Forbidden science

It is unusual for scientists to keep diaries and even more unusual for them to make them public ..." remarks Jacques Vallee in this expose of the methods of science as it deals with the challenge of anomalous phenomena. Widely recognized for his pioneering work in UFO research, Dr. Vallee reveals what he uncovered as a young scientist when he became involved in the mystery of unidentified flying objects at the height of the U.S. Air Force investigations in the mid-sixties. From the extraordinary Socorro landing of 1964 to the notorious "Marsh Gas case," Dr. Vallee details behind-the-scenes conversations and heated debates among researchers. He describes the hopes and fears he felt every day as new sightings were reported and as he and his colleagues struggled to develop research methodology for this new phenomenon. Going beyond his best-selling Alien Contact trilogy, Dimensions, Confrontations and Revelations, Forbidden Science is also the richly personal story of a young Frenchman fascinated with the stars and the sky. Vallee becomes an astrophysicist and computer scientist in the nascent French computer industry, leaving France in 1962 for the United States to pursue work in the early computer languages - and work with other scientists on the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects. When the Air Force funded a major university to evaluate sightings of UFOs in 1967, Dr. Vallee and his mentor, Professor J. Allen Hynek, were part of the first briefing. Day by day he details in this beautifully written journal how "the problem" became not just a proliferation of sightings, but a complex layered public relations challenge. Debates developed not only on the study of these new phenomena, but on the way they were explained to the American people. Dr. Vallee reveals the process by which major American scientists already had been led astray by the intelligence community as early as 1953, for reasons that had little to do with the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Behind closed doors, and without the knowledge of the public, secret data and classified recommendations were evaluated and debated by faceless analysts. "The problem" was never studied at the high intellectual level which a phenomenon refuting so many known scientific values would seem to demand. In the midst of a swirl of media attention and public hunger to understand UFO sightings, Dr. Vallee recorded in his diaries not the cold, official face of science but the human side of research, as a few people eagerly tried to meet the challenge of the unknown. Moving beyond the question of the possible reality of unidentified flying objects, a mystery he does not claim to explain, Dr. Vallee asks, If science refuses to deal with such topics, then what is science for? Forbidden Science questions how we use scientific research to describe anomalous phenomena in the physical world and challenges us to face our assumptions about ourselves and the tenuous concept we call reality.