanation of UFO abductions is therefore, ipso facto, a ludicrous non-starter. Nevertheless ALL of my insistent statements on this point were systematically eliminated by the producers.


Second, I indicated that there are many abuction reports involving two, three, six or more people who were taken simultaneously and whose highly detailed recollections are virtually identical. This fact alone eliminates not only "sleep paralysis" but "fantasy-proneness" or any other idiosyncratic psychological aberrations as triggering causes. My descriptions of these many cases of multiple abductions were likewise completely suppressed by the producers


Third, I showed the interviewers many photos of, again, virtually identical scoop marks, consistent straight-line scars and ground landing traces at abduction sites, and other physical sequelae. ALL of these vivid photographic examples of physical evidence were suppressed by the producers.


Fourth, I was not alone in making these points. My colleague Dr. David Jacobs was asked by ABC to carry out a hypnotic regression for the camera, but since the woman he chose had been abducted in the daytime while driving a car, the case did not fit ABC's "sleep paralysis" agenda and was thus not only suppressed, but Dr. Jacobs' many hours of taped interviews were also scrapped.


Fifth, I made it very clear that perhaps 30% of all the abduction reports collected by researchers are recalled WITHOUT THE AID OF HYPNOSIS, a fact which renders the issue of hypnosis moot. This point was also suppressed by the producers whose only goal, it appeared, was to eliminate any data that contradicted their transparently false debunking hypotheses.


Despite my having presented - and reiterated - the points above, the producers chose to trot out on camera two debunking scientists (whose experiments with a mere handful of subjects have yet to be taken seriously by the psychological community) to buttress the untenable "sleep paralysis" theory, the false "no physical evidence" claim, and the demonstrably untrue "its all hypnosis" assertion. The smug presentations of these two would-be experts were accompanied by the producers' lurid "reenactments" of "sleep paralysis" phenomena, complete with flashing lights and spooky music. The taped testimony of a serious mental health professional like Dr. John Mack was likewise suppressed, along with my statement that over the years eight psychiatrists and numerous other mental health professionals had come to me about their own UFO abductions. The producers' obvious goal was to conceal the fact that within the mental health community there are many professionals who look with amusement on the "sleep paralysis" theory, and who accept the physical reality of UFO abductions.

So what can one say about such a deliberately dishonest presentation as Peter Jenning's "Seeing is Believing" take on abductions? Perhaps one can only shrug and warn, yet again, that the incurious members of the press and the many blinkered, conservative scientists had better collectively pull their heads up out of the sand and join us in our work. Whatever one's personal attitude toward the UFO abduction phenomenon, science insists that an extraordinary phenomenon demands an extraordinary investigation. What ABC served up on Thursday night was, instead, an extraordinary whitewash of the abduction phenomenon, and a brutal suppression of the evidence for what may well be the most portentous event in human history.

Peter Jennings and his staff should be ashamed

Budd Hopkins
New York, Feb 25, 2005

let me know tell you, I often suffer from Sleep Paralysis and you could consider me 'fantasy prone' as I have been into Sci-Fi since I was about 5 or 6 (Dr.Who, Star Trek ect) and was also aware of the 'Alien' abduction scenario when I saw the Barney & Betty Hill story when I was like 7. Even before I knew what sleep paralysis was, I have NEVER, EVER mistaken it for anything other than a weird biological phenomenon, whilst its a scary feeling of being paralysised when its happening I know its happening and have never had illusions of Aliens taking me aboard a space ship or anything of that ilk, I find it so utterly ridiculous that these so called 'experts' are passing off such a complex and diverse experience of Abductions as sleep paralysis.
You know when your dreaming and even the most vivid dreams remain in that realm. When you have felt PHYSICAL pain & marks, its more than a dream. Its as simple as that.

[edit on 23-12-2008 by atsbeliever]

reply to post by SaviorComplex


This is a point I have made often (well, not so often here but with friends and fellow skeptic/CTers). However, the very real and dangerous opposite is that what someone witnesses, even if it is VERY real, can be manipulated by the powers that be through media postings and constant attack and belittlement. Before they realize it the people begin to believe that maybe they were mistaken because the MSM and government say it is so.

So, though I agree that many sightings are most likely hallucinations and such or embellished images turned into much more than it really was, I must warn against the above point. Because the philosophy of power is that if you tell a lie enough it becomes truth.

forward thinking would suggest the chance that you saw an actual ufo was 4/5ths more likely to be an actual event while the other 1/5th is a hillucination right?

regardless of what memory is being recalled the results seem to me that if 5 ufos flew over 4 of the 5 would actually see the event while the last would either miss it or hillucinate something 'else'

this article ironically supports the idea that the witnesses are keen.

does anyone else agree?
*no witty sarcasim being excersiced by my post,just honest inquiry*

reply to post by LordThumbs



I agree. You can't dismiss ALL witness statements because 20 - 25 % of them may be false.

That would be... ignorant.

Originally posted by damagedoor

Originally posted by abecedarian
It does have implications though that somewhere between 3/4 to 4/5's of the reports may warrant merit, or maybe, 3/4 to 4/5's of the story/report of each individual is true.

Seems intuitive, but - unfortunately - this isn't true. Consider a random and made-up stat like "1 in 100 people are seriously mentally ill". This doesn't mean that the majority of people in a 100-strong psychiatric ward shouldn't be there. It is simply that lots of "1 in 100"s are gathered together.

It doesn't mean some sightings aren't genuine, of course. But it does mean it shouldn't surprise us if some people adamantly believe they've seen something that they actually haven't.

nice analogy but think of the test in the article in this light if you will:
they asked the person to look at the 'words' or phrases and determine which letters were missing. but they actually left out the last part of the phrases like laurel and... and in the end of the test they asked which phrases had missing words and which ones didnt..

but the real point to be concidered 'when comparing this to UFO phenomina' is did you even see words PERIOD not how many were missing. this 'test' doesnt really address to the fullest the issue. because
5/5 people saw the words during the test 1/5 imagined a complete phrase when in fact it was only a partial phrase.

or i could say it like this. 5/5 witnessed a huge freakin craft, 1/5 miss counted the windows on the craft.


[edit on 12/23/2008 by LordThumbs]

reply to post by sebarud


imagine the test done on a scale that actually reflects the witness COUNT in the phenomena!! and their respective professions

test

5 astronauts
5 retired defence military commanders
5 presidents
5 military police
5 farmers
5 hill billies
5 latin american farmers
5 lawyers
5 australians
5 germans
5 FFA radar guys
5 pilots
5 'retired' military
5 people

oh i dont know, i dont want to make it out that im bashing this article. im just trying to make sence of it. and i feel now that im just over thinking it.
thanks savior though for bringing the article. star.

I've recalled having met Peter Jennings a few times that had 'allegedly' covered some news events in my life. As far as I know, these were never actually broadcast either.(go figure) Either Peter Jennings was knowingly part of these news report cover-ups or this is just another one of my 'many' alleged delusions/false memories.

For all we know, there's a clone or two of Peter still out there somewhere as well. And to add, I've also met Budd Hopkins when he was 'supposedly' doing an investigation when I lived in Wisconsin over ten years ago. Add one more delusion? whatever.

So, from my incredible point of view: Peter Jennings was himself an abductee and a host.