What books are you reading ? (conspiracy related, science, etc...)

Some old classics...
20241004_142246.jpg
 
Started (listening to) "The Cult of Trump"
by Steven Hassan, PhD....a leading expert on cults, and himself a former member of the Sun Myung Moon Unification Church.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Cult-of-Trump/Steven-Hassan/9781982127343

And next in my queue, is...
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China is a non-fiction book by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton on the psychology of brainwashing.
Click to expand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism
 
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Somehow I had to read "Behold the Pale Horse" by William Cooper, which touches on government conspiracies and hidden intentions, and "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari, which offers a scientific and historical perspective on human evolution. And then "have a snack" with Michael Talbot's book "The Holographic Universe", which delves into theories about reality and consciousness. As a result, even more questions arose both about the world we see and what is behind the scenes)))
 
I recently read In Plain Sight by Coulthard, then Imminent by Elizondo.
I'm currently reading Mirage Men by Pilkington, and next on my list is UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (And Don't Know) by Powell.
 
Was on the road last week and horror of horrors we without internet a few times :eek:. Had to actually read a book for a change as I had long ago switched to mostly audio books. And even here I'm cheating as it wasn't an actual book but my preloaded Kindel Fire ready for just such an occasion.

As we traveled through a lot of classic Bigfoot country, I started Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend by Joshua Blu Buhs. It's a great folkloric history of where the idea of Bigfoot/Sasquatch comes from back in the 1950s piggybacking on the Abominable Snowman stories coming out of Nepal/Tibet.

Particularly interesting in relation to the famous Patterson-Gimlin film which we discussed out to 20 pages or more here on Metabunk, was how much of what proponent's claim is novel and unique in Patterson's film, isn't. From the way the arms swing to the whole idea of a female Bigfoot with breasts was all circulating in the small Bigfoot community 5-9 years before the film was made.

Much like UFOlogy, old was new again. Patterson incorporated a lot of what was in print and books during the first Bigfoot craze in the late '50s and put them in his film in '68, but after the initial interest had faded away. His aping ;) of the many themes and ideas at a later date made it seem novel. Again, like we often see in UFO cases.


Might share some info on the Paterson-Gimlin film thread when I finish up.
 
Rob Brotherton's 2015 book Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories is one that hasn't yet come up in this thread but is worth checking out for anyone looking for something by an academic psychologist written in a fairly pop-science, colloquial fashion (shot through with dry, Irish humour).

His findings are delivered in somewhat of a "There but for the grace of God goes anyone" framing, making the case that conspiracy thinking isn't a different type of thinking from "normal" thinking, it's more like "normal" thinking which has been misdirected/extremified by emotional drives, and that said emotional drives are much less simple to understand/explain than they might seem.

I read it around the same time as I read Escaping the Rabbit Hole and found it a fairly good companion work - both books suggesting, in different ways, the worth of approaching a person who has been seduced by a grand conspiracy (or three) with a healthy degree of respect.
 
Beaker said:
"Thinking, Fast and Slow" is a decent book. Kinda crosses into pop-science self-help territory though, but has good explanations of aspects of human decision making heuristics.
Click to expand...
I liked this one a lot too, although it's worth noting (as Kahneman himself later acknowledged) that it cites some studies which were caught up in the replication crisis (especially ironic given that one of the points Kahneman makes in Thinking, Fast and Slow is that the human brain is not naturally geared for a good intuitive grasp of statistics!), so it's worth checking which chapters are now considered more questionable than they might have been at the time of publication .

This also makes the book a useful example to cite when pointing out to folks who are convinced by, say, a Gary "Nobel Prize Adjacent" Nolan type, that even a Nobel Prize winner should not be considered any kind of infallible.
 
External Quote:

John J. said: (...talking about the magazine Fortean Times:)
Issues I'll be reading, with selected cover stories/ blurb:
JMartJr said:
Just reading the article titles was plenty of fun!
Click to expand...

