A Science of Ufology
Shirley McIver
In 1979 James Oberg won the New Scientist/ Cutty Sark Whisky prize for the best research on UFOs with an essay entitled The Failure of the 'Science' of Ufology. He argued that ufology "refuses to play by the rules of scientific thought". Here I want to present the view that the main problem in ufology is not a failure to follow certain logical and methodological procedures of the kind outlined by philosophers of science, but the fact that it has a social basis in popular culture, rather than the elite culture of science. 