Hynek, UFOs and PR

I recently exchanged emails with a longtime reader, Dr. Brian Akers, about aspects of the work of celebrated UFO investigator Dr. J. Allen Hynek. We discussed how researchers sometimes selectively source and interpret Hynek's stated positions. We also considered public relations efforts to promote unsubstantiated belief systems that often surround those interpretations.

Dr. Akers is a retired professor and award-winning educator with multi-discipline expertise in anthropology, comparative religion and botany. He earned a Ph.D. in Plant Biology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and his employers included the University of Minnesota Morris. His interests in intriguing cultural and social issues are apparent in his extensive study of the use of psilocybin mushrooms in sacred rites and rituals.

Our email exchanges consisted of explorations of select Hynek articles, yet we also considered how the wider implications stand to say more about the UFO genre as a whole. This blogpost considers some of Hynek's work as a means to examine a UFO culture in which credulous conclusions are drawn. These conclusions are often asserted from arguably disingenuous or poorly informed positions of claimed objectivity and scientific study. This might particularly be considered a point of concern among self-described UFO archivists and historians, the very people who designate themselves to preserve and disseminate the ambiguous UFO truth. A more accurate description might often include promoting and romanticizing the work of UFO iconic figures such as Hynek, Dr. Jacques Vallee, Maj. Donald Keyhoe and others.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek

Are Flying Saucers Real?

Dr. J. Allen Hynek (1910-1986) was head of the astronomy department at Northwestern University and a UFO investigator. He advised the U.S. Air Force on UFO research, specifically, Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book. He developed a “close encounter” scale for categorizing UFO reports and subsequently consulted with producers on the 1977 blockbuster sci-fi movie bearing its name. Hynek founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in 1973 while sustaining criticism from both skeptics and believers. Skeptics expressed concerns he was biased in favor of the extraordinary while believers were frustrated he did not more aggressively endorse their preferred conclusions and conspiracies, as documented by Hynek-biographer Mark O'Connell in his book The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs.

Dr. Jacques Vallee, popular among UFO enthusiasts, numbered among those frustrated by Hynek's lack of willingness to promote premature and fantastic UFO explanations. Whether you view that as positive or negative probably has a lot to do with whether you prefer your science by systematic research or press release.

Cover of Dec. 7, 1966, Saturday Evening Post

J. Allen Hynek wrote an article in 1966 titled Are Flying Saucers Real?, published by The Saturday Evening Post. Brian Akers obtained a copy and shared it with me for public benefit. It was subsequently added to a section of Hynek articles located in the Ann Druffel Special Collection of the Expanding Frontiers Archive. We at Expanding Frontiers Research thank Dr. Akers for helping make the article more widely available.

The 1966 article gives readers a snapshot of an era in which the United States Congress was aggressively lobbied to dig into UFOs; an official study was commissioned by the Air Force; and common reports of flying saucers were widely thought to indicate extraterrestrial visitation if not, at a bare minimum, to be worthy of deeper study. If you think that sounds a lot like the present, you're right, it just hasn't always been that way. There were gaps between eras of politicians climbing on the UFO bandwagon. Public interest and urgency ebbed and flowed since modern flying saucers soared onto the scene in the 1940s and periodically went through branding revisions ranging from UFOs to UAP.

A primary challenge with the steeplechase, as Carol Rainey once aptly termed the enduring UFO social situation, has always been the genre is steered more by disingenuous or mistaken people than transparent and competent researchers. A lot of public opinion about UFOs is shaped by the willfully deceptive and those influenced by them. The latter often sincerely yet mistakenly traffic the former's false assertions with unwavering certainty. The outcome is exponential growth of a demographic that confidently asserts things that are simply wrong.

This is not to say honest and competent UFO researchers do not exist. They do, they're just few and far between, and public opinion is minimally formed from their work. The public mostly builds its UFO beliefs from dubious information absorbed through social media, click-bait websites, bad television, videos, and the inherent lies and logical fallacies that sustain them. That has historically been the case from people who innocently gather at local UFO meetings all the way to those populating the halls of Congress.

The Robertson Panel

Hynek took the opportunity in the above-referenced 1966 article to share some anecdotal testimonies and push back against findings reached by the Robertson Panel, a group we have since learned was CIA-funded to explore the UFO phenomenon. The panel, which convened in 1953, concluded that reports examined did not represent threats to national security and the topic could pretty much be dismissed without a lot of consequence.

