"Ovnis Les Agents du Changement"A book by Fabrice Bonvin |
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In 1989, Fabrice Bonvin [1] sees a ballet of lights in the sky. Do not look for a scientific approach of this: visual angles, observation duration, situation plan and other basic elements are missing, it only remains the author's feeling of having been a "privileged" observer, which is obviously not the case, especially if one believes the grossly exaggerated figure given by the author himself some pages further: according to the United Nations, he says, there have been 150 million UFO sightings, the real figure is to be found in surveys and to be undervalued down to 10%, which would be these "unexplainable" sightings which intrigue the author.
For Fabrice Bonvin, there are three components in all this: that of the physical UFOS, that of the "psychic" UFOS which manipulates the minds of the crowds, and the UFOs as symbolic system. He laments that the studies are done, according to him, only on the physical aspects of UFOs, which he sees as a victory of materialism, of which he thinks that it gives a only a limited comprehension of the phenomenon.
Actually, it has been ages that this anthem has been sung, particularly in France by authors such as Jacques Vallée, Jean Sider and of many followers, who had taken on the matter from the American John Keel [2], who himself had read Reich and Jung, who themselves etc... as far away in time as to Charles Fort.
The mechanism at work here has a multiple base of which a part is simplistic.
Let's suppose that a plane passes by in the sky. It would not come into you to suggest that it is not a physical object, because you know that planes physically exist. But when people see a UFO in the sky, they "do not know" if it is physical or not. And as it passes, without losing more bolts on your head than it is usually does, and unless you were taken on board a UFO previously, which seems rarer than to travel by plane, it may be that you make the conclusion that the UFO is not "physical".
This has a cost, not the least: you will have to imagine a parallel world, an hoc "interdimensionality", from which these non-physical objects are coming. The main benefit of the reasoning it is that nobody would dare to bother you by asking for physical evidence of this non-physical world.
Moreover, if some guy says he was into the UFO, or that he burnt his shirt on its exhaust pipes, you are ready to fight back: this unphysical UFO has the capacity to appear physically. Add a pinch of philosophical questioning on what is real and what is not it, utter some giggles on the topic of nuts and bolts (*), dilute with mysterious influences which would be at the base of the religions, from the invention of agriculture to stories of people crossing walls, do not burn this with any science, add pieces of presumably exemplary "cases" of non-physical UFOs, fairies, goblins, angels and demons, and your thesis is ready.
Let's see the mechanisms at work in the demonstration by Fabrice Bonvin with more attention.
If you think that some among the mass of UFO sighting reports could be satisfactorily explained by extraterrestrial visitors as their cause, this is because you are victims of the opinion makers. Dialectical trick, tedious: if you do not see that there is a social classes struggle, that proves that there is one, as you are yourself the living proof of the existence of the bourgeoisie which denies the social classes struggle. If you do not accept the concept of being largely controlled by your sub consciousness, you do what the theory predicts: you resist. By this you prove the truthfulness of the theory that your sub consciousness pushes you into resistance against reality.
If you think that extraterrestrial visitors do come here, you are a weirdo, emotional and paranoid [p.27], you are an "irresponsible paranoiac" [p.25] just as major Keyhoe [3] was, because the US Air Force told us he was. Curiously the author seems to omit to indicate whether the US Air Force would have considered his own theory to be judicious, rational and reasonable. "To make arrows of any wood" is the expression used in France about this sort of things.
In contradiction with his idea of an "pro-extraterrestrial" propaganda, the author recalls (for example page 46 to 49, pages not deprived of contradictions) that military and media propaganda was rather to ridicule the notion of extraterrestrial visits.
NICAP is criticized for having dared "to put pressure on the Congress." Actually, NICAP above all made field investigations, and not just ufopolitic as the author wants us to believe, and without the investigations by these ufology groups which indeed did not admit the rather constant public dismissal of the topic by US Air Force and made a point of letting it know, Fabrice Bonvin would quite simply had nothing to write a book on.
