Even if Velikovsky's books were, as
one astronomer put it, the `most amazing example of a
shattering of accepted concepts on record,' the violence of the
reaction against it seemed all out of proportion to the book's
importance if, as most critics insisted, the work was spurious
and entirely devoid of merit. Many nonscientist observers
concluded that Velikovsky's work was not run-of-the-mill
heresy, but a thesis that presented a genuine threat to the very
ego of science. It seemed that Worlds in Collision was being
attacked with a fervor `reserved only for books that lay bare
new fundamentals.' Caught up in this fervor, more than one
scientist-reviewer of Velikovsky's book adopted tactics even
more surprising than the overt and covert deeds of the would-be
suppressors.

juergens, VA