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Show Standard-Exarmuner HORIZONS Sunday, June 5. 1994 14£ Harvard psychiatrist says he believesin alien encounters He spent three lot of people assume there must be something the matter with John Mack — or at least something seriously awry with the 64- year-old professor's professional judgment when it comes to alien activities. “There are people who think he’s an em- barrassment to Harvard, that he’s gone off the deep end,” Jacobs acknowledges. Mack is hardlythe first to write about alien abductions. A number of authors have chronicled the case of Betty and Bar- By LYNN VAN MATRE Cmcago Tribune ive years ago, when a colleague asked Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack if he wanted to meet Budd Hopkins, Mack replied, “Who's ney Hill, an apparently stable New Hamp- artist known for his work with people who claimed to have been abducted byaliens and hustled aboard UFOs, Mack swiftly It wasn’t thefirst time the psychiatrist had flirted with what some might consider fringe fields or taken an alternative approach. The Center for Psychology and Social Change, the nonprofit research came to a professional conclusion. organization Mack founded in 1983, often “I assumed that either there must be something the matter with Budd Hopkins or that Hopkins was encountering a new form of mental illness,” Mackrecalls. “I wasn't prepared for what I found.” What Mack found when he finally met funds projects that combine psychology with ecological or ethnic issues outside the “He’s never been afraid to take a stand or follow his intuition, even if it might subject him to criticism,” says Douglas Hopkins was somethingso personally Jacobs, an assistant professor of psychiatry compelling that the veteran psychiatrist plunged intothe field of abduction research himself. Over the next three years, as word of his interest in the abduction phenomenonspread, nearly 100 self-proclaimed abductees (or “experiencers”) would contact Mackathis office at Harvard University’s Cambridge Hospital. The stories varied, but many abductees told of being taken from their homes by big-eyed extraterrestrials and borne aboard at Harvard. “His whole career has been about blazingtrails.” But for many of Mack’s fellow psychiatrists, the abducted-by-aliens study wasjust too bizarre. Dismissing abductees’ claims as preposterous, colleagues respectfully cautioned him about pursuing the project. “The difference between courage and foolhardiness is often subtle,” Mack admits. “After a while, though, I reached the point where there seemed to be more to lose in terms of my ownsense of integrity by keeping my mouth shutthan I could lose by describing what I was finding.” he?” Told that Hopkins was a New York psychiatric mainstream. space ships; there, sperm or ova samples were extracted from their bodies as part of an ongoing earthling-alien hybrid breeding program. After taking what he describes as thorough psychiatric histones of the subjects, Mack concluded that they were “solid people, of sound mind” and told several colleagues that he believed “something important” was going on. Off the deep end In April, Scribners published Mack’s “Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens,” featuring 13 in-depth case histories drawn from his research. And now a shire couple who claimed to have been taken aboard a craft in the early 1960s by small, gray humanoids and subjected to sexual examinations. (The Hills’ experiences later became the subject of a 1975 TV movie, “The UFO Incident.”) Budd Hopkins’ “Missing Time,” published in 1981, chronicled abduction claims involving missing time, body scars resulting from invasive alien medical procedures and small metallic implants pur- portedly inserted in victims’ bodies as tracking devices; the follow-up, 1987's “Intruders,” focused on sexual and reproduction-related episodes that have come to be ously,” he said. “Yes, I think that they are telling the truth. Now, does that meanthat the whole thing is hterally of our physical world and is going to conform to the re- quirements of proof of our classic western scientific methodology? Probably not. We need a more complicated ontology to grasp it.” Parallel universe Klass who \iied the COruce ine Delieves Mal phenomenon less suggestible people to believe too, have been abducted highly controversial 1991 Roper poll, anywhere from several hundred thousand to several million Americans may have had abduction-related expenences Little evidence The extraterrestrials, Mack theorizes, may be coming from some other dimension of reality — possibly a parallel uni- verse. “I'm not convinced that when the abductees are brought aboard ships to see hybrid beings, however real that may be to them experientially, this is really occurring in physical reality as we know it,” he says. “But does that mean that it’s not really happening? I don’t think you can conclude that. I think it might simply be inviting us to open up our way of knowing to other kinds of evidence. | want people to look at this and ask questions.” Philip J. Klass, publisher of the Wash- The lack of physical evidence associated with alien abductions also arouses skepti- cism among some members of the UFO community Longtime UFO investigators Kevin D Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, authors o/ the recently published “The Truth Abo the UFO Crash at Roswell” (Evans), are convinced that an extraterrestrial craft crashed near Roswell, N.M., in 1947; thei book includes testimony from doctors, lav enforcement officials and military personnel who claim they saw five alien bodie amid the wreckage “If we are right, we have leaped the first ington, D.C.