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.
“The Advance”52 pages
38
cannot be allowed to discount, per se, the basically significant nature of their
collective account. I have talked with a few scientists, especially some psy-
chologists, whose puristic insistence on the miserable observing equipment with
which the human species is cursed almost makes me wonder how they dare cross
a busy traffic intersection. Some balance in evaluating witness perceptual limita-
tions is surely called for in all of these situations. With that balance must go a
healthy skepticism as to most of the finer details, unless agreed upon by several
independent witnesses. There is no blinking that anecdotal data are less than
ideal; but sometimes you have to go with what you've got. To make a beginning
at UFO study has required scrutiny of such anecdotal data; the urgent need is
to get on to something much better.
5. Problem of witness' prior knowledge of UFO phenomena
In interviewing UFO witnesses, it is important to try to ascertain whether the
witness was, prior to his reported sighting, familiar or unfamiliar with books and
writings on UFOs. Although a strong degree of familiarity with the literature
of UFOs does not negate witness testimony, it dictates caution. Anyone who has
done a lot of interviewing at the local level, involving previously unsifted cases,
will be familiar with occasional instances where the witness exhibited such an
obvious enthusiasm for the UFO problem that prudence demanded rejection of
his account.
However, in my own experience, a much more common reaction to questions
concerning pre-sighting interest in UFO matters is some comment to the effect
that the witness not only knew little about UFOs beyond what he'd happened
to read in newspapers, but he was strongly disinclined to take the whole business
seriously. The repetitiveness and yet the spontaneity with which witnesses of
seeming high credibility make statements similar to, "I didn't believe there was
anything to all the talk about UFOs until I actually saw this thing," is a notable
feature of the interview-experience of all of the investigators with whom I have
talked. Obviously, an intending prevaricator might seek to deceive his inter-
rogator by inventing such an assertion; but I can only say that suspicion of being
so duped has not been aroused more than once or twice in all of the hundreds of
witnesses I have interviewed. On the other hand, I suppose that, in several dozen
instances, I have lost interest in a case because of a witness openly stressing his
own prior and subsequent interest in the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
Occasionally one encounters witnesses for whom the chance of prior knowl-
edge is so low as to be almost amusing. An Anglican missionary in New Guinea,
Rev. N. E. G. Cruttwell (Ref. 9), who has done much interviewing of UFO
witnesses in his area, has described testimony of natives who come down into
the mission area from their highland home territory only when they are wallaby-
hunting, natives who could not read UFO reports in any language of the world,
yet who come around, in their descriptions of what they have seen, to the com-
munications-shortcut of picking up a bowl or dish from a nearby table to suggest
the shape they are seeking to describe in native tongue. Little chance of bias
gained from reading magazines in a barber-chair in such instances.
6. Types of UFO accounts of present interest
The scope of the present statement precludes anything approaching an exhaus-
tive listing of categories of UFO phenomena: much of what might be made clear
at great length will have to be compressed into my remark that the scientific
world at large is in for a shock when it becomes aware of the astonishing
nature of the UFO phenomenon and its bewildering complexity. I make that
terse comment well aware that it invites easy ridicule; but intellectual honesty
demands that I make clear that my two years' study convinces me that in the
UFO problem lie scientific and technological questions that will challenge the
ability of the world's outstanding scientists to explain—as soon as they start
examining the facts.
(a) Lights in the night sky.—("DLs" as they are called by the NICAP staff,
on the basis that the profusion of reports of "damnable lights" meandering or
hovering or racing across the night sky in unexplainable manner are one of
the most common, yet one of the least useful and significant categories of UFO
reports.) Ultimately, I think their significance could become scientifically very
substantial when instrumental observing techniques are in wide use to monitor
UFO movements. But there are many ways that observers can be misled by
lights in the night sky, so I shall discuss below only such few cases as are of
extremely unconventional nature and where the protocols of the observations
are unusually strong. Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.