Condon Committee
The result of its work, formally titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, and known as the Condon Report, appeared in 1968.
The report has been cited as a decisive factor in the generally low level of interest in UFO activity among academics since that time.
The AFSAB agreed and the committee it formed, chaired by Brian O'Brien, convened for one day in February, 1966, and suggested UFO studies could be undertaken "in more detail and depth than had been possible to date" and that the U.S. Air Force should work "with a few selected universities to provide scientific teams" to study UFOs.
[5] Walter Orr Roberts, director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Menzel suggested physicist Edward Condon of the University of Colorado.
Condon's tenacious encounters with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and other government Loyalty Boards in the 1940s and 1950s made him "almost legendary" among fellow scientists.
Low, an assistant dean of the university's graduate program, explored faculty reaction to the proposed project and found it mixed and wary.
[citation needed] Some have suggested that finances were factor in Colorado's decision to accept the Air Force's offer of $313,000 for the project.
[8] On October 6, 1966, the University of Colorado agreed to undertake the UFO study, with Condon as director, Low as coordinator, and Saunders and astronomer Franklin E. Roach as co-principal investigators.
[6] Other Committee members included astronomer William K. Hartmann; psychologists Michael Wertheimer, Dan Culbertson and James Wadsworth, a graduate student; chemist Roy Craig; electrical engineer Norman Levine and physicist Frederick Ayer.
[14] In late January 1967, Condon stated in a lecture that he thought the government should not study UFOs because the subject was 'nonsense', adding, "but I'm not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year.
Press coverage included an article in the May 1968 issue of Look, "Flying Saucer Fiasco", that presented interviews with Saunders and Levine, detailed the controversy, and described the project as a "$500,000 trick.
[24] Despite the withdrawal of NICAP from the Project, members of its Early Warning Network continued to report sightings to the investigators, as did journalists.
Condon authored 6 pages of "conclusions and recommendations," a 43-page "summary," and a 50-page history of UFO phenomena and research over the preceding twenty years.
[29] He also described the problem that confronts the scientific community, that each scientist must evaluate the record for himself, and that the Report's recommendation against further research "may not be true for all time.
New York Times science editor Walter Sullivan, in his introduction to the published version of the Report, said the series "reads like a modern, real-life collection of Sherlock Holmes episodes.
"[35] Even before its completion, the Air Force had asked the National Academy of Sciences to "provide an independent assessment of the scope, the methodology, and the findings" of the Committee.
"[36] In response to the Report's findings, the Air Force closed Project Blue Book, established in March 1952, on December 17, 1969.
[37] The Report earned a mixed reception from scientists and academic journals, while receiving "almost universal praise from the news media".
"[38] The March 8, 1969 issue of Nature offered a generally positive review for the Condon Report, but wondered why so much effort had been expended on such a subject: "The Colorado project is a monumental achievement, but one of perhaps misapplied ingenuity.
"[43] In the December 1969 issue of Physics Today, Committee consultant Gerald Rothberg wrote that he had thoroughly investigated about 100 UFO cases, three or four of which left him puzzled.
"[45] In a 1969 issue of the American Journal of Physics, astronomer Thornton Page (who thought the phenomenon had a sociological basis) wrote of the report: "Intelligent laymen can (and do) point out the logical flaw in Condon's conclusion based on a statistically small (and selected) sample, Even in this sample a consistent pattern can be recognized; it is ignored by the 'authorities,' who then compound their 'felony' by recommending that no further observational data be collected.
"[4] He called Condon's introduction "singularly slanted" and wrote that it "avoided mentioning that there was embedded within the bowels of the report a remaining mystery; that the committee had been unable to furnish adequate explanations for more than a quarter of the cases examined.
"[4] Hynek contended that "Condon did not understand the nature and scope of the problem" he was studying[4] and objected to the idea that only extraterrestrial life could explain UFO activity.