If you think that extraterrestrial visitors do come here, you are victims of science fiction movies. For the author, an inversion of the causes and effects is nothing to worry about, science fiction is the cause of the theory of the extraterrestrial visits and not the other way round, or at least, it is the reason why people of the general public - an entity described as easy to manipulate at wish - do not find the idea of the extraterrestrial visitors ridiculous enough. Well, if this is the sort of reasoning to do, I can easily propose that Fabrice Bonvin read Philip K. Dick too much without perceiving the humor and dispair in it, or attended one too many Matrix movie or was hit on the head by one too many Keelian book.
The logic at work here:
Alternate theory which is not anything truly different, and one can really wonder whether it is not precisely the most popular theory which prevails in the French UFO book production these last years!
I must read this old lie once again: if ufologists hold on to their extraterrestrial visitors, that's because they are nor aware of the existence of other ideas on the UFO problem. This is laughable. All the proponents of the ET visitors theory are perfectly knowledgeable on the other theories. If there is ignorance, it is that of Fabrice Bonvin who is not informed or does not take into account the objections presented many times against the theories of the "other dimensions" and "non-physical worlds", "ultraterrestrials" and other "illusions of spacecraft manufactured by an intelligence we do not exactly know of". The many and fatal objections with these theories have been formulated and discussed at length since decades, they still will be here.
It is not the number of people who accept it that makes a theory good or bad. The theory of the extraterrestrial visits is not the cause of the theory of the extraterrestrial visits. The cause is the unit which gives weight to this theory. That people accept it in is an effect, not a cause. A theory is not rejected according to the number of people who divide it or not, it is rejected or defended on the arguments and the evidence it offers.
The fallacious reasoning is represented on temporal bases too, I quote [p.49]: "... one finds, nowadays, the same hypothesis as 40 years ago. This is proof that ufological research is pathetically blocked, the blame is on the internal quarrels and the majority's politically correctness of the ETH which has paralyzed any will to explore other tracks."
Actually, if these other tracks, according to the belief of the author, "do not make it", it is quite simply because they produce no scientific payload, which has major reasons, and not because this alleged "paralysis" allotted to the concept of extraterrestrial visits. The "internal quarrels" are precisely the proof of the living and sound controversy, of the absence of the alleged "oppressing ETH majority" and not the proof of the impossibility to venture on other tracks!
The author himself indicates the absence of this oppression, quoting for example the "5 reasons against the ETH" by Jacques Vallée - that I answer elsewhere [5] (see also [6]), and I would thus not take again these points in detail - but while omitting to account for the complexity of Vallee's thought, as he also authored "5 reasons for the ETH". Moreover, as opposed to what Fabrice Bonvin indicates, Jacques Vallée is not the first to have thought of arguments against the notion of the extraterrestrial visitors, and does not so formally exclude the ETH either.
Fabrice Bonvin thinks that "the definitive argument" [p.56] against the extraterrestrial visits is that they are not just a modern phenomenon. Same trick: every single story of the ancient times is accepted as fact, there is a complete lack of questioning on the causes or even the reality behind the ancient stories. This is "to make as if" they were well extraterrestrial visits, then, by a logic which escapes to me, to pose in theory that extraterrestrial visitors would visit us only today, and to deduce their inexistence from it! Actually, no one should reasonably make the least postulate on the visitors of the past, a pre-scientific past too easily exploitable to do some fishing of "facts which are appropriate" that one thinks to be largely beyond questioning. I propose [6] and [7] two examples of these so-called "facts", used by Jacques Vallée or others to develop similar theses against the extraterrestrial visits; these two examples will probably illustrate in a comprehensible manner the exploitation mechanism used here and of the reasons to question it, at the very least. I is a fact dissimulated and denied by Fabrice Bonvin: "the enemy", i.e. those who do not laugh with him at the notion of extraterrestrial visits, is very informed on the arguments that are opposed to him, and refutes them. The adversary of the notion of the extraterrestrial visits does not address it and goes his way undisturbed on shaky foundations, without asking for review. On which side is dogmatism?
