InvestigationCondon Committee Report (1968)

aka Condon Committee Report (1968)

The University of Colorado UFO Project under physicist Edward U. Condon was contracted by the USAF for $313,000 in 1966–1968; its final report concluded UFO research had 'not added to scientific knowledge' and led directly to the closure of Project Blue Book.

apparatus-event U. Colorado study funded by USAF; the Condon Report's negative conclusion closed Blue Book and shaped 30 years of academic disengagement.

status history (1)

2026-06-09 · unannotated → apparatus-event — annotated before the 2026-06-09 sweep; history begins at seeding

Physicist Edward U. Condon, chair of the 1966–68 University of Colorado UFO Project. Wikipedia Commons · Public domain · National Institute of Standards and Technology · betw

The University of Colorado UFO Project (the Condon Committee) was contracted by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in October 1966 for $313,000 over two years, with Dr. Edward U. Condon — former director of the National Bureau of Standards and a principal in the Manhattan Project’s General Advisory Committee — as principal investigator. The final 1,485-page report, ‘Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,’ was released 8 January 1969. Condon’s introduction summarized: ‘Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge.’ The American Physical Society and the National Academy of Sciences endorsed the report; the USAF used it as the basis to close Project Blue Book on 17 December 1969.

Notable & intriguing

The 1,485-page Condon Report concluded that ‘further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified’ — though the report’s own case analyses left 30% of investigated cases unexplained, a finding the summary did not foreground.

Edward U. Condon et al., Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, Bantam Books, 1969; analysis by Peter A. Sturrock, Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 1, 1987
A 9 August 1966 internal memo by project coordinator Robert Low, written before the project formally began, stated: ‘The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.’

Low Memorandum, 9 August 1966; published in David Saunders and R. Roger Harkins, UFOs? Yes!, Signet, 1968
Dr. James E. McDonald, senior atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona, formally protested the Condon Report’s methodology in testimony to the House Science and Astronautics Committee on 29 July 1968; his 71-page critique of the report’s internal inconsistencies was entered into the Congressional Record.

House Science and Astronautics Committee hearing, 29 July 1968; Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Congressional Record

Public-record items already documented about this subject. Folklore is labelled. Sources cited where the specificity warrants it.

Appears in interpretive theories

Psychosocial hypothesis — cites as evidence
Apparatus-response theories — cites as evidence
Multiple-phenomena / no-unified-explanation hypothesis — cites as evidence

More — investigation