1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:08,280 Of course it's appropriate to start with the reference to the scientific study of UFOs 2 00:00:08,280 --> 00:00:14,320 prepared by Dr. Condon and his 36 members staff at the University of Colorado during 3 00:00:14,320 --> 00:00:18,040 1967 and 1968. 4 00:00:18,040 --> 00:00:24,160 As Dr. Roberts has already said, this symposium was delayed for a year so that the full content 5 00:00:24,160 --> 00:00:29,840 of the Condon report could be read and digested after its publication in January of this 6 00:00:29,840 --> 00:00:30,960 year. 7 00:00:30,960 --> 00:00:38,720 The Van Dam Book Paperback edition of the Condon report contains some thousand pages, 8 00:00:38,720 --> 00:00:44,680 including case studies, analyses along several different scientific disciplines, and a 20 9 00:00:44,680 --> 00:00:47,000 year historical summary. 10 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:54,800 My own experience actually goes back to a panel convened by H.P. Robertson in 1953. 11 00:00:54,800 --> 00:00:59,620 We issued a very much shorter report and it was classified secret. 12 00:00:59,620 --> 00:01:05,780 Another panel, which met under the chairmanship of Brian O'Brien in 1966, also issued a report, 13 00:01:05,780 --> 00:01:09,540 but it was not very widely read. 14 00:01:09,540 --> 00:01:14,980 The Air Force, which is charged with the responsibility for investigating UFOs, came to realize that 15 00:01:14,980 --> 00:01:22,780 public education, public education, mind you, is needed to alleviate the so-called UFO problem. 16 00:01:22,780 --> 00:01:28,340 For instance, about 90 percent of the 13,000 reports in Project Blue Book could have been 17 00:01:28,340 --> 00:01:33,660 recognized as normal physical phenomena by persons who had studied elementary astronomy 18 00:01:33,660 --> 00:01:35,940 in high school or college. 19 00:01:35,940 --> 00:01:41,620 Of course, the press and other mass media have influenced public reaction in a manner that 20 00:01:41,620 --> 00:01:45,820 will be discussed later in the symposium. 21 00:01:45,820 --> 00:01:52,940 As we all know, public demand has helped to build up a large body of published literature, 22 00:01:52,940 --> 00:01:58,460 some of which I must admit is fallacious or highly speculative, and it's all of special 23 00:01:58,460 --> 00:02:04,180 appeal to readers uneducated in science, particularly youngsters in high school and 24 00:02:04,180 --> 00:02:06,820 early college years. 25 00:02:06,820 --> 00:02:13,780 At present, it's fair to say that the attitude towards UFOs is highly polarized between what 26 00:02:13,780 --> 00:02:20,500 I'll call conservative views of a small group of very senior physical scientists, and these 27 00:02:20,500 --> 00:02:26,220 will be discussed in the session tomorrow morning, and the vastly more speculative views 28 00:02:26,220 --> 00:02:29,300 of a large fraction of the U.S. public. 29 00:02:29,300 --> 00:02:36,620 This symposium is directed towards a middle group, the AAAS membership, who we hope want 30 00:02:36,620 --> 00:02:43,580 to learn more about the facts of the UFO problem and to hear a rational discussion of alternative 31 00:02:43,580 --> 00:02:50,180 explanations of the peculiar sightings that will be described, and to go over some of 32 00:02:50,180 --> 00:02:57,740 the sociological interpretations of the very widespread UFO phenomenon. 33 00:02:57,740 --> 00:03:04,780 For instance, I hope the psychologists, some of whom are here today, will take note of what 34 00:03:04,780 --> 00:03:11,860 I like to call Page's Law, that a wave of UFO reports seems to move eastward around the 35 00:03:11,860 --> 00:03:16,740 world and completes one full circuit in about 17 years. 36 00:03:16,740 --> 00:03:22,140 The special committee, which organized this symposium, as Dr. Roberts has already said, 37 00:03:22,140 --> 00:03:27,900 is convinced that a logical discussion of a topic that's already had such wide publicity 38 00:03:27,900 --> 00:03:35,060 will serve a beneficial educational service, both among the scientists present here today 39 00:03:35,060 --> 00:03:40,700 and the general public who will hear some of this discussion through the press and may 40 00:03:40,700 --> 00:03:44,780 have, thereby, some of their misconceptions corrected. 