Skeptic

Area 51 may want to dust off the welcome mat. Not one, not two, but three interstellar objects have drifted through our solar system, now referred to as “interstellar interlopers.” Astronomers labeled them as 1I/‘Oumuamua in 2017, 2I/Borisov in 2019, and 3I/Atlas in 2025 (the prefixes refer to the order of discovery of the interlopers). While most astronomers see unusual but ultimately natural cosmic debris, Harvard astronomer and Galileo Project head Avi Loeb has stepped up to suggest these anomalous interstellar visitors could be alien technologies, possibly even a threat to humanity. Before we start waving white flags at space rubble, it’s worth noting that the rest of the scientific community is responding with something far less dramatic: data. Most scientists, armed with models and common sense, see nothing more exotic than fast-moving rocks and comets with unusual chemical compositions.

Avi Loeb: Prophet, Seer, or Publicity Seeker? 

Avi Loeb is no UFOlogist conspiracy theorist with an active imagination. He holds Harvard’s Frank B. Baird Jr. Professorship of Science and has spent most of his academic life developing rigorous theories about black holes, galaxy formation, and the early universe. So, when he started speculating about alien artifacts drifting through our solar system and writing several popular books about extraterrestrials, it’s no surprise that a bevy of UFOlogists treated his words as something akin to the “next coming.” 

In recent years, he has become known less for his contributions to cosmology and more for a far more audacious proposition: that humanity may have already encountered extraterrestrial technology created somewhere beyond our solar system. The shift has turned him into a public figure with an unusually large following for an astrophysicist, even as it strains his standing among colleagues. Admirers see him as refreshingly fearless and he has inspired my young students to go into the sciences (he regularly posts emails from them on his Medium blog); critics describe him as a man who has allowed publicity to eclipse prudence. The tension between those two views defines the controversy that now surrounds his work. 

The ‘Oumuamua Puzzle and Loeb’s Radical Interpretation 

When astronomers in Hawaii identified an unfamiliar object sweeping through the solar system in October 2017, they immediately realized it was something unprecedented. The object—later named ‘Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “messenger from afar”)—did not behave like the comets or asteroids astronomers routinely study. Its elongated appearance, lack of visible outgassing, and slight but measurable change in velocity puzzled researchers. 

A large team of scientists, led by Karen Meech at the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii, published a widely cited paper in Nature in 2017, concluding that ‘Oumuamua originated from outside our solar system. Building on the data from that paper, Avi Loeb and his graduate student Shmuel Bialy (now at the Israel Institute of Technology) proposed in a 2018 Astrophysical Journal Letters paper that ‘Oumuamua might be a “fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.” That is, of course, a possibility—as is a cosmic teapot in orbit. But science does not require disproving every far-fetched alternative. The burden of proof lies squarely with Loeb and his collaborators. 

In his boldly titled book Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, Loeb offered a hypothesis that captured worldwide attention: perhaps ‘Oumuamua was not a natural relic at all but rather a fragment of engineered technology, possibly a thin, reflective structure propelled by starlight. He emphasized that he wasn’t announcing definitive proof (despite the book’s title), only pointing out that an artificial origin could not be ruled out. Nonetheless, his willingness to discuss this prospect publicly pushed the story far beyond the walls of academia. 

Here are a few unique characteristics of ‘Oumuamua: 

1. ‘Oumuamua’s light curve. A light curve is a graph that shows how the brightness of an object changes over time. In 2019, Sergey Mashchenko analyzed the light curve from ‘Oumuamua, concluding that “the most likely model for ‘Oumuamua is a thin disc (slab) experiencing moderate torque from outgassing.” ‘Oumuamua’s brightness varied dramatically because it tumbled, suggesting an extreme aspect ratio (possibly 5:1 or more). That implies it was either very elongated like a cigar or very flat like a pancake. The shape is unlike anything in our solar system, and “non-comet-like.” 
2. ‘Oumuamua’s acceleration. Astronomers observed ‘Oumuamua making a nongravitational acceleration, that is, it sped up slightly as it left the Sun’s gravity well. 
3. ‘Oumuamua lacks a “comet” tail. Typically, comets coming in from the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt or from within the Oort Cloud surrounding our solar system contain ice gases. Comets can develop two main types of tails. An ion (or plasma) tail forms when the solar wind—a stream of charged particles flowing outward from the Sun—interacts with gases from the comet. The solar wind ionizes these gases by stripping away electrons, and the resulting charged ions are then swept directly away from the Sun by the magnetic field carried in the solar wind. This produces a straight, narrow, bluish tail that always points directly away from the Sun, no matter which way the comet is moving. A dust tail, in contrast, is created when sunlight exerts radiation pressure on tiny dust particles released from the comet’s nucleus, pushing them away from the Sun. Because these dust particles follow slightly different orbits from the comet itself, the dust tail is broader, curved, and usually whitish or yellowish; it lags slightly behind and follows the curve of the comet’s trajectory around the Sun. 
4. ‘Oumuamua reflected more sunlight than typical asteroids or comets. 
5. ‘Oumuamua’s velocity entering the solar system was similar to the average speed of stars in the Sun’s neighborhood. Loeb pointed out that this was unusual and “unlikely by chance.” 