Maj. Donald Keyhoe

While abstaining from the public tendency to accuse the powers that be of a cover-up, circumstances that by 1966 had firmly become the calling card of Maj. Donald Keyhoe of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, Hynek nonetheless challenged the group's findings. The Robertson Panel acted in haste, Hynek asserted, and he pleaded his case that scientific study of UFOs could lead to worthwhile discoveries, regardless of whether or not any reports involved interplanetary spacecraft.

A recurring challenge with that position, however, and it continues today, is that it seems to misrepresent a researcher's true agenda about as often as not. This is not necessarily the circumstance with Hynek, and certainly not always, but pro-UFO scientists, investigators and government officials often play the “no one said it's aliens” card only when they get called out for saying it's aliens. As long as audiences encourage their rampant speculation, they're often more than willing to fan the alien flames.

By the way, Hynek directly referenced both NICAP and APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization) in Are Flying Saucers Real?. The context: “It was about this time that some firm believers in UFO's [sic] became disgusted with the Air Force and decided to take matters into their own hands, much like the vigilantes of the Old West; they organized 'to do the job the Air Force was mishandling.' These groups, composed of people with assorted backgrounds, were often the recipients of intriguing reports that never came to the official attention of Project Blue Book. The first group of this kind in the United States was the APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization), founded in 1952 and still going strong, as is NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena), which was organized several years later.”

Hynek's take on the Robertson Panel – published in The Saturday Evening Post, no less – might be considered ironic in light of the fact we now know the group also cautioned and advised CIA on the potential use of the UFO topic as a psychological warfare tool, with objectives including undermining authority and sowing public hysteria. That's pretty much what select NICAP leadership started doing in 1957 and continued throughout the 1960s. I have previously suggested Donald Keyhoe's most enduring legacy may have been to make wild assertions, then try to assign the burden of proof to intelligence agencies.

Hynek expressed his frustration with working with the Air Force but emphasized it did not try to influence findings of his investigations. The USAF, Hynek wrote, would occasionally disregard his evaluations or not consult with him on certain cases, but it did not attempt to steer his conclusions. It might be considered noteworthy we don't hear that point discussed more often among self-styled UFO experts and historians.

As a matter of fact, Hynek went as far as writing, specifically, “During all of my years of association with the Air Force, I have never seen any evidence for the charge about UFO's [sic] most often leveled against the service: that there is deliberate cover-up of knowledge of space visitors to prevent the public from panicking.”

While there are likely researchers who occasionally mention Hynek's 1966 stated position in passing, it is certainly not as prominently discussed as blaming the CIA and Air Force for an egregious and orchestrated UFO cover-up. Hynek's position just doesn't fit the current preferred narrative so it seems to be largely omitted.

Notably, Brian Akers shared the article with me while expressing what he observed to be a seeming lack of wide availability of the piece, at least as compared to what might be considered other representations of Hynek's work that more definitively support commonly held opinions on UFOs. A potential UFO community cover-up, if you will.

“The problem that Dr. Akers addresses should be a primary concern,” stated Erica Lukes, executive director of Expanding Frontiers Research. “Both historically, and in current times, UFO historians and archivists are actively promoting the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrials. If they sway too far from UFO education into activism, they omit large portions of information in order to advance unfounded claims. This information includes personal correspondence or background on investigations. The additional information is key to addressing the validity of a claim, the potential motivations or bias of a group or individual, and other factors that provide needed context.” 

I asked Mark O'Connell about his experience with bias among UFO historians and if they seem to protect the work of “sacred cows” such as Hynek, Vallee, Keyhoe and the like, from objective discussion and potential criticism. He qualified he might himself be accused of being sympathetic to, and protective of, Allen Hynek's work. “How could I not be?” he reflected.

“Aside from my complicity, though,” Mark continued, “yes, I think many figures in the field of UFOlogy are protective of their own UFO biases. Sometimes it is justified, sometimes it is not; that's where 'objective discussion' comes in, at least in theory, right? I can think of a few 'sacred cows' that have pretty much taken UFOlogy hostage in recent years but have not, in my opinion, contributed much if anything to our understanding of the UFO phenomenon.”

The Condon Committee

Akers observed Hynek expressed enthusiasm in his 1966 article about the then-forming Condon Committee, a group at the University of Colorado commissioned by the USAF to get to the bottom of UFOs once and for all. The eventual about-face by Hynek and others on the findings produced by the group - led by physicist Dr. Edward Condon - is historic in itself. The much anticipated study concluded that investigation of UFOs was unlikely to yield major scientific discoveries, much to the dismay of those who hoped their work and premature proclamations were about to be vindicated.

