Summary: Donald Menzel, from birth to 1953

If 25,000 words is a bit too meaty, blast through this 660 word recap of Menzel developing his roadmap to weaponized skepticism.

When I began the project looking into dogmatic skeptics, I didn’t know it would end up at Donald Howard Menzel.

And as I learned more about Menzel, I noticed that much more suspicious activity surrounded his famed “Menzel gap.” The problem was that the different insights were scattered across varied sources. They needed to be put in one place. That is the genesis of Unquestionably Skeptical (like Donald Howard Menzel), but here’s a quick 20 key points:

1. Worked with Vannevar Bush from 1936

2. Knew Edward Condon “in 1930” (Menzel’s own words)

3. Active with early computers from 1935 onwards

4. Built his own radio as a child–kept his callsign all his life (W1JEX)

5. Harvard colleague Howard Aiken created the Mark I-IV series of computers used heavily by the military

6. Close friends with Wallace Eckert, inventor of the automatic star position measuring machine

7. Close friends with Wallace’s wife, Dorothy “Doll” Eckert (circa 1928/9), who computed star positions

8. Both of the Eckerts did their work using photographic plates.

9. Robert Oppenheimer oversaw the selection of Menzel as HCO Director

10. Was investigated by FBI Special Agent Guy Hottel–yes, THAT Guy Hottel

11. Helped build the observatory that oversaw Trinity, White Sands test range, and Holloman AFB

12. Was NSA before the NSA (Navy Op-20-G), cleared to Top Secret Ultra

13. Described as ‘ingenious’ in his analysis of photographic plates

14. His Ph.D. thesis was finished using the Harvard plate vault archives from 1922-1924

15. He was in Roswell during Roswell

16. After Roswell he was going to Wright Field “about once a week” (again his own words)

17. His early 1950s assistant also held a Top Secret clearance

18. Was a military industrial complex consultant from World War II onwards

19. Began high volume debunking in media in 1952

20. The UFO flap of 1952 was right before Menzel become HCO director

And all of these things happened before he got rid of 1/3 of Harvard’s photographic plate collection–the ones from the same era Beatriz Villaroel has recently made famous for showing capture ‘transient’ phenomena that disappear in Earth’s shadow and in-between photos a few hours apart.

It doesn’t end there though.

At the same time Menzel was getting rid of the problematic plates, he was also evicting the first organization he ever joined as an astronomer: the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), headquartered at Harvard College Observatory. AAVSO astronomers were interested in stars doing variable things: binaries, large ranges in dimming and brightness, and things of the like that would easily house Villaroel’s modern day ‘transients’.

But wait, there’s more! Not only did he evict AAVSO from Harvard, he chased them from their next likely home at Boston University. Using his connections to torpedo that deal–even though it had zero financial impact on Harvard–Menzel made sure AAVSO would not land at another equipped and recognized university. AAVSO ended up in a small office working as a network hub for its volunteers, no longer active, equipped, variable star observers.

The other thing he was doing at the same time? Screwing with the UFO study that Battelle Memorial Institute was to prepare for the Robertson Panel in January 1953. He did this by getting Howard Aiken–now running the Mark IV at Harvard for the US Air Force–to get several years worth of USAF ATIC UFO files, the very same ones Battelle wanted to study for their Robertson Panel report.

The other trend I saw: things seemed to happen much earlier than the generic biographies suggest. For example, Wikipedia has Menzel’s “own UFO experience on 3 March 1955” while the UFO report he filed with the US Air Force’s Blue Book happened on 12 May 1949.

These data-deletion events and then his aggressive debunking make him the grandfather of professionalized skepticism, applying military deception and counterintelligence techniques on the public while working with scientific rigor in private.

My next article will explore that further as Menzel still has 1953 through 1976 on his timeline.

Donald Menzel making use of the radio.