The "pro" arguments are omitted. The arguments presented "against the ETH" are well known, and accepted by the author without critical examination. I want to comment on some of them.
Fabrice Bonvin quotes J. Allen Hynek [p.49]: "In my eyes, it would seem ridiculous to think that an super-intelligence would cross the cosmic space to indulge in such stupid activities as making a car's engine stall, collecting samples of ground and terrorizing people."
Let us note right away that if Fabrice Bonvin finds this argumentation valid, it then falls onto him to show that his own theory cannot suffer the same criticism:
"It would seem ridiculous that the intelligences causing the UFOS, intelligence which is (....), would manufacture UFOS to indulge in stupid activities like causing a car's engine to stall, collecting ground samples and terrorizing people."
I was not the least surprised no answer on this in his book.
More seriously, Hynek's assertion was quite simply silly. It results from a confusion between cause and effects. If a UFO flies above your car and that the engine stalls, what is really stupid is to infer that this UFO has crossed the cosmic space with this as a "goal!" As much to say that your power supplier is stupid because you had power blackout, and that the goal of creating blackouts is a stupid activity for a power provider!
This qualifies as fallacious reasoning.
Fabrice Bonvin, quoting Vallée [p.54], says that the appearances of UFOs are deliberate. This is false, no serious work comes to support this idea, which actually rests on the idea that any witness of UFO "is chosen" as witness by the UFO. From the Belgian flap of UFO sightings to aircraft-UFO encounters, nothing justifies such a thing. What does Fabrice Bonvin make of all these sighting reports starting with "I never believed in flying saucers before, but one day, I saw..."? He ignores it, since they obstruct his thesis.
This is immediately followed by the assertion that the majority of UFO sightings have only one witness. Still in error, without justification. It is sufficient to refer to the sightings of 1954 in France to note that the majority of the observations have more than one witness!
A recurring error is also at work here, that of "the number". As many others, Fabrice Bonvin inflates his "figures" so that there are "too many UFOS", which by some process which is beyond me is supposedly a proof that they are not extraterrestrial. An example of this inflation is the invocation, made a thousand times by others also, of the Roper poll [p.55, p.196], taken literally in the purest UFO-Skeptic tradition, as supposed to prove that five million American had been abducted by aliens. This is advanced here without the least critical look, in involuntary or deliberate ignorance of all that was rejected on this matter. What is presented is only the ever rehashed calculation: "5 million alien abductions, let's see, its amounts to 50 million abductions in 50 years, and thus 30.140 extraterrestrial on the planet per day," what is quite naturally considered to be impossible. In the same manner, Fabrice Bonvin calculates that there are 959 UFO landings each year. The burden of proof falls on him! Actually, there hasn't been one year during which 959 extraterrestrial craft have landed. Everyone one is free to try to prove me wrong.
As it is generally the case with this sort of argumentation, the easy way consists in making believe that any UFO report corresponds to an extraterrestrial visit. A balloon passes, you wake up with the impression to have seen aliens at your bedside, a bird has produced a spot in one of your family photograph,... all is good: there are too many UFOs. And thus, none is extraterrestrial, "it" must be something else. It is here the same tiresome caricature of "the ETH" served again, in order to better ridicule it, and to be used for a reasoning in which the essential articulation is found wanting: what could possibly justify the idea that there must necessarily be a number ranging between X and Y of extraterrestrial visits?
When a theory does not appeal to you, and when you have to evidence to justify your rejection, isn't easiest to caricature the disliked theory to the point of making it appear ridiculous when it really isn't?
