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The other day I wrote about a course in “Liberatory Violence” given by U of C professor Alireza Doostdar, a course that seemed to me to be (while probably not violating academic freedom) designed to propagandize students—largely against Israel. (Doostdar has a long history of anti-Israeli activism, and is director of our Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion.)  While I can’t say that the course should be deep-sixed, I can say that it’s likely to promote hatred of Jews and Israel, which Doostdar sees as guilty of “Zionist settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.”  Ah, three big lies in one sentence!

But it’s one thing to teach a permissible but dubious course, and another to fund an initiative designed to indict Israel for “scholasticide”: the destruction of Palestinian academia by design.  Yes, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, a unit that “brings unlikely partners together to work on complex problems”, has announced funding for ten new group projects in 2026-2027.  Here’s one of them, and, lo and behold, Dr. Doostdar is one of the stars:

Scholasticide in and Beyond Palestine
Jodi Byrd (Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity), Alireza Doostdar (Divinity School), Eve Ewing (Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity), Darryl Li (Anthropology)

Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this project will use a mixed-methods approach in undertaking empirical research and comparative analysis to investigate “scholasticide” as a critical category for political and historical analysis. In addition to the resident research team, the project will involve a sequence of virtual visiting fellows.

This is another way to use College money to do down Israel, and this I object to. Believe me, if there were a similar project designed to investigate “genocide by Palestinian terror groups,” it would not only not get funded, but would raise an ruckus. This one has elicited nary a peep.  I’m wondering whether the University of Chicago even thinks about the optics of giving money for a project like this.

With this article by Dennis Prager, the Free Press officially raises its flag as “We are totes pro-religion!”  In article after article, the site has touted the benefits of religion as a palliative for an ailing world, but you’ll never read a defense of atheism or nonbelief.  Here Dennis Prager, conservative podcaster and founder of an online “university,” touts religion as the only “objective” source of morality. I suspect the “we love religion” mantra of the FP ultimately comes from founder Bari Weiss, who is an observant Jew.

But Prager is wrong on two counts. First, religion is not the only source of morality—or even a good one. Second, there is no “objective” morality. All morality depends on subjective preferences. Granted, many of them are shared by most people, but in the end there is no “objective” morality that one can say is empirically “true”. Is abortion immoral? How about eating animals? What is wrong with killing one person and using their organs to save the lives of several dying people?  Can you push a man onto a trolley to save the lives of five others on an adjacent track?  If these questions have objective answers, what are they?

First, the FP’s introduction:

If you were to name the defining figures of the 21st-century conservative movement, Dennis Prager would surely rank near the top of the list. A longtime radio host and founder of digital educational platform PragerU, he is one of the world’s best-known public intellectuals, publishing more than a dozen books on religion, morality, and the foundations of Western civilization.

His latest book, “If There Is No God: The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil,” hits shelves next week. Drawn from a weekend-long lecture Prager delivered to 74 teenagers in 1992, it is a full-throated defense of objective, biblical morality at a time, he says, when more people dispute its existence than ever before. Though rooted in an earlier moment, the book holds new weight: In 2024, Prager suffered a catastrophic fall that paralyzed him from the waist down.

“A certain percentage of this book,” he reveals in the introduction, “was written by dictation and editing from my hospital bed. Were it not for Joel Alperson, who also organized and recorded the entire weekend, the book would not have been finished. We completed the book together. It is a testament to how important we both consider this work.”

Next week, our Abigail Shrier will interview Prager from his hospital room, so stay tuned for their full conversation. And below, we bring you an exclusive excerpt from his book, answering a question that many of us ask every day: In a world where profoundly evil things happen, how do we raise good people? —The Editors

I’m hoping that Abigail Shrier does not throw softballs at Prager, and asks him about “objective” morality and his evidence for God. But I’m betting she won’t: one doesn’t harass a man recently paralyzed from the waist down, and Shrier is employed by the Free Press.

Click, read, and weep.

At the beginning, Prager raises one of these moral questions, and argues that yes, there’s an objective answer—one that comes from the Bible (bolding is mine):

One of my biggest worries in life is that people these days are animated more by feelings than by values.

Let me explain what I mean. Imagine you are walking along a body of water—a river, lake, or ocean—with your dog, when suddenly you notice your dog has fallen into the water and appears to be drowning. About 100 feet away, you notice a stranger, a person you don’t know, is also drowning. Assuming your dog can’t swim, and also assuming that you would like to save both your dog and the stranger, the question is: Who would you try to save first?

If your inclination is to save your dog, that means you were animated by feelings. Your feelings are understandable, and as I own two dogs, I fully relate. You love your dog more than the stranger, and I do, too.

But the whole point of values is to hold that something is more important than your feelings. There is no ambivalence in the Bible about this. “Thou shalt not murder” is not for one group alone. “Thou shalt not steal” is not for one group alone. It is for every human being. Human beings are created in God’s image. Therefore, human life is sacred and animal life is not. You should save the stranger.

Unfortunately, those universal values are not what we’re teaching people today.. . . .

What? You can’t murder a dog? What if the drowning person is Hitler?  And aren’t five human lives on the trolley track worth more than one? What would Jesus do?

And what other Biblical values should we take literally? Should we levy capital punishment for homosexuality? Is it okay to have slaves so long as you don’t beat them too hard? Was it “moral” for the Israelites to kill all the tribes living on their land? Is it okay for God to allow children to die of cancer?  (Of course, sophisticated theologians have made up answers to these questions so that, in the end, they find nothing immoral in Scripture.)

