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From: Francisco Lopez <d005734c@dc.seflin.org>
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 10:30:15 -0400 (EDT)
Fwd Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 13:51:15 -0400
Subject: J. Allen Hynek Quote

From: Michael Estes <mestes@methow.com>
Via: "'ufolist@egroups.com'" <ufolist@egroups.com>

The following is quoted by J. ALLEN HYNEK in the Foreword to
'Challenge To Science - UFO Enigma' by Jacques Vallee, 1966:

FOREWORD

WHAT is the responsibility of the scientist confronted with
observations that seem not only a challenge but sometimes also
an affront to science? How does one discharge this
responsibility? The UFO phenomena presents us with such a
problem. To most scientists who have no acquaintance with the
subject, save that gained from scanning the popular press, it is
an "untouchable" area. Flying saucers indeed!-the product of
immature, imaginative, and even unbalanced minds, the playground
of the pseudo-scientist and the quasi-mystic, the haven of the
crackpot.

Is this really so? Obviously, if one is to apply the scientific
principles we all staunchly defend, one must take the time to
look into the subject carefully-to look and to consider. But
time is precisely what today's scientists-in some respects the
world's busiest people -do not have! Who can take the time to
wade through the seeming morass of stories, fanciful tales,
chimera, and balderdash when SO many pressing things demand the
scientist's immediate attention?

As an astronomer, I probably would never have approached the
subject had I not been officially asked to do so. Over the past
eighteen years I have acted as a scientific consultant to the
U.S. Air Force on the sub-ject of unidentified flying
objects-UFO's. As a conse-quence of my work on the voluminous
air force files and, to a greater extent, of personal
investigation of many puzzling cases and interviews with
witnesses of good repute, I have long been aware that the
subject of UFO's could not be dismissed as mere nonsense.
Nonsense is present, to be sure, and misidentification of
otherwise familiar objects that many sincere people report as
UFO's. But is there not a "signal" in the "noise," a needle in
the haystack? Is it not precisely our role to try to isolate the
valid from the nonsensical? By carefully working through tons of
pitchblende, Madame Curie isolated a tiny amount of radium-but
the significance of that minute quantity was world--shaking.

It is my conclusion (speaking now personally and not in an
official capacity) after many years of working through "tons" of
reports, that there is a signal, that there is "radium" in the
"pitchblende," waiting to be extracted. The authors of this book
have come to the same conclusion, by a somewhat different path.
Whether the scientifically valid in the entire UFO phenomenon
proves to be a physical signal or a psychological one -or even a
heretofore unknown phenomenon-it is in every respect a challenge
to science.

Perhaps I should have spoken earlier; eighteen years is a long
time. But it takes more evidence to get an idea accepted in a
revolutionary field, be it biological evolu-tion, relativity, or
quantum mechanics, than it does to advance simply another step
in an accepted scientific domain. Furthermore, astronomers are
among the most conservative of scientists. Perhaps this is
because their time scale is so great that they naturally bide
their time in proposing or accepting revolutionary ideas,
partic-ularly if such ideas are subject to sensational treatment
in the press and in the minds of the people.

Nonetheless, I have of late been rebuked, in my correspondence
with people whose integrity I respect, with the charge that I
failed to call the importance of the air force data on UFO's to
the attention of my peers. If any defense is needed, in view of
the controversial and explosive nature of the subject, it is
that I did indeed on many occasions call guarded attention to
the steadily growing mass of reports made by intelli-gent people
from many countries. As early as 1952, before the Optical
Society of America, I pointed out the significant nature of some
types of UFO reports (article published in the Journal of the
Optical Society of America, April, 1953). Over and above that,
there remains the fact that for years I have personally de-voted
a portion of my time to this subject, an action that would be
unthinkable had I not felt it was worthy of examination. I have
long been aware that the UFO phenomenon is a global one and that
it has captured the attention of many rational people. Numerous
scien-tists have privately told me of their interest and their
willingness to look further into the problem.

