By the mid-1960s the Air Force wanted out. Project Blue Book had become a permanent public-relations liability generating little intelligence value, and the service turned to an outside body for an answer it could act on.
The result was a study at the University of Colorado directed by the physicist Edward U. Condon, published in 1968 as Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects and universally known as the Condon Report.
What it concluded
Broadly, that there was no scientific basis for concluding that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin, and that little of substance had emerged from the Air Force's two decades of study.1 The committee argued that continued study of UFO sightings was not warranted, and recommended that Project Blue Book be discontinued.1
The National Academy of Sciences reviewed the report. The Air Force's decision to end UFO investigation rested on that report, the Academy's review, and its own accumulated experience across the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.2 A termination order followed in December 1969; activity ceased in January 1970.1
The dissent was immediate
The report did not command consensus, and it is important to say so plainly. It was contested at the time on grounds that ranged from methodological to institutional — including the charge that its conclusions were inconsistent with the case studies contained in its own body. Readers who want to weigh that argument should read the report and its critics rather than take anyone's summary, including this one. The University of Colorado holds Condon's own papers, and its libraries have written publicly about the project's history and its controversies.3
In this archive
Condon appears here in more than one medium. There is a substantial textual series associated with him — NAID 45484701 — and a short newsreel-era film, "Doctor Edward Condon, University of Colorado Physicist Studying Unidentified Flying Objects".
What makes the Condon episode worth studying is not the verdict but the mechanism: a government agency with an unwanted problem commissioned an external scientific review, received a recommendation to stop, and stopped. Whatever one thinks of the science, that is a clean and unusually well-documented example of how an institution sheds a subject.
Notes & sources
- The Condon Report's 1968 conclusion that there was no scientific basis for an extraterrestrial explanation, its recommendation to discontinue Project Blue Book, and the resulting December 1969 termination order and January 1970 cessation. CU the site of one of the last government-commissioned reports on UFOs. What does it say?, University of Colorado Boulder. Read at source ↗ ↩
- The Air Force's stated basis for ending UFO investigations: the University of Colorado report, the National Academy of Sciences review, and prior Air Force experience. Unidentified Flying Objects and Air Force Project Blue Book, U.S. Air Force. Read at source ↗ ↩
- The University of Colorado Boulder holds the Edward U. Condon collection and has published on the project's history. Edward U. Condon collection, University of Colorado Boulder, Rare and Distinctive Collections. Read at source ↗ ↩
Outside sources are summarised in our own words and linked, not reproduced. Follow the links to read them at their publishers.