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155 tions that have sought to disprove these points of view (such as Project Blue Book and the Condon Report) have failed to make the case. Hynek recommended that scientists and engineers establish a loosely knit institute for the study of the UFO phenomenon (he established the Center for UFO Studies a year later). He also recommended that a member country of the United Nations propose that the United Nations set up a committee to facilitate communications on this subject. Hynek acknowledged that, after 20 years of association with the problem, he still had few answers and no viable hypothesis. “When the long awaited solution to the UFO problem comes,” he wrote, “I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum jump.”*! Hynek returned to these themes in 1975. There remains a profoundly impressive body of data that constitute a new empirical set of observations. They may signal a whole domain of nature as yet unexplained. “Nothing that intrigues the mind of Man,” he wrote, “is automatically ineligible for the scientific approach.” Hynek reminded his readers that twentieth-century scientists tend to forget that there will be a science of later centuries whose knowledge of the universe may appear quite different. “We suffer, perhaps, from tem- poral provincialism, a form of arrogance that has always irritated posterity.” If we peer through the looking-glass of unidentified airships, mutilated cattle, and crop circles, we see reflected back at us the wondrous darkside of collective hopes and fears for the future of our species. —Randall Fitzgerald, 1998** Many people have speculated that UFOs are a psychological phenome- non. Yet, UFO witnesses stand convinced of the external causes of their perceptions. Psychologist Baird concluded that most people claiming to have seen UFOs were telling the truth: They saw something exceptional in the sky. From their vantage points, what they saw was inexplicable.*° Hynek found that persons reporting a UFO sighting first tried to fit their observations into familiar categories, coming to regard the phenomenon as strange and unidentified only after its appearance and actions seemed to rule out familiar interpretations. This is quite contrary to assertions made by UFO skeptics, who claim that witnesses are eager to find some- thing strange. When reasonable people report events that receive no social support from their friends and do not fit their own prior beliefs, we have to take these reports seriously. Hall dismissed the argument that UFO sightings are due to hysterical contagion, as such events last only a few days, at most a few weeks, and Psychological Explanations Psychological Explanations