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.

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quately studied, using all methods available to modern science, and
that the investigation be accorded a proper degree of scientific respect-
ability and an absence of ridicule so that proper investigations can be
carried out unhampered by matters not worthy of the ideals of scien-
tific endeavor. I might suggest that this could be accomplished by the
establishment, by the Congress, of a UFO Scientific Board of Inquiry,
properly funded, for the specific purpose of an investigation in depth
of the UFO phenomenon.
Secondly,I recommend that the United States seek the cooperation
of the United Nations in establishing a means for the impartial and
free interchange among nations of information about, and reports of,
unidentified flying objects—a sort of international clearinghouse for
the exchange of information on this subject. For, since the UFO
iphenomenon is global, it would be as inefficient to study t without
enlisting the aid of other nations as it would be to study world meteor-
ology by using weather reports from one country alone.
Now,it may be well to remind ourselves at this point,that the UFO
problem may not lend itself to an immediate solution in our time.
The problem may be far more complex than we imagine. Attempts to
solve it may be no more productive than attempts to solve the problem
of the Aurora Borealis would have been 100 years ago.
The cause of northern lights could not have been determined in the
framework of the science of 1868. Scientific knowledge in those days
was not sufficient to encompass the phenomenon.
Similarly, our scientific knowledge today may be grossly insufficient
to encompass the problem posed by UFO's. A profound scientific
obligation exists, nonetheless, to gather the best data possible for
scientific posterity.
To summarize: in the course of 20 years of study of UFO reports
and of the interviewing of witnesses, I have been led to a conclusion
quite different from the one I reached in the very first years of my
work. At first I was negatively impressed with the low scientific con-
tent of UFO reports, with the lack of quantitative data, with the
anecdotal nature of the reports, and especially with the lack of hard-
ware, of unimpeachable photographs, and with the lack of instru-
mental recordings.
I am still aware of the paucity of truly hard-core data—but then,
no effort has really been made to gather it. Nonetheless,the cumulative
weight of continued reports from groups of people around the world
whose competence and sanity I have no reason to doubt, reports in-
volving close encounters with unexplainable craft, with physical effects
on animals, motor vehicles, growing plants, and on the ground, has led
me reluctantly to the conclusion that either there is a scientifically
valuable subset of reports in the UFO phenomenon or that we have
a world society containing people who are articulate,sane, and reputa-
ble in all matters save UFO reports.
Either way,I feel that there exists a phenomenon eminently worthy
of study. If one asks, for what purpose,I can only answer—how does
one ever know where scientific inquiry will lead. If the sole purpose of
such a study is to satisfy human curiosity, to probe the unknown, and
to provide intellectual adventure, then it is in line with what science
has always stood for.