New White House UAP Council

Avi Loeb, the Harvard astronomer who has publicly pushed the envelope on extraterrestrial life has been approached by the Trump White House to run a new UAP council that will study and advise on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

Loeb has served in government functions before such as Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The council will be made up of a number of other Harvard staff, some astrobiologists and some miscellaneous members. The intention is to coordinate UAP investigations and help with the “timely coordination of declassification of UAP-related information.” It will be interesting to see if much can come of this!!

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Are we really Nearing Disclosure of Extraterrestrials?

Well, the title says it all - can we really be near something definitive? There's been a lot of noise in the press recently starting with the Trump administration's announcements from the Dept of War and some more initial analysis here. Nevertheless, the first point to call out is that there are no references to the terms of “UFOs” (other than a small tag) or “extraterrestrials” in the government release notes. All text points to UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) - which implies the releases are still in the realm of anomalous objects that could originate anywhere. The primary quote being:

"The American people can now access the federal government's declassified UAP files instantly. The latest UAP videos, photos, and original source documents from across the entire United States government are all in one place – no clearance required. While past administrations sought to discredit or dissuade the American people, President Trump is focused on providing maximum transparency to the public, who can ultimately make up their own minds about the information contained in these files."

 

Granted, you can search the released declassified documents for those terms. As far as I’ve been able to tell - nothing earth shattering has appeared. Both The Conversation and The Skeptic did a nice job reviewing this early release (from which I have to quote one author noting - “...absolutely nothing stands out beyond the usual blurry photographs, grainy videos, artist reconstructions, and countless stories about weird things in the sky and in space.”)  Scientific American also did a short overview noting a statement from Sean Kirkpatrick, "There’s nothing unexpected in their release. And without any analysis or context, [it] will only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy and armchair pseudoscience, particularly from the playhouse politics theater company..."

No matter your political affiliation it is readily apparent that the administration is attempting to appease critics complaints about not following through on some of the early campaign promises. This doesn’t imply, however, that national security would be compromised in any way if the US or any government entity had some strategic advantage from anything technological be it from other countries or extraterrestrial in origin - this being the most problematic part of disclosure.  

So here we sit again with just as much (if not more) speculation regarding extraterrestrial life. It's difficult to note whether this stands in Level 3 or Level 2 of the exoastronomy categorization - but, it mostly fits in Level 2 due to government classification and documentation.

You can go out and download the released material directly (as have thousands on social media that are full of speculation). I’m sure there’s more to come.  

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Washington Post Skeptic Op-Ed on UAPs

NASA UAP Study Committee

Recently, the Washington Post ran an editorial speculating about the origin and beliefs surrounding UAPs. If you’ve looked at my categorical breakdown of how to classify any information regarding UFOs or UAPs, you’ll see this clearly falls under my lowest Level 4, or, non-verifiable conjecture or opinion (see the definitions of levels here). Now, you might disagree with me and the author based on all of the testimonial evidence provided by government hearings. But, Mr. Shermer is espousing his own opinion on the matter as a contributor to Skeptic Magazine.

As usual, even the small additions of wording like “tinfoil-hat-wearing kooks” (even when written in the negative as “not kooks”) and “Bart Simpson balloon” still pushes the public stigma against positive and constructive conversations regarding the phenomena. Those types of small stereotypes printed in the negative do not help with modifying the conversation towards positive, scientific and cultural discussions.

The real meat of my disagreement comes in the punch line “could UAPs really be space aliens?” And, as usual, the extraterrestrial hypothesis is thrown under the bus with the tired old skeptic standard - distances between stars is too far, grainy photographs, etc. What’s interesting is why I consider this a Level 4 analysis in my rating system. The answer is that it is just as easy to post a similar op-ed with a different viewpoint using the identical argument. In fact, the entire article could be exactly the same except for the last 2 paragraphs that focus on religious-like beliefs due to declining religiosity. These could be rewritten to emphasize stronger evidential analysis while compiling scientific evidence (moving the conversation to Level 3).

If you’ve read this far you probably think I’m in complete disagreement with his opinion. I’m not. It’s more about the tone of the discussion and where we need to focus on both rational and scientific investigation without throwing the old stones (that I’ve been seeing since the 1960s).

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