41 00:03:44,780 --> 00:03:49,340 But it would be ridiculous, as Dr. Roberts said, to claim that in a two-day symposium 42 00:03:49,340 --> 00:03:54,460 we can come up with the correct answer to the UFO question. 43 00:03:54,460 --> 00:04:01,300 The Condon Report, which involves over 50 man years of study, reached a conclusion, which 44 00:04:01,300 --> 00:04:06,900 has been disputed by many, that further study is not worthwhile. 45 00:04:06,900 --> 00:04:10,780 As already been mentioned, the Air Force has recently discontinued its Project Blue 46 00:04:10,780 --> 00:04:15,740 Book files, in case you don't know, they're to be moved from the Wright-Patterson Air 47 00:04:15,740 --> 00:04:25,420 Force Base to the USAF Archives at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, where 48 00:04:25,420 --> 00:04:29,780 access will be controlled by the Office of Information Department of the Air Force in 49 00:04:29,780 --> 00:04:30,780 Washington. 50 00:04:30,780 --> 00:04:38,020 Some of us are concerned about these files, which we consider to have considerable scientific 51 00:04:38,020 --> 00:04:39,020 importance. 52 00:04:39,020 --> 00:04:46,820 Although the Blue Book files were far from perfect, their termination has disappointed 53 00:04:46,820 --> 00:04:50,780 many people, including some of the scientists here. 54 00:04:50,780 --> 00:04:59,300 I'd like to quote from what Condon himself wrote in the Section 1, Page 2 of the Condon 55 00:04:59,300 --> 00:05:00,300 Report. 56 00:05:00,300 --> 00:05:01,300 I quote, 57 00:05:01,300 --> 00:05:04,500 Scientists are no respecters of authority. 58 00:05:04,500 --> 00:05:11,460 Our conclusion, this refers to his conclusion that further UFO studies are not worthwhile, 59 00:05:11,460 --> 00:05:15,980 our conclusion will not be uncritically accepted by scientists. 60 00:05:15,980 --> 00:05:18,540 Nor should it be, nor do we wish it to be. 61 00:05:18,540 --> 00:05:22,780 For scientists, it is our hope that the detailed analytical presentation of what we were able 62 00:05:22,780 --> 00:05:28,060 to do and of what we were unable to do will assist them in deciding whether or not they 63 00:05:28,060 --> 00:05:32,100 agree with our conclusion. 64 00:05:32,100 --> 00:05:38,420 It was nice of him to give us this choice, and I choose to disagree with at least one 65 00:05:38,420 --> 00:05:43,460 of his conclusions, that is, the harmful effect of UFO literature. 66 00:05:43,460 --> 00:05:48,340 Dr. Condon was not able to be with us here. 67 00:05:48,340 --> 00:05:55,300 He devotes the last half page of his conclusions and recommendations to what he calls, Miss 68 00:05:55,300 --> 00:06:00,780 Education in our Schools, which arises from the fact that many children are being encouraged 69 00:06:00,780 --> 00:06:06,020 to devote their science study time to the reading of UFO books and magazine articles. 70 00:06:06,020 --> 00:06:13,340 Now, there can be no doubt that some of the books and articles on UFOs are unsuitable 71 00:06:13,340 --> 00:06:20,340 and misleading, just as popular books on science fiction, astrology, drugs, and sex, all of 72 00:06:20,340 --> 00:06:25,140 which are equally available, may be vilitarious for young readers. 73 00:06:25,180 --> 00:06:35,660 I chose to review the Cato's annotated bibliography of UFO publications. 74 00:06:35,660 --> 00:06:37,220 It's that book right here. 75 00:06:37,220 --> 00:06:39,900 Cato is in the Library of Congress. 76 00:06:39,900 --> 00:06:47,620 This was published by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and it's AFOSR, 77 00:06:47,620 --> 00:06:57,620 remember, 68-1656, published earlier this year. 78 00:06:57,620 --> 00:07:05,820 In this, I found, in the general category of UFO publications, in English, 71 books, 79 00:07:05,820 --> 00:07:12,740 28 pamphlets, 73 magazine articles, which have been available and widely read in the 80 00:07:12,740 --> 00:07:15,220 United States since 1947. 81 00:07:15,940 --> 00:07:21,580 Actually, the pamphlets and magazine articles, I took only since 1960, because it seemed 82 00:07:21,580 --> 00:07:25,220 to me that the interest in old magazine articles was minimal. 83 00:07:26,460 --> 00:07:34,020 I classified these in eight categories, ranging from conservative science, which is strong 84 00:07:34,020 --> 00:07:43,100 effort to debunk the UFO report, and the Air Force position, which was a couple of books 85 00:07:43,100 --> 00:07:47,220 about how the Air Force has undertaken its analysis. 