During his appearance before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics in 1968, noted astronomer Carl Sagan helped drive another nail into the coffin of federally funded UFO research and offered an alternative. He did so at a time when the University of Colorado was wrapping up its $313,000 contract to get the UFO monkey off the U.S. Air Force's back and reassure the American public that everything was under control.
Equating said research to what Scottish journalist Charles MacKay described as junk science in his 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Sagan mentioned the sprawling Arecibo Observatory dish in Puerto Rico – or practically any other project that didn't debase itself with UFOs – as a more adult way to discover ET intelligence. “I believe it would be much better advised,” he told the committee, “to support the biology, the Mariner, and Voyager programs of NASA, and the radio astronomy programs of the National Science Foundation, than to pour very much money into this study of UFOs.”
Sagan was an intellectually dishonest coward, who was obviously following orders from above. To read more, click here.