Air Force to Press Study Of Unidentified Objects

Hynek, Josef AllenHynek, Josef Allen: Yale Scientific Magazine, Université de Yale, vol. 37, n° 7, avril 1963

there are more reports per year now than there were in the early years of the 'flying saucer era'... [UFO reports] have been coming to the Air Force at the rate of better than one a day over the past fifteen years. - . the daily press no longer carries such reports, except perhaps as fillers, because monotonously repeated items do not constitute news. But it is just this repetition that is of potential scientific interest.

(...)

The intelligence of the observers and reporters of UFO's is certainly at least average, in many cases above average, in some cases embarrassingly above average.

Le témoin moyen est au-dessus de la moyenne, honnête et sérieux. Aucun examen vraiment scientifique du phénomène ovni n'a été entrepris malgré l'énorme volume de données brutes.

(...)

Based upon unreliable and unscientific surmises as data, the Air Force develops elaborate statistical findings which seem impressive to the uninitiated public unschooled in the fallacies of the statistical method. One must conclude that the highly publicized Air Force pronouncements based upon unsound statistics serve merely to misrepresent the true character of the UFO phenomena.