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
91 So, to conclude what I understand is the main reason why this committee has asked me to testify, it is not beyond any question of doubt that we can be visited. There are great difficulties from our present point of view. They are not insuperable. And if Dr. McDonald, for example, were to present me with extremely convincing evidence of an advanced technology in a UFO, I could not say to him that is impossible, because I know you can't get from there to here, or I can't say to him that is impossible because I know there aren't any other guys up there. On the other hand, I would of course demand very firm evidence before I would say, well, that seems to be a very likely hypothesis. So I would like to spend just a few minutes to come more closely to the subject of this symposium. First of all, I think it is clear to the committee, but this point should be emphasized very strongly, that there are very intense, predispos- ing,emotional factors in this subject. There are individuals who very strongly want to believe that UFO's are of intelligent extraterrestrial origin. Essentially to my view, for religious motives; that is, things are so bad down here, maybe some- body from up there will come and save us from ourselves. This takes all sorts of subtle and not so subtle forms. There are also predisposing emotional factors in the other direction; people who very much want to believe UFO's are not of intelligent extraterrestrial origins, be- cause that would be threatening to our conception of us as being the pinnacle of creation. We would find it very upsetting to discover that we are not,that we are just a sort of two-bit civilization. It is clear that the scientific method says you don't take either of those views, and you simply keep an open mind and pursue whatever facts are at hand with as many diverse hypotheses as possible, and try to eliminate each suggested hypothesis, and see if you are lucky with any one. I might mention that, on this symposium, there are no individuals who strongly disbelieve in the extraterrestrial origin of UFO's and therefore there is a certain view, not necessarily one I strongly agree with—but there is a certain view this committee is not hearing today, along those lines. Finally, let me say something about the question of priorities, which Congressman Rumsfeld asked us for, and the question of significance. Now, the possibility of discovering something about extraterrestrial life, life originated on some other planet, is of the very highest interest for biology and in fact for all science. A bona fide example of extra- terrestrial life even in a very simple form, would revolutionize biology. It would have both practical and fundamental scientific benefits, which are very hard to assess, it would truly be immense. Now, if the answer to this sort of profound scientific question lies right at hand, it would be folly to ignore it. If we are being visited by representatives of extraterrestrial life, just stick our heads in the sand, would be a very bad policy, I think. On the other hand, to mount a major effort to investigate these things, I think requires some harder evidence than is now at hand. It is clear that if such an effort were mounted,some information onatmospheric physics would be forthcoming. I think some information on psychology would certainly be forthcoming. I have the impression
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.