University of Colorado Notice
FINAL REPORT
Scientific
Study of Unidentified Flying Objects
Conducted by the University of Colorado
Under contract to the United States Air Force
Dr. Edward U. Condon,
Scientific Director
Daniel S. Gillmor, Editor
Copyright ©
1968 by The Regents of The University of Colorado
Electronic edition © 1999 by National Capital Area Skeptics (NCAS)
The Final Report of the Scientific
Study of Unidentified Flying Objects was originally copyrighted
in 1968 by the Regents of the University of Colorado,
a body corporate. It was subsequently published in reports of
the United States Air Force and other governmental agencies and was
published commercially by Bantam Books (currently out of
print).
Permission is granted for non-commercial
use of this electronic document, to link to it, mirror it on an
Internet site, or reproduce it electronically in whole or in part
without modification, provided that this notice is included.
Any other use requires advance written permission from The
Regents of the University of Colorado.
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INTRODUCTION TO THE NCAS EDITION
Paul Jaffe
1998-99
President,
National Capital Area Skeptics
The Colorado Project
The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects
was performed at the University of Colorado between 1966 and
1968, with physics Professor Edward U. Condon as its
scientific director. It is frequently referred to as the "Condon
Report" or the "Colorado Project Report". To
this day, the work carried out under Dr. Condon’s direction
represents the largest single scientific project ever
undertaken in relation to the UFO problem. In the opinion of
a sizeable majority of mainstream scientists, its principal
conclusion has stood the test of time:
Careful consideration of the record
as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further
extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be
justified in the expectation that science will be advanced
thereby.
It has been argued that this lack of
contribution to science is due to the fact that very little
scientific effort has been put on the subject. We do not agree. We
feel that the reason that there has been very little scientific
study of the subject is that those scientists who are most directly
concerned, astronomers, atmospheric physicists, chemists, and
psychologists, having had ample opportunity to look into the matter,
have individually decided that UFO phenomena do not offer a
fruitful field in which to look for major scientific discoveries.
(From section I of the report)
Anyone familiar with the popular media and the Internet is likely
aware that a very substantial fraction of the general public would
disagree with this conclusion. Unfortunately, the virtual
disappearance of the Condon Report from general
circulation makes it practically impossible for the public to
evaluate the evidence that supports it, or to weigh the Colorado
work against the claims of its critics.
To remedy this situation, the National Capital Area Skeptics
is pleased to present, with the permission of the Regents of
the University of Colorado, the NCAS Internet edition of
Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. Our
volunteer group, under the tireless direction of Jim Giglio,
has worked for more than a year to bring this document to the web.
We are confident that the effort will prove worthwhile, and that the
document will prove useful in the rational evaluation of many
aspects of the UFO issue.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Jim
Giglio
January 1999
NCAS Working
Group Coordinator
1. Brief History of the NCAS Project
This project began when I carried out a series of web searches for
an on-line copy of the Condon Report during 1996. I
had read the report when it was first published commercially, and
considering the amount of UFO material on the net, I was
confident that it would be easy to locate. It was not. In fact, it
was simply nowhere to be found. A visit to a used book dealer, who
searched for three months, finally turned up a copy of the Bantam
paperback for $35.
Reading the Condon report again after nearly three decades
convinced me of two things:
(1) that I should have
held on to my copy from 1969, as it would have been an excellent
investment, and
(2) that it deserved to
be more readily available.
Accordingly, I wrote to the
Regents of the University of Colorado (the copyright holder)
and requested permission to place the report on the web. The regents
granted the request in short order.
The next step was to find a group of volunteers to do the actual
work, which would include scanning, spell-checking/proofing, and
HTML coding. That’s where NCAS came in. I had been
recently elected to the NCAS board, so I suggested
that NCAS make this an official organizational
project. The board accepted that suggestion and quickly assembled
the volunteer group. Actual work started in October of 1997, and
this version of the report was ready for public release in
January of 1999, following a review by the University of
Colorado Board of Regents.
2. Acknowledgements
Bob Keefer, PhD, of the Psychology Department at Mount St
Mary’s College, Emmitsburg, MD, obtained a copy of the report as
submitted to the Air Force from the University of Colorado
Library. He then coordinated the work of photocopying the text
and getting it processed by Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
software into electronic form.
Gloria Balsley, Secretary to the Mount St Mary’s Psychology
Department at the time, supervised the work of student aides in
carrying out the mechanics of photocopying and OCR scanning.
Melinda Hatcher and Joanne Moses were the Mount St
Marys students who assisted Ms Balsley with copying and
scanning.
These NCAS members proofread and
spell-checked the electronic text, comparing it with the photocopied
pages. Each processed about 150 pages of material, adding internal
flags to items that needed attention when the HTML coding started.
Several members of this group also did the HTML coding of their own
sections, and/or assisted in coding particularly troublesome
segments of other sections:
-
Jim Hebblethwaite
-
John Pezzullo, PhD
-
John Varela
-
Lynne Francis
-
Jonathan Boswell,
PhD
-
Mary Pastel Anderson
-
ZoAnn Lapinsky
-
Tom Kirby
Mike Koller joined the group
after work was underway; he helped with scanning of the photographic
plates, and with re-scanning pages that had been skipped the first
time around.
Marvin Zelkowitz oversees the NCAS web page, and made
sure that the files were uploaded properly.
Grace Denman was president of NCAS when the project
got underway; both Grace and her successor, Paul Jaffe
have supported the work enthusiastically.
I did the spell-checking and proofing of the report’s index, and
carried out the final round of HTML coding on all sections. The
final design implemented in that code owes much to the suggestions
of Bob Keefer, Jonathan Boswell, and John Pezzullo.
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Dedicated To The Work and
Achievements
of
PHILIP J. KLASS
Engineer,
Journalist, Author, Investigator
Founding Member of NCAS
Phil’s tireless work in support
of rationality and critical thinking has earned him the admiration
and respect of all who share his vision. With this dedication, we in
NCAS express our gratitude for his continuing efforts.
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