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.
“The Advance”52 pages
9 I did wonder of course, as to how they were disposing of the nonastronomical cases. How did they explain the incident in which a pilot, co-pilot, and stewardessfollowed some rapidly moving dark objects which were silhouetted against the sunset sky and which disappeared presumably because of their superior speed? But my faith in the psychologists was unshaken—and when the Air Forces an- nounced that Project Grudge had been dissolved, I assumed that my colleagues had been successful and had even solved the case in which several observers watched an object, hollow in the middle, travel at a constant slow rate, taking 15 minutes to make the journey across the sky from north to south. After the project dissolved, Wright Field continued to take care of the slow but steady flow of reports as a part of their regular intelligence function. This spring I became curious and requested permission, through official channels, to look through the crop of reports that had accumulated since my official connec- tion with Project Grudge had terminated. As I looked through the welter of fanciful tales, inaccurate reporting, of misobservation of natural objects, I could not help, as an astronomer, recalling another wave of stories—stories of stones that fell from heaven. Because of poor reporting and poor imagery, sci- entific progress in meteorites had been held back for a good century. What a difference in imagery there is between "a stone falling from the sky" and "the interception by the earth of a particle pursuing an orbit around the sun." The use of improper and inaccurate description of what actually happened kept meteorites in the category of old wives' tales and out of the niche that celestial mechanics had made ready for them a century before! In 1801, Thomas Jefferson said that he would sooner believe that two Yankee professors had lied than that stones had fallen from heaven. And the French Academy of Sciences branded stories of meteorite falls as fanciful and absurd and dismissed a bona fide mete- orite whose fall had been sworn to—as an ordinary stone that had been struck by lightning. Perhaps the moral of this is: Beware the ready explanation! Now, it is clear that stories of real flying saucers, visitors from space, and strange aircraft violating the laws of physics are as reprehensible to the scientist of today as stones that fell from heaven were to the scientist of yesteryear. But, of course, stones did not fall from heaven—that was poor reporting and a wrong slant on a perfectly natural phenomenon. And we don't have space ships that dis- regard physical laws. But, do we have a natural phenomenon? The steady flow of reports, often made in concert by reliable observers, raises questions of scientific obligation and responsibility. Is there, when the welter of varied reports are shorn of, in the words of Pooh Bah, all "Corroborative detail to lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narra- tive"—any residue that is worthy of scientific attention? Or, if there isn't, does not obligation still exist to say so to the public—not in words of open ridicule, but seriously, to keep faith with the trust the public places in science and scientists? The Air Forces are attempting to give all reports a fair hearing, in view of the above. They are having all reported data reduced to punch cards so that in a month or so it will be possible to compare quickly reports made by people facing west on clear Tuesday afternoons with those made on non -inversion Friday nights by pilots going south. In any event, if significant correlations between various sets of sightings exist, this method should bring them out. In coming down to cases, to illustrate what constitutes at present the best evidence for unusual aerial phenomena, the examples submitted for examinationare presented without an all -embracing explanation for them. These are pre- sented in conformance with the school that believes that good observations and discussion of observations come before theory. It is hoped, however, that out of this discussion there may come a positive approach and, if these sightings do represent heretofore inadequately studied natural phenomena, that these ex- amples will stimulate their serious study; if, on the other hand, no natural phenomena are involved, then an obligation exists to demonstrate explicitly how the following specific reports can be explained in terms of balloons, mirages, or conventional aircraft. The chosen recent examples represent a definite pattern, and for each of the following there are many other similar examples in the files. One of these patterns might be called "Nocturnal Meandering Lights." Reports falling into this category are characterized by the sighting of a bright star -like light, perhaps of —2 or —3 stellar magnitude which floats along without sound,frequently hovers, reverses its field without appearing to turn, and often abruptly speeds up. The light is most frequently described as a yellow amber or orange,
Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.