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
• 15 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.
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.