Occam’s razor, named after William of Ockham (1287–1347) by Libert Froidmont (1587–1653), suggests that scientific hypotheses should consist of the smallest set of possible elements. For example, while staying in an old English hotel room, the lights flicker, the floor creaks, and the room gets chilly. You could conclude it’s the ghost of a Victorian child with unresolved issues—or, per Occam’s razor, you could check the wiring, the floorboards, and maybe close a window. When in doubt, blame the insulation before the afterlife. Occam’s razor doesn’t prove the simpler explanation is correct—just that it’s preferable until better evidence arises. It’s a tool for model selection, not an avenue to absolute truth. 

Admirers see Avi Loeb as refreshingly fearless and he has inspired my young students to go into the sciences; critics describe him as a man who has allowed publicity to eclipse prudence.

Let’s examine the data for ‘Oumuamua in this light. The elongated or flat shape: In three research papers, Steven Desch and Alan Jackson proposed that ‘Oumuamua is a collisional fragment of nitrogen ice from an exoplanetary Pluto-like body. Not only does this explain the flat shape, but the lack of observable H2O, CO, CO2, lack of dust, and especially the magnitude of the nongravitational acceleration. I asked Desch what he thought of Loeb’s ideas about ‘Oumuamua and he responded: “Suffice it to say he [Loeb] long ago stopped being a serious scientist making innocent inquiries, and now unstoppingly manufactures doubt in the service of positioning himself as some sort of science maverick.” Sebastian Lorek’s and Anders Johansen’s theoretical work demonstrates that flattened, disc-shaped planetesimals can form naturally through the gentle gravitational collapse of a rotating “pebble cloud” in a protoplanetary disk. Lorek and Johansen emphasized to me that “the formation of flattened objects like ‘Oumuamua is a completely natural outcome of planetesimal formation.” 

By contrast, Loeb postulates that ‘Oumuamua may be a light-sail—a thin, flat structure propelled by radiation pressure (i.e., the momentum of photons from starlight or sunlight). Photons carry no mass, but they do have momentum. When they hit a surface (especially a reflective one), they impart a tiny push. Over time, this small force accumulates, especially in the vacuum of space where there’s no friction. The challenge with using solar radiation for propulsion is that its force decreases with the square of the distance from the source (1/r²). While this pressure is weak but usable near Earth’s orbit (1 AU), it becomes vanishingly small at interstellar distances. In the vast space between stars, the photon flux is so low that even the nearest stars provide no meaningful thrust—effectively leaving a light sail adrift with nothing to push it along. 

AI-generated rendering of a hypothetical alien light sail, the type of technology Avi Loeb proposes could explain ‘Oumuamua’s unusual acceleration through solar radiation pressure.

As for the nongravitational acceleration of ‘Oumuamua out of our solar system, Loeb believes that it can’t be explained by outgassing, because no gas or dust was detected. He proposed that the acceleration was caused by the solar radiation pressure hitting a light sail. If ‘Oumuamua were an ultra-thin object, just 0.3–0.9 mm thick and tens of meters wide, it could have experienced enough radiation pressure at its closest approach to the Sun, which was 0.25 AU, or one-quarter of an Astronomical Unit (the distance from the Earth to the Sun, 1 AU) to account for the motion—without requiring any expelled material. However, in 2023, Jennifer Bergner and Darryl Seligman showed that entrapped molecular hydrogen (H2) in water ice could have been released from ‘Oumuamua’s body as it warmed, producing the observed nongravitational acceleration without a visible coma (the cloud of gas and dust that typically forms around a comet when it gets close to the Sun). This supports the view that ‘Oumuamua was a comet-like planetesimal rather than anything technological. Although the study centered on chemistry, a consequence is that ‘Oumuamua must have had a very high surface-area-to-mass ratio for H2 outgassing to be effective. Such a requirement is naturally met by a thin, sheet-like geometry (a flattened body), again consistent with the disc-like shape inferred by the light-curve analyses. In short, even its puzzling acceleration can be explained by natural processes acting on an unusually flat, icy object. 

The Galileo Project and Loeb’s Expanding Quest 

Rather than retreat from public engagement after ‘Oumuamua’s exit from the scene, Loeb broadened his search. In 2021, he launched the Galileo Project—funded entirely through private donations—with the goal of systematically looking for physical evidence of extraterrestrial technology. The initiative includes specialized camera systems aimed at tracking unusual aerial phenomena and an expanded effort to locate interstellar debris. 

One object in particular drew Loeb’s attention: a meteor that exploded over the Pacific Ocean in 2014. A U.S. Space Command memo suggested the meteor may have originated outside the solar system. Loeb seized upon the idea that remnants from this event might still rest on the ocean floor, potentially offering clues about materials forged beyond our stellar neighborhood. So in 2023 he orchestrated an expedition off the coast of Papua New Guinea to retrieve microscopic debris from the area where the meteor had disintegrated. Funded by a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, the mission blended scientific ambition with adventure-story drama—all captured by a documentary crew (to be aired in 2026). 