When Prager says that our big problem is that feelings have replaced values, I wonder where those “values” come from. Apparently they come from God. But that raises an ancient question: is something good because God dictates it, or did God dictate it because it was good? (This is Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma.) And if the latter is true, then there is a standard of morality that is independent of God’s dictates.

This is not rocket science. But Prager sticks to the first interpretation, adhering to the “Divine Command Theory“:

In fact, the Bible repeatedly warns people not to rely on their hearts. If you want to know why so many people reject Bible-based religions, there it is: Most people want to be governed by their feelings and not have anyone—be it God or a book—tell them otherwise.

The battle in America and the rest of the Western world today is between the Bible and the heart.

And Prager sticks to his guns, arguing that atheists and agnostics have no guidelines for morality:

Millions of people today are atheist or agnostic. If you are one of them, my goal is not to convince you that God exists. But I am asking you to live as if you believe God exists, and by extension, as if you believe objective good and evil exist.

Why? Because for a good society to maintain itself, we need objective morality. What would happen to math if it were reduced to feeling? There would be no math. Likewise, if we reduce morality to feeling, there would be no morality. In other words, if values and feelings are identical, there would be no such thing as a value.

Imagine a child in kindergarten who sees a box of cookies meant for the whole class and takes them all for himself. Most people would acknowledge that the child has to be taught that this is wrong. But if values were derived from feelings, this child would keep all the cookies on the basis of his personal value that whoever gets to the cookies first gets to keep them. It’s not as though this philosophy is without precedent. It has been the way many of the world’s societies have looked at life: “Might makes right.”

Again, this palaver appears in the Free Press, which apparently thought it worth publishing.

What Prager doesn’t seem to realize is that an atheist can give reasons for adhering to a certain morality, even if in the end those reasons are directed towards confecting a society that (subjectively) seems harmonious.  For example, John Rawls used the “veil of ignorance” as a way to structure a moral society. Others, like Sam Harris, are utilitarians or consequentialists, arguing that the moral act is one that most increases the “well being” of the world.  But even these more rational moralities have issues, some of which I raised in my questions above. The systems adhere largely to what most people see as “moral”, but they are not really “objective”. They are subjective.

But adhering to the word of the Bible, and twisting it when it doesn’t fit your Procrustean bed of morality, is palpably inferior to reason-based morality. Indeed, the fact that theologians must twist parts of the Bible so that, while seeming to be immoral they turn out to be really moral, shows that there’s no objective morality in scripture.

Does Prager even know his Bible? Have a gander at what he writes here:

That’s precisely why the Ten Commandments outlaw stealing. Because stealing is normal. The whole purpose of moral and legal codes is to forbid people from acting on their natural feelings.

Consider another example, this one far more serious. In virtually every past society, a vast number of women and girls have been raped. In wartime, when victorious armies could essentially do what they wanted, rape was the norm, with few exceptions, such as the American, British, and Israeli armies. Only men whose behavior is guided by values rather than feelings do not rape in such circumstances.

Both of these vastly different examples prove the same thing: To lead good lives, people must first learn Bible-based values, mandated when they are children.

Has he read Numbers 31? Here’s a bit in which, under God’s orders, Moses and his acolytes not only butcher a people, but save the virgin women for sexual slavery (my bolding, text from King James version):

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

2 Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.

3 And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some of yourselves unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites, and avenge the Lord of Midian.

4 Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.

5 So there were delivered out of the thousands of Israel, a thousand of every tribe, twelve thousand armed for war.

6 And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand of every tribe, them and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war, with the holy instruments, and the trumpets to blow in his hand.

7 And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.

8 And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.

9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.

10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.

11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts.

12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.

13 And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.

14 And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.

15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?

16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.

17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

I suppose that Prager thinks that not only atheists and agnostics lack moral standards, but that’s also true of all the non-Christians of the world, as morality not based on the Bible is evanescent at best:

Again, you don’t need to believe in God. But deciding between right and wrong is essentially impossible without a value system revealed by God. If there isn’t a God who says pushing little kids down—or raping women—is wrong, then all we have to go by are feelings, and then doing whatever you feel like doing isn’t wrong at all.

We’re not talking about theory. We’re living in a country where every few minutes a woman is raped, every minute a car is stolen, and every few hours a human being is murdered. The people committing these crimes don’t act on the basis of biblical values; they act on the basis of feelings.

This is not a wholesale indictment of feelings. Feelings are what most distinguish humans from robots. Feelings make us feel alive. Without feelings, life wouldn’t be worth living. But feelings alone are morally unreliable. Guided by feelings, every type of behavior is justifiable: If you feel like shoplifting and act on your feelings, you’ll shoplift. If a man is sexually aroused by a woman, he will rape her. And, of course, if you have deeper feelings for your pet than for a stranger, you’ll save your dog and let the stranger drown.

If we rely solely on feelings, everything is justifiable. And a society that justifies everything stands for nothing.

So much for Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims, who march along with us atheists thinking that nothing is immoral.

This is not only stupid, but it’s not new, either. It was Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s novel who said, “Without God, everything is permitted.”  Prager (and by extension, the Free Press) is making a Swiss cheese of an argument here, one that’s full of holes. If Abigail Shrier doesn’t dismantle it in her interview, I’ll be very disappointed, for I’m a big admirer of her work. And she’s way too smart to buy into Prager’s nonsense.

Here’s Prager’s new book:

More and more papers are coming out about the upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). As the telescope moves from theory to practice (and physical manifestation), various working groups are discovering, defining, and designing their way to the world’s next major exoplanet observatory. A new paper from researchers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center adds another layer of analysis - we even just reported on its immediate predecessor two weeks ago. In this one, the researchers compared the ability of the telescope to distinguish between carbon dioxide and methane/water, to come up with a specific wavelength the engineers should design for.

