Condon Report<\/a>
\nSection I
\nConclusions and Recommendations<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis is thought to be one of the most damming statements against the existence of UFOs. Hailed by skeptics and believers alike, this one paragraph, often quoted is also one of the most misunderstood passages of the Condon report and by extension, UFOlofgy itself.<\/p>\n
Believers roundly condemn it, using it to disregard scientific principals.\u201cWe know UFOs are alien spacecraft \u201cthey scream, \u201cCondon was a scientist, HE says UFOs are bunk so ALL SCIENCE IS STUPID!!!!.”<\/em><\/p>\nSkeptics use it to prove that scientific principles are sound. “We know UFOs are just misidentified things, see! Condon proved it!”<\/em><\/p>\nIs it possible that both ideas are incorrect? Could it be that both the skeptic and the believer have it wrong? You see, in my ravings I feel that any<\/em> extreme viewpoint has a high probability of being incorrect however, it’s helpful to understand the extreme views because somewhere in the middle resides-<\/p>\n– the truth.<\/p>\n
The paragraph really does not validate or invalidate any theory or idea of UFOs. It neither proves nor disproves the existence of unidentified flying objects. It does not prove that little gray aliens from Epsilon behooties (Beta Reticule or wherever) rudely used an anal probe without even a how-are-ya sailor! It also does not say that such things didn’t happen. It actually can’t because (now get this.)<\/p>\n
Proving the existence of aliens was right outside the scope of the Condon report. Hell proving UFOs were anything<\/strong> was right outside the scope of the Condon Report.<\/p>\nLet me step out on a real limb here.
\nThe Condon report is not about UFOs.<\/p>\n
It never was.<\/p>\n
Let me say that again;<\/p>\n
The Condon report is not about UFOs.<\/p>\n
The Condon Report is about UFO reports<\/em>. It’s a report on reports. It’s never been about UFOs, space brothers, aliens, mothmen or chupa-whatevers. It was from the very beginning a scientific examination of reports on UFOs period. Not UFOs themselves.<\/p>\nIt’s like someone wanting to figure out how an automobile works by collecting testimony of car wreck witnesses! Sure you could figure out that automobiles are physical objects, they tend to slam into other automobiles and people get hurt as a result. But you could never really understand where they come from, what they are made of or even what they are for just from crash witness testimony. And guess what?<\/p>\n
We have far FAR less to go on from UFO reports.<\/p>\n
Dr. Condon was simply telling the truth.![](\"http:\/\/www.oddempire.org\/images\/2006\/condon4.gif\")
<\/p>\n
The Condon report was a scientific study to determine whether or not further scientific inquiry should be conducted on Unidentified Flying Objects. I.E. the emphasis of this study has been on <\/span>attempting<\/span> to learn from UFO reports anything that could be considered as adding to scientific knowledge\u009d (Condon Report section I) Its here in black and white. When you create a program its always a good idea to create a set of goals. A mission statement and here we have one, we want to learn if UFO reports can add anything to scientific knowledge. In so many words the Condon committee was not looking at the validity of UFOs, they wanted to see if there was any good information that could be gleaned from UFO reports!<\/p>\nAnd what did they find?<\/p>\n
Nada. Not a damn thing. Most reports could be explained as mundane stuff. Sundogs, misidentified aircraft, reflections, even the planet Venus. Some, around 30% (a very high percentage BTW) were true unknowns.<\/p>\n
So, what sort of scientific benefits can we get from misidentifying Venus? Nothing! Perhaps someone can write a learned paper on optical illusions, not that there aren’t lots of those already.<\/p>\n
What kind of benefits can we get from the unknown reports? While interesting as reports of genuine unknowns, there is little scientific benefit we can get from those either. They all describe different objects, different events from different points of view. Frankly they are just data points and poor ones for the most part. The best you can do is shrug your shoulders and say \u201cI don’t know what that was!”<\/p>\n
Kind of like our car-crash witnesses. What if 30% saw what they think were large gorillas smashing into each other? Could that possibly further the study of automobiles? Remember that 70% were sure they saw automobiles, and 30% thought they saw something else. this is exactly opposite of the situation in the Condon Report.<\/p>\n
The bottom line here is, the Condon report did a very good job of analyzing UFO reports to determine if there is any scientific methodology to study UFOs. The concluded (quite correctly) that there is no scientific bases to study UFOs according to the data they had been given. In other words\u201cThis data sucks! What do you want us to do with it?\u00a0 Prove Santa exists?<\/em><\/p>\nBut, that’s about all they can<\/em> do with it. Not that the data itself is bad, its s very good data of a bunch of unknown events. It just doesn’t go anywhere. There is no way to verify or falsify any hypotheses based on that data. Ergo, it’s not scientific!<\/p>\nAnd that’s why Dr. Condon and his report gets such a bad rap from the UFO community. I can’t blame most of them really. Some people in the UFO community are not scientists and do not think objectively about them (or much else for that matter.) Too intent on proving this crackpot idea or another they seldom sit back and take in the broad concepts, let alone details like the Condon Report.<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.oddempire.org\/images\/2006\/condon5.jpg\")
\nSo what can we learn from all this? Well the first thing I recommend is read the report again and try to understand where they were coming from. Just because someone did not come up with a conclusion you like doesn’t necessarily invalidate the work. There are other factors here and get this.<\/p>\n
The objectives<\/em> of the Condon Report were flawed from the very beginning! I might add that the objectivity<\/em> of many key players in the Condon report may also be ..questionable.<\/p>\nMore on that in another edition of,<\/p>\n
ALIEN HISTORY<\/strong>!!!!! (or whatever I end up calling this if it becomes a series.)<\/p>\nShare and enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A paragraph and misunderstandings, The Condon Report. Let me preface this by saying, I wasn’t always interested in UFOs and such things. Once I liked cartoons, and teddy-bears! But, when the 1960s were waning and I was in the 5th … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","WB4WB4WP_MODE":"","WB4WP_PAGE_SCRIPTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_STYLES":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FONTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_HEADER":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FOOTER":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3088,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/3088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/www.oddempire.org\/images\/2006\/condon1.jpg\")
A paragraph and misunderstandings, The Condon Report.<\/p>\n