86 00:07:47,220 --> 00:07:54,980 From that extreme, through descriptive historical reports, and several books, for instance, by 87 00:07:54,980 --> 00:08:01,940 Fuller and others, speculative treatments of extraterrestrial visitors, and the most 88 00:08:01,940 --> 00:08:09,700 extreme on the speculative side are books and articles about contacts with UFO pilots 89 00:08:09,700 --> 00:08:10,700 and whatnot. 90 00:08:11,700 --> 00:08:18,940 The statistics, which I have tabulated here, but won't spend too much time on, are interesting 91 00:08:18,940 --> 00:08:20,620 in themselves. 92 00:08:20,620 --> 00:08:27,820 The publication dates of these journals, magazine articles and books given in Cato's bibliography 93 00:08:27,820 --> 00:08:36,700 show the three waves, which had hit the United States in 1950, 1958, and 1966. 94 00:08:36,700 --> 00:08:43,140 And then it's interesting to see where the articles were published. 95 00:08:43,140 --> 00:08:51,900 There are, of course, seven specific UFO journals, APRO Newsletter, Before a Journal in the United 96 00:08:51,900 --> 00:09:00,260 Kingdom, Fate, Flying Saucers, Flying Saucer Review, Saucer News, which is also in Britain, 97 00:09:00,260 --> 00:09:02,780 and UFO Investigators. 98 00:09:02,780 --> 00:09:10,860 But articles of some length appeared in publications like America, Argosy, Giant Comic Book, The 99 00:09:10,860 --> 00:09:17,260 Claims, The New Republic, Life, Look, Newsweek, New Yorker, Playboy, Saga, Spectator, Station, 100 00:09:17,260 --> 00:09:23,540 Saturday Even Post, Saturday Review, Time, True, U.S. News and World Report. 101 00:09:23,540 --> 00:09:28,940 And interesting enough, in other journals which are less available to the high school 102 00:09:28,940 --> 00:09:35,060 students that Connem is worrying about, Bioscience, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Journal 103 00:09:35,060 --> 00:09:41,580 of the Optical Society of America, Arrow Digest, Science, the publication is from AAAS, Science 104 00:09:41,580 --> 00:09:45,980 Digest, Physics Today, and the AL Scientific Magazine. 105 00:09:45,980 --> 00:09:50,500 I didn't read the whole list, but this gives you an idea of the publications we're talking 106 00:09:50,500 --> 00:09:53,300 about. 107 00:09:53,300 --> 00:10:02,820 The books show a much wider range in specularness than the pamphlets and magazines. 108 00:10:02,820 --> 00:10:08,660 About 10% of the books, remember there were 71 of them, are extremely conservative, and 109 00:10:08,660 --> 00:10:12,380 about 20% are highly speculated. 110 00:10:12,380 --> 00:10:18,220 The pamphlets and magazine articles, for the last nine years anyway, tend to be much more 111 00:10:18,220 --> 00:10:24,540 grouped in the center of liberal, scientific, or historical type discussion. 112 00:10:24,540 --> 00:10:30,860 And they're, I think, quite suitable for student reading. 113 00:10:30,860 --> 00:10:38,180 If you eliminate the books like Adamski's Inside the Spaceships, even the speculative 114 00:10:38,180 --> 00:10:45,580 books can be used under supervision of an experienced science teacher as interest browsers. 115 00:10:46,020 --> 00:10:53,340 And as any teacher knows, student interest in a topic, even if it drives from misconception, 116 00:10:53,340 --> 00:10:56,420 is better than no interest at all. 117 00:10:56,420 --> 00:11:05,500 So to test this use of UFOs in the teaching of science, at Westing University, I offered 118 00:11:05,500 --> 00:11:13,340 an undergraduate elective course called Science 101 designed to interest non-science majors 119 00:11:13,340 --> 00:11:17,860 who would otherwise have had no science courses whatsoever. 120 00:11:17,860 --> 00:11:22,100 Along with a number of other science teachers there, I've become very frustrated with the 121 00:11:22,100 --> 00:11:25,100 diminishing undergraduate interest in physical science. 122 00:11:25,100 --> 00:11:32,900 And I have a table here which shows that, whereas in the class of 1960, 16% of the students 123 00:11:32,900 --> 00:11:39,060 graduated with majors in the physical sciences, that means including math, math, physics, 124 00:11:39,060 --> 00:11:42,300 chemistry, astronomy, geology. 