The process is used a everywhere in the book [p.107-108 for example]. The aliens say they came from planet Kazik, Clarion, Schare, Korendor, and other Zomdic, that is silly, isn't it! A rational person would examine these accounts, would check their veracity, would realize that there isn't any in it. But Fabrice Bonvin takes them as bona fide alien encounters, as these planet names are so funny and so appreciated to ridicule the ETH!
Let's see some of the "illustrating" cases.
And on and on; Fabrice Bonvin believes it all, but only to present his ridiculous deformation, obviously unacceptable, of the theory of the extraterrestrial visitors.
The casuistry is not presented systematically and its reliability and veracity are not evaluated. It is spread among the demonstration, in the form of "examples", just like Jacques Vallée did. The demonstration thus has the solidity of a house of cards.
For Fabrice Bonvin, "Men-in-Black" do exist. Better, they "share the same nature" with UFOs.
This is all supposed to be demonstrated by descriptions of "Men-in-Back". They are pale, they are in suits, their glance is deprived of emotions, they are telepaths, often bald people, they walk like robots, and so on.
The evidence of their existence? Well, all the MIB accounts are identical, except in details [p.77], says Fabrice Bonvin. They aren't!
Second evidence: a MIB visited Fabrice Bonvin. What about that? "Finally a solid MIB case", I'd like to say? Fabrice Bonvin is at a "contactees" conference in the 90's. A guy comes in. It is a MIB. The MIB looks at Fabrice Bonvin, and Bonvin is very afraid. Then he disappears "all of a sudden", while Fabrice Bonvin had looked elsewhere. He then wonders how he was the only one to have seen him and why he did not investigate the matter. Those are good questions!
Some particularly sorry pages follow on the "MIBs". Old hoaxes are summarized. Unverified anecdotes are reproduced from books by Jean Sider and others. But to Fabrice Bonvin, these are not hoaxes nor illusions. On the contrary, these stories are the proof that "MIBs are only one form of expression of the intelligence at the source of the appearances of UFOs." Proof of which nothing is offered: the MIBS "are", point. No need to investigate, deepen, doubt, it is enough to read and believe. All the MIBS accounts (there aren't that many) are considered realities by Bonvin!
Actually, if the reader takes the trouble to use his critical judgment and a bit of reason, he will quickly find an astonishing number of facts that promoters of Men-in-Black systematically hide.
I want to give some examples relative to the "Bonvin method" applied to his MIB cases:
For Fabrice Bonvin, quoting Jacobs, MIBs "systematically" use telepathy to communicate [p.219]. Not so! The author simply believed without checking to add an element to his thesis. An examination of the literature of MIB encounters which consists in a little more than one hundred of case only, shows that MIBs almost always speak with their voice, which is a normal voice most of the time besides, and sometimes only a monotonous or mechanical vote, or a normal voice but with a foreign accent.
The figures from my MIBCAT catalogue are:
| Non telepathic MIB: | 78 |
| "Telepathic" MIBs in the sense that "their mouth did not move": | 4 |
| Clearly telepathic MIBs: | 2 |
| MIBs with mechanical or unexpressive voice: | 8 |
| MIBs with a foreign accent: | 7 |
| MIBs that did not communicate: | 22 |
The counting is generous, since it rests on the reports, all the reports, without any filtering of frauds, inventions, confusions or poor information.
2 telepathic MIB out of 100 - 6 out of 100 if a "mouth which did not move when he spoke" is really telepathy - and Fabrice Bonvin calls that systematic telepathy!
Let's take the cases of allegedly convincing MIB of Fabrice Bonvin, which are noted in my catalogue also:
Maury Island: MIB talking just like you and me.
MIB in China: Does not talk at all.
Montiel: no telepathy.
Christiansen: no telepathy.
Bernard Bidault's MIB: Bernard Bidault hears a voice in his, admittedly!
William Shearer: the witness has the vague impression that they communicate by telepathy between them, but they use their voice to talk to him.
Herbert Hopkins: No telepathy.
