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Sorry, X-filers. A panel of scientists has reviewed the physical evidence associated with UFO reports for the first time in nearly 30 years and found nothing to convince them that Earth is being visited by aliens. On the other hand, the scientists were persuaded that something mysterious is going on and that some reports are accompanied by physical evidence that cannot be easily explained. They suggested that "it may be valuable to carefully evaluate UFO reports to extract information about unusual phenomena currently unknown to science." The review was organized and directed by Peter Sturrock, professor of applied physics at Stanford, and supported by the Society for Scientific Exploration a forum for research into unexplained phenomena. The international panel included nine physical scientists who responded to presentations by eight investigators of UFO reports. The enduring public interest in the topic was manifest in the media flood that followed the report's release on June 29. "Good Morning America" featured it first thing in the morning, CNN aired a story about it a few hours later, and all the network evening news programs announced the basic conclusions. The review prompted ABC News to conduct an unscientific poll, and 91 percent of those asked answered "yes" to the question "Should scientists be encouraged to study UFOs?"
The panel points out that much has changed since the last scientific review of the controversial subject. Advances in scientific knowledge and technical capabilities make it more likely to produce new insights about UFO reports. People around the world have continued to report encounters with unidentified flying objects, and France has set up an official program to investigate such reports in a systematic fashion. Despite these developments, the
"Just recently Chile adopted a similar program [to France's]," Sturrock says. "It is my view that if several more countries establish modest programs like this, in a few years we would have at least a skeleton solution for this problem." For more information visit the Journal for Scientific Exploration website at http://www.jse.com.
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subject has continued to receive very little scientific scrutiny here.