Most issues have a column, "Extra! Extra!", with the description "FT's Favourite Headlines From Around The World", usually just 5 or so, a few recent ones:

FT440, Jan '24:
"Doubt Cast on Talking Mongoose Story" -Isle of Man Examiner
"Pothole Thwarts Dalek Invasion" -Manx Independent

FT441, Feb '24:
"Woman Slams Selfish Paragliders Who Made Her Think Hamas Were Invading Doncaster", Metro (London) 17 Oct '23
(Doncaster is a large-ish town in Yorkshire, northern England)
"Rescue plan for Irish fairy door company approved", Irish Times 23 June 2023
"Octopus in Talks to Buy Shell Business", Irish Times 26 Aug 2023
"Naked Opera Singer Armed With Bow & Arrow Went on Rampage At Care Home", Daily Telegraph (UK), 30 Oct '23

FT443, Apr '24:
"Owl Attacks Bus Driver", Express & Echo (Exeter, England)
"Cardigan my friend knitted is witchcraft in wool form", Irish Times 9 Aug '23
"Moth welcomes 'change of era' ", The Tablet (weekly Catholic magazine, UK) 13 Jan '24
"Woman Pays £175 To Have Hamster Stuffed as a Poledancing Stripper", walesonline.co.uk (Wales), 15 Jan '24

FT445, Jun'24:
"Sunderland Council Asks Dead Woman to Clear Own Grave", BBC News 28 Sept '23
"Graveyards should be "for the living" says bishop", BBC News 14 Feb '24
"Ex-cop punched Inspector he caught having sex with his wife in Screwfix car park", news.sky.com, 19 Mar '24
"Masturbating Handyman Gets Off", Sussex News 20 Mar '24

FT448, Sept '24:
"Demons get a wake-up call", Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Australia), 13 Nov '23
"Rare Worm-Eating Ghost Slug Spotted on Stroud Footpath", BBC News 27 Mar '24
"Escaped cloned female mutant crayfish take over Belgian cemetery", Daily Telegraph (UK) 24 Oct 2020
 
Mendel said:
worth pointing out that this is linked from Gelman's blog, i.e. author-sanctioned
Click to expand...
Good point! And worth pointing out that Gelman is a legend in the Bayesian statistics world! Not sure if this is in the book or not yet, but a really cool example of this methodology is Forecasting Election With Non-Representative Polls

External Quote:
Election forecasts have traditionally been based on representative polls, in which randomly sampled individuals are asked who they intend to vote for. While representative polling has historically proven to be quite effective, it comes at considerable costs of time and money. Moreover, as response rates have declined over the past several decades, the statistical benefits of representative sampling have diminished. In this paper, we show that, with proper statistical adjustment, non-representative polls can be used to generate accurate election forecasts, and that this can often be achieved faster and at a lesser expense than traditional survey methods. We demonstrate this approach by creating forecasts from a novel and highly non-representative survey dataset: a series of daily voter intention polls for the 2012 presidential election conducted on the Xbox gaming platform. After adjusting the Xbox responses via multilevel regression and poststratification, we obtain estimates which are in line with the forecasts from leading poll analysts, which were based on aggregating hundreds of traditional polls conducted during the election cycle. We conclude by arguing that non-representative polling shows promise not only for election forecasting, but also for measuring public opinion on a broad range of social, economic and cultural issues.
Getting good polling data from Xbox polls!!
 
@yoshy (from your quote)
External Quote:
series of daily voter intention polls for the 2012 presidential election conducted on the Xbox gaming platform.
This is 2024. Can't you figure out why that's not going to work this time? (Apart from the fact that Xbox is somewhat dated, of course.)
 
Ann K said:
@yoshy (from your quote)
External Quote:
series of daily voter intention polls for the 2012 presidential election conducted on the Xbox gaming platform.
This is 2024. Can't you figure out why that's not going to work this time? (Apart from the fact that Xbox is somewhat dated, of course.)
Click to expand...
xbox is not dated
and what is your point?
 
Ann K said:
@yoshy (from your quote)
External Quote:
series of daily voter intention polls for the 2012 presidential election conducted on the Xbox gaming platform.
This is 2024. Can't you figure out why that's not going to work this time? (Apart from the fact that Xbox is somewhat dated, of course.)
Click to expand...
I might be misunderstanding your response, but I posted that as a neat example for how MRP can get useful results from a non-representative dataset.
 
Ann K said:
Who plays with Xbox?
Click to expand...
Article:
By October 2024, video game genre statistics revealed that different platforms attracted millions of users. The PlayStation 5 sold approximately 60.6 million units worldwide, while the Xbox Series X and Series S lagged behind, with around 29.7 million units sold.

However, the Nintendo Switch continued to dominate, reaching over 142.6 million consoles sold since its launch in 2017.