“To me it seems this could be Hynek’s most unwittingly and uniquely self-incriminating testimonial,” Dr. Akers wrote to me in a recent email. “His gushing heraldry of the Condon Committee, by 20-20 hindsight, has to be the most glaring and obvious embarrassment. As if some triumph of scientific promise dawning on the horizon, of gospel comfort and joy. At last we’ll be told what we can believe about UFOs - on solid scientific basis and high authority... A prophecy hardly fulfilled.”

Dr. Edward Condon

The Condon Committee conclusion would prove to be adamantly opposed by Hynek, Keyhoe and NICAP, and pretty much everybody who believed UFO reports represented something exceptional. A real irony here is a lot of people would still argue against the findings of the committee today. Many UFO enthusiasts continue to this day to stubbornly assert that the criticism of the findings was justified, in spite of the fact history has now shown us Condon was much more right than wrong. It's not as if we don't now have a sizable sample to explore, yet the UFO culture has a tendency to fail to update assessments as more information is collected – even decades of it.

Some 60 years later, with untold millions of dollars poured into the steeplechase and aided by the luxury of ever-evolving technology, there have indeed been no major scientific discoveries attributed to the investigation of UFOs. The public continues to be manipulated by such circumstances as shots from grainy videos published on the front page of The New York Times. If there's a threat to national security, it may well be the people sustaining the chase more than what they're chasing, as consultants advised CIA in 1953.

In his 1966 Saturday Evening Post article, Hynek suggested we need good photos of UFOs. “I recommend that every police chief in the country,” he explained further, “make sure that at least one of his squad cars carries in its glove compartment a camera loaded with color film. The cameras, which could also be used for regular police work, might be furnished by civic or service groups.”

We're now well into a 21^st century where practically every police car in the country has a camera - on its dashboard. Average citizens are regularly walking around with cameras. All of this, as Hynek recommended and much more, yet still no overly significant UFO photos. How many years of such a pattern must be taken into evidence before it's identified as relevant and the implications are proportionately factored? If Dr. Hynek was still alive today, are we to believe he would stubbornly cling to the same arguments expressed in his writings, as if frozen in time with the comparatively limited perspective of the 1960s UFO scene?

Expanding Frontiers Research and I encourage the study of whatever inspires one's interest. It is not that any given topic should be summarily rejected, but that bad methodologies create bad results: garbage in, garbage out. It could be argued that pseudoscience and logical fallacies are typically granted tolerance among those interested in UFOs because there is otherwise a sorely disappointing lack of content. Often times, if there is no exaggerated sensationalism, then there is simply no story.

Swamp Gas

Brian Akers expressed interest in the evolution of Hynek's swamp gas speculation the astronomer applied to some 1966 Michigan UFO sightings, another issue Hynek addressed in Are Flying Saucers Real?. Having expertise in botany himself, Brian had some reservations about the handling of the potential explanation. It might also be considered noteworthy the now semi-famous scapegoat botanist of Hynek's narrative remains nameless. It didn't seem to be the idea itself of swamp gas that bothered Dr. Akers as much as its presentation.

The perfect storm of hype and circumstance blew into the Michigan towns of Dexter and Hillsdale in 1966. Several reported UFO sightings included an incident at Hillsdale College. The event was associated with an arboretum, a place where plant-life is grown for scientific and educational purposes.

As explained in Mark O'Connell's The Close Encounters Man, Hynek came to town fully expecting heightened media interest to make it difficult to conduct a thorough investigation. The circumstances were compounded by the Air Force presumably wanting fast and decisive explanations.

Hynek interviewed several witnesses in the area, but there was not a whole lot of continuity or significance from one account to another, and he was unable to immediately speak to all of the witnesses. Scientists were consulted, but about the only thing anyone could really determine for sure happened at Hillsdale College was some folks saw colorful lights that may or may not have been part of a solid object that may or may not have been airborne. Inconsistencies mounted, as O'Connell observed.

Somehow a press conference got scheduled. It depends on who you asked as to who initiated it. Nonetheless, the press conference was an exciting time for those who had long hoped for the UFO topic to get so much attention and be taken so seriously.

“It was also, in Hynek's words, the absolute low point in his association with UFOs,” O'Connell wrote in The Close Encounters Man, citing the 1966 article, Are Flying Saucers Real?, we've been examining.