-based publication Skeptics associated with the abduction phenomenon. Whitley Strieber’s “Communion” was a best seller in 1987; and in 1992, Temple University historian and abduction researcher David Jacobs presentedhis findings in “Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions.” But whatever his colleagues may think, Mack’s credentials — in addition to being a Harvard psychiatry professor, he is the authorof a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of T.E. Lawrence — set him apart why don’t they abduct Olympic athletes?” from the pack and lend a stamp ofrespect- Week & Space Technology magazine, has the whole package. These abduction ac- spent 28 years investigating UFO cases. He maintains that he has yet to find what he counts are so congruent among healthy people, from all over the United States — people who are not in touch with each oth- ability to a topic generally relegated to tabloids. As a result, he has received mainstream news media coverage seldom accorded to just anybody who announces his belief in alien abductions, though Mack isn’t crazy about invariably being described as a believer. “Yes, I take these peoples’ stories seri- UFO Newsletter and a longtime UFO debunker, can come up with plenty of them. “If you assume that we do have extraterrestrial visitors who are engagingin crossbreeding and that they are very advanced, Klass asks. “And whyis it that not one person who claims to have been aboard a hurdle for John Mack,” says Randle. “We have proved that (extraterrestrials) can get here.” But Schmitt and Randle have yet to be convinced that aliens are abducting earthlings for any reason whatsoever. Mack readily admits that he would love to have a smoking gun. flying saucer has ever brought back a paper “If someone did bring back an artifact, clip or cigarette lighter or some other sou- though, the debunkers would just argue over its pedigree,” he says. “I'm not trying to prove this with physical evidence. I take venir?” Klass, a contributing editor for Aviation considers “a single, credible case that cannot be explained in prosaic terms.” As Klass sees it, most abductees simply crave attention. “There maybe a few who are reluctant to go public, but manyare not,” adds er, who have nothing to gain and everything to lose bytelling their stories. The only thing I knowthat behaves like that is real experience, and I am going to continue to try to deepen my understanding. Why the name ‘quarks’? Scientist liked the sound ofit Physicistsstill seek ‘top quark’ WHY THINGS ARE Joel Achenbach The Washington Post oday we havea special treat: Lots of your favorite and most urgent questions about elementary particle Q. What does Gell-Mann say about recent allegations by Russian intelligence agents that Robert Oppenheimer, Ennco Fermi. Leo Q. Whywas it such a big hairy deal whenscientists recently found right? — answered by Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann, who the so-called top quark? predicted the existence of quarks back in 1963 and gave them their silly name. We caught up with him recently as he promoted his new book, “The Quark and the Jaguar.” Q. OK. so why'd he call them A. Because if it hadn’t been found, the theoretical physicists would have had to join Amway or find some other form of “geeberdongers”? A. He says he just liked the sound of “quarks.” Later he found a literary reference. He was perusing James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”and saw a reference to “three quarks for Muster Mark.” Though he says the right pronunciation is not “kwark” but “kwork.” Q. Do these things like quarks really exist, in reality, or are scientists just coming up with a theoretical model to satisfy their craving to understand the universe? A. They’re real all right. Gell-Mann saysit’s possible to detect quarks by bouncingelectrons off protons or neutrons. The pattern of deflection shows that a proton or a neutronis actually made up ofthree distinct particles. Those are the quarks. As for whetherthis is reality or just a model ofreality, Gell-Mann says, “People who have taken philosophy courses seem to be worried about this. I don’t know the difference. We describe reality as best we can. As far as we know, it is reality,” Child's play. Writers Group physics — you do have some. “quarks,” and not, say, plus-? and minus-'; equals plus-] — there’s your positive charge — and for a neutron it’s plus-?3 and minus-'; and minus-'s equals 0 That's why the neutron is neutral Szilard and other U.S. atomic scientists funneled secrets to the Soviets’ A. “Baloney.” Q. Why hasn’t Gell-Mann become as famous as his late colleague Richard Feynman? A. Even in field like elementary particle physics it pays to be good-looking and charismatic and play the bongos. “He was a employment. They've banked heavily on