Millions of users seems a good base.
jdog said:
Ahem.
I'm sure our demographic skews male, if no longer young.
Click to expand...
Article:
Meanwhile, in the US, as of June 2024, approximately 41% of regular console gamers were female, according to respondents.

Sufficient to get a result with statistical methods.
 
Inspired by this thread, I've been revisiting The Demon-Haunted World. I'd mostly forgotten how much political thought was woven through the wonderful and wondrous expressions of Sagan's love of and advocacy for science. A fitting time for a re-read perhaps.
 
Among other things, I have been reading the Skeptics UFO Newsletter archives recently and ended up spending quite a bit of time on issue #17 (Sept 6, 1992). The issue focuses on Budd Hopkins' Linda Napolitano abduction case ("The Queen-Bee of Abductees", as coined by Hopkins at the Albuquerque MUFON conference on July 11, 1992). I have not yet seen the Netflix doc, but I did find particularly interesting this one anecdote shared by Klass:

External Quote:
Recently, New Jersey MUFON member Vince Creevy chanced to buy a science- fiction book titled "Nighteyes," authored by Garfeld Reeves-Stevens, whose plot centers on a woman named Sarah and her daughter Wendy, who are abducted from their Manhattan apartment and beamed up to a UFO hovering overhead. This prompts them to contact a leading UFO-abduction expert who lives in New York City--where Hopkins lives. Later, Wendy is abducted by two Government (FBI) agents and taken to a CIA "Safe House" on Long Island, as Linda claims. Creevy, noting the similarity of the book's plot to Linda's account, brought the book to the attention of Butler and Stefula--because of their intimate familiarity with Linda's tale. Butler and Stefula discovered many more similarities.

BY A CURIOUS COINCIDENCE, THIS SCIENCE-FICTION BOOK •NIGHTEYES• WAS PUBLISHED IN APRIL 1989--SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE LINDA FIRST INFORMED HOPKINS OF HER ABDUCTION EXPERIENCE.
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/docs/SUN/SUN17.pdf

Joseph J. Stefula was MUFON's State Director for New Jersey, and his deputy was Rich Butler.

I found it interesting because I've been fascinated by the seemingly influential connection between pop culture/media and "UFOs," particularly "abductees," and this plot seems to mirror Napolitano's account.

I've since ordered "Nighteyes," and look forward to seeing how accurate Klass' summary is.
 
Interesting article on ARS TECHNICA about the NRO and its current efforts today.
"You can't hide, because we're constantly looking," said Chris Scolese
Click to expand...
NRO chief: "You can't hide" from our new swarm of SpaceX-built spy satellites

One of the factors that always amuses me is the fact UFO Whistleblowers always make claims about things the government doesn't have (crashed saucers), but they never make any mention of something the government does have. Namely all of the data collected by all of the systems produced by the NRO and other agencies over the years.

Why aren't they demanding all of that should be disclosed?
 
Mendel said:
because then their supporters would realize "disclosure" is bad for national security, obviously
Click to expand...

Correct! Because those are REAL secrets. As opposed to folk tales and out-of-focus snapshots and all of the myriad sources of UFO stories. But aren't their demands for the release of information about the governments possession of crashed or captured flying saucers also, according to them, Real secrets?

But I would recommend people read that ARS TECHNICA story, to get a feel for where the technology of "finding things" is heading.
 
triplekahuna said:
Among other things, I have been reading the Skeptics UFO Newsletter archives recently and ended up spending quite a bit of time on issue #17 (Sept 6, 1992). The issue focuses on Budd Hopkins' Linda Napolitano abduction case ("The Queen-Bee of Abductees", as coined by Hopkins at the Albuquerque MUFON conference on July 11, 1992). I have not yet seen the Netflix doc, but I did find particularly interesting this one anecdote shared by Klass:

External Quote:
Recently, New Jersey MUFON member Vince Creevy chanced to buy a science- fiction book titled "Nighteyes," authored by Garfeld Reeves-Stevens, whose plot centers on a woman named Sarah and her daughter Wendy, who are abducted from their Manhattan apartment and beamed up to a UFO hovering overhead. This prompts them to contact a leading UFO-abduction expert who lives in New York City--where Hopkins lives. Later, Wendy is abducted by two Government (FBI) agents and taken to a CIA "Safe House" on Long Island, as Linda claims. Creevy, noting the similarity of the book's plot to Linda's account, brought the book to the attention of Butler and Stefula--because of their intimate familiarity with Linda's tale. Butler and Stefula discovered many more similarities.

