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     In their recent book "Schwarze Forschungen" (1) Dr. Helmut Lammer and his wife Marion continue the considerations from their previous book (Verdeckte Operationen = Undercover Operations). The main subject is concerned with conjecture that a majority of all UFO-abduction phenomena consist of a conglomerate of psychologically produced experiences, like the „birth-trauma-hypothesis“, heavily favored by Dr. Alvin Lawson, or confusions by ex „mind-control-victims“ or „pseudo-UFO-abductions“, deliberately produced by using hallucinogenic drugs and hypnosis. Anticipating the result of this review one can say, that the Lammers do not succeed in proving this conjecture. This book is just another contribution to speculative science. Everything may or may not be possible.

     The Lammers cite a number of abduction victims throughout provided with the predicate “alleged“, about whom the reader does not know how healthy they are. Unfortunately, both authors are neither psychologists nor psychiatrists. Therefore, as reader, one sometimes has misgivings to be confronted with stories about schizophrenic persons that cannot be correctly judged by a natural scientist or a lawyer. For example, every first semester student of psychiatry knows that the fear of being exposed to X-rays from a undetected source may be an indication of schizophrenia. However, the Lammers accept such emotions of their probands as real fact by citing Harlan Girard, who claims that more and more persons after having visited a UFO- or parapsychology-conference or an esoteric meeting develop symptoms that indicate exposure to exotic weapons (meaning microwave- or infrasound-radiation).

     In order not to be taken in by stories of sick persons, in any investigation of abductees or UFO-abductees by the German MUFON-CES-group it is required that psychological and psychiatric tests are carried out before taking into consideration the reports of the alleged abductees (see MUFON-CES report 11 (2)). Unfortunately, the authors have failed to inform themselves about the experiences of the psychologists and hypnosis specialists of the MUFON-CES-group (Prof. Bick, Dr. Widhalm, Dr. Winter, Dr. Schulte) considering hypnosis-regressions of alleged abductees and, apparently, never personally have witnessed such hypnosis regressions.

     The core of the argumentations of the authors is the conjecture that abduction experience can be caused artificially by manipulations (drugs, hypnosis). But, for about 20 years the experts know that this is not true in cases of genuine abduction experiences. The Lammers, however, accept the experiments carried out by the researcher of linguistics, Lawson, as evident support for their argumentations. In 1977 Dr. Lawson let hypnotize several probands and had asked them to report on encounters with UFOs. Actually, their descriptions were very similar to those of genuine abductees (but not their behavior during hypnosis!). Therefore, Lawson and his staff thought that the “genuine“ cases also were based on inner experiences only, which they attributed to a birth trauma. (3)

     The Lammers insist that the Lawson experiments “are pointed out for the first time in their book“ (p.155). As a matter of fact, these experiments have been published already many times and several competent critical reviewers (Dr. Willy Smith 1981 (4), Dr. Scott Rogo 1985 (5) and Dr. Thomas Bullard 1989 (6) ) have proved that Lawson’s hypothesis is untenable. By the way, I myself have reported on the subject already in 1989 (MUFON-CES report 9, pp.304 (7) ) and in 1992 (Stand der UFO-Forschung, pp.228 (8) ). Without refering to the completely convincing arguments of the critical reviewers in detail, I just want to point out that nowdays Lawson’s hypothesis is not taken seriously anymore. Not until now the authors have studied the recirds concerning Dr. Lawson’s birth trauma hypothesis, as can be seen from their “words of thanks“.

     The authors believe in the birth trauma hypothesis, i.e. the speculation according to which recollections of birth are revealed under hypnosis, to such an extent, that they even attribute an experience of a Brazilian who was chased by an UFO and eventually seized (but not abducted) by gripping tongs at the end of a rope and who then was pulled up and was kept hanging above the ground for some time (9), to the recollection of his forceps delivery (p.163). This would be the same as if skeptics would explain the report of somebody who was caught between the door wings of a lift by the recollection of a forceps delivery.

     While the Lammers - for clear reasons - do not cite the critical publications concerning the Lawson hypothesis, they state: “Since Dr. Lawson’s results - for clear reasons - are ignored or dismissed as superficial by the well known UFO-abduction researchers (Alien Discussions Proceeding at MIT 1994, Jacobs 1992, Mack 1994)...“, and so on.

