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
104 him, but he was an experienced and trained observer, so he took notes on it; he recorded it. When he returned he was so ridiculed and laughed at for a long period of time that he completely gave up trying to have this taken seriously. He refused to talk about it. I urged this student to get his father to report this to some of the private organizations that might take it seriously, and he ap- parently was unable to do so. The ridicule suppressed the opportunity for this information. I have encountered similar things in academic colleagues from a variety of fields, finding they are very interested and wanting to hear about this, but are afraid to talk about. In order to support the hysterical contagion hypothesis, it seems to me we need to present some plausible evidence: First, that there is a very ambiguous situation. This we can all agree upon.Second, that there is a great deal of anxiety and concern about it. This appears clearly to be the case. Third, some plausible evidence of contact among the witnesses,either directly by conversing with one another, or indirectly by being exposed to the same information, the same stimuli. In cases that I have studied. I find that this third element is the one that is often lacking, that there are often witnesses who appear not to have had prior knowledge, not to have had contact with one another, not to have been exposed, as far as we can determine, to the same news information. I might throw in here, in reference to a remark Dr. Hynek made, that the public is indeed very unwilling to accept the kinds of casual and bland explanations that have been offered. This has been my experience also, and is indeed an index of the amount of concern and anxiety about this, it appears to me. Now I will turn to another subject. I might summarize in one sentence that in my eyes the hypothesis that elle hard-core cases of observed UFO's is hysterical contagion is highly improbable. The weight of evidence is strongly against it. Now I would like to address the question of what has brought about this situation of strongly opposing beliefs that seem not to become reconciled with one another. On this I will have to digress first to explain briefly what I mean by a system of beliefs in social psychology. Perhaps the best way to explain that is to say that just as nature abhors a vacuum, nature abhors an isolated belief. Neither a belief nor the person who holds it can normally persist very long in isola- tion. The beliefs become organized in such a way that, for one person,his various beliefs support one another, and people gather together in organizations to lend each other support in their beliefs. This is the sense in which we have highly developed systems of belief which come to resist change,to resist evidence. The circumstances under which systems of belief such as this char- acteristically arise are, as I mentioned in passing before, a situation of .ambiguity about a matter of importance on which there is not reliable. verified information in which people have confidence. Clearly the antidote is simple. It is to get good, reliable information whichpeople have confidence in. This is probably the only way to weaken the irrational elements that are strongly resistant.
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.