BY A CURIOUS COINCIDENCE, THIS SCIENCE-FICTION BOOK •NIGHTEYES• WAS PUBLISHED IN APRIL 1989--SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE LINDA FIRST INFORMED HOPKINS OF HER ABDUCTION EXPERIENCE.
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/docs/SUN/SUN17.pdf

Joseph J. Stefula was MUFON's State Director for New Jersey, and his deputy was Rich Butler.

I found it interesting because I've been fascinated by the seemingly influential connection between pop culture/media and "UFOs," particularly "abductees," and this plot seems to mirror Napolitano's account.

I've since ordered "Nighteyes," and look forward to seeing how accurate Klass' summary is.
Click to expand...

The PDF contains an excellent autopsy of the Manhattan Abduction mumbo jumbo and its inspiration, Nighteyes. Read it again after viewing the Netflix doc, which is a mostly worthless attempt at entertainment. Butler, Stefula and cohorts did solid work in their interviews and onsite research.

Disclosure: I met with Budd Hopkins in his home on the lower west side of Manhattan, somewhere between 15th and 18th Sts in what could be considered lower Chelsea, circa 1986/1987. I'd read Communion in manuscript form, receiving a copy via Whitley Streiber's agent who was pushing it to publishers and seeking a $3million advance. Therein, was introduced to Budd's book, Missing Time, so snagged and read a copy of that one. After reading Missing Time, for the sake of further research, I literally looked up Budd in the phone book and gave him a ring. He invited me over for lunch, and an hour later, there we were. I was curious about what Budd was currrently up to in the 'alien abduction' realm, and if he'd had another book on the subject in mind.

He was a painter; some of his works can be seen on the walls of his place in the Netflix doc. He called them "sentinel paintings", and was doing those and other works long before the abduction stuff, and apparently enjoyed financial success from the sales of his artworks. Carol Rainey was not home when I visited Budd; iirc, he said she was at their weekend home. I remarked, his conceptualization of the 'sentinel paintings' as he described it had echoes of themes in the 'alien abduction' stuff that he was presenting. He wasn't much interested in discussing his painting, gung-ho wanting to get right into the 'alien abduction' stuff.

I mentioned that a lot of the themes that he'd presented in Missing Time resonated, though not with intention of suggesting that I suspected personal experience with 'alien abduction'. He then launched a series of leading questions, clearly with intent of suggesting that I'd been 'abducted', and wanting to encourage me to believe that I'd been abducted or perhaps even was experiencing an ongoing, lifelong 'abduction experience'.
e.g. Alien abductees have these sort of experiences: have you ever had such-or-such similar experience? Usually the aliens will abduct multiple members of the same family: have any members of your family reported such-or-such experiences? Do you recall having such-or-such experience in childhood?

He was very, very leading, though clearly not disingenious. He was enthusiastically in thrall to abstract belief, an unwitting dupe of his own design. Zero scientific approach, zero skeptical inquiry. Nice guy, albeit clearly naive re motivations in others for attention, fame, self-delusion, etc. He was an easy dupe for "abductee" wanna-bes, especially one with fame-seeking grifter tendencies. He definitely implanted false memories in some individuals, with leading questions during interviews with 'subjects' and during his hypnotic regressions with the same 'subjects'. That's how he'd connected with Whitley, iirc: he did hypnotic regression sessions with Streiber and members of his immediate family.

Budd was very, very pissed off at Whitley, to whom he'd essentially introduced the 'alien abduction' topic. Budd claimed that Whitley stole his ideas for use in Whitley's first 'non-fiction' alien abduction work, Communion. Budd further claimed that Whitley, via his NYC publishing connections, had influenced publishers to either not buy the manuscript for 'Intruders' or hold off publishing the book until after Whitley's Communion hit the shelves; specifically which accusation - not buying the manuscript or supressing its publication date, not recalling here today. Basically, he sensed that Whitley was about the steal the thunder that Budd believed should be his.

It was a fun afternoon, and put to rest the question of any possible validity to the 'alien abduction' phenomenon as reality-based experience.
Also helped recognize, Whitley's book when published was going to explode the theme into pop culture, and that relative to sales value, $3million for the manuscript rights would be a good buy.
 
