University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2019 Reliable Witnesses, Crackpot Science: Ufo Investigations In Cold War America, 1947-1977 Kate Dorsch University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Dorsch, Kate, "Reliable Witnesses, Crackpot Science: Ufo Investigations In Cold War America, 1947-1977" (2019). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3231. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3231 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3231 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Reliable Witnesses, Crackpot Science: Ufo Investigations In Cold War America, 1947-1977 Abstract This dissertation explores efforts to design and execute scientific tuds ies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the United States in the midst of the Cold War as a means of examining knowledge creation and the construction of scientific uthora ity and credibility around controversial subjects. I begin by placing officially- sanctioned, federally-funded UFO studies in their appropriate context as a Cold War national security project, specifically a project of surveillance and observation, built on traditional arrangements within the military- industrial-academic complex. I then show how non-traditional elements of the investigations – the reliance on non-expert witnesses to report transient phenomena – created space for dissent, both within the scientific establishment and among the broader American public. By placing this dissent within the larger social and political instability of the mid-20th century, this dissertation highlights the deep ties between scientific knowledge production and the social value and valence of professional expertise, as well as the power of experiential expertise in challenging formal, hegemonic institutions.