Analysis of UFO Reports

I am pleased to see that a few scientists are offering comments on the subject of UFO's (Letters, 2 Dec., 23 Dec., and 27 Jan.). These support Hynek's contention (Letters, 21 Oct.) that lack of scientific attention is both cause and effect of the disrepute in which UFO's are held. Burke-Gaffney said that UFO reports do not furnish evidence of extraterrestrial intellectual beings. Of course, it is the fact that our best five or six hundred reports, if taken at face value, all point precisely to this conclusion which has caused otherwise respectable scientists to bother with UFO's and to search for a way to determine the truth or falsity of this subclass of reports. One does not get the impression that the good reports are so explicit from reading the morning newspaper; one must go to the original documents and talk to the witnesses directly.

Cannon's contribution of the Dunbar sighting of 1800 will add to the hundreds of other reports from before 1900. The effects of contemporary technology on interpretation as mentioned by Cannon have been discussed several times; Ezekiel saw a flying throne, and in the Middle Ages, peasants saw glowing spherical chariots landing, spewing forth angels. In the great wave of 1896-97, thousands of people from San Francisco to the Midwest saw "airships," with gondolas, paddle wheels, and fins. One would like to know whether technology has the unfortunate result of breeding mass hallucinations, or if we are safe in pushing on further.

Cannon's suggestion that UFOs are the result of visual "reflexes" may apply to some sightings - he is certainly not the first to suggest this possibility - but to make the hypothesis serve for all sightings is impossible. When one studies original reports and interviews witnesses, he becomes aware that UFO's fall into classes, and that an explanation that might apply to one class does not apply to the others. After all, there are other manifestations besides things that look like spaceships which could baffle a person with an average education. Any attempt to explain all UFO reports as satellites and meteors, or as hallucinations, or as misinterpretations of ordinary phenomena, or as plasma, or as hoaxes must fail. The UFO phenomenon is not homogeneous. In 1954, over 200 reports over the whole world concerned landings of objects, many with occupants. Of these, about 51 percent were observed by more than one person. In fact, in all these sightings at least 624 persons were involved, and only 98 of these people were alone. In 18 multiple-witness cases, some witnesses were not aware that anyone else had seen the same thing at the same time and place. In 13 cases, there were more than 10 witnesses s1Vallée, Jacques Challenge to Science, Regnery, Chicago, 1966. How do we deal with reports like these? One fact is clear: we cannot shrug them off.

William T. Powers
Dearborn Observatory,
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois 60201