Hynek with Dr. Jacques Vallee

When pressed for conclusive explanations that he simply did not have, Hynek speculated the lights may have been swamp gas. He noted how the association of the sightings with swamps seemed more than coincidence, and that the major conditions for the appearance of swamp lights were satisfied. The UFO faithful and some of Hynek's colleagues were bitterly disappointed (We could make some comparisons here to circumstances surrounding Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, formerly of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. He was much more recently accused by religious-like UFO zealots of cover-up and betrayal when he refused to assert unfounded conclusions, but we'll keep moving because this is a long story with several parable-like recurring themes already).

Per Are Flying Saucers Real? and a number of other sources, Hynek explained an unnamed botanist from the University of Michigan suggested the swamp gas possibility. “Searching for a justifiable explanation for the sightings,” Hynek wrote, “I remembered a phone call from a botanist at the University of Michigan, who called to my attention the phenomenon of burning 'swamp gas'. This gas, caused by decaying vegetation, has been known to ignite spontaneously and to cast a flickering light. The glow is well-known in song and story as 'jack-o-lantern,' 'fox fire,' and 'will-o'-the-wisp.' After learning more about swamp gas from other Michigan scientists, I decided that it was a 'possible' explanation that I would offer to the reporters.”

O'Connell notes in his book that one of the primary witnesses, Bud Van Horn, put the idea on the table during an interview conducted by Hynek. “But Van Horn wasn’t his only source,” O'Connell documented. “From Hynek’s lengthy case notes and Blue Book report, it becomes evident that as many as a half dozen people mentioned the swamp gas theory to Hynek as a likely explanation for the Dexter-Hillsdale sightings during his three days in Michigan. The list of swamp gas sources includes University of Michigan astronomy, chemistry, and botany professors; some unnamed 'Michigan scientists'; an anonymous military source; and Hynek’s Blue Book colleague Task Sergeant Moody.”

Citing an article titled “Air Force to Explain 'Saucers,'” O'Connell goes on to describe an intriguing series of circumstances that preceded the press conference, “Strangest of all was a small item that appeared several hours before the press conference, in the Friday, March 25, edition of the Detroit Free Press. The article said that the air force 'expects to come up with a reasonable, logical answer sometime Friday.' Then it dropped a bomb, saying that Dr. Hynek had admitted to finding no evidence to suggest that the Dexter-Hillsdale lights were the result of 'extraterrestrial intelligence.' The unnamed reporter predicted that the air force’s 'official' conclusions at the press conference would not satisfy the many witnesses in the area, and then cited one Alfred Dickens, a maintenance man for the York County Gas Company of York County, Pennsylvania, who 'snorts at saucers and says the phenomena are merely balls of ‘damp gas’ seeping from swamps and marshes.'”

O'Connell continues, formulating the possibility the USAF may have been behind the newspaper article in order to influence the press conference. “The question,” O'Connell wrote, “is whether the air force planted the article that morning to prime the media or to box Hynek in and pressure him into making the swamp gas statement.”

Intriguing circumstances, indeed, which brings us back to concerns Dr. Akers had with some of Dr. Hynek's statements from Are Flying Saucers Real?. We have considered the problematic, appeal to authority nature of deferring to unnamed scientists and sources. Concern was also expressed about Hynek's optimism the Condon Committee would prove significant to advancing the UFO topic or, at least, telling the public what it should believe about UFOs (A lot of what we might term UFO activists held similar positions at the time, whatever one may choose to surmise that indicates). Akers discussed further, “What caught me off guard most however - as a PhD in Plant Biology (my 1997 doctoral degree) - was what stuck out like a sore thumb as an undercurrent of pseudoscience - that only a specialist might notice.”

Akers went on to describe that perhaps only someone scientifically educated in certain natural phenomena might consider that spontaneously-igniting “swamp gas” does indeed exist, but the terms “foxfire,” “will-o'-the-wisp,” and “Jack o’ lantern” are, at generous assessment, ambiguous generalizations. They span circumstances ranging from fungal bioluminescence to folklore. “In a single sentence,” Akers wrote, “Hynek conflates all these disparate things as if synonymous, for the edification of his 1966 ‘coffee table magazine’ readership, who to this day wouldn’t know the difference, let alone back then.”

The Condon Report and UFOs   

By 1969 the proverbial rubber band snapped back on hopes mainstream science was about to go all in on saucers. Hynek reviewed the work produced by the Condon Committee in an article titled The Condon Report and UFOs, published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist. The article, contained in a pdf along with some newspaper clippings and other Hynek records, is available through the previously referenced Ann Druffel Special Collection of the Expanding Frontiers Archive.

