Issue of
July 1, 1998
 
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No evidence of ET:
Panel calls for more scientific UFO research
BY DAVID F. SALISBURY
Sorry, X-filers. A panel
of scientists has reviewed the physical evidence
associated with UFO reports for the first time in nearly
30 years, and found nothing to convince them that Earth
is being visited by alien astronauts. Nor did the panel
find credible evidence that known natural laws are being
violated.
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Information:
On the other hand, the
scientists were convinced that something mysterious is
going on. They agreed that some reports are accompanied
by physical evidence that cannot be readily explained and
suggested that "it may be valuable to carefully
evaluate UFO reports to extract information about unusual
phenomena currently unknown to science."
Despite the panel's
failure to find evidence for aliens, the enduring public
interest in the topic was manifest in the flood of media
interest that materialized on Monday, June 29, when the
report was released. "Good Morning America"
featured the report first thing in the morning, CNN aired
a story about it a few hours later, and all the network
evening news programs announced its basic conclusions.
The review prompted ABC News to conduct an unscientific
poll, and 91 percent of those questioned answered
"yes" to the question "Should scientists
be encouraged to study UFOs?"
The review was organized
and directed by Peter Sturrock, professor of applied
physics at Stanford, and supported administratively by
the Society for Scientific Exploration, which provides a
forum for research into unexplained phenomena. The
international review panel of nine physical scientists
responded to presentations by eight investigators of UFO
reports, who were asked to present their strongest data.
The panel points out that
much has changed since the last scientific review of the
controversial subject. Advances in scientific knowledge
and technical capabilities make it more likely that
studying UFO reports can produce important new insights,
the report's executive summary states. People around the
world have continued to report encounters with
unidentified flying objects, and France has set up an
official program to investigate such reports in a
systematic fashion. Despite these developments, the
subject has continued to receive very little scientific
scrutiny.
In 1996, Laurance S.
Rockefeller, chairman of the LSR Fund, invited Sturrock
to give him an update on how much is actually known about
the causes of UFO sightings. "We agreed that the
problem is in a very unsatisfactory state of
confusion," Sturrock says. To encourage the
extensive and open scientific scrutiny that Sturrock
believes is necessary to figure out what is really going
on, the two hit on the idea of holding a workshop where
prominent UFO investigators would meet with a panel of
scientists with wide-ranging interests and expertise.
Sturrock recruited a group
of scientists that he describes as "open-minded but
hard-nosed." The panel was co-chaired by Von R.
Eshleman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at
Stanford, and Thomas Holzer of the High Altitude
Observatory in Boulder, Colo. The other members were
Randy Jokipii, professor of planetary science, University
of Arizona-Tucson; Francois Louange, managing director of
Fleximage, Paris, France; H. J. Melosh, professor of
planetary science, University of Arizona-Tucson; James J.
Papike, professor of earth and planetary sciences,
University of New Mexico-Albuquerque; Guenther Reitz,
German Aerospace Center, Institute for Aerospace
Medicine, Cologne, Germany; Charles Tolbert, professor of
astronomy, University of Virginia-Charlottesville; and
Bernard Veyret, Bioelectromagnetics Laboratory,
University of Bordeaux, France.
Eight experienced UFO
investigators were asked to review specific categories of
evidence, including photographic, radar, interference
with vehicle and aircraft equipment, apparent
gravitational and/or inertial effects, ground traces,
biochemical effects on vegetation and physiological
effects on witnesses, and analysis of debris. The
investigators were Richard Haines, Los Altos, Calif.;
Illobrand von Ludwiger, Germany; Mark Rodeghier, Center
for UFO Studies, Chicago; John Schuessler, Houston;
Erling Strand, Ostfold College, Skjeberg, Norway; Michael
Swords, professor of natural science, Western Michigan
University, Kalamazoo; Jacques Vallee, San Francisco; and
Jean-Jacques Velasco, CNES, Toulose, France.
This group assembled in a
closed workshop in Tarrytown, N.Y., that lasted from
Sept. 29 to Oct. 4, 1997.
Among the cases presented
to the scientists were:
- A black-and-white
photograph taken in British Columbia in 1981 that
appears to show a hovering disk. The scientists
expressed concern that modern digital techniques
may make it impossible to rely on photographic
evidence without convincing, corroborative
eyewitness accounts.
