From: UFO INFO SERVICE
Date Sent: 06-17-1986
  Subject: 1968 SCIENT.RECOMM.STUDY

SOURCE:  NYT (DC)
  DATE:  30 JULY 1968


SIX SCIENTISTS RECOMMEND FLYING SAUCER STUDY

At a hearing yesterday before the House Committee on Space and
Astronautics, several witnesses urged Federal support for a huge program
to collect information aimed at finally settling the decades old debate
on UFOs.  The committee chairman, Representative J. Edward Roush of
Indiana, urged 3 months ago that Congress take over the saucer
investigation being conducted by USAF after challenging the objectivity
of the study.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek of Northwestern U said the USA should seek UN
cooperation in setting up "an international clearing house" for UFO
information "because there is almost a total lack of quantitative data"
on the subject.  Dr. James E. McDonald, a U of Arizona meteorologist,
said that the scientific community tended to discount saucer reports
because there was no scientific data, and yet these same scientists
would not support the collection of such data.	He also contended that
the news media, including one New York City newspaper, was refusing to
print news of UFO sightings.  Dr. Hynek and Dr. McDonald were supported
by Dr. Robert L. Hall, a U of Illinois sociology professor; Dr. Robert
M. L. Baker Jr. of the Computer Sciences Corporation, El Segundo, CA;
and Dr. James A. Harder, an associate professor of engineering at the U
of California, Berkeley.  Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell U, author of
Intelligent Life in the Universe, took the least positive stand on the
existence of UFOs. Instead of an expensive UFO data gathering program
which has a high risk of achieving positive results, he advocated
instead an attempt to contact other civilizations with radio astronomy
coupled with unmanned plenetary space flights.	Dr. Sagan added
facetiously that "it may be that things are so bad here that someone up
there will come to save us from ourselves."