Symposium on unidentified flying objects: hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress, second session, July 29, 1968.

4
subject
as
rank
nonsense, the
product of
silly
seasons,
and
a
peculiarly
American
craze
that
would run
its
course
as
all
popular
crazes
do.
I
was
asked
by
the
Air
Force
20
years
ago
to
assist
them,
as
an
astronomer,
in
weeding out
those reports
arising
from
misidentifica-
tion
of
planets,
stars,
meteors,
and
other
celestial
objects
and
events.
In
the
course
of doing
my
"homework"
I
found
that
some 30
percent
of
the
then
current
cases
very probably
had
astronomical
causes,
but
my
curiosity
was
aroused
by some
of
the
patently
nonastronomical
reports.
These were
ostensibly
being explained
by
the
consultant psycholo-
gist
9
but
I
frequently
had
the
same
feeling
about
the explanations
tn
offered
for
some
of
these cases
that
I
have
had
when
I
have
seen
a
magician
saw a
woman
in
half.
How
he
did
it
was
beyond
my
own
field
of competence,
but
I
did
not
question his
competence.
-
Yes,
I
was
quite
sure that
he
did
not
actually
saw
the
woman
in
half!
My
curiosity
thus once
aroused
led
me
to
look
into reports
other
than
those
of
a
purely astronomical nature,
and
in
the
course
of
years
I
have
continued
to
do
so.
I
have pondered
over the
continuing
flow
of
strange
reports
from
this
and
a
great
many
other
countries,
for
it
is
a
gross
mistake
to
think that the
United
States
has
any
exclusive
claim to
the
UFO
phenomenon.Those
reports
which
interested
me
the
most—and
still
do—were
those
which,
apparently
written in
all
seriousness
by
articulate
indi-
viduals
9
nonetheless
seemed
so preposterous
as
to
invite derisive
dis-
missal
by
any
scientist
casually
introduced to the
subject.
Such
baffling
reports,
however,
represent
a
relatively
small
subset
of
reports.
I
did
not—and
still
do
not—concern
myself with
reports
which
arise
from
obvious
misidentifications
by
witnesses
who
are
not
aware
of
the
many
things in
the
sky today
which have
a
simple, natural explana-
tion.
These have
little
scientific
value,
except
perhaps
to
a
sociologist
or
an
ophthalmologist
it
matters
not whether
100
or
100,000 people
fail
to
identify
an
artificial
satellite
or
a
high
-altitude
balloon.
The
UFO
reports
which
in
my
opinion
have
potential
scientific
value are
those—and
this
may
serve
us
as
a working
definition
of
UFO's—are
those
reports
of
aerial
phenomena
which
continue to
defy
explanation in conventional
scientific
terms.
Many
scientists,
not
familiar
with the
really
challenging
UFO
data,
will
not
accept
the
necessity
for
a
high order
of
scientific
inquiry
and
effort
to
establish
the
validity
of the
data—and
therefore
such
detailed, conscientious,
and
systematic inquiry
has
yet to be undertaken.
We
cannot
expect the world of
science
to take
seriously
the fare
offered
at
airport
newsstands
and
paperback
shelves.
I
have been asked
by some why,
as consultant to
the
Air Force
for
so
many
years,
I
did not
alert
the
scientific
world
to the
possible ser-
iousness
of the
UFO
problem
years ago.
The
answer
is
simple
a
scientist
must
try to be
sure of
his
facts.
He
must
not cry wolf"
unless
he
is
reasonably sure there
is
a
wolf.
I
was
painfully
aware, and
still
am,
of the
amorphous
nature ofthe
UFO
data,
of the anecdotal nature of
UFO
reports,
of the lack
offollowup
and
serious inquiry into reports
(which would have
re-
quired
a
large
scientific staff
and
adequate funding), of the lack of
hardware,
of
the lack of unimpeachable photographic evidence,
and