Among those who sent in photos in response to my self-abasing plea was UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson, who specializes in tide-pool invertebrates. We have some of those today; Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Family Littorinidae (periwinkle) (tentative ID) This snail is decorated with bryozoans – here he’s upside down, and here. . . .

. . . he’s right side up, so you can see the bryozoans:

Tectura paleacea (surfgrass limpet), Surfgrass is about 1/8” wide.   This tiny skinny limpet fits perfectly on it:

Doris montereyensis (nudibranch):

Rostanga pulchra (nudibranch). I have several photos from this set of tides with disturbing clear threads in them, which I think must be plastic:”

Family Ammotheidae (sea spider):

Genus Doryteuthis (squid) eggs- in a bunch on the beach:

Squid eggs close up, so you can see the eggs inside one sack:

An unusually colored Epiactis prolifera (brooding anemone). Its babies are nestled into its shoulders:

Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (Pacific purple sea urchin). As juveniles these are green, and I’d only seen juveniles here before.   This was big enough to be turning its adult purple, though it still has lots of green spines:

A little over eight years ago The New York Times published a story that had profound implications for the way in which the UFO topic was perceived.1 It also began, at least in the U.S., a process by which the subject became increasingly more mainstream. In this article I want to address three questions: (1) How did ufology get here? (2) Where does ufology stand now? (3) What does the future hold for ufology?

How did ufology get here? 

On December 16, 2017, The New York Times broke two related stories. The first was the existence of forward-looking infrared videos of UAP (the U.S. government uses the term UAP—Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon—as opposed to UFO) taken from U.S. Navy jets and confirmed by the Department of Defense as being authentic footage.2

The second part of the story was the existence of a shadowy intelligence program known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), that supposedly researched and investigated UAP. This was newsworthy in and of itself, because for years the official position of the U.S. government was that there was no longer any interest in UAP, and that no programs had existed to study the phenomenon since the end of the 1960s, when a long running U.S. Air Force program known as Project Blue Book was terminated. Many people in the UFO community believed this was a lie and that covert programs existed, so it seemed like a clear-cut example of a conspiracy theory that turned out to be true. 

The truth was rather more complex, and there’s still no universally accepted narrative here. Some skeptics say AATIP was more of an unofficial effort undertaken by a group of believers in the Intelligence Community. Whatever its true nature, AATIP was clearly a spin-off of an earlier Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) program called the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP). AAWSAP was demonstrably a genuine program, and some official documents use the terms AAWSAP and AATIP interchangeably.3 In January 2020, Pentagon public affairs spokesperson Susan Gough issued a statement attempting to clear up the confusion. It stated: 

The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was the name of the overall program. The Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program (AAWSAP) was the name of the contract that DIA awarded for the production of all technical reports under AATIP. 

I sought further clarification, and on January 13, 2020, Susan Gough followed this up with a statement that: 

DIA managed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. All of the work performed under AATIP was done via a single contract vehicle called AAWSAP. The total work effort for AATIP consisted of the 38 technical reports produced under the contract vehicle. DIA was the sole lead for management of AATIP via AAWSAP. Congress was briefed on the total work conducted for AATIP—the aforementioned 38 technical reports. 

The authors of these 38 reports include Hal Puthoff, Eric Davis, and Kit Green—names well-known to those who follow government dabbling in fringe science and the paranormal. 

My personal assessment is that all the euphemistic “advanced aerospace” references were a way of disguising a UFO or paranormal research program as being a program looking at next-generation foreign aerospace weapon threats, to try to protect it from skeptical Pentagon financiers and Congressional oversight folks who would have been horrified to learn that taxpayers’ money was being spent on such matters. This attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, because while $10M was appropriated in FY2008 and a further $12M in FY2010, funding ended in FY2012, after an earlier official review concluded that “the reports were of limited value to DIA.” 

The roots of AAWSAP trace back to Intelligence Community personnel Jay Stratton and James Lacatski, as well as to Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, often portrayed as a hotbed of UFO sightings and paranormal phenomena. Following the DIA’s 2008 issue of a contractual solicitation (carefully worded to focus on breakthrough technologies that might underpin future aerospace weapon systems, while avoiding mention of UFOs or the paranormal), the contract was awarded to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS).4 Billionaire space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow was, at the time, the owner of Skinwalker Ranch. 

Robert Bigelow had a longstanding interest in UFOs and the paranormal, and had previously funded the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS).5 The Chairman of the Board was the aforementioned Hal Puthoff, a parapsychologist who’d previously managed (with Russell Targ) a program at the Stanford Research Institute (not affiliated with Stanford University) to investigate paranormal phenomena. This work likely led to the U.S. government’s dabbling in such areas as remote viewing through Project Stargate, run by the DIA and CIA during the Cold War. 

NIDS looked at a range of fringe science topics, and some have argued that AAWSAP was essentially a way to secure government funding for a continuation of the sort of work that had been done by NIDS. Senator Harry Reid (who knew Robert Bigelow) was instrumental in securing official status and funding for AAWSAP. 

The New York Times story was quickly picked up by other mainstream media outlets around the world, and this caught the attention of numerous Congressional representatives and staffers. A key reason for this interest was the fact that aside from Harry Reid and two Senatorial colleagues, there seemed to have been no Congressional knowledge of AAWSAP or AATIP, and certainly no oversight. 

In terms of UFOs, folks in Congress likely aren’t that different from society as a whole, in that there’s a wide range of opinions across the spectrum from skeptic to believer. Furthermore, irrespective of beliefs, it’s hardly surprising that an unknown but clearly significant number of people in Congress saw The New York Times article and thought to themselves something like, “Wait, the government has a UFO program, but didn’t tell us? It was run by Intelligence Community personnel and there’s no Congressional oversight? What are they doing and what have they found out?” 

