Carl Sagan’s Life and Legacy as Scientist, Teacher, and Skeptic (Skeptical Inquirer Janurary/February 2007)

Carl Sagan’s Life and Legacy as Scientist, Teacher, and Skeptic (Skeptical Inquirer Janurary/February 2007):

"The first AAAS symposium, in 1969, dealt with the reality of UFOs. Like many scientists of his generation, in high school Sagan had been attracted to the idea that UFOs might be visiting spacecraft. At the AAAS, J. Allen Hynek and James McDonald defended UFO studies while Sagan, Donald Menzel, and Lester Grinspoon attacked this position. The proponents on both sides of the issue were scientists, although they took very different approaches to the interpretation of the anecdotal reports of UFO sightings. (The subject of alien abductions or direct contact with extraterrestrials, which has since become so common, was not an issue at that time; the AAAS symposium focused on the interpretation of moving lights in the sky and anomalous radar signals.) "