- The 1976 report of
the director of a scientific laboratory in France
who saw a luminous disk in the sky as he was
driving and estimated that the object glowed more
brightly than the moon. The scientists noted that
the eye was a very poor device for estimating
absolute brightness and the witness may have been
fooled by a highly focused light source like an
airplane landing light.
- A disk-shaped object
flying at an altitude of about 10,000 meters in
the vicinity of Paris reported by two members of
an airline crew in 1994. Military air traffic
radar also tracked the object for almost a
minute. The scientists characterized this and
another radar case that was presented as
"intriguing."
- Reports from the
Hessdalen Project, an effort by five individuals
that has received support from the Norwegian
Defense Research Establishment, the University of
Oslo and the University of Bergen to investigate
mysterious lights that inhabitants of a small
valley in Norway have been reporting since 1981.
The scientists noted that in cases involving
repeated, semi-regular sightings of lights
"it is difficult to understand why no
rational explanation has been discovered, and it
would seem that a small investment in equipment
and time should produce useful results."
The review was a modest
effort compared to the three-year Colorado Project,
supported by the U.S. Air Force and the Central
Intelligence Agency and headed by Dr. Edward U. Condon,
which concluded in 1968 that "further extensive
study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the
expectation that science will be advanced thereby."
Still, the scientists were
able to explain some of the reported incidents by rare
natural phenomena that have only recently been
discovered. One example is the large but extremely brief
flashes of light called sprites that are caused by
electrical activity high above large thunderstorms.
Another new explanation for some of the previously
unexplained radar sightings is a phenomenon called radar
ducting (the trapping and conducting of radar waves by
atmospheric channels).
The panel was particularly
impressed with an official French program for
investigating UFO reports that has been operating since
1977. Operated by the National Center for Space Research
(CNES) in France, the program provides an official
channel for reporting sightings, sorts out the hoaxes and
hallucinations, and conducts expert investigations of any
physical evidence.
"Just recently Chile
adopted a similar program," Sturrock says. "It
is my view that if several more countries establish
modest programs like this, in a few years we would have
at least a skeleton solution for this problem."
Currently, there is no official channel for reporting UFO
sightings in the United States.
Without collecting
additional data using scientific methods, it is unlikely
that the mystery of UFOs will be solved, panel members
agreed. Further analysis of the evidence presented to the
panel is unlikely to shed added light on the situation
because most current UFO investigations lack the level of
rigor required by the scientific community, despite the
initiative and dedication of the investigators involved.
But new data, scientifically acquired and analyzed, could
yield useful information and advance our understanding of
the UFO problem, the panel said.
The reviewers also made
the following observations:
- The UFO problem is
not a simple one, and it is unlikely that there
is any simple, universal answer.
- Whenever there are
unexplained observations, there is the
possibility that scientists will learn something
new by studying them.
- Studies should
concentrate on cases that include as much
independent physical evidence as possible.
- Continuing contact
between the UFO community and physical scientists
could be productive.
- Institutional support
for research in this area is desirable.
Sturrock's involvement in
the controversial subject dates back to the 1970s, when
he hired a French astronomer and computer scientist named
Jacques Vallee to help him with his research on pulsars.
Vallee, who had written several books on UFOs, got him
interested enough in the subject to read the Condon
report.
"I read it during a
Hawaiian vacation, when I could have been on the
beach," Sturrock says. "The upshot of this was
that, far from supporting Condon's conclusions, I thought
the evidence presented in the report suggested that
something was going on that needed study."
This prompted Sturrock to
survey scientists to learn their viewpoints on UFOs. He
discovered that they were surprisingly open minded about
the matter when asked to respond anonymously, and many
said that UFO reports should be studied scientifically.
Many of the scientists
said they would like to see articles about UFOs in
peer-reviewed scientific journals, Sturrock says.
"The only problem is that no established scientific
journal would publish articles on this subject." He
discovered that parapsychology research was in a similar
fix.
As a result, Sturrock
decided to found a new scientific society, the Society
for Scientific Exploration, and a journal, The Journal
of Scientific Exploration, to provide a scientific
forum for rigorous reports on subjects that are
considered taboo by mainstream scientific publications.
Today, the Society has
about 300 members and the journal, which is published
quarterly, has a readership of about 1,200. SR
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