Budd Hopkins is a world-renowned artist, author, and pioneer UFO abduction researcher. Having investigated well over 700 cases, he now heads the Intruders Foundation, a nonprofit, scientific research and support organization. Taken together, his three books, Missing Time, 1981, Intruders, 1987, and Witnessed, 1996, are widely regarded by researchers and skeptics alike as comprising the most influential series of books yet published on the abduction phenomenon. These works, Hopkins' lectures, and his other presentations have been responsible for bringing a number of other noted researchers-David Jacobs, John Carpenter, Yvonne Smith, and John Mack, among others-into this extraordinary area of specialization.
Junk Science is the proper designation for the many outlandish, irrelevant and unsupported hypotheses debunkers have employed over the years to dismiss UFO abductions (some of which I will discuss in future articles). Non-junk Science - the real thing, based upon the scientific method - begins by amassing and studying all the accurate, relevant data before any serious hypothesizing takes place.
I will concentrate instead on what information we can derive from their accounts that might bear on the question of the moral nature of the UFO phenomenon. Are the UFO occupants, as they are described by their abductees, good or bad, friends or foes, or is the situation just not reducible to such terms?
Budd Hopkins' cases -- people who believe they have been abducted by aliens. Excerpts from interview by PBS NOVA.
Interview with Budd Hopkins, leading abduction researcher and author.
After decades of dealing with debunkers' attacks upon anyone reporting UFO abductions, I am still amazed at the ill-informed and often cruel nature of these published assaults. I am not referring here to diatribes against investigators like myself, because, as Harry Truman pointed out, to be in the kitchen involves a certain amount of heat. Instead, I mean attacks against the abductees themselves, the innocent men, women and children who have dared to report their suspicions of ongoing UFO
"Anyone familiar with the subject is aware that UFO abduction reports almost always include accounts of physical examinations performed inside the craft. The abductee usually lies naked and immobile on a flat table while one or more of a wide variety of physical operations are carried out. There is, however, one virtually universal detail in these procedures that has never, to my knowledge, been commented upon in the literature: the abductee never seems to feel any degree of shame or embarrassment about his or her nudity."
Readers familiar with the writings and lectures of the late Dr. Allen Hynek may recognize in the above title an expanded version of one of his most quoted bon mots, "Science is not always what scientists do." After viewing the recent Nova program which systematically and outrageously distorted the UFO abduction phenomenon and my work in the field, it's fair to say that Nova has abandoned its right to be thought of as either objective, balanced, or scientific.
Over a decade ago Budd Hopkins founded the Intruders Foundation as a nonprofit organization with four basic goals: To provide sympathetic help, understanding and personal investigation for those reporting UFO abduction experiences. To carry out systematic research into the abduction phenomenon through a careful study of its patterns and resulting physical and psychological evidence. To mount an extensive program of public education about the phenomenon. To develop a cadre of trained professionals in various fields to carry out all of these projects.