What followed was multifaceted Congressional interest in and engagement on the topic of UAP, to the extent that a critical mass built up. I believe a key factor here was that this engagement was bipartisan, covered both the Senate and the House, and involved several committees, mainly the Armed Services committees, the Intelligence committees, and the Oversight committees. This Congressional engagement led to classified briefings and public hearings. Witnesses at the public hearings included whistleblowers like Luis Elizondo (a retired counter-intelligence operative prominently featured in The New York Times article and described therein as being the individual who had run AATIP) and David Grusch, a former Intelligence Community member who had been attached to the UAP Task Force under the directorship of Jay Stratton. 

Perhaps the most important part of Congressional UAP engagement was the insertion of multiple UAP-related provisions into several of the recent, annual National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA). In part to meet these legislative remits, the DOD set up an office (the aforementioned UAP Task Force) to handle the response and to lead on the topic across government. This task force published a number of official reports and was eventually replaced by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). AARO’s website hosts a wealth of reports, briefings, and other UAP-related materials, sourced both from the DOD and Congress, that perfectly illustrate both the breadth and depth of Congressional engagement and the government response to this Congressional interest.6

As an interesting side note, one of the directors of the UAP Task Force was the aforementioned Jay Stratton, who had previously been involved in AAWSAP and who had an anomalous experience at Skinwalker Ranch. Stratton’s upcoming memoir, apparently to be published in 2026 by HarperCollins, may shed some light on unresolved questions concerning the evolutionary process from NIDS to BAASS to AAWSAP to AATIP, as well as other not-yet-resolved questions. 

Every intelligence analyst on the face of the planet knows the importance of differentiating between what they know and what they think, yet these very people often seem to be blurring the line.

It’s certainly interesting to note the connections between the various individuals involved and to see how the same names pop up repeatedly. This gives some potential insights into who the key players are and what the overall agenda is. The New York Times story, for example, had a long gestation period. The story was shopped around for some months prior to publication, not only to The New York Times, but also to The Washington Times and Politico, both of which were thus able to run fairly detailed stories very shortly after The New York Times got the scoop. 

Further insights can be gained by looking at the three names that appeared on the byline for The New York Times story: Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean. 

Helene Cooper was a Pentagon correspondent with The New York Times, with no previous UAP interest; The New York Times veteran reporter Ralph Blumenthal’s interest predated the December 2017 article and began with his research into Harvard Professor of Psychiatry John Mack, who had conducted research into the alien abduction mystery. This led to the 2021 publication of Blumenthal’s book on Mack, The Believer. Leslie Kean comes from a wealthy political family and had a prior interest in UAP and alien abductions, illustrated by her previous writings and by the fact that she lived for some years with abduction researcher Budd Hopkins, who first introduced John Mack to the topic. 

It was Leslie Kean who was instrumental in bringing the story to The New York Times. Luis Elizondo had resigned from government service in the fall of 2017, but very shortly before leaving had passed the three best-known U.S. Navy UAP videos to Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Elizondo believed he had obtained official security clearance for their release, though it seems there was a misunderstanding and that the clearance was not intended to authorize public release. To illustrate this, an April 27, 2020, statement from the DOD referred to “unauthorized releases” of the videos in 2007 and 2017.7 In 2007, one of the videos leaked online on the Above Top Secret discussion forum, while 2017 referred to the process that led to The New York Times running the story. 

Mellon and Elizondo then joined an organization called the To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTSA), ostensibly headed by Blink-182 musician Tom DeLonge. TTSA was a sort of collaborative hub for a number of individuals, many with backgrounds in government UAP and fringe science research, including Hal Puthoff and retired CIA officer Jim Semivan. 

It was Christopher Mellon who facilitated a meeting between Kean, Elizondo, and others, which then gave Kean enough to take the story to The New York Times, via Ralph Blumenthal, setting in motion a series of events that was to forever change the field of ufology.8

Where does ufology stand now? 

This is how ufology in the U.S. went from fringe to mainstream, though it’s a simplified version, and not all the twists and turns of the story are universally agreed upon. If I had to summarize what I think happened and why, my best assessment would be as follows: A loose coalition of believers in UAP and the paranormal, often with backgrounds in government, military, and the Intelligence Community, sought and obtained official funding for their work. When that funding was terminated, they continued the work in a quasi-official capacity. Finally, when they felt they’d taken matters as far as they could without official funding, they decided to go public, successfully gambling that the resultant firestorm would generate other ways to take things forward. The goals may have included funding (TTSA certainly raised some money through a share issue) and Congressional engagement. The latter has clearly been a big success. 

However, eight years into this process, there’s still no smoking gun and we appear to have hit some speed bumps, with several new and parallel events putting things in a rather different light. 

Further ex-government whistleblowers have come forward. This sounds like a good thing, and in one sense, it is, but the unintended consequence has been that this has added to the information overload and created a landscape so complicated that even veteran commentators like myself, who follow the situation very closely, find it difficult to keep up. Furthermore, not all whistleblowers are equal. While one can be reasonably confident that those who have testified to Congress are who they say they are (staffers vet such people fairly thoroughly, not least by quizzing their former employers), others haven’t had their backgrounds investigated in such depth. 

