43 years ago the controversy plagued
Colorado University Condon committee scientific study of UFOs was released –
the result of a two year US Air Force half a million dollar funded
investigation. It concluded “that
nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to
scientific knowledge. Careful
consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that
further extensive study of the UFOs probably cannot be justified in the
expectation that science will be advanced thereby.”
The US Air force used the report to end its
public bondage to the UFO problem. The
notorious Project Blue Book was terminated and publicly at least the Air Force
were out of the UFO business. This was
the “fix” that was intended all along. The Condon report has since been used as
the basis of continuing mainstream scientific and sceptical rejection of the
reality of UFOs.
Just how credible was the Condon report and
its conclusions? The National Academy of
Sciences endorsed the study. Much of the
media uncritically embraced the report.
UFOs were dead and buried. However
no one informed the UFO corpse. In 1973 UFOs were back with a vengeance in the
one of the biggest UFO waves the US had
ever experienced. UFOs have refused to
be put down and they continue to be reported and continue to be marginalised by
science.
The spectre of Charles Fort’s “procession
of the damned” has been played out. “By
the damned, (Fort meant) the excluded.” He wrote in his classic narrative
engagement with the unknown and the unidentified, “The Book of the Damned,” “We
shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.”
When it comes to credibility as a scientific
report the Condon Report is hugely controversial. The problems and dubious background of the
study have been widely reported. For
example “the inside story by an ex-member of the official study group” appeared
in book form just before the Condon Report was finally published. “UFOs?
Yes! Where the Condon Committee went Wrong” by David Saunders and R.
Harkins revealed the tumultuous history of the Condon UFO project. Its internal problems during the course of
the study had also been aired in spectacular fashion in Look magazine in May of
1968, when journalist John Fuller wrote “Colorado UFO Fiasco” which leaked the
notorious Low “trick” memo, in which Robert Low, who would be the study coordinator
under Professor Edward Condon the project head.
Low wrote, “The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so
that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the
scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying
their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a
saucer. One way to do this would be to stress investigation, not of the
physical phenomena, but rather of the people who do the observing – the
psychology and sociology of the persons and groups who report seeing
UFO’s. If the emphasis were put here,
rather than on examination of the old question of the physical reality of the
saucer, I think the scientific community would quickly get the message.”
Professor Condon played that game
throughout the study and was over the top with his lack of objectivity and his
focus on the obviously dubious side of the subject – the contactees and the
silly stories, that didn’t require any scientific investigation to show them up
as nothing of merit. His biases were
revealed in his “Conclusions and Recommendations” in the final report. Stanford University
astrophysicist Peter Sturrock examined the report in close detail, something
the National Academy of Sciences review panel and the media failed to do.
Professor Sturrock found what I found as a budding researcher reading the
Condon Report in detail. There was a
huge disconnection between Condon’s conclusions, report summaries and the
detail of the actual report and studies of the scientists who did the actual
investigations and research. Sturrock’s
analysis revealed Condon’s summaries variously misleading, false or inaccurate. For example Condon indicated that the
project’s investigator/photoanalyst Dr. Hartmann had solved all the UFO
photographic cases. Hartmann’s
conclusion for the famous 1950 McMinnville photos in the Condon Report:
“This is one of the few UFO reports in
which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical appear
to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object,
silvery, metallic, disc-shaped, tens of metres in diameter, and evidently
artificial, flew within the sight of two witnesses.”
This was one of the more obvious
contradictions between Dr. Condon’s conclusions and summaries and the actual
substance of the report itself. There
are certainly others, sufficient to question why the National Academy of
Science endorsed the report. Professor
Sturrock would later direct a major review of the physical evidence for
UFOs. While it didn’t prove that UFOs
were alien for example, it certainly endorsed the need for further serious and
well funded scientific study. Sturrock’s
review was published as the first major scientific inquiry since the Condon
report, “The UFO Enigma” (1999). It is
an excellent review of the physical evidence for UFOs. Read in conjunction with Richard Hall’s
excellent 30 year review sequel to his classic 1964 “UFO evidence”, the year
2000 Volume 11 of “The UFO Evidence” you have a compelling case for the
validity of the UFO subject. And yet
very few sceptics, few scientists and certainly few media commentators are
aware of either study. They trot out the
Condon Report as if it is a credible study.
When pressed they haven’t read it or they have only bothered with the
disconnected “conclusions and recommendations” of Dr. Condon. They haven’t properly evaluated the Condon
Report and they haven’t even examined any of the controversy and debate about
the report.
Few if any realised that other scientists
also examined the Condon Report and came to different conclusions and also saw
the obvious disconnections between Condon’s own conclusions and
recommendations, and the body of the report.
An extraordinary example of this situation can be found in Dr. Claude
Poher’s response to the Condon Report.
