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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I have also had a chance to interview 75 or 80 witnesses in Aus-
tralia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, when I was down in that area
last summer. There were various kinds of atmospheric explanations
that had been invoked in Australian cases. I must say that many of
them are just as reasonable from the scientific point of view as many
that we have heard in this country. But primarily I found in Aus-
tralia that the nature of the sightings is similar to those in the United
States, disk-like objects, cigar-shaped objects, objects without wings,
without evident means of propulsion,frequently hovering without any
sound, sometimes making sounds, hovering over cars, stopping cars,
as Dr. Hynek has pointed out, causing interference with the ignition
system, and the same kind of public reluctance to report was very
evident.
I want to emphasize, as one of the very important misconceptions
that has been fostered, that instead of dealing with witnesses who
are primarily looking for notoriety, who want to tell a good story,
who are all out to gain attention, it is generally quite the opposite.
And this is true in Australia, too. People are quite unwilling to tell
you about a UFO sighting, afraid acquaintances would think they
have "gone around the bend," as Australians put it. Over and over
you encounter that. People are reluctant to report what they are
seeing. There is a real ridicule lid that has not been contrived by
any group, it just has evolved in the way the whole problem has
unfolded. This is not entirely new in science. It has occurred before.
I am sure a number here at the speakers' table are familiar with
an interesting chapter in science years ago when meteorites, out of
which NASA and many scientists around the world now get a very
large amount of useful scientific information, were scorned and
scoffed as unreal. It was regarded as nonsense that peasants were
telling stories about stones falling out of the sky. The efforts of a
few scientists to take a look at the problem and to get some initial
data simply were ignored until a very unusual but very real event
occurred in northern France, a meteorite shower. So they sent an
eminent academician out to have a look at what these people were
talking about, and by golly, the peasants appeared to be right. Every-
body in the village, the prefect of police, the local administrators,
all the peasants, had seen stones fall out of the sky, and for the first
time the French Academy deigned to take a look at the problem.
Meteoritics was born.
Here we now face a very similar situation in science. We have
tended to ignore it because we didn't think it made sense. It definitely
defies any explanation, and hence the situation has evolved where
we can't get going because we aren't already going.
The scientific community as a whole won't take this problem seri-
ously because it doesn't have scientific data. They want instrumental
data.
Why don't they have instrumental data? Because the scientists don't
take it seriously enough to get the scientific data. It is like the 20-year-
old who can't get a job because he lacks experience, and he lacks
experience because he hasn't had a job. In the same way you find the
scientist wishing you would give him good hard meter readings and
magnetometer traces, and so on but we don't have it yet because the
collective body of scientists, including myself, have ignored UFO's.