Baker report, 1968 congressional hearings

data"),1 Powers (1967), McDonald (1967), Hynek (1966), and others have concluded that overwhelming evidence exists
that a truly anomalistic phenomenon is present.
Of course, there are numerous others who have come to a completely opposite conclusion; in fact, it becomes almost a
matter of personal preference: it is possible for one to identify all of the anomalistic data as very unusual manifestations of
natural phenomena. No matter how unlikely it is, anything is possible -- even a jet plane reflecting the sun in direct
opposition to the laws of optics. I'm sometimes reminded of the flat earth debates that I organized 10 years ago in my
elementary astronomy courses at UCLA. Some students became so involved in justifying their positions-- either flat or
spherical -- that they would grasp at even the most improbable argument in order to rationalize their stand.
1Except in app. 3 to this report -- a paper supplied by Dr. Sydney Walker III, concerning a hypothetical case.
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Mr. Roush. Dr. Baker, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm going to have a brief recess here.
Dr. Baker. Certainly.
Mr. Roush. There is a motion to recommit the military construction bill, and I would like to vote on it. None of my
colleagues are here right now, so we will declare a very brief recess, and I shall return as quickly as I can.
(Whereupon a short recess was taken for a floor vote.)
Mr. Roush. The committee will be in order.
Dr Baker, you may proceed.
Dr. Baker. Thank you.
Personally, I feel that it is premature for me to agree that the hard and soft data forces the scientific community to give
overriding attention to the hypothesis that the anomalistic observations arise from manifestations of extraterrestrial beings.
On the other hand, I strongly advocate the establishment of a research program in the area of anomalistic phenomena -- an
interdisciplinary research effort that progresses according to the highest scientific standards; that is well funded; and that is
planned to be reliably long term. The potential benefit of such a research project to science should not hinge solely on the
detection of intelligent extraterrestrial life; it should be justified by the possibility of gaining new insights into poorly
understood phenomena, such as ball lightning, cometoid impact, and spiraling meteorite decay.
There is practical value in such research for the Military Establishment, as well. Let us suppose that something similar to
the "Tunguska event" of 1908 occurred today, and that it was Long Island in the United States, rather than the
Podkamenaia Tunguska River Basin in Siberia that was devastated by a probable comet impact. Would we misinterpret this
catastrophic event as the signal for world war III? What if another "fireball procession," such as occurred over Canada on
February 9, 1913, repeated itself today, and the low-flying meteors were on nearly polar orbits that would overfly the
continental United States. Would we interpret the resulting surveillance data as indicating that a fractional orbital
bombardment system (FOBS) had been initiated in Russia? My knowledge of our Air Force sensors, both current and
projected (see Baker and Ford (1968)), indicates that they are sufficiently sophisticated so that they would probably not
react prematurely and signal a false alarm -- although a careful study of this point should be made. On the other hand, there
may exist other anomalistic sources of data that might give rise to a false alarm and perhaps provoke us either to deploy our
countermeasures, or even to counterattack.
Before I enumerate the specific benefits this research might confer upon various scientific disciplines, allow me to digress
briefly on the subject of soft data. The primary reason that I have avoided the introduction of soft data into my
photographic studies and have not involved myself in the analysis of eyewitness reports (such as the excellent ones given
by Fuller (1966)), is that I have been unable to develop a rational basis for determining the credibility level for any given
human observer. Although they lie outside the field of my own scientific competence, I feel that credibility evaluations of
witnesses
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