there being a top quark. “It has to be there,” Gell-Mann says. In science, unlike, say, politics, it little too much of an egotist for me After a while, it got wearing. But | is not enough to simply declare that something is so. You must support your explanation experimentally sull liked him,” says Gell-Mann. Q. Why are physics geniuses and show why someother explanationisn’t as good. (This is whypsychoanalysis is suspect as a scientific enterprise.) Whatparticle physicists do these days, for the mostpart, is try to discover particles that no longer exist. Used to be, back near the beginning of time, there were all kinds ofinteresting doodads just lying around. Big particles, powerful particles, particles with chicken pox, etc. But the Big Bang ruinedall that. The cosmos cooled down,particles decayed, now we're stuck with what Gell-Mann calls the dregs of the universe. Basicallyall we've got left in the wild are electrons, photons, neutrinos, gravitons (predicted but never. found), and two types of quarks, called U and D quarks, for “up” and “down.” Butin high-energyparticle accelerators it is possible to cook up some ofthe types ofparticles that used to exist. WHERE'S QUARKO? Help’ Quarks & his'deg Stansebettom are losf inthe Subatomic maftix! Can you And Shon | (for ages 5 dup. Promefer spatial cognizance & squinting”) Richard Thompsonillustration Physicists had found another pair of quarks, which they named “strange” and “charmed.” Then came the discovery of another quark, dubbed the bottom quark. Quarks always comein pairs. Thus for years physicists have searched for the top quark to go with the bottom quark. They foundit. Theory triumphed. Q. Howdo we knowthere’s not something more elementary than a pickiest pets until I got Guinea pigs. Any suggestions? By DEBORAH LAWSON Knight-Ridder Newspapers Here are answers to some of the more interesting questions sent in by readers, —__ 2 eee day. Fat deficiencies in many commercial dog rations lead to dry, itchy skin and poor coats. A bit of Vitamin E oil spread gently on the area works wonders for human and animal skin abrasions, The pharmacist can order a bottle of the oil or squeeze it from a human Vitamin E supplement gelatin capsule, Once the rawness is gone and healing 1s complete, try the dog breeders’ trick of spreading Preparation H on the affected area to promote quick hair regrowth Q. | thought my cats were the . Q. What can | do for my shep- herd-sized mixed-breed that scratches herself raw? I treat her regularly for fleas. The sore spots take forever to heal. A, If the vet says there's no medical cause, and has checked for a “grass allergy,” which is sometimes overlooked, try adding one teaspoon to one tablespoon (based on the dog’s size) of corn oil to the pet's ration once a A. These finicky fellows refuse food if they don’t like the taste or texture and refuse anything dirty. Try various quality brands. To protect rations and water from waste contamination, put food in a cup or bin suspended from the crate side and water in a hanging bottle with a sipper tube. Clean both containers daily. Don’t put food on the cage floor. You should provide washed, fresh greens or carrots daily and have rock salt available. Q. My dog has a disgusting habit of eating the droppings in the cat's litter box. Is this simply revolting to watch or can it hurt the dog? A. Many dogs doeat cat feces, and it can hurt them to consume feces containing internal parasites or decayed matter, Most dangerous, though, is the repeated ingestion of the cat litter, particularly the clay kind, clinging to the feces. This accumulates in and clogs the digestive tract, which causes swelling, inflammation and, in some cases, cuts the blood supply to the larger portion of the intestines, Get a covered or enclosed litter and general relativity, as a sleek, groomed, well-dressed German quark? A. Wedon’t. But Gell-Mann suspects there isn’t. “I think it’s clear that the quarks are as elementary as the electron,” he says. If quarks are composites, electrons have to be composites. Andelectrons don’t look like composites, because they'reall exactly the same, a strong indicator that they are truly fundamental. Q. Why do protons have a Q. No, but you want to be asked. A. You'reright. Here goes. A proton is two Uquarks and a D. A neutron is one Uand two Ds. The charge of the U is plus-% and the charge of the D is minus-", So for a proton, Gell-Mann tells the caller, the charge is plus- 74 and the electron in any of his calculations,” Gell-Mann says. Q. That sounds dumb. A. It’s all relative. Joel Achenbach write this column weekly. Write to him in care of the Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th ST., NW, Washington, D.C. 20071-9200 its name, it isn’t made from coal. It THE GREEN CONSUMER Just in time for summer, the electric utility industry lip over or place it in a spot the dog cannot reach Q. | use chain link collars in obedience class and when walking my big dog. Is there any way to believe. The industry — through the Edison Electric Institute, a trade to prevent their ruining the neck hair? A. Cut sections wide enough to cover your pet's neck fromther- mal underwear legs. Use kids’ thermals or adult thermals’ sleeves or colorfast tights with Lycra for