The World of Flying Saucers (1963)

Dr. Donald H. Menzel, with Lyle G. Boyd, addressed the issue of  "flying saucers" through a book, The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age (Doubleday, New York, 1963). All one needs to know about the astronomer's views on the subject are in the title. Menzel came to the topic with a distinct bias (1) they were "Flying Saucers" with the implied "little green men" baggage and (2) the topic was a modern myth as surely as Prometheus or Arthur pulling a sword from a stone.

The chapters are also illustrative of his attitudes:

The Saucer Worlds (UFO Reports and the Air Force; A Scientist's View; The Question of Evidence; Various Types of UFO's ; Descriptions; A "Baedeker's Guide " to Saucerdom)
LO! (Arnold's Nine Disks; The Great Shaver Mystery; Maury Island Fragments; S.F. Adopts the Saucers; Mirage or Wave Clouds?)
Air-Borne UFOS: Balloons to Bubbles (The Mantell tragedy; Skyhook and Pibal UFOs; Kites and Soap bubbles...)
The Spangled Heav'ns: Stars and Planets (Mirage of Sirius; Vensus as Morning Star; UFOs and teh opposition of Mars; Gorman Dogfight...)
Out of the Sky: Meteors and Fireballs (...Meteors, Chiles-Whitted Sightings; Other flaming UFO's)
Living Lights (The Luminous Owls; Sea Gulls as UFOs; The Lubbock Lights; ...The Tremonton Movies)
PANIC (Growth of a Panic; Scoutmaster's UFO; Monster in West Virginia; The Panel of Civilian Scientists)
Phantoms on Radar ("Inversions"; "Ghosts"; "Angels"...)
E-M and G-Fields in UFO-Land (Stormy weather in Texas; The Phenomena of Ball Lightening; E-M and non EM Saucers; ...)
Contact (Contactees;)
Angel, Hair, Pancakes, Etc. (Angel Hair and Spiders...the Wisconsin pancakes...the Moon Bridge; Pieces of Saucers;...)
Special Effects (The Role of Unusual Coincidence; The Problem of Unknown Lights...UFO's from Reflections; Inversions in California....)
Investigators: Air Force and Civilians (NICAP and the Conspiracy Fantasy; the Open Mind and others)
Appendix
Index

Overall, the work is a collection of cherry picked cases that could be set up as straw men and easily knocked down by the blustering breath of "science".  Cases are mis-represented, witness testimony ignored or truncated, and the agenda driven aspects of the work are painfully obvious.

The fact that pages of this volume were photocopied and placed in case files, often serving as a source for an explanation used by the Air Force, causes questions about the purpose of the book. There are numerous hints that Menzel had a relationship with the Project, with the staff, and with other consultants (letters as well as copies of the pages of his book). Hynek indicated in his work on Project Blue Book that he was not the only astronomer utilized by the Air Force.

This is an important historical work due not to its open minded scientific approach but as an example of the close minded bias prevalent in society and the scientific community when faced with something that was unexplained and consistent. The weight of scientific authority in those heady days of the 1940's through the 1960's caused some to later label them a new American religion and the scientist as the new Priestly order. Too often, however, the academy was a close-minded as any panel rejecting Galileo's idea of the planets revolving around the Sun.

Science can be so much more - a field of study that serves to keep human endeavor honest and moving forward as it explores reality and the universe in which we harbor - and should be the goal of the scientist to stay honest, open, and humble enough to realize there is always more to learn.