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by John Shirley Whenever I'm about to write about the UFO field,
I somehow feel I have to explain, in a paraphrase of the Cowardly
Lion: "I do, I do, I do believe in...UFOs." I mean, yeah, I do. I think
there's something there, in some cases. I don't exclude the ExtraTerrestrial
Hypothesis, okay? I merely want to use deduction, deducting the demonstrably
bogus to get at the truth; I'd like to exclude all the conceptual
"noise" in ufology so we can get a clear signal. And I just get so damn
frustrated with the field. Surely, I say to myself, they won't
believe that bullshit artist. (Insert your favorite UFO
bullshit artist there. Travis Walton?)
I recently read about Reverse Speech, sort of in passing.
I laughed and shook my head. The Aussie chap promoting this won't get
anywhere with this horseshit, I said to myself, with my usual ingenuous faith
in human nature. A little while later I published a piece attempting to explain
Roswell as an urban myth. One reader responded that I had failed to take into
account the "evidence" provided by Reverse Speech. Then I go to the
Sightings on the Radio website (I do love that site, because it's all there, the
hoakum as well as the stuff that just might be real, and it's updated often)
and they're obviously taking seriously "Researcher" David John Oates' claim
that he's used Reverse Speech to expose a disinformation agent. Well, the site
is very, you know, open ended. But there are other inklings that people out
there believe this stuff, and -
I am astounded.
I'm just amazed at the stuff that otherwise intelligent people
fall for, and Reversed Speech may yet bring me to the shining pinnacle of
amazement.
In reversed speech, you see, you record someone talking, then
you play it backwards, and you hear another message in the backward noise,
because (so we're told by RS's premiere salesman, Mr Oates) we're speaking
backwards at the same time as we're speaking forwards, but unconsciously,
you know: "...as we speak consciously, the brain is generating messages
arising from the unconscious. These messages occur constantly throughout
language and can be heard very clearly at least every 10 to 15 seconds
by simply playing a recording of normal speech in reverse..." Paul, you dig,
is dead.
Let's leave aside the fact that Oates, at his website, tells us
nothing of his academic background, if he has any. Let's leave aside his
designating himself a "hypnotherapist", a field which is in itself rank with
ludicrous claims. Let's put to one side the obvious: that when you listen to
the gibberish resulting from playing a tape backwards, you will inevitably hear
all kinds of familiar sounds, since it is made up of human vocalization,
and the rorschach-inkblot effect, just mentally filtering out what
doesn't fit your agenda, will let you imagine you hear messages. Let's
ignore the other gibberish here, the counterfeit quality of the
pseudo-scientific sounding short explanations at the Reverse Speech site
as to how the method works.
Leave that aside. Instead of going down that tiresome road,
let's just read the following inspiring message from Mr Oates: "I am about to
present to you a set of Keys that will unlock the mind, lay the human soul
bare, and open up a doorway to the infinite...a reliable and concise method to
access, hear and alter the blueprints of Mankind and to gain conscious control
of our evolution, possibly for the very first time..."
Is this method the e-meter, perhaps?
No, it's reverse speech. It does all that. It also, he says, "describes
the state of the human soul and our relationship with God."
Elsewhere in his site Mr Oates says he can't understand why, when he's
taken all this to universities and scientists, they refuse to even look
at his evidence. It's because they're not naive, Mr Oates. It's the
same reason they don't buy a ten dollar Rolex from a guy at a card
table set up on Times Square. They don't squander their
time going to get a Rolex expert to examine the cheap, tacky little watch and
confirm that it's a fake. They simply walk past the card table. And scientists
don't squander precious research time on people who say that their backward
tape recordings "lay the human soul bare and open up a doorway to the
infinite". Now, if Mr Oates had said, "I have found some indications
that there may be a correlation between some previously-unnoticed
sounds found in a reversed recording of human speech and unconscious states
of mind", some researchers might listen. I doubt there's even that
much to it, but they might look to see, just in case. But when he
claims his method "describes our relationship with God" anyone with
any experience in the world will instantly detect a tone, a manner, an
approach, characteristic of the would-be cult leader, or at least
a con artist working with silly, fuzzy New Age hyperbole.
