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
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.
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.