Queries & Comments

Velikovsky Supporters Pounce on Sagan

To the Editor:

Any reader who hoped that BAR would someday give serious attention to the reconstruction of ancient history proposed by Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky must have been sorely disappointed by the Jan./Feb. 1980 issue (“A Scientist Looks at Velikovsky’s ‘Worlds in Collision,’” BAR 06:01, by Carl Sagan). Instead of a responsible critique, BAR merely offered excerpts from a 1974 speech by popular author Carl Sagan, reprinted now for the fifth time with minor changes but, as always, without cognizance of the rebuttal literature published in the journal KRONOS, “Velikovsky and Establishment Science” (1977) and “Scientists Confront Scientists Who Confront Velikovsky” (1978) and the pamphlet Velikovsky and his Critics (1978). Sagan’s arguments do not survive critical scrutiny. The merest sampling of the errors permeating Sagan’s article follows.