International UFO Reporter

History

The Center for UFO Studies was founded in 1973 in Evanston, Illinois, by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who had spent two decades as the scientific consultant to the Air Force's Project Blue Book. Hynek had entered that role as a sceptic and left it as a cautious advocate for serious study of the phenomenon. CUFOS was his answer to the question of what an honest scientific investigation would look like, conducted outside government control and free from the institutional pressures that had warped Blue Book's conclusions.

1973 to 1976: The CUFOS Founding

The Center for UFO Studies launched at the close of Project Blue Book and at a moment when American civilian UFO research was rebuilding its institutional base. The Condon Report of January 1969 had recommended against further scientific study. Blue Book had closed in December 1969. NICAP was in steep decline under John Acuff's directorship. APRO continued under the Lorenzens in Tucson but had no academic-credentialed scientific leadership. Hynek's Northwestern University chair as professor of astronomy gave CUFOS the institutional weight that the post-Condon civilian community needed.

Allen Hendry served as the first full-time CUFOS investigator from 1976. His work distinguishing genuinely anomalous reports from astronomical and atmospheric misidentifications, published in The UFO Handbook (1979), set the methodological standard the journal subsequently maintained.

1976 to 1980: The IUR Launch and Early Years

The International UFO Reporter launched in 1976 as CUFOS's flagship journal. Where MUFON published field investigation reports and APRO ran international case compilations, IUR aimed for something closer to a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Articles underwent editorial review. Case studies were expected to include methodology sections. Statistical analyses were welcomed. The journal's tone was measured, cautious, and frequently critical of overreach within the UFO research community itself.

The journal's editorial staff reflected its scientific aspirations. Mark Rodeghier, a sociologist who later became CUFOS's scientific director, shaped IUR's analytical standards for decades. Jerome Clark, who would go on to write the multivolume UFO Encyclopedia, served as editor and brought a historian's rigour to case documentation. Richard Hall, formerly of NICAP, contributed his deep archive of investigation files. The combination of scientific methodology, historical awareness, and investigative experience gave IUR a voice that no other UFO publication could match.

1980: The NICAP Inheritance

The 1980s also brought the death of Coral Lorenzen (1988) and the dissolution of APRO. CUFOS by the late 1980s held by default the institutional memory of three of the four major civilian American UFO organisations of the postwar era. The exception was MUFON, which remained operational under Walt Andrus and John Schuessler.

1986 to 2004: Post-Hynek under Rodeghier

After Hynek's death on 27 April 1986, CUFOS continued under Mark Rodeghier's leadership. The journal adapted to each decade's developments: the Belgian wave of 1989 to 1990, the abduction research debates of the 1990s, the emergence of the Phoenix Lights of 13 March 1997 as a case study in mass observation. IUR's coverage of the Belgian wave, drawing on data from SOBEPS and the Belgian Air Force, remains some of the most thorough English-language analysis of that event.

IUR ran continuously from 1976 until 2004, publishing bimonthly issues that covered active case investigations, historical case re-examinations, statistical analyses of sighting patterns, and commentary on government policy. The journal also served as a forum for methodological debate: how should witness testimony be weighted? What constitutes physical evidence? How do you distinguish a genuine anomaly from misidentification? These questions were argued across IUR's pages with a seriousness that assumed the reader was a colleague, not a consumer.