small pets, Slip one of these circlets over the pet's head to protect the neck underthe collar. Make a batchof them so you can wash them regularly. These stretchy “hoops” (made from sleeves or tights) also work as snoods, Another reader wrote to pro- vide another pet use for a human garment. To prevent birdseed husks that fall through the bars at the bottomofthe cage from getting on the floor, slip the elastic top of a pair of panty hose over the cage bottom and bring it up a few inches jabove the feeding cups, Tie the legs in a tight knot close to the cage base and snip off the dangling material Deborah Lawsonis the pet columnist for the Philadelphia Inwrite to her c/o no charge? A. You really want to know? ere’s a deal that doesn’t come along every day: wants to help you trade in your smoky, charcoal-fired barbecue grill in favor of a clean, green, electric-powered version. quirer; positive charge and neutrons have into exile in the United States and, after his wife died, didn’t take good care of himself. By then Einstein wasfar out of the physics mainstream. “He never tned to put Electric grills no greener than charcoal box that the dog cannot open or PETS Einstein is that of a disheveled old coot. Einstein did his great work, developing the theories of special professor. But he was later forced Fat deficiency in diet can be cause of pet's dry, Itchy skin Guinea pigs are finicky eaters always rumpled professors in baggy sweaters and sneakers and unkempt hair? A. They're not. Gell-Mann, at 64, is a dapper fellow. He’s also annoyed that the public image of The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, PA 19101. At least, that’s what it wants you group — is promoting plug-in grills by appealing to consumers’ environmental consciousness Because electric grills emit fewer smog-producing ingredients than grills that burn charcoal, the industryis claiming that its product is better for the environment. Electric grills are 18 times more efficient than charcoal grills, says the institute. Someutilities are even offering coupons worth up to $50 toward the price of an electric grill, But hold onto your burgers for a moment. The electric industry's claims are full of, well, hot air. True, electric grills do burn cleaner, But that’s not the whole Joel Makower Universal Press Syndicate cleaner or bakery, for example — grills are hardly an eco-villain. Of course, exactly how polluting your grill is depends a lot on how you barbecue. For example, if you pour starter fluid on coals before lighting them. you're sending needless smog-creating ingredients into the atmosphere The greener way 1s to use an electnestarter cotl to heat the coals, Even better is a chimney starter — a simple metal cylinder sold in many hardware stores that allows you to light coals with a crumpled-up piece or two of newspaper. Both methods eliminate the needfor starter fluid. Similarly, you will do the nght thing if you avoid buying charcoal pre-soaked in starter fluid, including the “self-starting” versions in which youlight the comes from pieces of waste wood that are ground up and pressed into briquettes. Some food starch may be added as a binder. One thing that isn’t particularly green is mesquite wood, which many cooks add to coals to provide foods with a smoky flavor favored by some. Mesquite, a slow-growing tree found in parts of the southwestern U.S. and Mexico, lives among ancient cactus forests. Those forests are being cut down by mesquite-wood harvesters Also destroyed in the process are vast tracts of ironwood, another old-growth species that can live up to 800 years. Both mesquite and ironwoodplay a cnitical role in the ecological health of desert ecosystems. What about propane gas-powered grills? Propane is a relatively clean-burning fuel that emits few pollutants. It’s a pretty green choice, These grills use no charcoal; most use a layer of lava rocks to help disperse heat. I'm not aware of any harm caused by collecting lava The bottom lineof all this 1s that electric-powered grills arent much better than any other kind. There are trade-offs for all kinds of grills Electricity, charcoal and propane each have some environmental picture. What about the pollution generated by electric utilities? That electricity has to comefrom somewhere — a coal- or oil-fired power plant, for example, or a hydroelectric dam or nuclear reactor. All create pollution or inflict other environmental damage And how much pollution do paper bag itself. polluting chemicals, (Why that low-polluting fluid isn’t sold create enough pollution to worry about charcoal grills really cause in the first place? Compared to some everywhere 1s another matter.) Again, starting coals without any fluid 18 best There's nothing particularly polluting about charcoal. Despite Joel Makower 1s editor of The Green Consumer Letier, based in Washington, D.C other pollution sources — automobiles, gas-powered lawn mowers, and your fnendly local dry Residents of southern California have another choice: buying oneof the brands of lighter fluid specially formulated for sale there. State law requires that products sold there contain a much lower level of impacts But if you do it nght, you won't So go ahead, gnill away without guilt, Just don't burn yourself |