125 00:11:42,300 --> 00:11:49,300 That dropped down to 7% in 1969, and the numbers in between just right down. 126 00:11:49,300 --> 00:11:56,580 See, this is frustrating at a time when, it seems to me, the space exploration, electronic 127 00:11:56,580 --> 00:12:01,340 computers, nuclear physics offer much more exciting work than anything in my previous 128 00:12:01,340 --> 00:12:03,660 experience. 129 00:12:03,660 --> 00:12:08,180 The source of disinterest, or even hostility to the physical sciences, has been traced 130 00:12:08,180 --> 00:12:12,140 to the poor teaching of mathematics and physics in grade school and high school. 131 00:12:12,140 --> 00:12:15,940 But this scarcely helps to solve the problem of what we should do about a generation of 132 00:12:15,940 --> 00:12:20,340 college students who want nothing to do with physical science, at a time when more young 133 00:12:20,340 --> 00:12:23,140 physicists, engineers, and astronomers are needed. 134 00:12:23,140 --> 00:12:29,020 Of course, my colleagues on the faculty's West End laughed at my offering a course called 135 00:12:29,020 --> 00:12:30,520 Flying Saucers. 136 00:12:30,520 --> 00:12:33,660 That was in the fall semester of 1967. 137 00:12:33,660 --> 00:12:40,540 But it was oversubscribed and reoffered by student demand in the spring of 1968 as Flying 138 00:12:40,540 --> 00:12:45,540 Sickles, a reference to the UFO reports in the Soviet Union. 139 00:12:45,540 --> 00:12:50,500 The course was maintained for another school year, and then discontinued because I was 140 00:12:50,500 --> 00:12:56,260 away from the university down at NASA Man's Spacecraft Center. 141 00:12:56,260 --> 00:13:01,340 Very briefly, this one semester course consisted of two lectures and a discussion session each 142 00:13:01,340 --> 00:13:05,660 week with a two week reading period near the end. 143 00:13:05,660 --> 00:13:11,940 We started with a review of UFO reports, and then spent five weeks on elementary astronomy. 144 00:13:11,940 --> 00:13:17,660 The reasoning being that planets, bright stars, and meteors are often reported as flying saucers 145 00:13:17,660 --> 00:13:18,660 to UFOs. 146 00:13:18,660 --> 00:13:25,140 The importance of slushed coordinates and time was stressed for proper reporting of UFOs. 147 00:13:25,140 --> 00:13:30,340 Then the students were interested enough, or villainous enough, to phone me late in the 148 00:13:30,340 --> 00:13:33,540 evening every time they saw something look like a UFO. 149 00:13:33,540 --> 00:13:39,460 One of my most active evenings was in November of 1967 when I was a bright moon dog, this 150 00:13:39,460 --> 00:13:44,700 circle around the moon, was reported to me by every one of the 50 students in my class. 151 00:13:44,700 --> 00:13:48,500 I kept the phone busy, though, with our meeting. 152 00:13:48,500 --> 00:13:54,220 At this point we shifted to atmospheric physics and discussed ball lightning and refraction 153 00:13:54,220 --> 00:13:59,340 and aurorae for a week or two, and then returned to astronomy for a discussion of the extraterrestrial 154 00:13:59,340 --> 00:14:00,340 hypothesis. 155 00:14:00,940 --> 00:14:04,860 The students learned that conditions on other planets in the solar system are not conducive 156 00:14:04,860 --> 00:14:08,740 to life, discussed theories of the origin of the solar system and the origin of life, 157 00:14:08,740 --> 00:14:10,940 which was a very popular topic. 158 00:14:10,940 --> 00:14:15,460 They learned how stellar distances are measured by parallax, discussed the probability of life 159 00:14:15,460 --> 00:14:20,580 on planets around other stars, and recognized the difficult problems of interstellar travel. 160 00:14:20,580 --> 00:14:26,300 It's a long way to the nearest star, and if you try to go very fast, the impacts of interstellar 161 00:14:26,300 --> 00:14:31,980 hydrogen, which we know about and the students learned about, is kind of difficult. 162 00:14:31,980 --> 00:14:39,300 In a two-week reading period, each student wrote a term paper on a topic which he selected 163 00:14:39,300 --> 00:14:45,660 from a list that I've reproduced in my paper here that I'll give you some ideas and topics 164 00:14:45,660 --> 00:14:50,660 for the toll-make system in astronomy. 