Not sure why this is here in the Science section, but OK.
UFO Research has been my lifelong hobby ever since my brother and I saw a silent domed disk about a football field away during the summer before I went to Notre Dame (1958.) Once I got my science prof job at WMU, I sought out information on the field of study, finding that the USAFs former scientific consultant had begun a civilian research group in Chicago, not far away. I joined him at the Center for UFO Studies, and since have been able to access the best case information available to civilian researchers. Due to this "quiet presence" of mine for 30-40 years, I have sort of reluctantly become a world-known expert (if there are any) on this subject.
I can tell you that as much as I'd like it to be true, and as much as it deserves to be acknowledged, UFO Studies is not a "science." Despite Hynek (and he wrote a fine textbook-like book, The UFO Experience, trying to create the foundational thinking for it to be a science) it has never been able to establish a level of seriousness in the minds of the public nor academia (who are willfully stunningly ignorant of the data) to get itself "into the textbooks." In fact, an atmosphere of mockery exists (read Robert Powell's and my book, UFOs and Government, if you have the stamina --- it's a 600+pp monster --- if you want to know how this happened). The field has tons of responsible data, statistical studies, laboratory analysis trying to break down this inscrutable enigma. It refuses to break. If the adventure were not so entertaining to the researcher, every good quality person in the field would have quit in frustration long ago. But we persist (like Don Quixote) in an otherwise thankless task.
The map shown in the post above is "OK" and not OK. It does represent the times that persons have decided to call into the media (almost always an internet site) and claim that they "saw a UFO." Whether they did or not is questionable as that's where that ends. Almost never (contrary to Hynek's and the USAF's investigations time) are any of these actually followed up upon --- the claim just dies. Do actual UFO encounters still go on? They do. Once in a lucky while, an actual field researcher gets the news of a good case and does an investigation --- Robert Powell is one of the best. Frequently these cases are genuinely puzzling and seem to point to some kind of physical aerial technology that we don't know about. Sometimes the "Strangeness" of the case details push this aerial technology into the discomfort zone of "beyond our capability", just like the USAFs conclusions in many of their cases.
So, what do you do with that? You can make a "best guess" but you can't "prove" it in the laboratory like a "science" might. You CAN come close. You can investigate the cases, sample the sites, do the lab work, do the statistics seeking patterns, make alternative hypotheses, --- everything but drag a piece of the technology into the National Academy of Sciences and say: "Please Look At This." (We've done everything else.)
The other thing that you cannot do is count on the media. The subject is just entertainment to the media so they will (almost) never report any of it "straight." You will always get a smear job for the HAR-HAR effect. So, as a serious researcher, you never go to the media. I still get two to three requests from (big outfit) media people for filming interviews per year. Once in a while I say yes. It's almost always an error. The Peter Jennings people were OK --- pretty straight shooters. The Canadian CNBC guy was great. I've been on a couple of other televised "documentaries" which were tolerable. Most are not. Lots of you have probably seen one or more of these --- I can tell you that with the exceptions of the bits by Mark Rodeghier, Jerry Clark, and myself, you were probably not getting a solid take on the subject from either the debunkers nor the UFOriacs. ... no one wants to hear the actual researcher-scholars though.
... anyway, for those on IE with open minds on such things and maybe interested, those are some of the thoughts of a guy who, whether he wanted it or not, became a "world expert" on something quite controversial.
