How should scientists react to UFO sightings? Should they blow them off as a mental dyspepsia bubbling up from a diet too rich in "The X-Files" and "Star Trek" and too poor in skepticism, or should they investigate them?
A new report by a group of well-credentialed scientists recommends the latter approach.The report, "Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports," was issued in late June by the Society of Scientific Exploration. It contains the findings of a panel of scientists who looked at UFO evidence at the suggestion and funding of Laurance S. Rockefeller. The workshop's director was Peter A. Sturrock, professor of applied physics at Stanford University.
Meeting in Tarrytown, N.Y., Sept. 29-Oct. 4, 1997, the panel asked leading UFO researchers to take their best shots, showing them photos and other physical evidence. Then they analyzed these with the best tools they could lay their hands on, including digital scanners and spectrometers. They held a review session in San Francisco in late November.
"It was clear that at least a few reported incidents might have involved rare but significant phenomena such as electrical activity high above thunderstorms . . . or rare cases of radar ducting," says the summary of the report.
"On the other hand, the review panel was not convinced that any of the evidence involved currently unknown physical processes or pointed to the involvement of an extraterrestrial intelligence. A few cases may have their origins in secret military activities."
The group concluded that when UFOs are reported, better investigation by scientists might yield real benefits. "It is desirable that there be institutional support for research in this area," they wrote.
One of the panel's chairmen, Von R. Eshleman, professor emeritus at Stanford University, told the Deseret News, "I couldn't say the scientific method was well-used in any of the UFO reporting to give a convincing case for any of the so-called UFO observations.
"At the same time, at the other extreme, I think totally dismissing all reports of unexplained phenomena is fundamentally the wrong way to go . . . There are sober people who have seen things they can't explain."
For example, years ago reports surfaced of colored lights moving about high in the atmosphere, far above thunderstorms. Scientists scoffed at these mysterious lights, saying lightning happens between, within and below clouds - but not above.
Recently, researchers verified such lightsare a discharge flashing upward from thunderclouds. "It's a breakdown of the air that occurs when there are large charge differences that exist between clouds and the high atmosphere."
If reports like that had been taken seriously, he said, the electrical "sprites" might have been discovered earlier.
With photos of UFOs, "surely some are frauds" and many others can be explained by unusual natural events, like the moon reflecting in ice crystals within the atmosphere and showing up as a disk.
Still, Eshleman said, "a scientist is a man or woman who is curious, and they want to know more about things, and evidence should be looked into."
Professor Laurence W. Fredrick of the University of Virginia astronomy department, secretary of the Society for Scientific Exploration - the group that issued the report - noted that all UFO reports aren't easily explained.
"Well, there are a few observations - very, very few - that are reliable enough and puzzling enough that they raise the question that something's going on that is interesting, is worth trying to find out. The great majority of UFO cases that are not solved are third-hand reports and/or very poor observations," he said.
One of the puzzling cases dates to 1965 when two French submarines, the Junon and the Dephane, escorted by the logistics ship Rhone, were anchored near the island of Martinique.
According to documentation within the report, one dark evening in clear weather "a large luminous object arrived slowly and silently from the west, flew to the south, made three complete loops in the sky over the French vessels and vanished like a rapidly extinguished light bulb."
Michel Figuet, helmsman of the French fleet of the Mediterranean, saw the object from his position on the deck of the Junon. "He had time to go up to the conning tower, where he took six pairs of binoculars and distributed them to his companions. There were 300 witnesses, including four officers on the Junon, three officers on the Daphne, a dozen French sailors and personnel of the weather observatory."
The disk was the color of a fluorescent tube and of the brightness of the full moon. "It left a whitish trace similar to the glow of a television set."
Fredrick said hundreds of crewmen "saw something which no one on that ship could explain."
Some reactions by Utahns with a science background to the report's recommendation that UFO sightings should get closer attention:
- Chuck Lear, an Ogden man who works in the aerospace industry and has a master's degree in physics, believes UFOs are nonphysical. There are up to 10 dimensions of space-time, he said, and "I think possibly a lot of UFO phenomena are objective appearances in higher dimensions."
Asked to explain that, he said the UFOs could be "appearances of objects in higher dimensions. Our space-time kind of intersects spaces of higher dimensions, and what we're seeing is cross-sections of those higher dimensional objects."
A beefed-up examination of UFOs may not be worthwhile, as "I don't think we have the right tools to do it. . . . But it's worth keeping our eyes on it."
- Dr. Paul H. Wender, professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah, doesn't know of any compelling evidence for UFOs. "The fact that something unbelievable is believed in by a large number of people is not any indication of truth," he said.
UFO reports are hard to study, just as it's hard to study reports that satanic ritual abuse is going on. With all the FBI investigations of satanism, and all the stories of this abuse, he said, "no chopped-up babies have ever been found."
"Why ideas without support get widely disseminated and believed in has something to do with the psychology of rumor." He termed this, "the phenomenon of infectious misbelief."
- Harry Ames, assistant manager for the programs division, Space Dynamics Laboratory, Utah State University, Logan, said in his personal opinion, scientists should not just dismiss UFO reports out of hand.
"Phenomena of any kind are worth studying, because you might not find the green men from Mars, but you might find some new meteorological phenomenon or some phenomenon in atmospheric physics or chemistry that might lead you to a new investigation."
All science starts with curiosity, he said. "I don't think that people seeing things in the sky should be treated any differently from any other observation that someone might make, that might lead to a scientific investigation."
- Jill Marshall, associate professor of physics at USU, said, "I'm afraid I have a mixed feeling" about whether scientists should pay attention to UFO reports.
When she switched from research to teaching an astronomy class in the physics department, she found students had "a lot less skepticism" than she had found among her colleagues.
"Many students just have not had the opportunity to learn about (the scientific approach), so they believed things that to a scientist would seem very, very unlikely."
Research budgets are limited, so scientists aim at subjects where they can profit most by finding valuable solutions or opening new fields or where they can best further their own careers, she said.
"From the scientists' viewpoint, I would say no, these things (UFO reports) are not really worth spending a lot of time and energy on."
But from a teacher's standpoint, she has come to realize that people need to understand why scientists think reported events are or aren't explainable. Scientists are attacked for being unresponsive to the public, Marshall said.
"If we dismiss these cases of alleged sightings or contacts as being definitely not UFOs, then we have to be able to demonstrate what evidence or proof we have that these cases are not."
She is convinced that no evidence could convince some people that fraud has occurred. Even if she could show a prankster at work making crop circles, or a secret videotape made of someone asleep in bed on the same night he claimed to be abducted by a UFO, "that would make no difference to many of the people."
"It's a matter of belief, and there is no proof that they would accept."
Scientists should educate people who have open minds, Marshall said. They should neither go all-out on researching UFOs nor write off every report.