UFO's: A Scientific Debate

UFO's: A Scientific Debate (Cornell University Press, 1972) is the record of the only full-scale debate on UFOs held by America's main scientific society. In December 1969, months after the Condon Report and the closure of Project Blue Book, the American Association for the Advancement of Science held a symposium in Boston despite pressure, including from Edward Condon, to cancel it. Carl Sagan and the astronomer Thornton Page edited its papers into this book.

Its value is its balance: the atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald and J. Allen Hynek argue that the best cases remain unexplained and deserve study, while the astronomer Donald Menzel and William Hartmann, the Condon study's photo analyst, set out the case for conventional explanations; psychologists and sociologists discuss perception and belief. Sagan himself remained a sceptic of the extraterrestrial hypothesis while defending the open debate.

Sources: USI library record · Paul McCarthy on the 1969 symposium