UFOs - Leslie Kean [152]
But no matter how this enigma is eventually resolved, the American political establishment is monopolizing any decision making for the time being. Official bodies within other countries have obviously not been overcome by projected fears, nor do they think that any risks inherent in discovery justify ignoring UFOs. They are already moving forward, and I suspect most of these officials believe it is more dangerous to ignore UFOs than it is to confront them. The majority of the American public, as shown by various polls, already recognize the reality of UFOs, and they don’t appear to be traumatized about it. Rather, they seem to want to know more.
For the benefit of the political establishment, I believe that bringing any and all fears to consciousness is our only choice. When we decide, as a society, to honestly deal with UFOs, we will be entering into a large-scale “therapeutic” process that will diminish, or even ultimately extinguish, the power of the forces sustaining the taboo. By finally shedding light on these dynamics, we will disarm them. This is perhaps the only way for all of us to take the next step, because it will undermine the very foundation of the dysfunctional political system in place, the central obstacle standing in our way.
In the meantime, I hope all the writers for this book have helped assuage some of that existential anxiety. Understanding brings relief, and, as the clichés say, knowledge is power and the truth will set you free. As true “militant agnostics,” we can recognize that political change must incorporate these more philosophical considerations. As in Hynek’s metaphor, the waters are rising to a level that will eventually compel the dam to break. We can find a healthy resolution to the challenge of UFOs and all they represent, and we must do so.
With the launching of a new U.S. government agency and the liberation of new resources, science could take its rightful place in the study of UFOs by claiming the subject as its own and beginning a new inquiry. Such a scenario would represent a dramatic turnaround from a past in which a few noble scientists made an effort to bring this controversial issue to the table, while others, although interested, were inhibited by the risk of professional ridicule. The rest succumbed to the notion that there was nothing there worth studying, as put forth in the summary of the Condon report.
A few scientists have actively studied and investigated UFOs despite the professional obstacles, and we have much to learn from them despite the passage of time. In 1968, the House Science and Astronautics Committee heard the testimony of Dr. James E. McDonald, senior atmospheric physicist3 of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, who had spent two years investigating UFO cases. As a result of his focused study—a rarity within his profession—McDonald told the congressional committee that “no other problem within your jurisdiction is of comparable scientific and national importance,” and this extraordinary matter should not be ignored. If other scientists had bothered to undertake such studies, many would have reached the same conclusion, and we’d be in a very different situation today. Instead, shortly thereafter, the University of Colorado’s biased and misleading report quashed the efforts of pioneer scientists such as McDonald to interest the scientific community in studying UFOs.
Since then, Dr. Peter A. Sturrock, emeritus professor of applied physics at Stanford University and emeritus director of Stanford’s Center for Space Science and Astrophysics, has taken the lead in combating the effects of the Condon report. In 1975, he conducted a survey of the American Astronomical Society and found that 75 percent of the respondents wished to see more information on the UFO subject published in scientific journals. Due to the fact that these journals rejected papers on UFOs and other anomalies out of hand, Sturrock