Most scientists and mental health professionals explain these experiences by factors such as suggestibility (e.g. false memory syndrome), sleep paralysis, deception, and psychopathology.
[3] Skeptic Robert Sheaffer sees similarity between some of the aliens described by abductees and those depicted in science fiction films, in particular Invaders From Mars (1953).
[4] Unidentified flying objects (UFOs), alien abduction, and mind control plots can also be part of radical political apocalyptic and millenarian narratives.
Skeptic Michael Shermer proposed that the ubiquity of camera phones increases the burden of evidence for such claims and may be a cause for their decline.
[citation needed] According to John E. Mack, a psychiatrist who gave credence to such claims, most of those who report alien abductions and believe their experiences were real are sane, common people, and psychopathology was associated only with some cases.
Widespread publicity was generated by the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case of 1961, culminating in a made-for-television film broadcast in 1975 (starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons) dramatizing the events.
Works by Hopkins, novelist Whitley Strieber, historian David M. Jacobs and psychiatrist John E. Mack presented alien abduction as a plausible experience.
Jacobs and Hopkins argued that alien abduction was far more common than earlier suspected; they estimate that tens of thousands (or more) North Americans had been taken by unexplained beings.
There had been anecdotal reports of phantom pregnancy related to UFO encounters at least as early as the 1960s, but Budd Hopkins and especially David M. Jacobs were instrumental in popularizing the idea of widespread, systematic interbreeding efforts on the part of the alien intruders.
Niall Boyce writing in The Lancet called him "a well-meaning man uncritically elaborating on tales of alien abduction, and potentially both cementing and constructing false memories".
Due to Mack's belief and subsequent promotion of the claims of those he interviewed, his professional reputation suffered, prompting Harvard to review his position in 1994.
[21] These child-reports often feature very specific details in common with reports of abduction made by adults, including the circumstances, narrative, entities and aftermaths of the alleged occurrences.
[32] Although different cases vary in detail (sometimes significantly), some UFO researchers, such as folklorist Thomas E. Bullard[33] argue that there is a broad, fairly consistent sequence and description of events that make up the typical "close encounter of the fourth kind" (a popular but unofficial designation building on J. Allen Hynek's classifications).
[35] As the alleged abduction proceeds, claimants say they will walk or be levitated into an alien craft, in the latter case often through solid objects such as walls, ceilings or a closed window.
[34] It shares vivid hallucination-like mental visualization with the envisioning procedures, but during staging the abductee interacts with the illusionary scenario like a role player or an actor.
These four types of events are:[6] Chronologically within abduction reports, these rarer episodes tend to happen in the order listed, between the medical examination and the return.
[6] After allegedly displaying cold callous disregard towards the abduction experiencers, sometimes the entities will change drastically in behavior once the initial medical exam is completed.
[6] Bullard notes five general categories of discussion that occur during the conference "phase" of reported abduction narratives: An interrogation session, explanatory segment, task assignment, warnings, and prophecies.
People who believe they have been abducted by aliens usually have previous New Age beliefs, a vivid fantasy life, and suffer from sleep paralysis, according to a 2003 study by Harvard University.
[44] Due to the extensive use of hypnosis, and other methods which they view as being manipulative, skeptics explain the abduction narratives as false memories and suggestions.
[45] Alleged abductees seek out hypnotherapists to try to resolve issues such as missing time or unexplained physical symptoms such as muscle pain or headaches.
This usually involves two phases, an information gathering stage, in which the hypnotherapist asks about unexplained illnesses or unusual phenomena during the patients' lives (caused by or distortions of the alleged abduction), followed by hypnosis and guided imagery to facilitate recall.
[46] Seven steps are hypothesized to lead to the development of false memories:[45] Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack counters this argument, noting "It might be useful to restate that a large proportion of the material relating to abductions is recalled without the use of an altered state of consciousness, and that many abduction reporters appear to relive powerful experiences after only the most minimal relaxation exercise, hardly justifying the word hypnosis at all.
"[47] There have been a variety of explanations offered for abduction phenomena, ranging from sharply skeptical appraisals, to uncritical acceptance of all abductee claims, to the demonological, to everything in between.
[48] Mack was unconvinced by piecemeal counterclaims, however, and countered that skeptical explanations naturally need to "take into account the entire range of phenomena associated with abduction experiences", up to and including "missing time", directly contemporaneous UFO sightings, and the occurrence in small children.
[49] Putting aside the question of whether abduction reports are literally and objectively "real", literature professor Terry Matheson argues that their popularity and their intriguing appeal are easily understood.
After experiencing the frisson of delightful terror one may feel from reading ghost stories or watching horror movies, Matheson notes that people "can return to the safe world of their homes, secure in the knowledge that the phenomenon in question cannot follow.
Matheson writes that when compared to the earlier contactee reports, abduction accounts are distinguished by their "relative sophistication and subtlety, which enabled them to enjoy an immediately more favorable reception from the public".
Seraphim Rose, who devotes a whole chapter in his book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future[54] to the phenomena of UFOs and abductions, which, he concludes, are manifestations of the demonic.
Abduction researcher Brian Thompson claims that a nurse reported to him 1957 in Cincinnati she encountered a 3-foot-tall (90 cm) praying mantis-like entity two days after a V-shaped UFO sighting.