David M. Jacobs - The UFO Controversy in America

The UFO Controversy in America

By

David Michael Jacobs

FOREWORD BY J. ALLEN HYNEK

To the Memory of My Mother

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C O PYRIGHT 1975 BY INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. For information addre ss Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana 47401.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 74-11886

This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover edition published by the Indiana University Press. The hardcover edition was published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside L imited , Don Mil l s, Ontario.

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Scientific controversy has a rich history. And in modern times no controversy in science has had the global extent, the awareness by the public, the display of scientific argument and prejudice, the involvement of the media, and the scientific dilution of, and gross distraction from, the main issues by religious f anatics, visionaries, and charlatans, as has the phenomenon of the Unidentified Flying Object (UFO).

The UFO controversy has a relatively long history, but until now this has been only partially and not coherently documented from about the turn of this century to the present. There is only sporadic doc um entation in earlier centuries. Indeed, in earlier times there could hardly be said to have been a controversy, although the phenomenon apparently was present.

The need of a sober non-partisan compilation and documentation of the controversy its elf arises precisely because the UFO phenomenon has elicited as strong an emotional and partisan response as any scientific controversy in history. Certainly it has involved far more people, and on a global basis, than the classic scientific controversies on, say, meteorites, continental drift, mechanical nature of heat, relativity, and even biological evolution and natural selection. The latter, however, is perhaps the only controversy in which basic emotional responses, buttressed by deep-seated religious and personal prejudice, played so major a role.

Indeed, there is an interesting anti-parallelism between controversy surrounding the theory of biological evolution and that s urr ounding the UFO phenomenon. In the gradual rise of the concept of biological evolution, there was first the slow acceptance at the top echelons of biological science before these concepts filtered down to the popular levels. It was at these lower levels, however, where the greatest emotional and surcharged prejudicial responses were generated. Human dignity, it seemed to the man on the street, was at stake, as was religious orthodoxy, and the new concepts were stubbornly resisted and openly combated by the grass roots very much more than by the scientific establishment. One has to recall the famous Tennessee monkey trial in which the Darwinian concepts were ably but unavailingly defended by Clarence Darrow and vehemently opposed by William Jennings Bryan to gauge the extent of rampant emotionalism surrounding the whole subject.

With the UFO phenomenon there is a parallel, but one with the opposite sign. Here the phenomenon arose and was reported at the grass roots levels (as in the case of meteorites, as a matter of fact) and it was, in contrast, the highest scientific echelons that generated the emotional storm against allowing unprejudiced examination of the claimed observations of thousands upon thousands of persons judged sane by conventional standards.

One may expect unbridled emotional responses in scientific matter from the untutored public; one is aghast to find it among ones scientific colleagues. One should expect that they, above al l , would be conversant with the history of science, which has furnished so many, many ex am ples of violent opposition to new ideas and concepts, opposition which was forced to give way to acceptance in the face of overwhelming evidence. Above a l l, the ideals of science call for calm and unprejudiced examination of the evidence, duly and properly presented.

And therein lies the rub! The UFO evidence has not been properly presented at the Court of Science. The parallel of meteorites comes at once to mind. For centuries there had been stories of stones having fal l en from the sky. Peasants reported finding such stones as later they plowed their fields. Wh y should the French Academy of Science take seriously the untutored peasants incredible stories of stones having fa ll en from the skies? Clearly impo ss ible! And by the s am e token, why should science take seriously incredible stories about strange craft in the sky? Stones dont fall from the sky, and strange craft, exhibiting behaviors totally unknown and not encompassed in modern science, cant exist.

One glaring difference: many of the observers of the UFO phenomenon have by no means been untutored peasants. Professors, scientists, air-traffic controllers, engineers, pilots, persons holding elective office as well as truck drivers, farmers, and school children have reported much the same things . And as in the case of meteorites, the reports have come from all around the world.

But the data on the UFO phenomenon have had to run an insidious gauntlet that the meteorites were spared. Discoveries of meteorite falls did not become the fabric of cultists, pseudoreligious aberrants; meteorites were not regarded as sent by other-world intelligence bent on helping and reforming the benighted people of the earth. Nobody concocted a story about riding a meteorite to Venus and there meeting glorious perfected humans who imparted platitudes in stained glass attitudes.

But let it be clearly understood: such UFO associated stories have been relatively few and certainly were not generated by pilots, policemen, air-traf fic controllers , and persons holding public office and other highly responsible positions. These wer e quite clearly generated by persons for whom the concept of flying saucers satisfied some psychological fantasies and peculiar in n er needs. Unfortunately, though few in number, such persons were generally uninhibitedly vocal and insensitive to ridicule; they were given ample press and often generated a cultist following . Meteorites were not so encumbered. Nor was final acceptance of meteorites and of other concepts obstructed by stories generated by misidentification and misperceptions. The untutored in what can be seen in the sky, and those unaware of the vagaries of perceptions, are legion. Stimulated by accounts of truly strange sights in the sky or near the ground, and anxious to partake in the excitement, legion in n ocently but devastatingly heaped large piles of UFO stories onto the market. Although these were soon revealed for what they were unidentified only to themselves and certainly not to others who could easily identify the source of the misidentifications this all served to muddle the primary issues.

It was in atmosphere of co nfu sion and misinformation that the Condon Committee, the Air Force sponsored group at the University of Colorado headed by the late Dr. Edward Condon, was conceived. It labored long to produce a scientific mouse, and a deformed mouse at that, one with two dissimilar heads; one, the summary of the investigation by Dr. Condon, which summarily dismisses the entire subject as unworthy of scientific attention, and the other, a series of attempts, often agonizing and unsuccessful in four times out of five to devise a natural explanation for the UFO report selected for study. Clearly, the right hand head did not know what the left hand head was doing.