It should also be remembered that even when someone’s government background checks out, their specific role is often harder to pin down and their information can be all but impossible to verify. That’s partly because many of these folks have a background in the military and the Intelligence Community, where issues of classification often arise and where deception was literally in some of these people’s job descriptions. It’s also because much of the information is second hand, but where those concerned don’t make it clear that this is something that somebody else told them. Every intelligence analyst on the face of the planet knows the importance of differentiating between what they know and what they think, yet these very people often seem to be blurring the line. No wonder one occasionally hears some civilian UFO researchers complain that the whole thing is a PSYOP. 

This already murky situation has been further complicated by factional infighting. There’s clearly a struggle for narrative control within the field. Even among the various whistleblowers and other key players, who are ostensibly polite with each other, there are clearly some tensions. By way of a personal anecdote, I’ve had more than one TV producer tell me how Individual A told them he’d appear on a show, provided Individual B wasn’t featured (the requests backfired because producers don’t usually play that game). I’m similarly aware that some of the key players who are ostensibly being polite to me are briefing against me, perhaps seeing my mainstream media platform as a potential threat, especially given that I’m independent in all this and don’t take anybody’s side. Because it so perfectly describes the situation, I can’t resist quoting a lyric from the O’Jays song Back Stabbers: “They smile in your face. All the time they want to take your place.” 

There’s nothing new about infighting in the UFO community. What is new, however, is that folks with a background in military intelligence know a few dirty tricks that their civilian counterparts don’t. Plus, social media has acted as a force multiplier, with 𝕏 in particular having turned into a veritable battlefield between some of the key players, often using proxies and sock puppet accounts. Cliques, harassment, and doxxing seem to be the order of the day. Neither should we sweep under the carpet the uncomfortable truth that some of the people who’ve recently jumped aboard the ufology train clearly have psychological issues, while others sense a money-making opportunity. 

To pick one example of all this infighting, the December 2025 appearance of Jay Anderson on Joe Rogan’s podcast seems to have set off a particularly nasty squabble.9 Jay criticized Luis Elizondo (among others), accusing him of orchestrating an aggressive campaign to control the narrative, as well as making reference to what he’s sometimes called a “UFO Hate Group.”10 In response, a group of Elizondo supporters, sometimes dubbed “the Lue Crew,” hit back against Jay Anderson.11

A related development is that a new generation of influential podcast hosts and YouTube channel owners saw the topic become increasingly mainstream and entered the fray. While many are honest brokers, their podcasts and channels are often the arena in which the struggle for narrative control plays out. Again, despite being a veteran commentator who follows all this closely, I struggle to work out who’s supporting which faction, how many factions there are, and the true nature of their respective agendas. 

Cartoon by Oliver Ottitsch for SKEPTIC

What is the result of all this information overload, confusion, and infighting? Speaking personally, I’m fatigued. Moreover, I see from social media that other people are fatigued too. I’m a free speech absolutist, so I’m certainly not advocating any controls on this. I completely reject the idea (which has been floated several times over the years) that ufology should set up some sort of governing body, or somehow police itself. After all, who gets to decide who’s on the governing body, and quis custodiet ipsos custodes? 

There are other developments that give me cause for concern. One of them relates to a couple of narrative shifts that I’ve noticed creeping into the topic. 

Ufology has always been a big tent. In whistleblower David Grusch’s testimony to Congress, and in some of his media interviews, he used the terms “nonhuman” and “non-human intelligence.”12 In the Schumer-Rounds Amendment (a legislative proposal intended for insertion into FY2024 NDAA, but which did not find its way into the final bill), the term “non-human intelligence” was used multiple times.13 Grusch has said that this leaves the door open for other possibilities aside from the extraterrestrial hypothesis. And this has opened the door to some highly speculative discussions about cryptoterrestrials, ultraterrestrials, extratempestrials, and interdimensionals. It’s also led to something a little more on the dark side, with a theological bent. 

The idea that aliens are fallen angels, or demons, isn’t new. But this once-niche theory has gotten a little more traction lately. Luis Elizondo has previously told the story of how, when he lobbied a senior Pentagon official to take more action over UAP, the official told him he should read his Bible. This appeared to reflect a belief that some aspects of UAP are demonic and that to study it would be to give it energy and feed it. 

Such opinions have gained more mainstream traction with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene expressing the views that aliens could be fallen angels,14 while high-profile broadcaster Tucker Carlson has also talked about UAP in terms of spiritual forces and entities like angels and demons.15 All of this plays into a neoreligious interpretation of ufology. Chris Bledsoe—author of UFO of God—talks about how an entity he dubs “The Lady” told him how glowing orbs would intervene to stop the missiles if Israel and Iran go to war. There’s an “end times” theme to a lot of this.16

Again, as a free speech absolutist, I wouldn’t dream of telling people what they can and can’t say about UAP, let alone what they should believe. Again, I’m merely commenting on the current state of play and expressing a personal opinion that I think some of the current narrative isn’t necessarily healthy or helpful. And I certainly doubt that it holds any validity. 

Another narrative shift is the use of the term “psionics”—the idea that one can use the power of one’s mind to summon UAP. It’s a scientific-sounding term, but is it really that different from Steven Greer’s CE5 (Close Encounter of the Fifth Kind) protocols, whereby one can supposedly use meditation and other techniques to initiate contact with extraterrestrials? The danger, of course, is that certain individuals can then insert themselves as intermediaries; you can access the phenomenon, but only through them, because of their special abilities. Again, there’s a sort of quasi-religious, cultish feel to all this, in which one can only access the divine through the intermediary of the priest. 

What does the future hold for ufology? 

