A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

practicing theoretical astrophysicists, Harvard faculty at 31, full professor by 37, director of
Harvard Observatory, and president of the American Astronomical Society. Menzel made it his
personal crusade to ensure that no concerted research efforts on UFO’s would be pursued by
official science. In doing so, he was not always as scrupulous as science demands. Accusations
made by critics of Menzel include misrepresentation of data and speculation unanchored by
specific cases. James E. McDonald, a University of Arizona atmospheric physicist, and ufologist
sympathetic to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, wrote of his unease concerning Menzel’s methods.
My puzzlement stems from realizing that Dr. Menzel’s background in physics and
astronomy is well-attested by his authorship of a number of texts and references in those
areas. Despite that background, when he comes to analyzing UFO reports, he seems to
calmly cast aside well-known scientific principles almost with abandon, in an all-out
effort to be sure that no UFO report survives his attack. Refraction processes are quite
well understood in optics, and the refracting properties of the atmosphere are surely as
familiar in astronomy as in meteorology, if not more so. Yet in “explanation” after
“explanation” in his books, Menzel rides roughshod over elementary optical
considerations governing such things as mirages and light reflections. 214
Explanations as to the origin of Menzel’s single-minded efforts to discredit any agnostic
treatments of UFO sightings included his own personal UFO encounter, which in his later
explanation and dismissal of, he substantially revised. Thus he may have had personal reasons
for such vociferous denial. Secondly, he served in a variety of official and unofficial capacities
in the federal government. While this is far from unusual for a Cold War era American scientist,
some have drawn the tempting conclusion that his debunking efforts were carried out at the
behest of national security. From a scientific perspective the saucer represented a threat to the
understood contours of the natural world. From the perspective of national security, the saucer
represented a similar threat. If there were some set of objects moving freely through U.S.
airspace, objects that successfully eluded both capture and explanation, than both the borders of
214 Jerome Clark, “Menzel, Donald Howard (1901-1976),” in The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial
(Detroit: Visible Ink, 1998) 395.
138