Nick Popein the documentary “ETs Among Us 3”:
To any skeptic who says, ‘Well, these are just stories, these are just accounts,’ hell, life is just stories, life is just accounts. The entire criminal justice system, for example, is based on eyewitness testimony. When did we stop thinking eye witness testimony was important? We put, and rightly so, a vast amount of stock in testimony. Why shouldn’t we do so when that testimony comes from someone who says they’ve seen a UFO or they’ve had an alien abduction experience?’
Maybe because too often, this is not eye witness testimony. In fact, way too often it’s the polar opposite: testimony that has been “recovered” from a hypnotic regression. From an excellent article in Psychology Today by Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D:
Problems with hypnotically enhanced memory include the possibility that a "recovered" memory is incomplete, inaccurate, or based on a leading suggestion. There also might be hypermnesia or confabulation—filling in the gaps with false material that supports the subject’s self-interest. Also, personal beliefs and prejudices can influence how an event was initially encoded and/or how the subject interpreted it during recall. More alarming is “memory hardening,” which occurs when a hypnotically induced false memory seems so real to the subject that he or she develops false confidence in its accuracy. It cannot be distinguished from genuine memories.
Today, the consensus among memory researchers is that memory is not recorded. Rather, it's constructed from many sources, such as experience, beliefs, and personal schemata. Therefore, hypnosis will not necessarily restore "forgotten" parts. Over the years, scientific support for the technique has eroded significantly, especially after many cases of hypnotically refreshed memory of "repressed" sexual abuse during the 1980s and 1990s were proven to be fabricated (Paterline, 2016)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/201809/forensic-hypnosis-more-cons-pros
The US court system has dealt with these issues when it refers to “hypnotically refreshed memory”:
There are also problems associated with the two methods commonly employed, regression and suggestion. With regression, it is impossible for even a highly trained psychologist or psychiatrist to know when the patient is reliving an actual memory or confabulating. With suggestion, the problem lies in the patient's tending to accept the events suggested during hypnosis as actual facts. For instance, the patient will fill in any gaps in his or her memory with those suggested by the hypnotist. To further compound the problem, the patient may not be able to discriminate which of his or her memories occurred in hypnosis and which memories were from his or her previous normal waking state.
https://www.uakron.edu/dotAsset/f2164baa-65fa-470a-90a3-56c600738108.pdf
I think we should take a fresh look at the whole topic of “hypnotically enhanced memory.” That phrase in itself is troubling. Since all roads lead back to Hellier Season 2 for me, I recognize that was an experiment done with a willing subject which still produced emotional trauma. How many more willing subjects of varying degrees of suggestibility, the main component of a successful hypnotic regression, have been traumatized by well-meaning but ideologically determined practitioners? And how much of our current data base on abductions and even contactees has been hypnotically enhanced or refreshed? For me, all cases of hypnotically enhanced memory have an asterisk after them until this subject is addressed.