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
230 Nevertheless, the single most striking thing about these pictures—far from being any general uniformity in their appearance—is their largely irreconcilable diversity. Whether or not this diversity is interpreted as detracting from their value as evidence, it surely cannot be taken as contributing to that value. It does, however, serve our immediate, rather different purpose of providing an initial sample from which to extrapolate and interpolate an eventual graded array of the sort that we seek for purposes of testing witnesses. Some Incidental Comments on the Status of Photographs of Alleged UFOs as a Source of Evidence Themselves Befor leaving the photographs themselves, however, it should be noted that there are a few instances of rather suggestive similarities between these photo- graphs. A frequently cited case is the striking resemblance between E6, re- portedly taken by a farmer, Paul Trent, as he was returning home with his wife near McMinville, Oregon in June 1950, and E7, allegedly taken by a French military pilot near Rouen, France in March 1954. Another example, involving several different sightings, is shown in the upper right. (II, G2, and G3 present three successive views of the same object pur-• portedly taken by a photographer, Ed Keffel, of the Brazilian publication "0 Cruziero" while he was accompanied by a journalist, Joao Martins, near Rio de Janeiro in May, 1952. The edge -on view, Gl, is almost indistinguishable from another photograph, represented in Fl, allegedly taken from an Argentine pur-suit plane in late 1954. The "tap" view, G2, seemingly resembles F2 (the left edge of which was cut off by the boundary of the orginal photograph), which a15 -year -old boy, Michael Savage, claims to have taken near San Bernardino, California in July, 1956. It also somewhat resembles the lighted object, F3, allegedly appearing in a color photograph taken by Joseph Sigel near Waikiki, Hawaii in June, 1959. And, finally, the "bottom" view, G3, presents the same general sort of configuration as that shown in G4, which is based upon a photo- graph purportedly taken by Yukuse Matsumura outside his residence in Yoko- hama, Japan in January 1957 (although the relative dimension's of the features appear slightly different in these last two photographs). There are several other instances in which photographs taken by apparentlyunrelated individuals might be of the same object. Another view (not includedin the figure) showing more of the "bottom" of the object displayed in E4 re- sembles the object shown in G5 and, even more closely, an object apparently hovering over a seaplane in still another photograph (also not included) of un- known origin. In a number of instances (e.g., F5, 6, and 7 or D6, 7, and 8) the degree of correspondence is more difficult to assess owing to the relatively poorer definition of the images. Of course even very close similarities do not in themselves guarantee authen- ticity. Consider, for example, 02 and 03 which are strikingly similar dispite the fact that the object in 02 appears over a mountain near Riverside, California in the original photograph reportedly taken by a 21 -year -old man and two friendsIn 1951, whereas the object in C3 appears over a flock of grazing sheep in the photograph submitted by an Australian rancher in 1954. But, since the object in 02 has subsequently been admitted to be none other than a 1967 'Ford hubcap,the object in 03 is presumably the same. (Another photograph later confessedto be fraudulent is represented in B6, and somewhat suspicious circumstances also surround several other photographs, including those represented in A9, Bl,B8, B9,01,and G8.) Perhaps the safest attitude to adopt is that recommended by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (cf., Hall, 1964, p. 86) ; namely,
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.