Documents / Analysis
Special Report No. 14 was issued by the U.S. Air Force's Air Technical Intelligence Center on 5 May 1955. It is a statistical study of about 4,000 reports of unidentified aerial objects from June 1947 to December 1952. The reports were reduced to IBM punched cards and analyzed with methods including chi square tests. The report concludes that the reports it examined are very unlikely to represent technology beyond present scientific knowledge, and it notes that no case produced valid physical evidence.
SINGLE OBSERVATION - A SIGHTING consisting of a single report from (1) one OBSERVER with no knowledge of additional OBSERVERS of the same phenom- enon, or (2) a group of witnesses of the same phenomenon, each cognizant of the others. The witness who made the report is called a SINGLE OBSERVER. MULTIPLE OBSERVATION - A SIGHTING consisting of several reports from OBSERVERS of the same phenomenon who were cognizant of each other. The witnesses who made reports are called MULTIPLE OBSERVERS. ALL SIGHTINGS - (1) The group of reports consisting of one report for each OBSERVER, including both SINGLE and MULTIPLE OBSERVERS. (2) The questionnaire, work sheet, and IBM card representing the report from each OBSERVER — in other words, the representation of each report accepted for the statistical study. UNIT SIGHTINGS - (1) The group of reports consisting of one report for each SIGHTING, including all the reports of SINGLE OBSERVATIONS and the one . most representative report from each MULTIPLE OBSERVATION. (2) The questionnaire, work sheet, and IBM card representing the report for each SIGHTING accepted for the statistical study. A major serial number (four digits) was assigned to each sighting, segregating the year of occurrence by selection of limits for each year, as follows: 0001 to 0500 0501 to 1000 1001 to 1500 1501 to 2000 2001 to 2500 2501 to 4900 reserved reserved reserved reserved reserved reserved for 1947 for 1948 for 1949 for 1950 for 1951 for 1952 While this scheme would serve to identify any individual sighting, identifi- cation of each report and its subsequent forms was necessary. The minor subserial numbers (two digits) fulfilled this requirement. For all SINGLE OBSERVATIONS, a major serial number followed by two (2) zeros, for example, 2759.00, was sufficient identification. For MULTIPLE OBSER- VATIONS, the major serial number followed by a series of two-digit num- bers ranging from 00 to 99 was used to identify the individual reports. In general, the most complete report from the most reliable observer of that 8
Analysis, from the classic collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 309 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.