impossible to obtain observational reports that have not been influenced by previous sensationalist, and invariably explanatory, reports. However, when strict observational criteria are employed, few cases of UFOs turn out to be genuinely unidentifiable. On investigation some 95 per cent are eventually classified as identified flying objects (IFOs) and the argument turns on the status of the remaining 5 per cent.
The American astronomer, J. Allen Hynek, a former sceptical UFO investi-gator who was for twenty years a scientific consultant to the US Air Force inquiry known as Project Blue Book, became convinced that some reports require further scientific investigation. Hynek was Professor of Astronomy at North-western University and Head of the Center for UFO studies at Illinois where, until he died in 1986, he had compiled some 100,000 entries from over 140 countries in his data bank. His definition of a UFO was:
the reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky or upon land the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behaviour of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a commonsense identification, if one is possible.
(Hynek, 1972: 10)
This definition, claims Hynek, should enable investigators to distinguish between misperceptions of known objects, like weather balloons and kites, and those which require more intensive scientific investigation. It calls for investigation and evidential support within the framework of current scientific theory and technology. It does not make any reference to evidence or observational methods which might be relevant from a standpoint associated with a different discipli-nary matrix, and it does not, as T. Patrick Rardin (1982: 257) points out: ‘make any distinction between evidence that is available in fact and that which is available in principle’. Without extending the meaning of ‘in principle’ too far, so as to include the manifestly implausible and esoteric, the Kuhnian point can be made that new theories and explanations may initiate new evidential requirements. This is precisely the problem with Ufology, as the residue of anomalous observations do not fit easily with current theories of motion and transport. Here an appeal to Kuhn’s model of incommensurable paradigms can be made where different explanatory frameworks are ‘not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with what has gone before’ (Kuhn, 1962: 103).
The essence of the philosophical problem concerning evidence for UFO experiences is whether they can be dealt with by the methods appropriate to normal science, or extensions of it, or by means of a new explanatory scheme or paradigm in Kuhn’s sense. There are certainly problems with many traditional forms of presenting evidence. Eye witness reports, photographic evidence and
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films can be challenged and are prey to accusations of forgery. Photographic evidence is, by itself, of little value. Photographic forgeries have been common since the beginnings of photography. Recent techniques of digital imaging, where a picture can be reduced to a series of pixels (digitized picture elements) and be entirely manipulated by a computer, raise fundamental questions about the value of photographic evidence. Conventional photography has always been open to manipulation and forensic scrutiny of photographs purporting to represent encounters with aliens has usually revealed evidence of interference. But a digital image can be manipulated without detection and it is not beyond the range of modern computer-assisted photography to produce a fairly coherent photograph of a UFO on the White House lawn with the President greeting its inhabitants. Artefacts and wreckage of alien spacecraft would count as hard evidence, but these are either unavailable or their alleged existence is a matter of dispute.
The very concept of ‘hard evidence’ is problematic. UFO sceptics insist on hard evidence but in doing so forget that successful disciplines such as astronomy do not rely upon the hard evidence provided by singular convincing cases, but by the steady accumulation of explanations, theory and evidence.
Evidence of close encounters
Initially, Ufologists classified close encounters (CEs) with extraterrestrial bio-logical entities (EBEs) in terms of four kinds, but Stephen M. Greer (1992) added a fifth. They are:
First kind CE1: an observation of a UFO at a distance less than 500 feet.
Second kind CE2: where some trace of observable evidence is obtained, such as an artefact, piece of wreckage or landing marks on the ground.
Third kind CE3: observation of an EBE, generally within the vicinity of a UFO.
Fourth kind CE4: interaction with an EBE where the observer is taken aboard the UFO, sightseeing visits and abductions.
Fifth kind CE5: intentional interactive communications, a response to a human initiated signal, such as flashing lights in re-ply to human signals.
Evidence of CE1s is derived from large numbers of sightings from numerous ‘reliable’ witnesses, together with frequent sightings of photographic evidence and ground tracings. The small town of Bonnybridge in Scotland, which has a population of 5,500 people, produced 2,000 UFO sightings in three years. These are usually descriptions of bright flashing lights, and while the majority have been explained, there is still a residual 250 unexplained and the local MP has
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