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.
f m translation and transcription from reports to punched cards, indicated that there would be relatively few specific variables or factors that would yield meaningful correlation studies. Either the original data were too subjec- tive, or the incompleteness of the original reports would seriously reduce the sample of a specific variable. Preliminary tabulations of various sortings substantiated the im- possibility of deriving statistical results from certain variables, such as movement of the observer during,the sighting, sound, shape parameter, size, angular velocity and acceleration, appearance and disappearance bearing, initial and final elevation, altitude, and orientation of the object. The statistically usable variables presented in this study include the date, time, location, duration, reliability, and method of observation of the sighting, and the physical attributes of number, color, speed, shape, light brightness, and identification of the objects sighted. The presentation of frequency and percentage distributions of any of the variables must be interpreted in the light of the sample of incidents represented. For example, the analysis of the reported colors of the objects sighted, based on ALL FIGHTINGS, could lead to misrepresenta- tion of the distribution of the reported color of the objects, because of the multiplicity of reports on some of the phenomena. On the other hand, the percentage distribution of the light brightness reported by each observer is more likely to be,, correct than a distribution based on one report for each phenomenon. To assure that the most nearly correct presentation was made, and to avoid trie possibility of failure to uncover any pattern or trend inherent in the data, the variables were studied on five different bases or samples. These samples, and their numerical relation to each other, were as follows: ALL SIGHTINGS (all reports) UNIT SIGHTINGS, all observers UNIT SIGHTINGS, single observer UNIT SIGHTINGS, multiple observers OBJECT SIGHTINGS 3,20 1 cards 2,554 cards 2,232 cards 322 cards 2,199 cards The preliminary tabulations indicated that the samples based on UNIT SIGHTINGS, single observer, and UNIT SIGHTINGS, multiple observers, would not add materially to this study. Accordingly, although the fre- quency distributions were recorded and are available for study, they are not presented in this report. , - The bases of ALL SIGHTINGS, UNIT SIGHTINGS (referring to all observers), and OBJECT SIGHTINGS are presented in Appendix A as Tables Al through A240. A critical study of these tabulations reveals that there is no apparent change in the distribution of any variable from one basis to another, and that no marked patterns or trends exist in any sample, 1 5
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.