Perspective

Speaking in the first-person, Author Erich von Däniken makes it a point to stand outside the contemporary scientific community, which he characterizes as narrow-minded and dogmatic. In his self-ascribed role as an outsider, Von Däniken is by contrast skeptical (which he defines as "open to anything"), questioning, iconoclastic, and receptive to new ideas. He freely admits that his theories and interpretations are controversial and a threat to an insular, even smug, community of scientists content to rely on long-held assumptions. These assumptions, relied upon not because of quality, objective, and cross-disciplinary scientific research but because of intellectual laziness, reputation, and the failure for different fields of science to communicate and share information, lay bare problematic facts. These facts are square pegs to the round holes the scientific community has drilled for them, and Von Däniken has systematically arranged the discourse such that only an intelligent...