Given my assessment that ufology has to some extent moved from fringe to mainstream, but has hit some speed bumps, where do we go from here? I don’t have a crystal ball, but based on statements from a range of people involved in the process, it seems that further Congressional hearings and more whistleblowers would be a fairly good bet. The problem, of course, is that, short of a “smoking gun” (actual evidence and not just more stories), this runs the risk of reinforcing the view that it’s all talk and no action. Where’s the beef? 

The Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets is looking at UAP. There’s considerable overlap between personnel involved with the Task Force and personnel serving on the House Oversight Committee, which has been particularly vociferous on UAP. This brings up a potential problem, because while the Task Force is bipartisan, it skews toward Republicans. Thus, it wouldn’t take much to jeopardize the bipartisan nature of Congressional engagement, which would be a setback. 

If Donald Trump’s presidency ends without disclosure, I’ll be 99.9 percent convinced that there’s nothing to disclose.

The UFO community continues to hope for Disclosure—the official acknowledgement of an extraterrestrial presence. The Age of Disclosure, a documentary produced by Dan Farah and released late in 2025 plays into this.17 So does Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film Disclosure Day.18 But it goes further than this, and 2027 is a potential date that’s been frequently mentioned. 

Disclosure in 2027 would mean that Donald Trump would be the Disclosure President. There’s a curious kind of logic in this, because if there truly is a decades-long official cover-up of an extraterrestrial presence, the secret has been scrupulously kept by successive administrations of both political parties. By inference, therefore, the reasons for secrecy must be exceptionally compelling. Perhaps only a populist, maverick, second-term President would disclose in such circumstances—more so, given that Trump will soon be in his 80s and is doubtless mindful of his legacy. I agree that if the U.S. government is aware of an extraterrestrial presence, Trump is more likely than any previous president to spill the beans. President Trump has occasionally hinted that he’s privy to some interesting information about UFOs, but has yet to elaborate on the topic.19

Some argue that the secret of an extraterrestrial presence is kept even from presidents (perhaps to maintain plausible deniability) and is in the hands of an unelected set of gatekeepers, perhaps in the government, but possibly in the private sector. I find this unconvincing. Most Western governments operate on the basis of what the UK civil service calls the culture of “no surprises,” by which political leaders need to be briefed on all big, impactful issues that might require quick decisions and action. 

If Donald Trump’s presidency ends without Disclosure, I’ll be 99.9 percent convinced that there’s nothing to disclose. I’d have to accept that if extraterrestrials are visiting Earth, nobody in the government is aware of it. The acceptance of such a state of affairs might actually be rather good for ufology. After all, while some conspiracies are real, most conspiracy theories are false, and encourage a negative, accusatory approach. Removing—or at least reducing—this mindset from ufology might lead to a healthier, less aggressive approach. It would also remove a lot of redundant effort, which could be better used elsewhere, such as in encouraging more scientists and academics to engage on the topic. 

As I see it, ufology stands at an interesting crossroads. While some of the details remain disputed, the topic has undoubtedly transitioned from fringe to mainstream in the last few years. However, a mixture of information overload, infighting, and quasi-religious narratives may conspire to undo this progress. Allied to this, mainstream media interest in most topics waxes and wanes. The UFO community can’t expect their current fascination with the subject to last indefinitely. This is particularly true if Congressional engagement falls away, as it may well do if the perception is that the subject is becoming more partisan and more fringe, with the attendant dangers of reputational damage attaching to those Representatives who continue to express an interest. 

Ufology has come out of the fringe and into the mainstream, but I believe there’s a distinct possibility that it will move out of the mainstream and back into the fringe.

Qubits, the heart of quantum computers, can change performance in fractions of a second — but until now, scientists couldn’t see it happening. Researchers at NBI have built a real-time monitoring system that tracks these rapid fluctuations about 100 times faster than previous methods. Using fast FPGA-based control hardware, they can instantly identify when a qubit shifts from “good” to “bad.” The discovery opens a new path toward stabilizing and scaling future quantum processors.

Qubits, the heart of quantum computers, can change performance in fractions of a second — but until now, scientists couldn’t see it happening. Researchers at NBI have built a real-time monitoring system that tracks these rapid fluctuations about 100 times faster than previous methods. Using fast FPGA-based control hardware, they can instantly identify when a qubit shifts from “good” to “bad.” The discovery opens a new path toward stabilizing and scaling future quantum processors.

Colliding galaxies can create a beam of focused microwave radiation known as a maser, and astronomers have discovered the brightest one ever seen

New insights into the causes of migraine are prompting a fresh look at a drug target that was sidelined 25 years ago

Planet K2-18b, an apparent water world 124 light years away, has been seen as a promising location in the search for aliens, but telescopes on Earth failed to pick up any radio transmissions

We’ve been missing an important contributor to ageing, says columnist Graham Lawton. Ultra-processed foods are known to be associated with many chronic health problems, but studies have now shown they may also speed up ageing

It's everything anti-vaxxers have been crowing about for decades.

The post Is the FDA is Hiding “Evidence” the COVID Vaccine Killed Children? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

How do galaxies evolve? When did they start forming? Those are questions astronomers and cosmologists are working to answer. The standard path includes early bright starforming activity, a middle age, and then a quiescent old age where they stop making stars. That changes if the galaxy happens to collide with another one, because that spurs new bouts of starbirth. It's been this way since stars and galaxies first began forming, slightly less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

Oxford researchers have found a way to visualize one of the most hidden — yet critical — components inside lithium-ion batteries. By tagging polymer binders with traceable markers, they revealed how these tiny materials are distributed at the nanoscale and how that affects charging speed and durability. Small manufacturing adjustments reduced internal resistance by up to 40%, potentially unlocking fastcer charging. The technique could help improve both today’s batteries and next-generation designs.

