The Close Encounters Man by Mark O'Connell

Author:Mark O'Connell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

Dr. Hynek looking bemused, perhaps after digging through the latest batch of UFO reports from Project Blue Book. Note the example of what his son Paul referred to as his father’s “astro-beatnik” neckwear. (Photo by Tom Brunk. Courtesy of Northwestern University.)

After a description of his long tenure as a UFO investigator, Hynek recounted his frustrated attempts to nudge the air force into taking a more scientific approach to the phenomenon. He then declared that it was time at last to clear up popular misconceptions about UFOs, and he addressed seven that he felt were the most egregious:

1. Only UFO “buffs” report UFO’s. The exact opposite is much nearer the truth . . . It has been my experience that quite generally the truly puzzling reports come from people who have not given much or any thought to UFO’s.

2. UFO’s are reported by unreliable, unstable, and uneducated people. This is, of course, true. But UFO’s are reported in even greater numbers by reliable, stable, and educated people . . .

3. UFO’s are never reported by scientifically trained people. This is unequivocally false. Some of the very best, most coherent reports have come from scientifically trained people. It is true that scientists are reluctant to make a public report . . .

4. UFO’s are never seen at close range and are always reported vaguely. When we speak of the body of puzzling reports, we exclude all those which fit the above description . . .

5. The Air Force has no evidence that UFO’s are extraterrestrial or represent advanced technology of any kind. This is a true statement but is widely interpreted to mean that there is evidence against the two hypotheses. As long as there are “unidentifieds,” the question must obviously remain open . . .

6. UFO reports are generated by publicity. One cannot deny that there is a positive feedback . . . when sightings are widely publicized, but it is unwarranted to assert that this is the sole cause of high incidence of UFO reports.

7. UFO’s have never been sighted on radar or photographed by meteor or satellite tracking cameras. This statement is not equivalent to saying that radar, meteor cameras, and satellite tracking stations have not picked up “oddities” on their scopes or films that have remained unidentified.25

His argument was comprehensive; his points were sound. How could any thinking person not be persuaded to at least consider the data?

“I cannot dismiss the UFO phenomenon with a shrug,” he concluded, adding, “I have begun to feel that there is a tendency in 20th-century science to forget that there will be a 21st-century science, and indeed, a 30th-century science, from which vantage points our knowledge of the universe may appear quite different. We suffer, perhaps, from temporal provincialism, a form of arrogance that has always irritated posterity.”26

Six months and one day from the date that the House Armed Services Committee directed Secretary Brown to recruit a group of universities to study the UFO phenomenon, the first school signed on. Relieved to

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