Let's look at the small print on the site: "Reverse speech
(TradeMark sign) and its associated technologies have been developed solely
by...David John Oates who claims all ownership rights pertaining to these
techniques. These rights include, but are not limited to, ownership of the
trademark Reverse Speech, all intellectual property rights for theories and
analysis techniques of reverse speech..." etc. I wonder if Carl Jung
or Adler or Freud or Aristotle, for that matter, copyrighted and trademarked
their analysis techniques? Can one own an analysis technique? It's probably
important to you to own it if your analysis technique represents a commodity
that you are selling. "...it is strongly suggested that you purchase a copy of
David Oates' book: 'Reverse Speech: Voices from the Unconscious:'. Please
visit our Products Section." Conveniently click right there for the Products
Section, where you find seminars, tapes, etc etc etc. Things for sale.
Lots and lots of things for sale.
If it looks like a used car salesman, sounds like a used
car salesman, and smells like one, then, well...
Richard Hoagland, apparently, believes in Reverse Speech - here's a
guy, after all, who's used to seeing patterns where he wants to see them; faces
on Mars, artificial spires on the Moon. Hoagland apparently "confronted Greg
Beal" with the reverse speech analysis and Beal, who'd claimed, as "Kent", to
have seen color photos of the ruins of a Martian city, "broke down and
confessed that he was working for a disinformation unit in the Defense
Intelligence Agency". So we've got a fellow here, Beal, who made a bullshit,
unsubstantiated claim in the first place - and now he makes another one,
getting him another kind of attention (or possibly he is a shill cooperating
with the stage magician, Mr Oates); we're supposed to be dazzled when he
makes one absurd claim, then another.
Mr Oates' reversal messages, if the ones that come from Kent/Beal
are representative, are totally open to interpretation (if they exist
at all to an objective listener - and I doubt it): A forward statement,
"He said, It doesn't matter, you should have put the picture back
in there. (he said) we don't need the American public looking at these
pictures" becomes (supposedly), with reversal: "You see lamb beside the
scene/They see it on you. Been naughty when they grabbed the ship".
Right, you can clearly see what that means, can't you? Oates
can, anyway.
Compare Oates to Derrel Sims.
I read somewhere that Derrel Sims used to
sell a kind of super-hypnotic instantaneous method for "learning
martial arts in ten minutes". Sims turned you into a blackbelt instantly.
Just pay him and he'd do it. Once something like this becomes known
about a guy, you'd think that people would say, simply: "Since he
was hawking this obvously bogus instant martial arts, he is, therefore,
not likely to be trustworthy. Hence his claims about UFOs can't be trusted
either." I mean, the guy claimed to have fought hand to hand with an
alien. That's so ludicrous, coupled with the past in fraud, people
of course will no longer take him seriously, right? But he continues to be
asked to lecture about UFOs at MUFON meetings and elsewhere.
Oates claims that by listening to tapes of speech played
backwards he can - if you pay him enough - analyze your very soul. To me,
this has the same quality as the instant martial arts course.
It all has a particular quality: Absurdly high expectations
generated from a bold and striking sales speech with magical overtones. Stand
in the right colored lights, other people claim, and you'll be cured of cancer.
They really can make it sound good, too. But you're wise to that, sure, most
of us are. We listen to ads for 1-900 "psychics" on TV and we see a quality
about them, a little patter that sounds good, some apparent "testimony", and
we sneer when we see people taken in by it. But just make the same
technique a little more technical sounding, use the magic word "therapist",
invoke vague spirituality buzzwords, and apply it to something involving
machinery, reverse speech - and for some reason the same old snake oil
seems credible to the very person who sneered at the TV psychic.
If there was ever a field that desperately needed common sense, it
is ufology. UFOs - and any aspect of the paranormal. If you don't
step back and use common sense - you will be used, yourself, by the users
who're always waiting in the wings...
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