Customer Reviews

Project Identification: The First Scientific Field Study of Ufo Phenomena

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just read the book for the second time since 1981. Dr. Rutledge was a totally skeptical scientist until he undertook this study of UFOs using instruments. Most of his conclusions came about from using time-lapse photography at night along with calculations made by using a Questar telescope. The really interesting part was the feeling of the investigative group, mostly his physics students, that the phenomenon was interacting with them by means of awareness and perhaps telepathy. This came about through a numbr of "coincidences," such as UFOs abruptly turning when a camera was pointed at them, or even by pointing a finger at them. The writing drags at times in an attempt to create a storyline, but this book is a UFO classic since it is a chronicle of an innovative early attempt to study the phenomenon while it was in progress. A gargantuan effort, the project involved 620 volunteers over a seven-year period.

I was growing up in the town of Piedmont during all of the activity described. Dr. Rutledge's experience was a vindication of sorts for the whole town. Here was an admitted sceptic and a man of science saying that there really were things in the sky around Piedmont that couldn't be explained by natural phenomena.

I'm not a mathematical type at all, but I found Dr. Rutledge's use of formulas and his explanations fairly easy to follow. The photos were very interesting, too.

Few books tackle the subject of UFO's on scientific grounds and this is the first I have read that does not stray from that path. Though an account of a scientific study, it is an easy and interesting read for the layman.

When it comes to the idea "are extraterrestrials visiting Earth," I am extremely sceptical. On an Amazon forum board, I asked for people to provide a book which had the best evidence for the idea. I didn't want to hear anything about Roswell or alien abductions or cattle mutilations. This book was recommended. I ordered it a while back, and finally got around to reading it.

This book is the result of an investigation headed by the author (who has a Ph.D. in Physics) who used many scientists and college students as assistants. In February and March of 1973, a number of UFO sightings occurred in the area around Piedmont, Missouri. Rutledge recruited a team and set out to study the phenomena as it occurred. Over the next two years, they documented dozens of sightings (which the team observed themselves) of craft that behaved in ways no manned aircraft could behave. Could they be unmanned military experimental aircraft, or is something else going on? Read this and decide for yourself.

4 out of 5 stars. The book does appear to be an honest inquiry and not a hoax, but the black and white photographs could either be exactly what they are claimed to be, or could easily be faked.

I haven't read this in twenty years but it made a lasting impression. (I hope my memory is intact enough to avoid serious errors.) Rutledge was a university physicist in Missouri who was asked by residents around Piedmont, in a distant part of the state, to come up and investigate the UFO flap that was going on. He didn't want to do it. He had no interest in UFOs and any serious study would require funds. A newspaper agreed to cover his expenses and he finally agreed, taking some student assistants and some family members with him.

He arrived while the flap was still active and with simple instruments -- a camera, a telescope, a pair of binoculars -- he witnessed the same kind of truly amazing sights that the locals had been buzzing about. He began as a non-believer but was forced by the evidence to open his mind. The reader will be too.

Two things surprised me about the investigation. Not that something extraordinary was going on, because my own experience years earlier had told me that much. But, rather, that one could squeeze so much empirical data out of simply watching something through a pair of binoculars. The second thing that surprised me was that Rutledge ends by believing that the things he watched were, in turn, not only watching him and the others but that they were capable of reading human thoughts. The last sounds ridiculous, I know, and I'm not sure that Rutledge is right about it. But billions of humans believe that our thoughts can be transmitted somehow, only we tend to isolate what we call "God" as the receiver.

I can't imagine how anyone could finish this book without being convinced that something was up. I don't think anyone could be "certain" of it, just "convinced", which is a little weaker form of belief. I'm a scientist of sorts too and there's little room in science for certainty.

At any rate, what doesn't surprise me is that experiences like those of Rutledge -- or innumerable airline pilots, police officers, and other credible observers -- dismiss UFOs as hoaxes or as mistaken balloons or simply as things to joke about, if they're otherwise unexplainable. Because, brothers and sisters, either we don't stand on the pinnacle of knowledge the way we like to think, or we are entrusting our lives and our welfare to respectable people like university professors who are completely out of their minds.