Well, I found a physicist who knew something about plasmas, talked to him about the case, and was told the explanation was ridiculous. The Air Force officer was just looking for a way to write the case off. The plasma answer didn't make sense to him. Of course, to other Air Force officers and to the news media and general public who knew nothing of plasma physics, the explanation sounded credible and that was all they wanted. An answer that would be believed. They knew that most of us would not have the time or the training to review the case closely. They provided a scientific sounding explanation and slapped it on the file.
What this tells us, as do some of the other cases we examined that had ridiculous explanations like the police officers who chased Venus or the private pilot who tried to intercept Venus or a Sundog, was that they would slap explanations on sightings. When the Air Force statement suggests that only 701 sightings were listed as unidentified, they don't mention all the others that are mislabeled. In my survey of the files, I found dozens of reports that seemed to have been "solved" in a similar fashion.
This also suggests that even if the 701 sightings that were unexplained were not a significant number, when we add in those that had solutions that were less than accurate, the number increases. If we added only three hundred, a very conservative number, then we suddenly have a thousand sightings that aren't explained, or about one in twelve. Is that a significant number?
But let's take it even further, which we can. What the Air Force status sheet didn't tell anyone was that many of the cases were labeled as insufficient data for a scientific analysis. Although there were few such cases in the beginning of the project, by the end many of them were labeled as such.
It should be pointed out here that calling a case "Insufficient data" is not an explanation. It is merely a label. But, the point would be to keep the case from the unidentifieds. By doing so, they are not counted in the 701 sightings labeled as unidentified.
In the course of this work, I reviewed a number of those cases. In some of them there just wasn't enough information to make a proper evaluation. If, for example, a single witness saw a bright light move across the sky at three 'o'clock in the morning, how could the Air Force be expected to "solve" the riddle. It could have been a meteor that was distinctive enough that it fooled the witness? What if it was a private plane with the landing lights on and the wind blowing hard enough to push the engine noise away from the witness? What if it was spotlights playing across a cloud? There simply isn't enough information and the Air Force investigators were right in labeling it as insufficient data.
But the majority of the cases weren't like that. There was a great deal of accurate and precise information supplied by the witnesses. Sometimes there was more than one witness. The thickness of the file and the amount of the information seems to have overwhelmed the officers reviewing it. There was too much information so that many of the old stand-by answers such as a weather balloon or Venus just couldn't be bent to fit the mold. Rather than suggest an unexplained case, the report was stamped with insufficient data.
In one case, one of the very last to labeled as unidentified, the witness was furious when his case was stamped as insufficient data. He filled out another of the Air Force forms and then added a long statement to question thirty-five which asks for additional "information which you feel pertinent and which is not adequately covered in the specific points of the questionnaire or a narrative explanation of your sighting." He wrote, "It is a real mystery to me why you state in your August 21 missive, 'The information which we received is not sufficient for a scientific evaluation,' in consideration of the fact that the very thorough report which Lieutenant Foreman took and supposedly submitted to you contained far more definitive information… than could be elicited via your questionnaire."
The witness continued, adding that more information was available through Foreman's report than in the form that was being sent, but that their handling of the case "leads me to believe… That accusations of negligence heaped upon you… by some independent investigations in recent years may NOT be entirely unfounded."
Like the rest of us, this witness was left wondering what was missing from his reports and those of Lieutenant Foreman. What data was needed so that a scientific analysis could be made. It seemed to him that a great deal of time and effort was going into the collection of data that when received and processed revealed nothing or was lacking in some critical area.
After evaluating the new information, and realizing that the witness had not only a good education but a technical background, they changed the status from insufficient to unidentified. The Air Force officers had found themselves in another of the famous holes.
But the case does raise an interesting question. What was left out of the questionnaire that should have been included? The Air Force, with the help of the Battelle Institution had spent years designing the form to gather precisely the type of information that the Air Force would need to gather. Several different versions had been tried and then revised. Even top UFO critic and UFO debunker, Dr. Donald Menzel, had supplied the Air Force with his thoughts on the questionnaire used. Menzel wrote about the design of the questionnaire, "I don't know who is at fault, but the questionnaire seems cleverly designed to avoid asking the most vital questions and to get the wrong answers. In response to my repeated criticisms, the Air Force asked me to suggest revisions for the new printing. I spent several weeks detailing the revisions and giving my reasons therefore. But they adopted only a few of my suggestions, rejecting the remainder because they considered them to be an invasion of privacy."
Menzel was quick to point out other inadequacies. "The original questionnaire determined whether or not the person was wearing glasses, but did not find out whether a person who was not wearing glasses was supposed to be wearing them. I wanted to know how long it had been since the witness had had an eye examination. I even wanted to know the nature of the correction."
While it seems that Menzel was delving into areas that were personal and private, and may not have relevant to the investigation, it is also obvious that the Air Force questionnaire, from a scientific standpoint was not complete. There were standard questions that should have been asked and that clearly were not.
Finally, it must be noted that a large number of the cases marked as insufficient data were marked because the Air Force questionnaire had not been completed in what the Air Force officers thought a reasonable amount of time. This was a complex document that ran to several pages, calling for some precise information. The Air Force officers, when confronted with a sighting, apparently felt it was sufficient to send out a questionnaire, but apparently never believed it necessary to make follow-up inquiries. If their form was not completed, then the case was written off as insufficient data.
In a review of the number of sightings for the period of 1-10 July 1967, picked at random, I found that ten of the thirty-four sightings were listed as insufficient data. One of the sightings, from Lizelia, Mississippi was listed as unidentified. One was listed as being unreliable, which meant the witness had made other UFO sightings. And one was listed as "confusing data."
All in all, there were thirteen sightings that were unexplained, though only one was listed as such. The other twelve were labeled, but they certainly weren't explained. That means that about thirty percent of the sightings have no explanation on them. Or, in other words, about four thousand of the twelve thousand Blue Book sightings are not explained. Is that a significant number?
Let's stop for a moment and look at the unreliable reports. The thinking of the Air Force officers was probably that seeing a UFO was such a rare circumstance that no one would have the opportunity twice. If they did report UFOs on more than one occasion, that would mean that the witness was unfamiliar with the sky and was therefore unreliable. No reason to investigate a case in which the witness couldn't distinguish between what was supposed to be in the sky and what wasn't supposed to be there.