Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 18:07, 26 January 2023

James E. McDonald
Born	(1920-05-07)May 7, 1920 Duluth, Minnesota, US
Died	June 13, 1971(1971-06-13) (aged 51) Tucson, Arizona, US
Education	PhD. Iowa State University
Occupation(s)	Physicist Ufologist
Organization(s)	Institute for Atmospheric Physics, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Society, NICAP, APRO

James Edward McDonald (May 7, 1920 – June 13, 1971) was an American physicist. He is best known for his research regarding UFOs. McDonald was a senior physicist at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics and a professor of meteorology at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

During the 1960s McDonald campaigned in support of expanding UFO studies, and promoted the extraterrestrial hypothesis as a plausible explanation of UFO phenomena.

Early life and career

McDonald was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota. He served as a cryptographer in the United States Navy during World War II, and afterwards, married Betsy Hunt. McDonald received a B.A. in chemistry from the University of Omaha in 1942 and an M.S. in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1945 before completing his Ph.D. in physics at Iowa State University in 1951. He taught at the University of Chicago for a year, then in 1953, helped establish a meteorology and atmospherics program at the University of Arizona as a professor of meteorology. McDonald eventually became the head of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics.

UFO studies

McDonald's first detailed, public discussion of UFOs was in a lecture given before an American Meteorological Society assembly in Washington D.C. on October 5, 1966. Entitled "The Problem of UFOs", McDonald said that scientific scrutiny should be directed towards the small number of "unknowns", which he defined as a UFO reported by a "credible and trained observer as machine-like 'craft' which remained unidentified in spite of careful investigation." He noted that the vast majority of UFOs could become Identified flying objects, and, in his estimation, only about 1% of UFOs were true "unknowns".

In 1967 the Office of Naval Research supported McDonald to conduct his own UFO research, ostensibly to study the idea that some UFOs were misidentified clouds. He was able to examine the files of Project Blue Book at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and eventually concluded that the Air Force was mishandling UFO evidence. McDonald secured support from United Nations Secretary General U Thant, who arranged for McDonald to speak to the UN's Outer Space Affairs Group on June 7, 1967. Additionally in 1967, McDonald noted, "There is no sensible alternative to the utterly shocking hypothesis that UFOs are extraterrestrial probes".

In his Statement on Unidentified Objects to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, McDonald made the following remarks regarding types of UFO accounts.

"the scientific world at large is in for a shock when it becomes aware of the astonishing nature of the UFO phenomenon and its bewildering complexity. I make that terse comment well aware that it invites easy ridicule; but intellectual honesty demands that I make clear that my two years' study convinces me that in the UFO problem lie scientific and technological questions that will challenge the ability of the world's outstanding scientists to explain - as soon as they start examining the facts. the scientific community has been casually ignoring as nonsense a matter of extraordinary scientific importance."

The Condon Committee Controversy

Following a widely publicized series of mass UFO sightings in southern Michigan, the federal government created the Condon Committee in late 1966, named after committee chairman Edward Condon, a former director of the National Bureau of Standards. McDonald offered to serve on the committee, but when he was denied a position, McDonald still agreed to assist with the committee's work.

McDonald played a major role in the controversy regarding the Condon Committee when one of the committee's investigators - who disagreed with Condon's attitudes - privately gave him a copy of the so-called "Trick Memo". The memorandum, which was written by Low, outlined how the committee could reach a predetermined conclusion that all UFO cases were explainable in mundane terms, while simultaneously appearing neutral during the actual investigation process. The "Trick Memo" seemed to confirm his worst fears about the Condon Committee's bias regarding the UFO phenomenon. Following McDonald's release to the public of the now-infamous "Trick Memo", Condon tried unsuccessfully to get McDonald fired from his tenured faculty position at the University of Arizona.

When the Condon Committee issued its final report in 1969, Condon wrote in the foreword to the report that, based on the committee's investigations, his conclusion was that there was nothing unusual about UFO reports; thus further scientific research into the UFO phenomenon was not worthwhile and should be discouraged. Condon's conclusions about UFOs were generally accepted by most scientists and the "mainstream" news media. McDonald, however, became one of a small number of scientists and researchers who wrote detailed critiques and rebuttals of Condon's conclusions regarding UFOs. McDonald was particularly disturbed by the fact that, while Condon in his foreword had claimed that all UFO reports could be explained as hoaxes or misidentifications of man-made or natural objects or phenomena, the Report itself actually listed over 30% of the cases it investigated as "unexplained".

