Case file · Abduction
John E. Mack
Pulitzer-winning Harvard psychiatrist (1929–2004) who concluded that alien-abduction experiences deserved to be taken seriously.
1994 CE · 42.38, -71.10 · status: disputed
The account
Mack won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for a biography of T. E. Lawrence. From the early 1990s he studied abduction experiencers, founded the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (1993), and published 'Abduction' (1994) and 'Passport to the Cosmos' (1999). In November 1994 he interviewed the children of the Ariel School in Zimbabwe. A 1994–95 Harvard inquiry censured his methods but reaffirmed his academic freedom.
The sceptical view
Critics said his approach was credulous and that hypnosis and his own expectations shaped what experiencers reported.
Connections in the atlas
- David M. Jacobs
- Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens
- John E. Mack
- Budd Hopkins
- Whitley Strieber
- Ariel School
- Betty & Barney Hill