A plethora of newly discovered baryonic (or normal) dark matter signals the first step toward the end of dark matter theory. Or so say the authors of a new paper just accepted by the journal Physical Review D.

Nearly two years after Boeing’s botched Starliner mission to the International Space Station, NASA put the mishap in the same category as the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters — and said the spacecraft wouldn’t carry another crew until dozens of corrective actions are taken.

Theory says that, under the right conditions, massive stars can collapse directly into black holes without exploding as supernovae. But observational evidence of the phenomenon has been hard to get. Now astronomers have found some sequestered in archival data.

Imagine you are at a puzzle night with friends. Someone poses this question: “You roll two dice. At least one shows a six. What’s the probability both show a six?”

The table splits: Half the people argue that the dice are independent, so the answer must be one in six. The other half insists it’s one in 11. They may refer to the image below: There 11 equally-likely ways that a roll of two dice can show at least one six (bottom row and rightmost column), and in one of these rolls, they are both sixes.

So who’s right? Both—and neither. The correct answer is: “We can’t answer this without more information.” Depending on how you came to the information that there was at least one six, the answer can be one in six or one in 11.

Many so-called probability “paradoxes” arise from vague framing. In practice, data are generated by processes. Those processes define the pool of possibilities—and thus the probabilities. When the information-generating process isn’t specified, reasonable people can come up with different answers because they’re answering different questions.

Double-Six Puzzle

Let’s return to the opening question. To reveal the ambiguity, I’ll frame it in two ways:

Puzzle 1: You roll two dice. One of them falls under the table and you can’t see it. The other one lands on top of the table, and it’s a six. What is the probability that both dice landed on a six?

Puzzle 2: You are rolling two dice blindfolded. A machine is programmed to ding if and only if at least one of them lands on a six. You keep rolling until the machine dings. What is the probability that both dice landed on a six?

Solutions

Puzzle 1: The probability that both dice landed on a six is one in six. In this scenario, you’ve learned a fact about a particular die: the one you can see is a six. The first die doesn’t affect the second, so the six possible outcomes of the second die are equally likely.

Puzzle 2: The probability that both dice landed on a six is one in 11. In this scenario, you don’t have information about a particular die; the ding of the machine only tells you a property of the pair. This roll passed a filter that admits only outcomes with at least one six. Among the 36 ordered outcomes of two dice, 11 contain at least one six. Only one of those 11 outcomes is the double six.

Both of these puzzles answer the question “You rolled two dice. At least one shows a six. What’s the chance both show a six?” However, since they have different information-generating processes, they have different solutions.

Boy or Girl Paradox

In Martin Gardner’s famous “Boy or Girl Paradox,” sometimes called the “Two-Child Problem,” he poses this question: “Mr. Smith has two children. At least one is a boy. What is the probability that both children are boys?”

If this puzzle sounds familiar, that is because it is like the dice puzzle. Even if we adopt the assumption that births are like coin flips (i.e., independent, equally likely boy or girl, no multiple births), the puzzle is unanswerable. Gardner initially proclaimed the answer was “one in three,” but later admitted that the puzzle was ambiguous. The problem is that it does not tell us how we learned that at least one child is a boy.

Imagine you randomly meet a man named Mr. Smith at the park. He’s with one child, and that child is a boy. He mentions he has another child at home. What is the probability the child at home is a boy?

Seeing the boy in the park tells us nothing about the child at home. The possibilities are simply: “boy at the park, girl at home” or “boy at the park, boy at home.” Those two possibilities are equally likely, so the answer is one in two. The “child at the park” is like the die you can see and the “child at home” is like the die under the table.

When the information-generating process isn’t specified, reasonable people can come up with different answers because they’re answering different questions.

Now imagine you have a list of all men named Mr. Smith in your city who have two children and at least one boy. You pick a man at random from that list. What are the chances both his children are boys? The four ordered possibilities in all two-child families are GG, GB, BG, and BB. However, your list excludes GG. That leaves GB, BG, BB–three equally likely families, only one of which is BB. So the probability is one in three. This “filtered list” setup is like the machine-ding scenario: your knowledge is based on a property of the pair, not a particular child.

In both stories, it is true that Mr. Smith has two children and at least one is a boy. The answers differ because we came to know that fact in different ways.

The Monty Hall Problem

The best-known version of the Monty Hall problem was posed by Craig F. Whitaker to Marilyn vos Savant in a 1990 issue of Parade magazine, one of the most widely read publications in the country at the time:

Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, “Do you want to pick door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Marilyn answered, “Yes; you should switch. The first door has a 1/3 chance of winning, but the second door has a 2/3 chance.”

The magazine received over 10,000 letters, including many from highly educated readers, insisting that this answer was wrong. Don Edwards, from Sunriver, Oregon, suggested: “Maybe women look at math problems differently from men.” A Georgia State University professor, one W. Robert Smith, PhD, advised: “I am sure you will receive many letters on this topic from high school and college students. Perhaps you should keep a few addresses for help with future columns.” Another PhD correspondent, a University of Florida professor named Scott Smith, exclaimed:

You blew it, and you blew it big! Since you seem to have difficulty grasping the basic principle at work here, I’ll explain. After the host reveals a goat, you now have a one-in-two chance of being correct. Whether you change your selection or not, the odds are the same. There is enough mathematical illiteracy in this country, and we don’t need the world’s highest IQ propagating more. Shame!

Today, it’s widely accepted that Marilyn was right. People have even built computer simulations that reproduce the result. The story is often cited as a reminder that probability can be counterintuitive, and as a lesson that confidence and credentials don’t make us immune to mistakes. Those are valuable lessons—but I think much of the pushback came from a simpler reason: the problem phrasing was too vague.