Also, as a scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force, I carry
a unique responsibility: any statement I make on the importance
of the UFO phenomenon, unless backed by overwhelming evidence,
carries the danger of "mobilizing the credulity of the world,"
as a univer-sity colleague of mine so aptly put it. I recognize
that responsibility in accepting the invitation of the authors
to write the Foreword to this book. It was only my respect for
the authors as serious investigators and the continued and
growing mass of unexplained UFO re-ports that prompted me to
accept. I have over the years acquired something of a reputation
as a "debunker" of UFO reports. If this arose from my honest
desire to find a rational natural explanation for the stimuli
that give rise to the reports, a procedure very frequently
crowned with success, then I must bear with that reputa-tion. If
it stems, however, from a belief that I deliber-ately adopted a
Procrustean approach, cutting down or stretching out evidence to
make a forced fit, deliber-ately to "explain away" UFO reports
at all cost, then it is a most unwarranted charge.

In my nearly two score years' association with the investigation
of the reports, I have yet to write a book on the subject,
primarily because there is no physical evidence in support of
the phenomenon. Were I to write such a book today, however, I
probably would take much the same approach followed by the
present authors. The Vallees present a formidable amount of
evidence for the. global nature of the UFO phenomenon, but
despite this they come to no firm conclusion. As they state: "We
must realize that the observations we have reviewed . . . have
no value in themselves. They are important and deserve study,
only because each one is an illustration of a phenomenon that
has manifested itself since May, 1946, in every country in the
world." Besides the fact that the reports bear striking
similarities to each other they continue to be made by people of
good repute, which makes it imperative that a scientific
investigation be undertaken. Because of the global nature of the
total phenomenon, this investigation might well be carried our
under the auspices of the United Nations. The psychological
implications of the UFO phenomenon on world affairs certainly
make it worthy of study. It makes no difference, in this
respect, what the physical truth of the matter is; it is the
impact it has on the minds of people in many nations that makes
it potentially important in the psychosociological balance of
the world.

My own interest, as an astronomer, in the total phenomenon is,
of course, purely scientific. Some readers many well wonder
whether this seemingly flam-boyant subject is amenable to
scientific inquiry. What constitutes scientific evidence in this
field? The authors present a convincing argument that the UFO
phenom-enon can be studied with the advanced methods of inquiry
of the physical scientist and of the sociologist and
psychologist. In all of these methods the electronic computer
figures prominently.

Scientific inquiry becomes possible when the phenom-enon under
study exhibits patterns and-regularities, when it is subject to
classification Lee authors have shown that a classification
system (the start of many branches of science) of UFO phenomena
is possible and, indeed, that each type they have identified
shows a different diurnal frequency pattern. In particular,
their catalogue of five hundred cases should be of interest to
scientists. I cannot help drawing a parallel with the first
catalogues of celestial radio sources: the great majority- of
the entries were unidentified optically; only more ad-vanced
methods of analysis and observation revealed that some of these
were distant radio galaxies and that some were the striking new
puzzle, quasi-stellar sources. The present catalogue of UFO
cases consists, with very few exceptions, of unidentified items;
one wonders whether the parallel with the catalogue of radio
sources continues.

Certainly no progress can be made without scientific study.
Unfortunately, as the authors point out, scientists, "draped
with dignity," have often refused to study the reports. The fact
of the matter is that many of my colleagues who have undraped
their dignity long enough to take a hard look at the reports
have joined the grow-ing ranks of the puzzled scientists: they
privately indi-cate serious interest in the phenomenon but
publicly they choose, like the subject itself, to remain
unidenti-fied; they are unwilling to expose themselves to the
raillery and banter that go with it. It is to them in
par-ticular, and to all who foster the true Galilean spirit,
that this book will be of greatest value. They grope and seek,
examining even those ideas that seem fanciful and strange, for
they know how strange and fanciful the term "nuclear energy"
would have been to a physicist one hundred years ago. They are
ready to accept a new challenge to science.


J. Allen Hynek
Chairman, Department of Astronomy, and Director,
Dearborn Observatory, Northwestern University


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