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.

7
serious
study
possible,
however,
requires recruiting
competent
scien-
tists,
engineers,
and
technical
people,
as
well
as
psychologists
and
sociologists.
This
in
turn
requires
not
only
funds
but
a
receptive
scientific
climate.
Many
scientists
have
expressed to
me
privately
their
interest
in
the
problem
and
their
desire
to
actively
pursue
UFO
research
as
soon
as the
scientific
stigma
is
removed.
But
as
long
as the
unverified
presumption
is
strongly
entrenched that every
UFO
has
a
simple,
rational
everyday
explanation,
the
required climate
for
a
proper
and
definitive
study
will
never
develop.
I
recall
an
encounter
I
had
sometime ago
with
the
then
chief
scientist
at
the
Pentagon.
He
asked
me
just
how
much
longer
we
were "going
to
look
at
this
stuff."
I
reminded
him
that
we
hadn't
really
looked at
it
yet—that
is,
in
the
sense,
say, that
the
FBI
looks
at
a
kidnapping,
abank
robbery,
or
a
narcotics
ring.
Up
to
this
point
I
have
not
discussed
another
major impediment
to
the
acceptance
of
the
UFO
phenomenon
as
legitimate
material
for
scientific
study.
I
refer
to the adoption
of
the
UFO
phenomenon
by
certain
segments of
the
public
for
their
own
peculiar
uses.
From
the
very
start
there
have
been
psychically
unbalanced
individuals
and
pseudoreligious
cultist
groups—and
they
persist
in
force
today—
who
found
in
the
UFO
picture
an
opportunity to further
their
own
fanciful
cosmic
and
religious
beliefs
and
who
find solace
and
hope
in
the pious
belief
that
UFO's
carry kindly
space
brothers
whose
sole
aim
is
a
mission
of
salvation.
Sikh
people
"couldn't care
less"
about documentation,
scientific
study,
and
careful
critical
consideration.
The
conventions
and
meet-
ings
these
people hold,
and
the
literature
they purvey,
can
only
be
the
subject
of
derisive
laughter
and,
I
must
stress, it is
a most
serious
mistake for
anyone
to confuse
this
unfortunate
aspect
of
the
total
UFO
phenomenon
with
the
articulate
reports
made
by
people
who
are
unmistakeably
serious
and
make
their
reports
out of
a
sense
of
civic
duty
and an
abiding
desire
to
know
the cause
of
their experience.
It
may
not be amiss
here to
remark
in passing that the "true
be-lievers"
I
have
just referred to are rarely
that ones
who make
UFO
reports.
Their
beliefs
do
not need
factual
support.
The
reporters
of
the
truly
baffling
UFO's,
on
the other
hand,
are
most
frequently
dis-
interested
or even
skeptical
people
who
are
taken
by
surprise
by an
experience
they cannot understand.
Hopefully
the
time
is
not far
off
when
the
UFO
phenomenon
can
have an
adequate
and
definitive
hearing,
and
when
a
scholarly
paper
on
the nature of
UFO
reports
can be
presented before
scientific
bodies
without
prejudice.
Despite the
scientific
attitude
to
this subject in
the
past,
I
nevertheless
decided to present
a
short
paper on
UFO's
to
a
scientific
body
in 1952, following
a
scientific
hunch
that in the
UFO
phenomenon
we
were
dealing with
a
subject
of great
possible
importance.
In
my
paper
(JOSA
43, pp. 311-314, 1963), which
I
should
like
to
have read into the record,
I
made
reference to the
many
cases in 1952
and
earlier
which were nonastronomical in nature
and
did not seem
to
have a
logical,
ready explanation.