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money from their stories, and they certainly weren’t after fame. In fact, they suffered more from telling their stories than if they had just kept quiet. Such cases are not isolated. There are many with such bizarre elements. Something is certainly happening to these people, and it is something that has both physical and psychological components. Nevertheless, this High Strangeness factor is a problem because it’s all too easy to dismiss or ignore such “reports” because of these ridiculous claims. One has to wonder if this “High Strangeness” isn’t deliberate - and for that very reason. This brings us to consider the signal to noise factor. Dr. Hynek wrote in a paper presented at the AIAA 13th Aerospace Sciences Meeting Pasadena, Calif., January 20-22, 1975, entitled “The signal-to-noise ratio; in the UFO phenomenon this problem is a major one. The UFO problem is, initially, a signal-to-noise problem. The noise is, and has been, so great that the existence of a signal has been seriously questioned. Isaac Asimov, whom no one could accuse of lacking in imagination, writes: “Eyewitness reports of actual space ships and actual extraterrestrials are, in themselves, totally unreliable. There have been numerous eyewitness reports of almost everything that most rational people do not care to accept - of ghosts, angels, levitation, zombies, werewolves, and so on... The trouble is, that whatever the UFO phenomenon is, it comes and goes unexpectedly. There is no way of examining it systematically. It appears suddenly and accidentally, is partially seen, and then is more or less inaccurately reported. We remain dependent on occasional anecdotal accounts”. (From the December 14, 1974 issue of TV Guide, a media magazine with a very great circulation and hence powerful in forming public opinion.) Here we see a very important part of the UFO problem, that of the presentation of data to men of science, and to men, like Asimov and others who excel in writing about science. Scientific efforts can be seriously hampered if the popular image of a subject is grossly misleading. Funds can be curtailed and good men of science who wish to give time to the subject are apt to face misrepresentation whenever their work receives any public attention. Ball lightning is just as much an unknown as the UFO phenomenon, yet scientists can openly discuss these “balls of light” but are likely to be censured if they talk about similar unidentified lights which last much longer, are brighter, and move over greater distances, but are labeled UFOs. Proper presentation of the UFO 21 High Strangeness Such cases are not isolated. Emerging Picture of the UFO Problem”: But one element that is common to all scientific endeavor is the problem of