James E. McDonald statement, Symposium on UFOs, House Committee on Science and Astronautics

sample I have examined since 1966 is that the witness first attempts to fit the anomalous observation into some
entirely _conventional_ category. "I thought it must be an airplane." Or, "At first, I thought it was an auto-wrecker
with its red light blinking." Or, "I thought it was a meteor - until it stopped dead in midair," etc. Hynek has a very
happy phrase for this very typical pattern of witness-response: he terms it "escalation of explanation" , to denote the
often rapid succession of increasingly more involved attempts to account for and to assimilate what is passing before
the witness' eyes, almost invariably starting with an everyday interpretation, _not_ with a spaceship hypothesis.
Indeed, I probably react in a way characteristic of all UFO investigators; in those comparatively rare cases where the
witness discloses that he immediately interpreted what he sighted as an extraterrestrial device, I back away from
what is likely to be a most unprofitable interview. I repeat: such instances are really quite rare; most of the general
population has soaked up a degree of scientific conventionalism that reflects the net result of decades, if not
centuries, of scientific shaping of our views. I might interject that the segment of the population drawn to
Hypothesis 8 above might be quick to jump to a spaceship interpretation on seeing something unusual in the sky,
but, on the whole, those persons convinced of Hypothesis 8 are quite uninterested in observations, per se. Their
conviction is firm without bothering about such things as observational matters. At least that is what I have sensed
from such exposure as I have had to those who support Hypothesis 8 fervently.
3. Credibility of witnesses:
Evaluating credibility of witnesses is, of course, an ever-present problem at the present stage of UFO studies. Again,
from discussions with other investigators, I have concluded that common sense and previous everyday experience
with prevaricators and unreliable persons lead each serious UFO investigator to evolve a set of criteria that do not
differ much from those used in jury instructions in our courts (e.g., Federal Jury Instructions). It seems tedious to
enlarge here on those obvious matters. One can be fooled, of course; but it would be rash indeed to suggest that the
thousands of UFO reports now on record are simply a testimony to confabulation, as will be better argued by some
of the cases to be recounted below.
4. Observational reliability of witnesses:
Separate from credibility in the sense of trustworthiness and honesty is the question of the human being as a sensing
system. Clearly, it is indispensable to be aware of psychophysical factors limiting visual discrimination, time
estimation, distance estimation, angular estimation, etc. In dealing with the total sample of all observations which
laymen _initially_ label as UFOs, such factors play a large role in sorting out dubious cases. In the type of UFO
reports that are of primary significance at present, close-range sightings of objects of large size moving at low
velocities, or at rest, and in sight for many seconds rather than fractions of a second, all of these perceptual problems
diminish in significance, though they can never be overlooked.
A frequent objection to serious consideration of UFO reports, made by skeptics who have done no first-hand case
investigations, is based on the widely discrepant accounts known to be presented by trial-witnesses who have all
been present at some incident. To be sure, the same kind of discrepancies emerge in multiple-witness UFO
incidents. People differ as to directions, relative times, sizes, etc. But I believe it is not unfair to remark, as the basic
rebuttal to this attack on UFO accounts, that a group of witnesses who see a street-corner automobile collision do
not come to court and proceed, in turn, to describe the event as a rhinoceros ramming a baby carriage, or as an
airplane exploding on impact with a nearby building. There are, it needs to be soberly remembered, quite reasonable
bounds upon the variance of witness testimonies in such cases. Thus, when one finds a half-dozen persons all saying
that they were a few hundred feet from a domed disk with no resemblance to any known aircraft, that it took off
without a sound, and was gone from sight in five seconds the almost inevitable variations in descriptions of
distances, shape, secondary features, noises, and times cannot be allowed to discount, per. se, the basically
significant nature of their collective account. I have talked with a few scientists, especially some psychologists,
whose puristic insistence on the miserable observing equipment with which the human species is cursed almost
makes me wonder how they dare cross a busy traffic intersection. Some balance in evaluating witness perceptual
limitations is surely called for in all of these situations. With that balance must go a healthy skepticism as to most of
the finer details, unless agreed upon by several independent witnesses. There is no blinking that anecdotal data are
less than ideal; but sometimes you have to go with what you've got. To make a beginning at UFO study has required
scrutiny of such anecdotal data; the urgent need is to get on to something much better.