     Lawson’s speculations have not all been “ignored“ or “dismissed as superficial“. All soures mentioned by the Lammers have dealt with it, like in Alien Discussions Proceeding on pages 19, 191, 195 and 577, David Jacobs p.292, John Mack p.432. (10)(11)(12)

     Not the “noted UFO-abduction researchers“ are “superficial“ but the authors with their sweeping explanation of the abduction experiences of human beings of all age groups. The therapists and abduction researchers Budd Hopkins, Dr. Rima Laibow, Dr. Paul Schulte, Dr. John Mack and the documentary movie maker Christian Bauer who has brought along from the U.S.A. twenty hours of documentary movies on abductees and their therapists (13), told me, in complete agreement, that they all were particularly impressed and confused by the experience reports of children, in particular, by those of age four. Are the Lammers really convinced that the U.S. secret-services also kidnap children? Or do they have still another interpretation for abduction of children, perhaps the one by Lawson?

     Of course, all conclusions concerning talking people into UFO-pseudo-experiences by the bad American military personnel in order to cover up other dirty tricks played with their victims, are no longer valid if Lawson’s hypothesis is incorrect! “Because of lack of space“ - as the authors say - they have presented nothing but “the basic results from the publication of Dr. Lawson and Dr. Call“. A serious treatise also should allow enough space for the critics of a theory, without necessarily approving it. But the reader does not get to know anything about it!

     The reader also does not get a clear idea concerning the authors’ opinion of UFO abductions. They are speculating that “the alleged extraterrestrials are not as strange as one is trying to persuade us“ (p.26). “Somebody“ wants to „make the general public believe, that we have contact with extraterrestrial beings“ (p.125).

     “Are some or even all inexplicable UFO abduction cases mental hypnoprogrammed covered recollections produced by military mind-control-specialists?“ (p.127)

     “But, we want to remind that the birth-memory hypothesis cannot explain all UFO-abduction experiences or UFO close encounters with strange beings“ (p.166).

     “However, if one takes into consideration UFO-related PSYWAR-activities, then such UFO-abduction cases or close encounters, which are inexplicable at present, could be deliberate or staged cheating“ (p.166)

     “We, therefore, take the view that this result suggests that MILAB abductees (people kidnapped by military personnel, remark by the reviewer) and, possibly, persons with pure UFO-abduction experiences are subject to an artificially produced MPD (multiple personality dissociation, remark by the reviewer)"(p.185)

     The authors do not believe anymore, that UFO-abductions have anything to do with the traditional UFO-phenomenon (p.243).

     Instead of referring to a number of speculations this assumption should be justified more thoroughly and it should be confirmed by psychologists or psychiatrists. This is the drawback of this book. The authors present documents concerning all kinds of unusual experiments with human beings allegedly carried out by U.S. military personnel in order to find out whatever is feasible. But, one cannot assume that all these mind-control-practices ever will applied. Why should housewives - and not convicts or soldiers - be selected as test objects by U.S. armed forces? In the authors’ opinion the U.S. armed forces have produced compliant victims for special espionage tasks by carrying out artificial personality dissociation with probands. The UFO-abduction than would be just a cover story. However, the Lammers do not point out a single case in which one of the housewives concerned actually have carried out a secret service mission.

      Later on the Lammers make the decision, that these persons “with alleged abduction experiences possibly are used for secret clone experiments“ (p.208). According to the Lammers, the U.S. armed forces have cloned human beings and have implanted chips into human brains already a long time before civilian scientists were able to clone animals and make nerves grow on silicon chips.

     The many errors concerning new military high-tech developments made by the authors are reviewed by Dr. John Alexander (NIDS, Las Vegas).(Dr. Alexander is like the reviewer an expert in modern weapon developments, but the Lammers are no insiders, as they have claimed).

     The authors claim that alleged UFO-abductees show a multiple personality dissociation. About this nothing can be found in the literature and, in fact, the Lammers do not prove this.