1968: Congressional UFO testimony

McDonald spoke before the United States Congress for a UFO hearing in 1968. In part, he stated his opinion that "UFOs are entirely real and we do not know what they are, because we have laughed them out of court. The possibility that these are extraterrestrial devices, that we are dealing with surveillance from some advanced technology, is a possibility I take very seriously".

1969: "Science in Default"

In 1969, McDonald was a speaker at an American Association for the Advancement of Science UFO symposium. There he delivered a lecture, "Science in Default", in which he discussed a handful of UFO cases which seemed, he thought, to defy interpretation by conventional science. Ufologist Jerome Clark called the lecture "one of the most powerful scientific defenses of UFO reality ever mounted".

Late life and death

McDonald's UFO efforts were exacting a toll: he was becoming professionally isolated, and his marriage was faltering. Beyond Klass and Condon, McDonald butted heads with many other prominent figures, including Donald H. Menzel of Harvard University. McDonald's personality may have been a factor in these confrontations; even his friends described him as sometimes forceful and impatient, while others, less charitably, called him blunt and abrasive. Additionally, McDonald suffered a public humiliation when in 1970, he agreed to appear before a committee of the United States Congress to provide evidence against the development of the supersonic transport (SST) plane. Like many other atmospheric physicists who testified with him, McDonald was convinced that the plane could potentially harm the Earth's vital but fragile ozone layer. During his testimony Congressman Silvio O. Conte of Massachusetts — whose district contained factories that would help build the SST — tried to discredit McDonald's SST testimony by switching the hearing to a discussion of McDonald's UFO research. Although McDonald defended his UFO work and noted that his evidence regarding the SST had nothing to do with UFOs, Conte bluntly stated that anyone who "believes in little green men" was, in his opinion, not a credible witness. McDonald was deeply humiliated by Conte's mocking attitude, and by the open laughter of some committee members.

In March, 1971, McDonald's wife Betsy told him she wanted a divorce. McDonald seems to have started planning his suicide not long afterwards. He finished a few articles he was writing (UFO-related and otherwise), and made plans for the storage of his notes, papers, and research. In April 1971 he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head. He survived, but was blinded and was recovering in the hospital. The next day he was nowhere to be found. However, on June 13, 1971, a family, walking along a creek close to the bridge spanning the Canada Del Oro Wash near Tucson, found a body that was later identified as McDonald's. A .38 caliber revolver was found close to him, as well as a suicide note.

Four of McDonald's peers from the University of Arizona wrote a reminiscence of their colleague, calling him "a man of great integrity and great courage. He was loved and admired by a great many people ... he made a lasting impact on many facets of atmospheric sciences ... and he will be missed much more than we now realize".

Sources

1. ^ Berliner, Don. "Congressional Hearings on UFOs". ufoevidence.org. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
2. ^ McDonald, James E. (1972). "Science in Default". In Carl Sagan, Thornton Page (ed.). UFO's, A Scientific Debate. American Association for the Advancement of Science, 134th Meeting. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780393007398.
3. Randles, Jenny (1987). The UFO Conspiracy: The First Forty Years. Barnes and Noble Books. ISBN 978-1-56619-195-1.
4. McDonald, James. E. (1968). Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects submitted to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics at July 29, 1968, Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Rayburn Bldg., Washington, D.D.
5. ^ Clark, Jerome (1998). The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial. Visible Ink. pp. 368, 370–371. ISBN 978-1-57859-029-2.
6. Druffel, Ann (2003). Firestorm: Dr. James E. McDonald's Fight for UFO Science. Wild Flower Press. ISBN 978-0-926524-58-3.

External links

• Statement on UFOs by James McDonald to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 1968 (PDF)
• FBI FILE OF DR. JAMES E. McDONALD
• An actual Project Blue Book Report from Dr. McDonald
• Publications of Dr. James McDonald
• MOST CREDIBLE UFOLOGISTS Dr. James E. McDonald
• Historical Documents from the Phillip Klass collection of Robert Sheaffer concerning McDonald and Klass

• 1920 births
• 1971 suicides
• University of Nebraska Omaha alumni
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni
• Iowa State University alumni
• University of Chicago faculty
• University of Arizona faculty
• People from Duluth, Minnesota
• 20th-century American physicists
• Suicides by firearm in Arizona
• Ufologists
• 1971 deaths