"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. "It is often useful to form working hypotheses that may be tested by the data collected. This approach was used here because of the focus this approach brings to both data collection and critical thinking. Most of these hypotheses originated from considering the UFO evidence in general before I began to collect and analyze these particular cases.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
American physicist
Hypothesis 1. The more objects there are (in a common group) the more likely that they will fly in a rigid, geometrically precise formation. However, the formation may change into another formation during a given pass overhead.
Hypothesis 2. Basic object(s) flight dynamics will not change over the years, regardless of the number of objects involved in a given case.
Hypothesis 3. A frequency plot of the number of objects per case versus year will show the same curve, i.e., there will be no significant change over time.
Hypothesis 4. There will be a correspondence in the description of the object(s) flying within the same general geographic region, between different reports, when the same number of objects are reported. That is, different people are probably seeing and reporting the same group of aerial objects .
Hypothesis 5. There will be no clear-cut relationship between the number of objects in a given case and the reported velocity or brief duration maneuverability they exhibit.
Hypothesis 6. Flights of objects in a rigid formation will not change in direction of flight.
Each hypothesis is evaluated against the data later.