For Marilyn’s solution to be correct, the game must guarantee from the start that the host will open a door showing a goat. This needs to be explicitly stated as a rule of the game. Many readers assume that the host knowing what’s behind the doors implies that he is guaranteed to open a goat door. But even if the host knows, that alone does not tell us what he is obliged to do. Marilyn’s answer relies on the following assumptions:

1.     The host always opens a door after your initial choice.
2.     He never opens the door with the car.

Simulations built to show why Marilyn’s answer is correct have these assumptions built into their programming. But if those conditions aren’t guaranteed, the probabilities change.

If we make the above two assumptions, then Marilyn’s advice is correct–you should switch. This can be explained simply:

• If your initial choice was a goat door, switching will certainly give you the car. Since there is a 2 in 3 chance your initial choice was a goat, there is a 2 in 3 chance you will win if you switch.

• If your initial choice was the car door, you will certainly lose if you switch. Since there is only a 1 in 3 chance your initial choice was the car, there is a 1 in 3 chance you will lose if you switch.

This reasoning treats the host’s action as guaranteed and therefore uninformative about your original choice. If the host’s behavior is left unspecified, the fact that he opened a goat door can give you different information. Here are two variations of the puzzle that help to demonstrate that.

Optional Opening Variation

On a game show, there are three doors. Behind one is a car; behind the others, goats. After contestants choose a door, the host sometimes opens another door to show a goat (he never reveals the car). If he does open a door, he then offers you the chance to switch to the other closed door. It’s your turn: You pick a door, and the host opens a goat door. He offers a choice to switch to the other unopened door. What should you do?

You can’t answer this until you know the host’s policy—how often he opens a door given that a contestant’s initial pick is the car versus a goat. If the host is much more likely to open a door for contestants who initially picked the car, then seeing him open a door increases the likelihood that the car is behind your chosen door. Different policies lead to different conditional probabilities, so the question is unanswerable without more information. 

Random Door Variation of the Monty Hall Problem

On a game show, there are three closed doors. Behind one is a car; behind the others, goats. After contestants pick a door, the host randomly opens another door. If he reveals a car, it’s game over. It’s your turn to play! You choose a door. The host randomly opens another door. It’s a goat! He offers a choice to switch to the other unopened door. What should you do?

It can help to think of this game being played many times. One third of players initially pick the car. For them, the host will always reveal a goat. Two thirds of players initially pick a goat. For them, the host reveals a goat half the time and reveals the car the other half. If we consider all games, we can split the players into three equal groups:

1. Picked the car and saw a goat
2. Picked a goat and saw a goat
3. Picked a goat and saw the car

All of these scenarios are equally likely, so a third of the players will be in each group. Since the question tells you that, in your game, the host opens a door that has a goat, you know that you are in either group 1 or 2. Since it is equally likely that you are in either one, switching or staying makes no difference.

Once you state the host’s policy clearly, many people who previously found the problem baffling finally see where the answer comes from.

The crucial difference is that here the host could have shown the car but didn’t. In this variation, the host is more likely to open a goat door if your initial pick was the car door. In other words, the host opening a goat door gives you information about your initially chosen door: it increases the probability that it has a car from ⅓ to ½.

A Clearer Phrasing

Here is a clear way to pose the problem such that Marilyn’s answer is correct:

You are about to go on a game show. The game is always played in the same way: The player is shown three closed doors. Behind two of them are goats; behind one is a car. The player wins if they pick the door with the car. After the player picks a door, the host opens another door, and it's always one with a goat behind it. Then the host offers the player the chance to switch to the other closed door. He does this in every game. What should you do to maximize your chances of winning? 

You may have noticed that I also specified that you win if you pick the car door (not that you win what’s behind the door). This is because sometimes people say they prefer a goat over a car.

Clarity is crucial, whether you’re posing a puzzle or talking with someone who sees things differently than you do.

The problem with the Monty Hall problem is that the standard wording is often too vague. Marilyn’s answer is correct only under a particular set of rules about what the host will do, but those rules are frequently left out. Once you state the host’s policy clearly, many people who previously found the problem baffling finally see where the answer comes from.

For readers familiar with Bayes’s theorem, I leave you with a challenge:

You’re playing a game with the same setup as above, but now you’re told the host opens a door 75 percent of the time when the contestant initially picks a goat, and 25 percent of the time when the contestant initially picks the car. In your game, the host opens a door to show a goat. Should you switch or stay?

The “Obvious” Interpretation

For many such probability puzzles, one might object, “But the most natural interpretation is obviously X.” Natural to whom? When a puzzle leaves out the information-generating process, people may assume different backstories and end up answering different problems. What seems obvious to you may not be to someone else.

This lesson applies beyond puzzles. In many disagreements, people talk past each other because they understand the same term in different ways or are working from different assumptions. When you make those terms and assumptions explicit, you may find you disagree on less than you thought. Even if you don’t, that precision lays the groundwork for a more productive discussion. Clarity is crucial, whether you’re posing a puzzle or talking with someone who sees things differently than you do.

Astronomers have found a candidate Jellyfish Galaxy only about 5 billion years after the Big Bang. This is earlier than expected, since the ram pressure stripping responsible for it wasn't thought to be possible so early in the Universe's history. The galaxy could explain the puzzling "Red Nugget" galaxies, but first it has to be confirmed.

The early Universe was a busy place. As the infant cosmos exanded, that epoch saw the massive first stars forming, along with protogalaxies. It turns out those extremely massive early stars were stirring up chemical changes in the first globular clusters, as well. Not only that, many of those monster stars ultimately collapsed as black holes.