UFO ACTIVITY IN RELATION TO DAY-OF-THE-WEEK

This document, authored by Dr. David R. Saunders, provides a statistical analysis of UFO sighting reports categorized by the day of the week they occurred. The paper addresses the popular notion that UFO activity peaks on weekends, a theory often cited by those who attribute sightings to hoaxes or hallucinations linked to social behavior. Saunders also discusses a competing theory proposed by Keel, which suggests a peak in sightings on Wednesdays. To investigate these claims, Saunders utilized data from the UFOCAT-70 database, which contains records from 1921 to 1970. To minimize bias, the data was processed to count only a maximum of one event per political unit per date. The resulting analysis, presented in Table 1, includes chi-square statistics to test the hypothesis that sightings are equally likely to occur on any given day. The author notes that while some years show significant deviations, these results are often influenced by external factors, such as the editorial decisions of newspapers to publish more reports on certain days or the impact of well-publicized 'flaps.' Saunders argues that the observed inequalities in the data do not provide strong evidence for the 'natural phenomenon' hypothesis and suggests that the reporting process itself is a significant variable. The paper concludes by noting that the data is complex and that the 'Wednesday phenomenon' or other day-of-the-week trends are likely artifacts of human reporting behavior rather than inherent characteristics of the UFO phenomenon itself. The document includes a comprehensive table of data spanning nearly five decades, illustrating the distribution of reports across the week.