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triplekahuna said:
Joseph J. Stefula was MUFON's State Director for New Jersey, and his deputy was Rich Butler.
Click to expand...
Stefula, Butler and George Hansen also published a final report on their findings about the case in 1993 that is worth a read. It was initially published in smaller UFO circulars because the big groups like MUFON and CUFOS would not publish it according to the authors.

Their request for comments and redistribution including the entire report is archived from UFOBBS here:

https://textfiles.meulie.net/ufo/UFOBBS/2000/2490.ufo

External Quote:
Enclosed is our report on the much acclaimed case of the UFO abduction
of Linda Napolitano. We invite your comments.

Hopkins' claims have generated enormous publicity and have been
mentioned in the New York Times, Omni, the Wall Street Journal, and
Paris Match, among others. As such, this case is likely to have a
substantial impact on the field of ufology.

Leadership in both the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and the J. Allen Hynek
Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) aggressively opposed our investigation,
and both previously refused to publish our criticisms. This raises grave
questions about the scientific and journalistic integrity of MUFON and
CUFOS.

Those organizations have many members, and we are unable to provide more
than a few copies of this paper to others. We ask you to help us with
the distribution. Please feel free to make copies of this article, post
it on electronic bulletin boards, and print it in periodicals.

Here's the abstract from the report (full paper in UFOBBS link above):
External Quote:
A Critique of Budd Hopkins' Case of the UFO Abduction

of

Linda Napolitano


by Joseph J. Stefula, Richard D. Butler, and George P. Hansen

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABSTRACT: Budd Hopkins has made a number of public presentations of a
purported UFO abduction case with multiple witnesses. The primary
abductee is Linda Napolitano, who lives in an apartment building on the
lower east side of Manhattan (New York City). She claims to have been
abducted by extraterrestrial aliens from her 12th floor apartment in
November 1989. It is claimed that three witnesses in a car two blocks
away observed Linda and alien beings float out of a window and ascend
into a craft. One alleged witness was United Nations Secretary General
Javier Perez de Cuellar. It is also claimed that a woman on the Brooklyn
Bridge observed the abduction. Linda has reported nose bleeds, and one
X-ray displays an implant in her nose.

To date, Hopkins has provided no full, detailed written report, but he
did publish a couple five page articles in the September and December
1992 issues of the Mufon UFO Journal and made a presentation at the 1992
MUFON symposium. We have made use of that information as well as records
from other presentations, and we have interviewed the abductee. A number
of serious questions arose from our examination. The case has many
exotic aspects, and we have identified a science fiction novel that may
have served as the basis for elements of the story.

Several prominent leaders in ufology have become involved, and their
behavior and statements have been quite curious. Some have aggressively
attempted to suppress evidence of a purported attempted murder. The
implications for the understanding of ufology are discussed.

Budd Hopkins is the person most responsible for drawing attention to the
problem of the extraterrestrial (ET) abduction experience. His efforts
have been instrumental in stimulating both media attention and
scientific research devoted to the problem. He has written two popular
books (Missing Time, 1981, and Intruders, 1987), established the
Intruders Foundation, and has made innumerable appearances at
conferences and in the media.

Although Hopkins is neither a trained therapist, an academic, nor a
scientist, he has involved such people in his work. John E. Mack, M.D.,
a Pulitzer Prize winner and former head of the psychiatry department at
Harvard Medical School, has praised Hopkins' work and acknowledged his
indebtedness to him (Mack, 1992a, 1992b). Hopkins has collaborated with
university professors in co-authoring an article in the book Unusual
Personal Experiences (1992), which was sent to 100,000 mental health
professionals. He has testified as an expert witness at a hearing
regarding the medical competence of a physician who claims to have been
abducted (McKenna, 1992). Because of such strong endorsements and
impressive affiliations, and because of his untiring work on behalf of
abductees, Hopkins has become the single most visible figure in the UFO
abduction field. His contributions, positive or negative, will be
quickly noticed by those inside and outside ufology.

Last year, Hopkins made a number of public presentations about a
spectacular UFO abduction case occurring in November 1989 and having
multiple witnesses. The primary abductee was Linda Napolitano, a woman
living on the 12th floor of a high-rise apartment building in lower
Manhattan (New York City) [Hopkins has previously used the pseudonym
"Linda Cortile" in this case]. It is claimed that three witnesses in a
car two blocks away observed Linda and three ET aliens emerge from a
window and ascend into a craft. Further it is claimed that a woman who
was driving across the Brooklyn Bridge also saw the event.

