Ufology - Status As A Field

Status As A Field

Further information: List of ufologists

Ufology has generally not been embraced by academia as a scientific field of study, even though UFOs were during the late 1940s and early 1950s the subject of large-scale scientific studies. The lack of acceptance of ufology by academia as a field of study means that people can claim to be "UFO researchers", without the sorts of scientific consensus building and, in many cases peer review, that otherwise shape and influence scientific paradigms. Even among scientifically inclined UFO research efforts, data collecting is often done by amateur investigators.

Famous mainstream scientists who have shown interest in the UFO phenomenon include Stanford physicist Peter A. Sturrock, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, computer scientist and astronomer Jacques F. Vallée, and University of Arizona meteorologist James E. McDonald.

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