Documents / Hearing transcript
This is the printed record of a July 29, 1968 symposium on unidentified flying objects held by the Committee on Science and Astronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives, chaired by Rep. J. Edward Roush. The committee heard statements from six scientists: J. Allen Hynek, James E. McDonald, Carl Sagan, Robert L. Hall, James A. Harder and Robert M. L. Baker. It also printed papers from Donald Menzel, Stanton Friedman, Frank Salisbury and others. Hynek argued that puzzling UFO reports from competent witnesses deserve serious scientific study.
“Nevers”43 pages
100 STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT L. HALL, HEAD, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, CHICAGO, ILL. Dr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Roush. First I should like to state a few of the rather well-established facts as they would be seen by a social psychologist. I find that when I do so, there is a great deal of redundancy. You have heard most of these facts before, so I will make my presentation brief. Fundamentally what we know that everyone can agree upon is that a great many people all over the world keep reporting some quite puzzling flying objects. In these reports there are certain recurring features, and the people so reporting often have all the characteristics of reliable witnesses. Second, the next main thing we know is that there are several strongly, often bitterly competing systems of belief about how to ex- plain these observations, and some rational men seem to fall into line supporting each of these positions. This in itself is of course of great interest to a social psychologist. Inevitably he is interested in how systems of belief grow and are maintained. The third major factual thing that can be quite well agreed upon is that to a very large extent these alternative explanations, these systems of belief, have become rooted in organizations of people who have become committed to defending their respective positions. This greatly complicates the problem of arriving at a generally accepted explanation. In that sense,in addition to any other problems that have been defined here, clearly we have a social psychological problem also. These are very briefly the main outlines of the facts as I see them. Now,how are these explained? There are certain things that everyone seems to agree upon, or nearly everyone, I believe. First that a great many of these observa- tions can be quite clearly identified as mistakes on the part of the observer, misidentifications of familiar objects, hoaxes, and a mis- cellaneous collection of similar things. Beyond that point, there comes to be a good deal of divergence in explanations, to say the least. Perhaps the major views now can be classified simply as follows: First, that these are technological devices or vehicles of some sort entering our atmosphere from the outside. Second, that this is some new, as yet ill-understood natural phe- nomena, something like a form of plasma, that we do not understand, and so on. The third major hypothesis to explain the hard-core cases that are not otherwise agreed upon,is that they too are simply a result of mass hysteria,and its resulting misidentifications. This hypothesis I will address myself to particularly very soon, because obviously a social psychologist has a special interest in this possibility. The three major topics that I believe I should address myself to are, first, what has brought about this complicated situation of strongly opposed beliefs that seem to resist the factual evidence, and are not responsive to each other?
Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.