Fabrice Bonvin: No telepathy.
There is no systematic telepathy at the MIB. To make fun of the aliens, Fabrice Bonvin quotes distorted data without critical judgment, without checking. Another example [p.337], MIBs according to Bonvin have a "quasi-Mongolian" face.
A chapter is a rehash of the old idea of Jacques Vallée, when he gave up the scientific approach (he explained this his book's introduction), a strict homage to "Passport for Magonia", the ideas coming from John Keel, which held them of... etc.
The idea is that UFOs are like fairies, goblins, angels, demons, of the past. It is an idea which rests on a large number of reasoning errors, selective sorting and filtering of UFO data and of fairies data in order to create apparent similarities, which rests on interpretations of fairies stories taken as factual while they are invented or allegorical, and that collapses by total absence of investigation of these stories. As I already developed this many times elsewhere, on the basis of Keel and Vallée's writings, I will not go into all the detail here.
"Goblins are domestic geniuses which put themselves at the service of men ready to control them," says Bonvin. No. Goblins are beings of legend who do not exist, they are simply beliefs, reorganized in the romantic times and Victorian times, and do not have more relationship with UFO sightings than sorcery has with aerospace industry.
"The intelligence at the source of the UFO phenomenon (and probably of other phenomena called "paranormal") is thus able to disguise as Martians, a primitive God, the Blessed Virgin, fleet of air vessels at the liking of the cultural and historical contexts...", writes Bonvin. No. Actually, the adversaries of the thesis of the extraterrestrial visitors lost foot with realities and think that gods, Martians, Blessed Virgin, goblins are all the same on the same level, empirical observations of real facts, and they are not at all worried to seek any commonplace explanations to fairies and goblins and accepts that their existence is proven, while all the same claiming an "absence of evidence" when "Martians" are the matter. This is quite simply a bias, the bias they claim to be attached to the thesis of the extraterrestrial visitors.
The accounts of fairies, djinns, goblins and devils are not a phenomenon which would be an ancient expression of the UFO phenomenon. They are not at all homogeneous in writing context, in description, in origin. Legendary creatures do not do what the author thinks at all. They sometimes kidnap little children - giants supposedly eat them - they sometimes tickle your feet at night, but the accounts are much richer and various and do not allow at all a parallel with UFO reports. They do not use telepathy: they talk like you and me. They do not use flying saucers and extremely seldom use any flying device. Some are tales of fictions written as such, others are personal accounts, others are compilations of "curiosities." They are generally deformed by the literary modes which invent them or recycle them, and put into an imagery centuries after having allegedly occurred. Some can be "ufologicaly investigated" in spite of the passing of time, and commonplace explanations can be found, confabulations and confusions can be sometimes be discovered, but authors like John Keel or Jacques Vallée do not do any such investigation. Some stories appear amazing, such as this one told by Wendt, a compiler of ancient marvelous stories and a source abundantly used by Vallée:
"Some few weeks before Christmas, 1910, at midnight on a very dark night, I and another young man (who like myself was then about twenty three years of age) were on horseback on our way home from Limerick. When near Listowel, we noticed a light about half a mile ahead. At first it seemed to be no more than a light in some house ; but as we came nearer to it and it was passing out of our direct line of vision we saw that it was moving up and down, to and fro, diminishing to a spark, then expanding into a yellow luminous flame. Before we came to Listowel we noticed two lights, about one hundred yards to our right, resembling the light seen first. Suddenly each of these lights expanded into the same sort of yellow luminous flame, about six feet high by four feet broad. In the midst of each flame we saw a radiant being having human form. Presently the lights moved toward one another and made contact, whereupon the two beings in them were seen to be walking side by side. The beings' bodies were formed of a pure dazzling radiance, white like the radiance of the sun, and much brighter than the yellow light or aura surrounding them. So dazzling was the radiance, like a halo, round their heads that we could not distinguish the countenances of the beings; we could only distinguish the general shape of their bodies; though their heads were very clearly outlined because this halo like radiance, which was the brightest light about them, seemed to radiate from or rest upon the head of each being. As we traveled on, a house intervened between us and the lights, and we saw no more of them."
