6.1 Introduction to the Best Available Evidence

6.0 BACKGROUND MATERIALS

6.1 Introduction to the Best Available Evidence

The following sections present a series of well-know sightings and cases.

In a recent book on UFO issues, reporter and writer Jim Marrs38 states the following at the start of his Introduction (p. x):

“The controversy over the existence of UFOs is over. UFOs are real. Only those persons whose outlook prevents them from dealing honestly with the massive amounts of documentation and reports collected over the past five decades still cling to the idea that nothing soars in the skies of Earth exception man’s imagination.”

Well, where is this “massive amounts of documentation” and why is it not more widely known? It is all around us, you just have to look. At present there is a boom in information about UFOs available to the public. For example, as of February 2001, Amazon Booksellers listed 581 books under the search criteria of UFO on their web site. For the more research oriented, there are several large compilations of sightings available.

One of the largest computer databases of UFO sightings in the public domain is UFOCAT2000, which has over 109,000 UFO reports and related information. As described on their web site (http://www.cufos.org/UFOCAT.html), the UFOCAT is the result of a 30-year effort that began during the Air Force sponsored Colorado UFO Project, also known as the “Condon Committee.” UFOCAT was begun by Dr. David R. Saunders, who at the time was a coPrincipal Investigator on the Colorado UFO study and professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado.

Another major computerized source of sighting information is the compilation entitled “*U* Database,” which as of February, 2001 contains over 17,750 carefully filtered UFO events compiled from over 365 book, newspapers, periodicals and private sources. Information about this database can be found on the web at Larry Hatch’s web site: http://www.jps.net/larryhat.

For the last few years, retired Air Force Captain George Filer39 compiled and published (through email) UFO sighting reports, many with editorial comment, from around the US and the world. These are sent out on nearly a weekly basis. His reports for the last four years 1997 through 2000 are available on a CD from: Majorstar@aol.com.

For contemporary sighting’s information nearly as they happen, the National UFO Research Center (NUFORC) run by Peter Davenport (web site: http://www.msatech.com/nuforc) provides good information on what people are reporting to them and a searchable database covering reports over the past several years. What do these reports represent in terms of what people are actually seeing? Peter Davenport reported to us in a recent email that NUFORC receives on average 10-20 reports a day with a range of half a dozen to many dozens a day. He states: “Given that probably only one in 100 reports is recorded anywhere, that statistic provides some insight into how many UFO sightings occur per day. I suspect that the percentage of sightings reported may range to as low as one in 1,000.” This suggests that there are perhaps 15 x100 or about 1500

38 Marrs, Jim. 1997. Alien Agenda, HarperCollins Publishers, NY, 434pp. 39 See George Filer witness testimony in section 3.8.4.