Sagan was a Big Science mouthpiece who filtered the correct party line to the proletariat. His extraterrestrial life fantasies fueled the SETI sinkhole, his “super greenhouse” theory was instantly debunked and his execrable treatment of Immanuel Velikovsky is voluminously documented in Charles Ginenthal’s “Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky” available on Amazon.
From an Amazon review:
“This book is a blow-by-blow account of how Carl Sagan systematically misrepresented Velikovsky, and used the full weight of his reputation and position within the establishment to complete the work of suppression begun over two decades earlier by Harlow Shapley and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. The sheer hypocrisy, dishonesty and self-regard of Sagan is brutally exposed for all the world to see. Unfortunately, for Sagan fans and true believers, the book will be so unpalatible that they might not get beyond the first few pages. Indeed, I would venture to suggest that almost none of the critics of this book, who have here given it a one-star rating on Amazon, have actually read it. The very act of reading it would dispel all notions one might have had of Sagan’s nobility and intellectual honesty. He was a fraud and, in some respects at least, a bully. He was also a very poor scientist, as Ginenthal demonstrates in literraly dozens of ways.
The detail into which Ginenthal has gone over each and every point raised by Sagan is phenomenal, as is his understanding of the problems and his mastery of the technical terms and concepts involved. Quite simply, as a previous reviewer remarked, Ginenthal has done the research that Sagan couldn’t be bothered to do.”
Thanks Y, well said.