Marsh gas? Fireflies? Angels? UFO with occupants? Invention? Fairies?
The point is: the so called "fairies stories" can be filtered and interpreted at will to defend any thesis, they are of very diverse natures, their explanations are also varied, and to reduce them as Jacques Vallée did to a universal type related to the UFOS, is not research. Valley had issued some careful warnings on this matter, but Fabrice Bonvin makes a dogma from Vallée's fairies and goblins without any use of critical sense and any research of his own in the matter.
 This is a fairie. |
 This is a flying saucer. |
According to Fabrice Bonvin, UFO sighting reports cannot be studied scientifically because one cannot bring a UFO to a laboratory [p.37].
The reasoning is false for a large number of reasons.
Any report, any phenomenon, regardless of the difficulty to comprehend or to sample "a piece of it" for the laboratory, can be approached in the respect of scientific methodology. The idea that there exists on one side stuff accessible to science and other side stuff not accessible to science is a false idea, which is derives from an erroneous understanding of the what the scientific method really is.
UFO sightings reports have been and are presently studied in the respect of scientific methodology by innumerable investigators, including academic scientists of course. Any UFO observation report, even the reported passing of a strange or apparently strange light in the sky is a legitimate subject of scientific investigation. Moreover, "bolts" from "flying saucers" were or are still analyzed in laboratories.
On the contrary, the disrespect or abandon of scientific methodology leads to the formulation of unfounded theses, whether in connection with UFO sighting reports or any other matter.
Fabrice Bonvin indicates: "an observation is never objective." [p.38 ] It is obviously a fruitless assertion, which results from a simplistic vision of what research is. The reading of a measurement device's counter by laboratory personal is not more or less objective than the observation a bird flying in the sky or a UFO experience. It is precisely this situation that justifies to stick to an approach respecting the principles of the scientific investigation. To note the subjectivity of any observation is a cliché, to learn what methods and principles can overcome such difficulties with regard to UFO sightings reports is to become a ufologist. The author himself reconsiders his assertion on subjectivity at the very nest page, a sign of poorly structured writing.
Fabrice Bonvin, by quoting, tries to convince the reader that UFO witnesses "are chosen by the UFO", which by mere logical humping is supposed to justify their non-extraterrestrial nature. Actually, this is again only a claim. It is very true that there exists UFO witnesses who say that the were "chosen" or felt such an impression, but there isn't the least work carried out to determine if this is a general characteristic of UFO witnesses. Of course, the fact that so many UFO witnesses do not feel "chosen", that so many reports are absolutely not comparable the ones to the others, because a "contactee" by "aliens of planet Lanulos", a UFO cult guru who claims to be the chosen ambassador of the aliens, a Belgian couple in car flown over by a large flying triangle, and an aircrew that encounters a UFO in the sky are not at all the same type of UFO sighting reports does not challenge the author into further thinking. Fabrice Bonvin does not practice the case by case approach when it could make his thesis inconsistent.
"The concept of an "ultraterrestrial" intelligence which would be at the origin of UFO displays does not exclude the extraterrestrial origin for some UFOs", Bonvin says. That is a familiar trait of the "non-extraterrestrial" theses on UFOs: "Do not criticize My precious thesis with facts pointing in the direction of extraterrestrial visitors, I will not discuss these, I admit them, some UFOS are extraterrestrial spaceships."
It still reinforces the caricatured idea that UFO witnesses "are predisposed". If the President of the United States is not contacted by aliens, it is because "he is not predisposed" [p.341]. Actually we do not lack predisposed Presidents that much, and many researchers whatever their opinions on UFOs precisely agree on at least on thing: UFO witnesses are a representative part of the population, there does not seem to be any social, religious or professional "predispositions" to become a UFO witness. Bonvin may not agree, since he labels "UFO" all and anything, for example his "millions of abductees."
