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APPENDIX
A CENTURY OF UFO LANDINGS
(1868-1968)
To COMPILE a catalogue is to invite criticism. Catalogues are obtained
by integrating information over a variety of sources, but not every piece
of information has an identifiable source; information drawn from a
single source is always questionable; information gathered from several
sources is generally contradictory. To compile a catalogue, then, is to
weigh alternatives and to make difficult choices. In classical fields (in
astronomy, for instance), the original sources are people scientifically
trained in the same discipline as the man who conducts the compilation.
Both follow common rules and observe a common ethic. They
each provide many entries, so that personal bias can be estimated with
some degree of accuracy. A general validity measure can be given for
the catalogue as a whole.
None of these guarantees exists in the present domain. The study
of UFO's is more than a descriptive analysis of folklore, but it has not
developed into a scientific field. It differs from folklore in two respects:
the individuals at the source of the rumor are, for most of them, still
alive; and physical effects are, in a significant number of cases, available
to the analyst. What is lacking to bring the matter into the realm
of science is a proper definition of the phenomenon to be studied,
along with a set of criteria to determine the significance of any particular
report. In the absence of a general presentation of outstanding
cases, it is naturally impossible to ascribe meaning to an individual
sighting, taken out of context. Criteria that are proposed under those
conditions remain purely philosophical exercises, and definitions are
similarly void of interest. For these reasons, it was felt that a catalogue
of unsolved landings might be useful to those currently engaged in a
serious study of the problem.
The sample of observers, earlier studies have shown, is a true crosssection
of the rural population: all ages and all nations are represented.
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These observers witnessed an event that, to them, was unique, and it
was not always reported to authorities, but spread through the public
or was given to the newspapers. Such accounts we shall find worded
very loosely. Specialized magazines that record the data seldom bother
to check them. Typically, they add errors of their own, giving the date
of the newspaper as the date of the sighting or failing to recognize obviously
duplicated versions of the same case. All those who have investigated
claims of UFO sightings know well the frustration caused by
journalistic inaccuracy. Fortunately, official sources can be consulted
as a check on the reported events. Such sources often provide precise
data not only on the phenomenon itself but also on the conditions of
the observation.
To compile a catalogue of UFO sightings, we must start with a
number of books, magazines, and private files from which a general
index is built. In doing so, we find that many writers do not quote
their sources, so that we must either take their story at face value (reaction
of the average reader) or reject it summarily (reaction of the
average scientist). A third solution exists, but it is costly and extremely
time-consuming; it involves cross-indexing every available source with
all others, so that the path of the information through the reporting
network can be traced back to the origin. Naturally, the attempt is not
always successful. The publication of a catalogue such as this, however,
may well stimulate new studies into cases we have failed to clarify
either because we had to rely on a single source of data or because fresh
field investigation would have been the only way to arrive at the truth.
It is impossible to work alone when compiling such a catalogue, but
the problem is complicated rather than simplified when people from
different continents must cooperate to prepare a list of events that
they see from different angles and know from different versions—which
in turn reflect the biases of local authors, translation errors, etc. Lack
of official recognition makes it very difficult to organize meetings or to
exchange extensive files, in view of the costs involved in such operations.
A compromise must therefore be found between completeness,
accuracy, and practicality. The method we used in the preparation of
the present catalogue represents such a compromise.
The construction of a cross-index of sources of UFO literature was
begun by our group in 1961. We started with the French literature
on the subject and extended it gradually to the Anglo-Saxon literature,
then to that of the rest of the world. We were fortunate, coming into
the field at that relatively late date, to benefit from the work of several
predecessors who had already gathered in a systematic fashion exten-