165 00:14:50,660 --> 00:14:55,700 The Earth's atmosphere, aurorae and how they work, the explanation of the aurorae, is celestial 166 00:14:55,700 --> 00:15:00,980 mechanics, how close other planets get to us and how fast they're moving, space probes, 167 00:15:00,980 --> 00:15:07,700 how long it takes to get to the moon and Mars, the moon and planets, all the surface conditions 168 00:15:07,700 --> 00:15:13,740 of the moon, this was before we had Apollo data on the lunar surface, the solar system 169 00:15:13,740 --> 00:15:19,380 and its origin, and the origin of life, and then a historical summary of the flying saucer 170 00:15:20,100 --> 00:15:28,100 reports. So each student wrote a paper of three or four thousand words about this, about one of 171 00:15:28,100 --> 00:15:38,100 the topics. This was passed to another student to criticize, and in all but very few cases, 172 00:15:38,100 --> 00:15:45,140 these critiques of the second student revealed a clear understanding of the astronomy involved 173 00:15:45,220 --> 00:15:50,420 and in the physics. The three best papers each semester were published and there's some 174 00:15:50,420 --> 00:15:57,860 copies still over on that table of studies of UFOs that were considered by the students 175 00:15:57,860 --> 00:16:02,820 themselves to be the best in the class. We sold them for twenty five cents in middle town, 176 00:16:02,820 --> 00:16:10,820 but we're giving them away for years. At each semester we had a TV show in Hartford, 177 00:16:11,380 --> 00:16:18,020 and the three best authors appeared with me on a half hour show explaining their views on UFOs, 178 00:16:18,020 --> 00:16:23,780 and they gained first-hand experience with the publicity aspects of the UFO phenomenon. 179 00:16:23,780 --> 00:16:32,420 And by the way, earlier in the semester we'd had two speakers from outside. The first semester 180 00:16:32,420 --> 00:16:37,300 was Dr. Heineck who talked to us tomorrow, and Dr. Menzel who may talk to us tomorrow, 181 00:16:38,180 --> 00:16:42,900 lectured to the class and the students had a chance to ask me questions and learned a good 182 00:16:42,900 --> 00:16:47,700 deal more about the publicity difficulties. While I'm convinced the students learned a good 183 00:16:47,700 --> 00:16:53,860 deal of astronomy, physics, and biology in my flying saucer course, although I must admit that 184 00:16:53,860 --> 00:17:00,260 such a course is not suitable for regular science program and that it loses its appeal after 185 00:17:00,340 --> 00:17:06,180 three or four repetitions, which is what we're trying. For lab work the students learned constellations, 186 00:17:07,140 --> 00:17:12,980 spotted an earth-orbiting spacecraft, looked at bright planets through a small telescope, 187 00:17:13,620 --> 00:17:21,380 and several of them searched for the evidence of UFOs on pictures taken by the cameras of the 188 00:17:21,380 --> 00:17:28,580 Prairie Network, which will be discussed later this afternoon. After one session on this we decided 189 00:17:29,220 --> 00:17:35,220 all the astronomical telescopes in the world have almost no chance of photographing a UFO passing 190 00:17:35,220 --> 00:17:44,580 through a telescope field by chance. On the other hand this Prairie Network has a much better chance 191 00:17:44,580 --> 00:17:53,540 of photographing UFOs. The Canadians have recently established a similar network, 192 00:17:53,540 --> 00:17:59,140 and the Czechs had a network for both all three of them, designed of course for studying meteors 193 00:17:59,140 --> 00:18:05,060 rather than UFOs, but certainly available for getting hard data on UFO appearances. 194 00:18:06,260 --> 00:18:11,780 So in conclusion, I think that the general advancement of science depends heavily on the 195 00:18:11,780 --> 00:18:19,220 public's education in science, and most of the significant research today depends on public 196 00:18:19,220 --> 00:18:26,500 support, obviously, at universities, the foundation support, or government financing, and it's 197 00:18:28,180 --> 00:18:34,660 obvious that all students and older citizens also must be given enough science education to recognize 198 00:18:34,660 --> 00:18:40,740 what's worthwhile and what's in the science ethic. For a number of reasons, a large fraction of the 199 00:18:40,740 --> 00:18:46,340 students in the public are interested in UFOs, and I think that the teachers can certainly 200 00:18:46,340 --> 00:18:53,060 capitalize on this interest in teaching courses abroad appeal. Scientists in general should take 201 00:18:53,060 --> 00:18:58,420 advantage of the public interest in UFOs to correct public misconceptions about science.