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What mass media generally do, particularly in France, is not to convince us that we are visited by aliens, but to convince us that it is the mass media that want to convince us that we are visited by aliens. Actually, UFO witnesses are most of the time not at all "cultural sponges" who would then believe to see in the sky what was shown on TV or at the movies. |
William Becquette, says Bonvin, is this journalist who confused the shape and the displacement when listening to Kenneth Arnold [p.42]. Fabrice Bonvin quotes Bequette according to Pierre Lagrange. Bequette is said to have agreed to have been guilty of this confusion. It should be noted however that ufologist Ronald Story interviewed Bequette on this matter and he taught him that it was indeed Arnold who had spoken about flying saucers and that he did refer to the shape of the objects [11].
Fabrice Bonvin writes [p.31] that "as soon as 1946" the military "high brass" had set up "several study groups" aiming at finding the origin of UFOs. It is not correct. The first was Project SIGN and was started only on December 30, 1947. The next was Project Grudge, beginning on February 11, 1949, and the third, officially the last, was the New Project Grudge, soon renamed Project Blue Book and it starting in March 1952.
Fabrice Bonvin writes that the Betty and Barney Hill UFO was detected on the Peese AFB radar set [p.213]. It is inaccurate. Their radar detection was two hours later and 80 miles away from the Hill sighting location. This double divergence forbids to claim that Peese AFB has radar confirmation of the Hill experience. Besides, their unidentified echo was similar to that of a small plane in approach of the Air Base landing strip, detected on the landing strip approach radar.
Fabrice Bonvin gets irritated at "Clark's principle". This is actually about "Clarke, Arthur C.", the celebrated science fiction writer. The principle is: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Fabrice Bonvin presents this as "a desperate invention" by ufologists defending the extraterrestrial visitors thesis. Actually, Arthur C. Clarke never defended this thesis and its principle was born apart from the ufological debate. This principle is totally rational: it is the common sense aknowledgment that mistakes in interpretations necessarily occur when an encounter between civilizations having a noncontemporary technological development takes place. Arthur Clarke thus said that if we were to meet extraterrestrial beings, their machines, their behavior, their intentions would not be readily comprehensible for us, certain performances of their technology would appear as magic to us, which translates into "impossible according to our knowledge of physics". This thinking of common sense is validated by the observation that one can make by studying how human civilizations were victims of this perceptive ditch, now called "incommensurability", when they were confronted on first arrivals of explorers from ot er human civilizations.
Amazing assertions, distorted or without foundation are made. I can give only few examples, else my criticism would become bulkier than the criticized book.
Fabrice Bonvin discusses on hypnagogic hallucinations or "sleep paralysis" [p. 201]. He admits that this exists, but claims that it explains "only 50%" of the abductions stories. How was this figure computed? Why not 30% or 10% or 90%? We are left to wonder!
To reduce the weight of this explanation, he claims that episodes of hypnagogic hallucination can only occur to people who have symptoms of narcolepsy and catalepsy. This is utterly false, sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations happen to anyone without any particular pathology.
He contradicts himself on hypnosis, initially quoting opinions of "prominent specialists" who know that hypnosis is not worthy as a method to prove something [p.204], then by saying exactly the opposite [p.205]. Abductions revealed by hypnosis are "true abductions", he says. Why? Because they all tell the same thing, and because there are "the scars" on the abductees bodies. All of them? No counting, no quantitative argument is presented.
Finally, the chapter is a succession of opinion from the ones and the others, and the usual caricatured reductions of the hated ET theory: if you think that the extraterrestrial visitors are here, then, you must obligatorily also think that they remove abduct million people as it is said in the famous roper poll.
