58% Of French UFOs Remain Unexplained
This article (also referenced by Nick in another post) points out that the French authorities (actually their UFO investigative branch, with the acronym GEPAN) were only able to satisfactorily explain (or partially explain) 42% of the civilian reports presented to them beginning in 1985. Contrast this to the US Air Force’s claim that they were able to put to rest about 94% of reported sightings from 1952 to 1970.
Is this because the French authorities are less thorough? Did they use different criteria? Did they not have a standing rule to explain away the sightings at all costs? Were they more honest? A complete study of the 1600 cases remains to be completed by civilian groups to possibly answer these questions.
It has been pointed out and I heartily agree that there is much waiting to be discovered in old data. Someone told me recently that the Mutual UFO Network has begun a study which involves mining their vast database for hitherto unrecognized patterns to determine the cause (or causes) of the UFO phenomenon. Apparently the plan is to present the problem from differing points of view and see if the data supports any one theory. The MUFON site states, cryptically: MUFON will be conducting a series of workshops to analyze our investigative data and draw additional conclusions about the UFO phenomenon. The first of these workshops will be held March 10 - 12, 2007 in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Anyone with more information on this worthy project is of course welcome to comment. We can only hope that they will choose to look at the problem from angles other than just the “aliens from other planets” P.O.V.
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Apr 11 2007 
April 11th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Greg:
I have always doubted the claims made by the air-force (and also by many ufologist) that the majority of UFO sightings are caused by mundane events and that only a tiny fraction defy explanation. In fact I suspected it was the opposite - most are unexplained. I believe the majority of people try very hard to find a rational explanation for anything unusual they experience. Which means witnesses have to be seeing things that are pretty perplexing if they are reporting it. It would seem that the French study confirms this.
April 15th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Greg,
Would not surprise me in the least if the true “unknown’ rate for US sightings under Sign/Grudge/Bluebook would be about the same as the French data analysis. I have pointed out in a couple of threads over time that Hynek
discussed this in his writings after his split with the Air Farce and the trigger was the Michigan “swamp gas” story. That really set him off, since all he’d done…he always said…was give that as a “maybe remotely possible” preliminary hypothesis and they blindsinded him by putting it out as “The” scientific explanation. Made him feel like a jackass.
It was from this that later he described their evaluational methodology, perhaps, more accurately, their modus operandi. They would cook the books by “massaging” these cases along. An investigation would typically end up, alluded Hynek, as being something with “possibilities” as a solution. They would then do their initial write-ups taking the “possibility” of such being the solution, and turning it into the “PROBABILITY”. Playing semantics with it. Then the final report would almost inevitably DROP the word “probable” and leave the impression that such and so absolutely “was” the solution….yet NO new data or evidence had ever been added to the mix from the time when the sighting evaluation merely listed a “possibility”. Hynek stood by this allegation till the day he died, and the implication is clear: all these AF
“solved/unsolved” percentages are totally bogus. Worthless.
I have always thought, because of that, that the true percentages of
unsolved cases should be a lot higher than what the Air Farce claimed, and these numbers out of France would seem to bear that belief out.