     In their book the reviewer has counted about 70 sentences of speculative character such as:
     “Therefore, it seems that...exists“, “the Soviets are said ....to have developed“ (p.33),
“The Lawrence-Livermore-scientists speculate on ...brain bombs“ (p.37), “Victor Schauberger is said to have ...“(p.44), “It is quite possible, that...“(p.79), “One can assume that ...“(p.83), “It is very probable, that ...“(p.84), “It seems likely, that ...“(p.88), “Even nowadays ...seem to play an important role“ (p.112),“....some prominent UFO researchers could play a double game and collaborate with the persons standing behind these cases“ (p.120), “...as suspected by us because of many indications...“ (p.137), “...one may speculate, if ...“ (p.181), “In reality ...could have been“ (p.181), „Seem ... to be ...“ (p.187), “...it seems quite certain that...“ (p.202), “...one cannot exclude that...“ (p.242).
     And, finally, I want to mention an example of speculation an page 232: “The ideology, the motivations and the crimes which already have become known suggest that secret service scientists could be blamed at least for parts of the alleged UFO implantation stories.“
 
This book contains subjunctives and speculations in abundance instead of keeping those at a minimum in a serious non fiction book. Also, factual errors are made. For example, Robert Pavlita did not develop „psychotronic generators“ (p.33). (Many years ago we have investigated Pavlitas’ „objects“ at MBB/DASA company on a private basis which never worked. They were nothing else but nice metallic sculptures. Only their designer attributed „paranormal power“ to them). Antigravitation is not expected by relativity theorists „in connection with negative mass and antimatter“! (p.39). John Searl from Britain had bluffed. He did not let disks fly (p.46). By the way, this also holds for Victor Schauberger (p.44).

     Conclusion:   This is a confusing book, which wants to produce fear of American secret service personnel. The authors try to solve the problem of UFO-Abduction reports - not convincingly - by phantastic speculations and reports of dubious persons, of course, all under pseudonyms. Some UFO-abduction researchers, which have been attacked by the Lammers, actually have contributed more to the understanding of this phenomenon.

        Illobrand von Ludwiger
Feldkirchen-Whm., March 1999

After that book review Dr. Lammer put his membership of MUFON-CES down and collaborates now with the skeptical organizations in Germany. He calls the reviewer (who has written the foreword to his first book) now as unscientific and makes openly propaganda in all press and TV-media against MUFON-CES and its leader.

 
Literature
(1)  Lammer, Helmut und Marion: Schwarze Forschungen - Geheime Versuche unter Ausschluß der Öffentlichkeit, Munich: Herbig, 1999
(2)  Ludwiger, I. von: Abduction Cases in Germany, in MUFON-CES report 11, pp.89-119, 1993
(3)  Lawson, A.: A Testable Hypothesis for Fallacious Abductions: Birth Trauma Imagery in CE-III Narratives, in Mimi Hynek (ed.): The Spectrum of UFO Research: The Proceedings of the Second Conference, Sept. 25-27, 1981 in ‘Chicago, pp.71-98 Hynek Center for UFO Studies, Chicago, 1988
(4)  Smith, W.: A Second Look, Magonia, Dez. 6,81, pp.3-5, 1981
(5)  Rogo, S.: Imaginary Facts: The Case of the Imaginary Abductions, IUFOR, Vol. 10, No.2, pp.3-5, 1985
(6)  Bullard, T.E.: Hypnosis and UFO Abductions: A Troubled Relationship, J. of UFO Studies, 1 (new series), pp.3-40, 1989
(7)  Brand, I (von Ludwiger): Hypnoseregression in der UFO-Forschung, in MUFON-CES report 10, pp. 301-342, 1989
(8)  Ludwiger, I. von: Der Stand der UFO-Forschung, Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins, pp.228, 1992
(9)  Pratt, B.: UFO-Danger Zone - Terror and Death in Brazil - Where Next? Madison,
Wisconsin: Horus House, p.58, 1996
(10) Alien Discussion: Von Außerirdischen entführt - Forschungsberichte und Diskussionsbeiträge zur Konferenz am MIT über das Abduktionsphänomen, A. und D. Pritchard, J. Mack, P. Kesey, C. Yapp (ed.) 1994; German in Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins, 1996
(11)  Jacobs, D.: Secret Life - Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions, New York: Simon & Schuster, p.292, 1992; German issue: Geheimes Leben, Rottenburg: Kopp, 1994
(12)  Mack, J.: Abduction - Human Encounters with Aliens, New York: Ballentine Books, p.432, 1994
(13)  Bauer, Chr.: Manuskript zur ZDF-TV transmission: Von UFOs entführt (unpublished), 1993