For these UFO reports with a markedly "extraterrestrial visitors" content, those that the proponent would perhaps point at, Fabrice Bonvin gets them off his shoulder with the comment that they are "disconcerting" but do not prove extraterrestrial activities. Why? Well, have a guess: because, with 5 million abductees, it is not normal that one did not capture an alien, naturally.
Does lack of hard evidence obstruct his on theory on UFOs? No, of course, because his theory is of such a nature that it does not need any evidence whatsoever.
According to Fabrice Bonvin, it is in the realms of quantum physics that "the psychic and physical world merge" [p.219]. Actually, it is a blatant distortion of what quantum physics is about. It does absolutely not authorize inventions of this kind. It is because quantum physics is little understood by laypersons that defenders of the paranormal and the ultraterrestrial and other alternate realities abuse its real content. When they need to justify just anything that is a little assured than the existence of an entire "other world", when they need to invent a "psychic world" that creates "physical objects" as by magic, they spoon within the quantum physics soup and the trick is done. Fabrice Bonvin uses this trick abundantly. Quantum physics is thus changed into a magical sandbox where any demand of evidence of the unnatural are supposed to rest.
This quantum pataphysic is necessary to make the magic of the "supraterrestrial intelligence" work.
We are now in the personal world of Fabrice Bonvin, it does not need a relation to reality anymore. All the criticisms formulated by Bonvin against the alien visitors theory are of course applicable a hundred times more to his own thesis, but, you guessed that, it is now pointless to ask for corroboration, evidence, or to underline inconsistencies, or to show any absurdity of what follows. It is now useless to talk planets, space travel, irrefutability, physical traces, UFO flaps, limitations of hypnosis, UFO sighting report investigations, all of this is useless when it comes down to the "superterrestrial intelligence."
What is this superterrestrial thing about? It is the possibility granted to a "superterrestrial intelligence" to do everything, without limits, it is Absolute Power. The benefit is that the "superterrestrial intelligence" explains everything: UFOs, Men-in-black, fairies, crop circles, hoaxers, angels, clairvoyance, contactees, "Out of Body Experiences, encounters with aliens, religions, shamanisms, the evolution, telepathy, all that is true but false, for all that is created by the "superterrestrial intelligence."
What is the "superterrestrial intelligence"?
It is very simple, as Bonvin puts it; in fact "new scientific discoveries" prove it: it is an intelligence which is "inside our planet" and that can do everything. It's Gaia, the noosphere, it is SIVA, it explains it all, it controls everything, it controls us, it does what it wants or rather, it does what Fabrice Bonvin chooses to think that it does.
Remember Fabrice Bonvin' claim: if the concept of extraterrestrial visitors exists, it is in error, because "this idea is not based on proof." [p. 27]. However, do not seek any proof of his own thesis in his book. It is all entirely speculative, at best, and an auto-demonstrative idea, vague enough to offer no angle to scientific approach, a "theory of everything" without possible refutation since the refutation could be allotted to the control exerted upon us by the "superterrestrial intelligence."
Now, what is the intent of the "superterrestrial intelligence?" It is to make us believe that we have extraterrestrial visitors. But why should we believe that?
Well, that's for saving the planet from misery and pollution, of course!
But how? How does producing faked aliens save the planet? Well, people who believe thes saw the aliens become preoccupied with the fate of the planet and thus start to save the planet, and when everyobdy has seen the aliens, we will all get busy saving the planet.
You see it now, Fabrice Bonvin's message is the same that was promoted by contactees in the Fifties, except that there are no real Venusians or residents of planet Kazik, neither any Ashtar Command, but of a "superterrestrial intelligence which wants to make us believe in the extraterrestrial visitors." Fabrice Bonvin's book is a modern counterpart of Adamski-type books, quite simply. There you go, a modern times contactee message! He believes that a "supraterrestrial intelligence" will solve the problems of our planet!
That is indeed a new religion.
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