While qualifying himself as having by that time been a consultant on UFOs to the USAF for over 20 years, Hynek argued there is no scientific value in focusing on the explainable. He emphasized the committee's conclusions overlooked cases that lacked explanation. Hynek expressed particular disappointment the Condon Report was endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences, which basically agreed no further work on the UFO phenomenon should be done.

Hynek was indeed talented at making an argument for studying UFOs. He was more effective, I would say, than some others who achieved media coverage such as Donald Keyhoe and Richard Hall of NICAP, who also numbered among those publishing counterarguments to Condon's work. For all of his strengths, however, it could be argued Hynek's talking points occasionally incorporated flawed logic where the rubber hit the road. The more clearly a UFO investigator describes details of specific cases, often times the more difficult it becomes for them to abstain from relying on inference and speculation, else the report may just not seem that interesting.

Dr. Hynek may have somewhat been a product of his era, as is the case with all of us to some degree, but he sometimes prioritized witness statements more than may have been justified. A lot of people were reporting having seen a UFO and everyone was talking about them. Hynek's writing did not always show a working knowledge of how people may simply be wrong about what they think they saw. Importantly, people may interpret events as UFO sightings through a subjective lens of prior conditioning, which is to say what we read in newspapers, see on television, and talk about with our friends affects our future perceptions and interpretations.

To give Hynek his due, maybe he'd say those weren't the cases that concerned him. Critics might counter, however, the burden is on the claimant.

UFO Outreach

Public relations is an extremely important part of marketing an organization's mission, and that certainly applies within the UFO genre. Donald Keyhoe's primary talent may have been in public relations, questionable as some of his other work may arguably have been.

The importance of marketing continues today. UFO organizations, investigators and archivists use television appearances, social media accounts, and a wide variety of tools to widen their reach. Marketing itself is neither good nor bad, but it is the messages and intentions it carries that make it either constructive or detrimental to a society.

“A tenet for professional archivists is preserving and disseminating information without bias,” Erica Lukes explained. “Instead, we see archives whose sole focus is on promoting files that support the unfounded belief that UFOs are alien spacecraft, while omitting information that paints the full picture. Until UFO historians and archivists hold themselves to industry standards, we will continue to see a whitewashing of UFO history.”

Since the mid-20^th century, UFO organizations and advocates describe a substantial part of their work as increasing public awareness. Unfortunately, their methods are often all but indistinguishable from the characteristics of religious fanaticism, and typically just as lacking in verifiable facts. Moreover, due to a lack of recognition of standards of evidence, UFO fanatics will argue they are critical thinkers and science-based researchers when confronted with their flawed reasoning. From NICAP to To The Stars, spokespersons appointed themselves purveyors of truth while people, corporations, and institutions of varying levels of influence eagerly carried their water.

Cover of a 1976 People magazine containing a Hynek interview, courtesy Ann Druffel Special Collection.

Hynek expressed a lack of concern about the ways UFO investigation and the inevitable resulting media attention might lead the public astray down a garden path to destructive extremism. I interpret he valued possible scientific discoveries over the consequences of sensationalism and exploitation that have remained certain byproducts of an active and publicly engaged UFO culture. The investigations just had to be done.

Given the current circumstances in the U.S. and the self-evident attack on science and its institutions, expressing a counterpoint to Hynek's position hardly seems necessary. Overzealous UFO investigation is by no means solely responsible for rampant brain rot, but it is undeniably adjacent to Pizzagate, crypto scams, sovereign citizens and various other ideologies that put vulnerable populations on fast tracks to loss of family and fortune. Hynek and UFO advocates of the 1960s could have hardly seen it all coming but suffice it to say the Robertson Panel had valid concerns.

Along with other less-often explored examples of Hynek's talking points, we find the following item from his above-linked review of the Condon Report. “There is, however, one area in which the reviewer is in accord with Dr. Condon,” Hynek wrote, “and that is in his recommendation that science credit not be given in elementary schools for term papers and projects on UFOs. School children are too lacking in critical faculties to be turned loose in UFO land.”

I direct the reader's attention to the National UFO Historical Records Center, which in 2024 opened a UFO archive on the campus of none other than the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Rio Rancho, NM. It would appear the UFO records group and Rio Rancho Public Schools consider themselves in dissent of Hynek's position.

The Rio Rancho Observer reports the collaborators aim “to provide innovative ways for students and parents to engage in educational opportunities.” Objectives reportedly include promoting critical thinking.

So why don't they just teach critical thinking?