The article below was published in the daily newspaper France Soir, Paris, France, page 4, on February 2, 1954.
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"The flying saucer is something that could cause a nation that started believing in it to lose a war. A panic based on saucers would kill more people than ten atomic bombs." This is one of the reasons why we want to clip the wings of errors and fanciful information."
It is in these terms that Mr. Le Lionnais, president of the Association of Scientific Writers of France, is scheduled to present today, to the press, the scientific telephone consultation service, which has just expanded its scope to cover most branches of science.
From mechanics to medicine, from the atom to the cell, some of the most eminent French scientists have agreed to answer telephone inquiries with yes, no, or maybe to investigators who might have doubts about the truthfulness and credibility of a scientific piece of information.
Subsequently, Mr. Le Lionnais hopes to elevate his system to the level of an organization disseminating detailed and rigorously verified scientific answers. But he admits that, in the current state of things, this is somewhat like "building castles in the air."
