dusanmal says:

JCD mentioned “Day After Roswell” book. Couple of pointers for potential readers:
1) Take it for what it is and from whom it is.Writer implies throughout that he, himself worked on related science and engineering which is not plausible. However, have in mind military head of Manhattan Project who in his own biography portrayed himself as developing science/engineering of the atomic bomb – obvious nonsense, but that is how these military heads of projects think. They deeply believe they did it. Almost a Steve Jobs complex. Understanding that makes writing plausible with asterisk.
2) Many people complain that human science was already on track of many items author claims we “harvested” from alien tech’. For me that is actually a supporting argument. Counterexample: say that 19th Century scientists got hold of alien craft with lasers and semiconductors.They couldn’t even start to understand them, ICB’s may have been interpreted as decorations… However, long before this book and on completely unrelated issue I was writing for a science popularization paper about “what were the most surprising technologies to be developed by humans”? I wrote about semiconductors and lasers. Both were in theoretical development but suddenly emerged in almost pristine end product. Whole number of engineering steps were missing (say, equivalent of an early nuclear reactor made of literally a pile of Uranium under a stadium…). We went from barely understanding the issues in theory to an extremely streamlined and finished engineering product. Possible natural “hail Mary pass” but much more plausible is an outside intervention. Not proof positive, plausible case.
So, I give Mythbusters style “Plausible” to this book and many of its claims.