Behavior Whatever Happened to UFO's?

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

credentials who does come up with a clearly defined, specific proposal for study should be supported."

This conclusion has been bitterly denounced by the flying saucer buffs who have been making money from sensational writing and lecturing to gullible audiences, and collecting dues from the membership of their pseudo-science organizations. One prominent professor of atmospheric physics has been giving speeches in which he advocates that the federal government spend on UFO study amounts of money which would "dwarf" that spent on the space program.

Even though nearly a year has gone by since my work in this field ended, I continue to be astonished at the fervor with which many people hold views that are totally unsupported by objective evidence of any kind. Many people seem quite incapable of recognizing any distinction between what might be so and what actually is so. Some of these are charlatans, in my opinion, who profess belief in order to collect royalties from writing and fees from lecturing. But others are deeply sincere.

## THE CULTISTS

We ran into many more interesting cases than we could include in the report, already criticized by many for being too thick. There was a young airman, second class, at an Air Force base in New Mexico whose 19-year-old wife died suddenly of a heart attack. They were members of a flying saucer cult which gathered around and decided that the woman's spirit had gone to Venus on a flying saucer, and that she would want her body back when she returned. So they wrapped it in a sheet and stored it in a barn rather than having it properly buried. The police learned of this by a mysterious postcard from a woman in Spokane, Washington. At first they thought the card was a hoax, but investigation proved that the young woman's body had been by this time stored in that barn for about three weeks. The young airman had seen lots of flying saucers but had not reported any of them, saying: "I didn't know the Air Force was interested!"

In the spring of 1967 I was visited several times by a well-mannered man who claimed to be acting as agent for the Third Universe (we are the First,

and the Second is inhabited by beings that resemble polar bears, he said). He said he was authorized to negotiate a contract with the U.S. government by which they would teach us to make inter-stellar flying saucers for $3 billion. The first billion was to be paid after a demonstration to government officials at Dulles airport, the second after a major national laboratory had been built and our scientists and technologists had learned how to make flying saucers, and the third after they had trained our flight crews in interstellar navigation. He was specific down to the point of naming the bank in Arlington, Virginia, where the $3 billion was to be deposited.

He wanted me, in the interim, to pay him $3,000 as "earnest money" to be deposited in a particular bank in Western Colorado to the account of his organization, which was called the "Omnific Intelligence Continuum." Inquiry to that bank revealed that there really was such an account. Asked the size of the account the

banker cautiously said, "Small sums go in and out." Asked about membership of the organization the banker told me, "So far as I know Mr. X is the only member." Since part of Mr. X's story is thus verified, ought we now to believe everything he tells us?

## REAL OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE

The most vivid lesson that I learned from such experiences is what a narrow, wobbly line there is between real science and pseudo-science. So far as the public is concerned most of the science which they know about they do not understand. Very few people can state clearly the grounds for belief that the Earth goes around the Sun, rather than vice versa, or for that matter, for our belief that the Earth is a ball rather than flat. Coming to more modern instances, who among the many investors in the profitable semiconductor industries have the slightest idea how a transistor works really?

In the given circumstances most of the scientific ideas that are accepted by the public are accepted entirely on faith. To most people, completely lacking any basic understanding of underlying principles, the proposition that the configuration of the planets and stars at the time of our birth determines the course of events in our lives, seems no more unlikely or preposterous than many of the well-established truths of science which they do accept without understanding them. There are some 10,000 astrologers in America who make their living practicing astrology and only about 2,000 astronomers who live by practicing astronomy. If celestial matters were decided democratically by the members of both professions lumped together, then the "real" astronomers would always end up as a depressed minority.

Flying saucers and astrology are not the only pseudo-sciences which have a considerable following among us. There used to be spiritualism, there continues to be extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, and a host of others. Hanson W. Baldwin in the "New York Times" has told how the Marines at Camp Pendleton are trained for Vietnam in the use of dowsers made of bent wire coathangers as a means of locating tunnels and other underground works of the Viet Cong.

Recently a visitor from a Navy research installation told me that some