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.
“UFO Files”31 pages
34 and in various scientific organizations. Now, two years later, with very much more background upon which to base an opinion, I find myself increasingly more concerned with what has happened during the past twenty years' neglect, by al- most the entire scientific community, of a problem that appears to be one of ex- tremely high order of scientific importance. THE UNCONVENTIONAL NATURE OF THE UFO PROBLEM To both laymen and scientists, the impressive progress that science has made towards understanding our total environment prompts doubt that there could be machine -like objects of entirely unconventional nature moving through our atmosphere, hovering over automobiles, power installations, cities, and the like, yet all the while going unnoticed by our body scientific. Such suggestions are hard to take seriously, and I assure you that, until I had taken a close look at the evidence. I did not take them seriously. We have managed to so let our preconceptions block serious consideration of the possibility that some form of alien technology is operating within our midst that we have succeeded in simply ignoring the facts. And we scientists have ignored the pleas of groups like NICAP and APRO, who have for years been stressing the remarkable nature of the UFO evidence. Abroad, science has reacted in precisely this same manner, ignoring as nonsensical the report-material gathered by private groups operating outside the main channels of science. I understand this neglect all too well; I was just one more of those scientists who almost ignored those facts, just one more of those scientists who was rather sure that such a situation really could not exist, one more citizen rather sure that official statements must be basically meaningful on the non-existence of any substantial evidence for the reality of UFOs.The UFO problem is so unconventional, involves such improbable events, such inexplicable phenomenology, so defies ready explanation in terms of present-day scientific knowledge, has such a curiously elusive quality in many respects, that It is not surprising (given certain features in the past twenty years' handling ofthe problem) that scientists have not taken it very seriously. We scientists are, as a group, not too well -oriented towards taking up problems that lie, not just on the frontiers of our scientific knowledge, but far across some gulf whose verybreadth cannot be properly estimated. These parenthetical remarks are made here to convey, in introductory manner, viewpoints that will probably prove to be correct when many more scientists begin to scrutinize this unprecedented and neglected problem. The UFO problem is, if anything, a highly unconventional problem. Hence, before reviewing my own investigations in detail, and before examining various proposed explanations lying within atmospheric physics, it may be well to take note of some of the principal hypotheses that have been pro- posed, at one time or another, to account for UFOs. SOME ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESES In seeking explanations for 'UFO reports, I like to weigh witness-accounts in terms of eight principal UFO hypotheses: 1. Hoaxes, fabrications, and frauds. 2. Hallucination, mass hysteria, rumor phenomena. 3. Lay misinterpretations of well -know physical phenomena (meteorolog- ical, astronomical, optical, aeronautical, etc.). 4. Semi-secret advanced technology (new test vehicles, satellites, novel weapons, flares, re-entry phenomea, etc.). 5. Poorly understood physical phenomena (rare atmospheric -electrical or atmospheric -electrical effects, unusual meteoric phenomena, natural or art1,- ficial plasmoids, etc.). 6. Poorly understood psychological phenomena. 7. Extraterrestrial devices of some surveillance nature. 8. Spaceships bringing messengers of terrestrial salvation and occult truth. Because I have discussed elsewhere all of these hypotheses in some detail (Ref. 2), I shall here only very briefly comment on certain points. Hoaxes and fabrications do crop up, though in percentually far smaller numbers than many UFO scoffers seem to think. Some of the independent groups like APRO and NICAP have done good work in exposing certain of these. Although there hasbeen a good deal of armchair -psychologizing about unstable UFO witnesses, with easy charges of hallucination and hysteria, such charges seem to have almost no
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.