Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Volume 22, Number 3, May/June 1998

• Buy this back issue
• Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis?
• Gray Barker: My Friend, the Myth-Maker
• Multiple Personality Disorder: Witchcraft Survives in the Twentieth Century
• `Therapeutic Touch' Fails a Rare Scientific Test
• CSICOP Website Recognized
• The Real Roswell Crashed Saucer Coverup

Special Section: The Aliens Files

Before Roswell: The Meaning Behind the Crashed-UFO Myth
Stories about a crashed saucer in the New Mexico desert are part of a broader myth dating back to at least eighty-five years before Roswell. What makes this myth so appealing?
Robert E. Bartholomew

Case Closed: Reflections on the 1997 Air Force Roswell Report
The Air Force "crash dummy" explanation of the Roswell "bodies" was not a desperate attempt to preserve the Roswell coverup, as UFO promoters would have us believe. Rather, clues that anthropomorphic test dummies may have been mistaken for "aliens" came from testimonies of the Roswell "alien body" witnesses themselves. The 1997 Air Force Case Closed report, and new findings presented in this article, provide intriguing new speculations on the origin of various parts of the Roswell legend.
Bernard D. Gildenberg and David E. Thomas

Gray Barker: My Friend, the Myth-Maker Gray Barker, who raised the "Men in Black" concept to prominence in UFO lore, didn't mind if the sensational flying-saucer stories he published were made up -- as long as they were presented as fact. To him it was all a joke. Here John Sherwood ("Dr. Richard H. Pratt") for the first time confesses his role in Barker's flying-saucer, "Men in Black" myth-making. John C. Sherwood

A Skeptic Living in Roswell
Roswell residents generally regard the UFO hoopla as harmless fun and a source of tourist dollars. Local civic leaders ignore the dark side of UFO mania, especially its common roots with sex-abuse hysteria and urban legends such as satanic cults.
Martha A. Churchill

Articles

Multiple Personality Disorder: Witchcraft Survives in the Twentieth Century Since 1980, some psychotherapists have claimed that thousands of Americans are afflicted with multiple personality disorder. Believing such claims requires ignoring their many serious deficiencies. August Piper Jr.

Columns

News and Comment

• Psychic Telephone Networks Profit on Yearning, Gullibility
• `Therapeutic Touch' Fails a Rare Scientific Test
• Gish and Creationism at Murray State: A Child's Garden of Verses
• CSICOP Website Recognized
• Cold Fusion Saga Ends at Its University of Utah Birthplace
• ABC's Prey -- Not Exactly the Science Adventure Promised
• Paranormal Web Sites Proliferate

Notes of a Fringe-Watcher
Zero-Point Energy and Harold Puthoff
Martin Gardner

Investigative Files
Alien Abductions as Sleep-Related Phenomena
Joe Nickell

Psychic Vibrations
From Ark-eology to UFOlogy, from Ararat to Arizona
Robert Sheaffer

Media Watch
Testing Put to the Test
Ian C. Maione

New Books

Articles of Note

Forum
Could Experimenter Effects Occur in the Physical and Biological Sciences?
Rupert Sheldrake

Gimme That Ol'-Time Logical Consistency
Ralph Estling

Letters to the Editor

Book Reviews

The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups edited by Kendrick Frazier, Barry Karr, and Joe Nickell Reviewed by Peter Huston

The Real Roswell Crashed Saucer Coverup by Philip J. Klass Reviewed by David E. Thomas

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