L'AARO ne semble pas savoir que le consultant de l'Air Force Hynek a posé les fondations de l'enquête scientifique sur les PANs

Le petit secret honteux du projet Blue Book de l'Air Force était que "Données insuffisantes" voulait souvent juste dire Enquête insuffisante ce qui, si on l'avait admis, aurait bien sûr donné une mauvaise image de la performance de Blue Bookw. Ainsi, la tendance habituelle dans la stratégie égoïste de Blue Book était de blâmer le témoin pour tous échecs de l'enquête sur leur propre observation – comme si l'on attendait du témoin qu'il doit un docteur en science du plus haut niveau. Lorsque le témoin typiquement non scientifique ne parvenait pas à fournir des données du niveau d'un universitaire, Blue Book écartait souvent le cas et classait le cas comme un de leurs prétendus "succès".

Les témoins civils qualifient rarement ce qu'ils ont vu de “OVNI” ni n'utilisent le terme “OVNI,” encore moins “vaisseau extraterrestre" (la plupart n'auront même jamais entendu le nouveau terme de PAN). La plupart des témoins ont simplement ressenti le devoir civique de signaler aux autorités une “lumière” ou un “objet” qui leur a paru intriguant (comme dirait le consultant U-2 Hynek). That is the objective scientific approach which witnesses weren’t given credit for – reporting what they saw, not presuming to make PhD-level scientific interpretations or judgments of what it was. Military witnesses especially would grasp that the matter might have possible national security or scientific implications. It was inappropriate for the Air Force to insult the intelligence and goodwill of these citizens by dismissing their reports with improbable explanations that often made the witness look foolish. This high-handed and dismissive approach naturally had the effect of reinforcing the stigma and deterring others from coming forward.

The Air Force’s longtime scientific consultant on UAP, Astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, taught that the “UFO” label not be given to a report until after a scientific investigation determines that it has no conventional IFO (Identified Flying Object) or other explanation. But because there is no recognized term for the initial report, the “UFO” label (and now “UAP”) is applied right at the outset for simplicity, and a seemingly redundant qualifier has to be added for cases that pass the Hynek Scientific UFO Screening process to be a “real” UFO, such as the redundant “Unidentified UFO” (Unidentified Unidentified-Flying-Object) or “UFO Unknown.” The process is not followed logically or consistently and the Hynek Screening is treated almost as an afterthought if at all. These issues are not discussed in the AARO report. Most civilian research groups’ UAP reports appear to be “Insufficient Data” mainly because they do not have the resources to investigate them all and so no Hynek Screening is applied.

AARO’s historical account barely mentions the leading role Dr. Hynek played in researching UAP for the Air Force and attempting to implement a meaningful investigative methodology. In the lone paragraph in the section on “Perceived Deception,” Dr. Hynek is referred to merely as an investigator, not as the Air Force’s chief scientific consultant on UAP. Also, the first sentence of the paragraph only refers to public suspicions of “recovered alien craft” and “extraterrestrial beings,” not the government’s overall handling of the UAP issue. It then merely mentions that the Air Force expected him to serve as a “debunker” in a sentence that also briefly mentions that Captain Ruppelt said he was expected to explain away every report and align press stories with the Air Force’s public position. Yet in its discussion of Project U-2, AARO simply states that the Air Force “determined” that there was “there was no threat to national security, no evidence of extraterrestrial vehicles and ..no evidence submitted to, or discovered by, the USAF that sightings represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of present day scientific knowledge. These conclusions are boldly stated as though there was nothing irregular or controversial about these conclusions. The same is true of AAROs account of the highly controversial Condon report (further details below).

Among other things, Hynek blew the whistle on the Air Force and its Project U-2 for the “insufficient data” trick, forthrightly insisting that insufficient data cases, including the sneaky “possible/probable” IFO categories, are neither IFO nor proper UFO cases and must be excluded from statistical scorecards as they are insufficient in data s1The Hynek UFO Report, 1977, p. 259. The same principle applies to modern UAP cases (“UAP” merely being the new label for UFO). Among other things, AARO should be required to clarify the distinction between Insufficient Data reports and “Insufficient Investigation” (more on Insufficient Data in sections below).

AARO also doesn’t seem to know about Hynek’s classic subdivision of UFO cases into Close Encounters (of three kinds or more), Daylight Discs, Nocturnal Lights, and Radar-Visual cases. AARO’s “complete” history of UAP investigations by the US government seems incomplete without it. There was even a Spielberg movie involving Hynek’s work, called Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

AARO also makes no mention of probably the greatest scientific investigator of UAP of all time, atmospheric physicist Dr James E. McDonald of the University of Arizona. McDonald’s name, along with Hynek’s, is all over the U-2 records that AARO brags about “completely” reviewing (though AARO seems to have overlooked half of U-2’s records).

The prestigious author and scientist Dr. Jacques Vallee was a colleague of Dr. Hynek’s who lived through this period and could have helped AARO enormously, but he was not contacted. Nor was he contacted for comment by the New York Times, Washington Post, or other outlets after AARO’s historical report was released. AARO also does not seem to follow Dr. Hynek’s and Dr. Vallee’s UAP scientific methodology established in the 1960s.