possible introduction?

Here's some extra text I knocked out trying to get my abstract finalized...it might work as part of an introduction to the paper.
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The study of UFOs has occupied an unprivileged position in the scientific community for over half a century, having been alternately ridiculed and ignored by mainstream researchers since at least the early 1950's. The existence of UFOs is almost always taken to imply the reality of extraterrestrial visitation--which would imply the existence of otherworldly technologies allowing for super-luminal, interstellar travel. Since neither astronomers nor physicists have been able to conceive of how such a technology might actually work, the bulk of accepted scientific knowledge has always been weighted against there being anything to the UFO phenomenon that can be considered worthy of serious investigation.

Meanwhile, the UFO phenomenon itself has stubbornly refused to disappear. Thousands upon thousands of sightings continue to be reported each year. While most can be explained away by conventional means as mis-identifications of natural phenomena or unusual, sometimes secret aircraft, there remain a "hard core" of truly baffling incidents involving what appear to be solid (often "metallic") airborne objects, conducting maneuvers no known terrestrial craft can replicate, and which are often reported by sober, trained, highly credible witnesses from the private sector or military. It is the study of these incidents that most prominently concerns the field of Ufology.

Despite the merits of any individual case or sighting--despite even these unknown objects being tracked on radar by the military itself--mainstream science cannot account for the existence of these “craft.” The entirety of the UFO phenomenon has therefore been relegated to the scientific "fringe," its study paraded about as a prime example of "pseudoscience," and its researchers portrayed as being more akin to religious believers than scientists.