The case has generated enormous interest and drawn international
attention. It has been discussed in the Wall Street Journal (Jefferson,
1992), Omni (Baskin, 1992), Paris Match (De Brosses, 1992), the New York
Times (Sontag, 1992), and Hopkins and Napolitano have appeared on the
television show Inside Edition. The Mufon UFO Journal labeled it "The
Abduction Case of the Century" (Stacy, 1992, p. 9). Even the technical
magazine ADVANCE for Radiologic Science Professionals carried a
discussion of Linda's nasal implant (Hatfield, 1992). We should expect
continuing coverage of the affair not only in the UFO press but also in
the major media.

In a short article previewing his 1992 MUFON symposium presentation, he
wrote: "I will be presenting what I believe to be the most important
case for establishing the objective reality of UFO abductions that I
have yet encountered" (Hopkins, 1992, p. 20). During his lecture at the
symposium he stated: "This is probably the most important case I've ever
run into in my life" (tape recorded, July 1992). In his abstract for the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abduction Study Conference held in
June 1992 he wrote: "The importance of this case is virtually
immeasurable, as it powerfully supports both the objective reality of
UFO abductions and the accuracy of regressive hypnosis as employed with
this abductee." Because of Hopkins' renown, and because of his
evaluation, this case warrants our careful scrutiny.
 
Just started reading "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," by Charles Mackay (1852).

Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece
of paper. To trace the history of the most prominent of these delusions is the object of the present pages. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
Click to expand...
As true as it was 172 years ago.

Although this example is of a haunting in Scotland in 1838, it could've been written yesterday about Skinwalker Ranch any of the modern "wonderful stories" of the extraordinary people have invented:

There were, of course, some sensible and educated people, who, after stripping the [haunted farm-house of Baldarroch] stories circulated of their exaggeration, attributed all the rest to one or other of two causes; first, that some gipsies, [sic] or strolling mendicants, hidden in the neighbouring plantation, were amusing themselves by working on the credulity of the country people; or, secondly, that the inmates of Baldarroch carried on this deception themselves, for some reason or other, which was not very clear to any body. The last opinion gained but few believers, as the farmer and his family were much respected; and so many persons had, in the most open manner, expressed their belief in the supernatural agency, that they did not like to stultify themselves by confessing that they had been deceived.

At last, after a fortnight's continuance of the noises, the whole trick was discovered. The two servant lasses were strictly examined, and then committed to prison. It appeared that they were alone at the bottom of the whole affair, and that the extraordinary alarm and credulity of their master and mistress, in the first instance, and of the neighbours and country people afterwards, made their task comparatively easy. A little common dexterity was all they had used; and, being themselves unsuspected, they swelled the alarm by the wonderful stories they invented. It was they who loosened the bricks in the chimneys, and placed the dishes in such a manner on the shelves, that they fell on the slightest motion. In short, they played the same tricks as those used by the servant girl at Stockwell, with the same results, and for the same purpose—the gratification of a love of mischief. They were no sooner secured in the county gaol than the noises ceased, and most people were convinced that human agency alone had worked all the wonder. Some few of the most devoutly superstitious still held out in their first belief, and refused to listen to any explanation.
Click to expand...
A hoax ("mischief") establishes a story in the receptive minds of those living in the household, which spreads to the town to take on a life of its own. Then, when the hoax is revealed (and the stories proved false), the "most devoutly superstitious" still refuse "to listen to any explanation" and cling to their initial belief. After all, nobody likes "confessing that they had been deceived."
 
Just finished re-reading "UFO's: The Public Deceived," by Philip J. Klass, and am re-reading 'Bad UFOs" by Robert Sheaffer. For those of you who are old enough to recall some of the older UFO cases, such "older" books looking critically at the UFO stories of their times can be fascinating. And there is a definite sense of nostalgia for a time when YouTube. Reddit and Twitter/X were not flooding the zone with huge tranches of CGI and AI UFO garbage, and a debunker had a moment to breathe!

Neither book is oerfect -- Klass comes across as egotistical in a prickly sort of way, at least to me, and Shaeffer replacement for citing sources by giving you bold key phrases to do a Google search is irritating. But still, good reads, I may have to grab another book or two from their collections.
 
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