Michael D. Swords is a retired professor of Natural Science at Western Michigan University, who writes about general sciences and anomalous phenomena, particularly parapsychology, cryptozoology, and ufology, editing the academic publication The Journal of UFO Studies. He is a board member of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies.
In 1962 Swords graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a B.S. He studied biochemistry at Iowa State University (where he earned his M.S.), and at Case Western Reserve University (where he earned his Ph.D. in 1972).
Swords recently retired as a professor of natural sciences at Western Michigan University, where he received a Teaching Excellence award in 1978.[1]
As a ufologist, Swords is an authority on the Condon Committee. He was editor of the Journal for UFO Studies.[2] He was a prominently featured pundit on the prime time 2005 television special Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing, discussing the early history of the U.S. Military's UFO investigations (see also Project Sign and Project Grudge.)[3]