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.

92
that the
capability
of
human
populations to
self-delusion,
has
i
s
not been
i
accorded appropriate
weight
in
these considerations.
There
s
an
nter-
esting
book
published
about
a
century
ago
by
McKay
called
"Extraor-
dinary
Popular
Delusions
and
the
Madness
of
Crowds," which
I
commend
to
the committee.
It
goes
into
such
things as
alchemy,
.and
witchcraft.
After
all,
there
have
been
centuries
in
which
these
things
were
considered to
be
as
obviously true
as
anything,
and
yet
we nowknow
that
this
is
really
nonsense.
So
the
possibility
of
these sort
of
delusions
having
a
kind of
con-
temporary
guise
as
UFO's
should
not be
thrown
out
altogether.
I
do
not
think
that explains
most
or
all
of
the
unidentified
settings.
Since the
funds
are
so
painfully
tragically
short for
science
today,
the
priority
question
boils
down
to
this:
In
the
search
for
extrater-
restrial
life
there
is
a
high
risk,
high
possibility,
that
is
the
one
we
are
talking
about today
namely,
UFO's—there
is
a
high
risk
that
they
are
not of
extraterrestrial
origin,
but
if
they
are,
we
are sure
going
to learn
a
lot.
Compared
to
that,
there
is
a
moderate
risk, significant
return
pos-
sibility,
and
that
is,
looking
for
life
even simple
forms
on
nearby
planets,
and
searching
for
intelligent
radio
communications
by
thetechniques
of
radio
astronomy.
Here
it is
clear
there
will
be
significant
paydirt
of
one
sort
or
another for
what
I
gather
is
a comparable
sort
of
investment.
So
if
Congress
is
interested,
and
I'm not
sure
it
is,
I
think
it
might
very
well
ought
to
be,
but
if
Congress
is
interested
in
a
pursuit
of
the
question
of
extraterrestrial
life,
I
believe
it
would
be
much
better
advised to
support
the
biology,
the
Mariner,
and Voyager programs
of
NASA,
and
the
radio
astronomy
programs of
the National
Science
Foundation,than
to
pour
very
much money
into
this
study of
UFO's.
On
the
other
hand,
I
think
a
moderate support of
investigations
of
UFO's
might
very
well
have
some
scientific
paydirt in
it,
but perhapsnot the
one
that
we
are talking
about
today.
Mr.
Chairman
that concludes
my
statement except that
I
request
that
you
include
for the
record
a
statement
entitled
"Unidentified
Fly-
ing
Objects" that
I
prepared for the Encyclopedia
Americana.
UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS*
(by
Carl
Sagan)
Unidentified
flying
objects
(UFO's)
is
the
generic
term
for
moving
aerial
or
celestial
phenomena,
detected visually
or
by
radar,
whose
nature
is
not
iramedi•
ately
understood.
Interest
in these objects
stems
from
speculation
that
some
of
them
are the products of
civilizations
beyond the
earth,
and from
the
psychologi-
cal insights into
contemporary
human
problems that
this interpretation provides.
Observations. Unidentified flying objects
have been
described variously
as
rapidly
moving or
hovering:
disc
-shaped, cigar-shaped,
or
ball
-shaped
moving
silently
or
noisily;
with
a
fiery
exhaust,
or
with
no
exhaust whatever; accom-pained
by
flashing
lights,
or uniformly glowing with
a
silvery cast.
The
diversity
of the
observations suggests that
UFO's
have
no common
origin
and
that the useof such terms as
UFO's
or
"flying
saucers" serves only to confuse the
issue
by
grouping
generically
a
variety
of unrelated
phenomena.
In
the United
States,
popular
interest in unidentified flying objects
began on
June
24, 1947,
when a
group of rapidly
moving,
glistening objects
was
observed
*In Encyclopedia Americana
(New
York:
Grolier) and In
Ball.
Atom.
Set.,
23, (6), 43,1967.