He was with the French equivalent to NASA – CNES. Examining the Condon Report in detail he
found that contrary to Condon, the report substantiated that there was a real
UFO problem. An examination of the
report indicates that about a third of the cases examined for the Condon Report
were unexplained. What did Poher
do? Well he would eventually win support
for the establishment of GEPAN – a UFO study group within CNES, which went on
to do some excellent research, some of which went a long way to supporting a
UFO reality, not the least being the Trans-en Provence case of 1981, in which a
UFO landed and left behind compelling physical evidence – a ground trace that
yielded fascinating data. If many of the
thousands of the worldwide physical trace cases received similar attention as
the Trans-en Provence case we would have a compelling body of physical evidence
data. Instead we have thousands of lost
opportunities – a huge measure of the failure of mainstream science to properly
examine a real UFO phenomenon.
Roy Craig was a major field investigator
for the Condon study. As a physical
chemist like myself I found some affinity for his memoir published in 1995 as
“UFOs – An Insider’s View of the Official Quest for Evidence.” Craig felt the American public got a “good”
report out of the Condon report. His
memoir gave this take, “Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote that the
American public did not understand the importance in our society of the
“no-business meeting,” that is, a meeting whose purpose was not to conduct
business, but to give the impression that business was being conducted. Bob Low’s indiscreet paragraph in his office
memorandum suggested the Colorado Study would be a “no-business”
investigation. Dogmatic views like that
of Condon … would fit a situation in which a “no-business” non-investigation
would be appropriate. The contents of
(Craig’s memoir), however, as well as the full contents of the Condon Report,
show that the American public got a real “business” investigation in the
Colorado Project, regardless of the implications of the Low’s office
memorandum, regardless of the possible appropriateness of a non-investigation,
and regardless of the campaign of magazines and newspapers to convince the
public otherwise.”
Despite Craig’s somewhat myopic and limited
take on his time as a key player in the controversial Condon UFO study, there
are still some matters emerging that seem to substantiate the severe
credibility problems it had, and it was Roy Craig who had an indirect role,
albeit after his death.
It is important to note that despite the
damage done and the massive misdirection that occurred with the mainstream
scientific community and the media, there were some positive outgrowths of the
notorious Condon committee report. David
Saunders and Roger Harkins in their 1969 book “UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon
Committee went wrong” tried to spell out the problem at the time but were
largely ignored in the tidal wave of myopic mainstream acceptance of the Condon
report. Roy Craig’s own 1995 book “UFOs
– An Insider’s View of the Official Quest for Evidence” has some insights but
it was from within his personal papers and documents that the “smoking gun” of
deception and misdirection may have emerged.
We have seen in a positive sense the published Condon report made some
scientist realise that there was a real UFO problem worthy of scientific
attention, despite Edward Condon’s negative conclusions to the contrary. Dr. Claude Poher, of the French equivalent to
NASA read the report in depth and saw the huge disconnection between Condon’s
conclusion and the full report itself. As
I showed, this led Poher to work towards getting GEPAN formed. Gildas Bourdais provides an excellent summary
of GEPAN’s history in the International UFO Reporter (IUR) Volume 31 Number 2
(June 2007): "The Death and Rebirth of official French UFO Studies"). GEPAN and its variations had to also run a
difficult course through politics, mainstream scientific scepticism and
clandestine militarism but much good work was achieved.
Of possible critical significance is the
emergence in 2009 of documented evidence that confirms the dubious nature of
the 1969 Condon report that has so sidetracked the interest of mainstream
science in UFOs. Documents found in the
papers of the late Roy Craig, confirm that the report chairman Dr. Edward
Condon had drafted his negative conclusions about the UFO subject “without
benefit of prior reading of the other sections of the report which were by
(then) near completion.” The Craig papers also reveal that despite publicly
reporting over 30 % “unknowns” in the final report (and astonishingly reporting
that there was nothing of scientific worth to the UFO subject) the reality was
that more than 50% were “unknown.” A
confidential 3 page memo to Condon dated 5 September 1968 from Joseph Rush, a
National Centre for Atmospheric Research physicist and Condon UFO project
investigator revealed that despite growing more sceptical in the Condon study
environment, the irony was so many of their investigations had ended up as
unexplained cases. Rush wrote, “This may
seem an anomalous conclusion, since more of the C-cases (Colorado University
cases) are unexplained than explained.”
Most UFO researchers who have examined the
controversy in detail, particularly the “devil in the detail” behind the Condon
report are hardly surprised by such revelations. Dr. Michael Swords, who wrote an excellent
review of the Condon study in the CUFOS Journal of UFO Studies Volume 6,
1995/1996, and who has undertaken a detailed study of Roy Craig’s papers is not
surprised. He told me the Condon report
was a “political and sociological response” to the USAF’s UFO “problem.” As such it was an effective response providing
the Air Force with an “escape clause” from its UFO nightmare. Well, the nightmare continues and the UFO “corpse”
is alive and well. UFOs relentlessly
continue their march of the “damned” and still await the serious open and
scientific attention they deserve.