The expedition recovered tiny metal beads—mere fractions of a millimeter in diameter. Laboratory analyses revealed unusual ratios of heavy elements that did not neatly align with common terrestrial or meteoritic compositions. Loeb interpreted the findings as suggestive of an exotic, possibly interstellar, origin. He stopped short of outright claiming discovery of alien technology (the tiny spherules were not exactly the dashboard of the Millennium Falcon), but he made clear that he considered the possibility worth exploring. 

Many experts quickly objected. Planetary scientists noted that it is extremely unlikely for an object traveling at such high velocity to leave behind intact solid fragments. Others questioned whether the spherules could even be tied to the 2014 meteor, or whether the meteor itself was truly interstellar. Critics argued that uncertainties in the military data make firm conclusions impossible, and that Loeb was again presenting the most sensational interpretation well before the evidence justified it. 

The interstellar comet 2I/Borisov streaks through our solar system in this 2019 image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Unlike ‘Oumuamua, Borisov behaved like a typical comet, showing a bright coma and tail. The telescope tracked the comet’s movement, causing the background stars to appear as colorful streaks of light—a result of combining observations in different wavelength bands that give the image some disco flair. Credit: ESO/O. HainautThe interstellar comet 2I/Borisov behaves like a typical comet. 

2I/Borisov is considered interstellar because it entered the solar system on a hyperbolic trajectory—with an orbital eccentricity greater than 3—meaning it is not gravitationally bound to the Sun and must have originated from outside our solar system. Its inbound velocity (approximately 32 km/s) and trajectory indicate it came from the direction of the galactic plane, rather than from within the Oort Cloud or Kuiper Belt. Unlike ‘Oumuamua, which baffled astronomers with its lack of cometary features, Borisov behaved exactly like a typical comet, complete with a bright coma, a dust tail, and outgassing of familiar volatiles like water, carbon monoxide, and cyanide. 

Avi Loeb has suggested that Borisov may still deserve scrutiny as a potential technological relic—noting that it was more pristine than expected for a comet traveling interstellar distances, possibly implying unusual origins. However, most scientists interpret Borisov as strong evidence that other planetary systems form comets much like our own does. Its ordinary composition, active sublimation, and typical behavior all suggest it is natural, and in fact, it reinforces the view that cometary bodies are common ejecta from planetary systems throughout the galaxy. In Galileo Project Zoom meetings of late, Loeb has conceded that 2I/Borisov is a comet (Skeptic magazine’s Michael Shermer is on the Galileo Project team and attends the Zoom meetings). 

3I/Atlas: The Third Interloper 

3I/Atlas’s inbound excess velocity was about 58–61 km/s, far above the escape velocity of the Sun, indicating an origin outside the solar system (that is, it is not gravitationally bound to our solar system). Astronomers traced its incoming direction to the constellation Sagittarius and predict it will depart toward Gemini. Unlike the enigmatic ‘Oumuamua (which showed no outgassing) and more like 2I/Borisov, 3I/Atlas immediately revealed a coma and dust activity, behaving in most respects like a typical comet. Its trajectory and motion suggest it may have originated from the Milky Way’s thick disk, making it plausibly older than our solar system. 

Hubble’s image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS (365 million kilometers from Earth, July 21, 2025) shows a bluish, teardrop cocoon against streaked stars. While Avi Loeb suggests its sunward jet may be artificial, the consensus confirms it behaves like a natural comet. Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)

From the start, astronomers have viewed 3I/Atlas as a natural cometary body. Observatories around the world (including Hubble, the James Webb Telescope, and the Very Large Telescope in Chile) tracked its movement, noting that it started releasing gas and dust at large distances from the Sun—an unusual but not unprecedented behavior. Spectral studies revealed a coma rich in CO2, CO, and diatomic carbon (C2), while surprisingly low in water vapor, which typically dominates solar system comet outgassing. Polarimetry also showed an unusually strong negative polarization signal—meaning the light scattering off the coma’s dust was more directionally polarized than expected. (Polarimetry is the study of how light becomes polarized after it reflects off or scatters through materials like dust or gas. In astronomy, it’s used to analyze light from objects such as comets to infer the properties of their surfaces or comae. When astronomers applied polarimetry to 3I/Atlas, they found unusually strong negative polarization, suggesting its dust grains are very fine or have unusual textures—possibly hinting at a unique interstellar origin or formation environment.) These characteristics, while distinct, are seen as falling within the natural diversity of cometary compositions, especially for bodies formed in ultra-cold outer regions of a planetary system. 

Researchers note that 3I/Atlas offers a unique opportunity to expand our understanding of planetary formation beyond the solar system. Its high CO2 content, early activity, and evolving tail structure suggest it likely formed in a cold, distant part of its home system—perhaps analogous to our Kuiper Belt around a distant solar system. Its compact nucleus (likely under 1 km in size) and slowly rotating, modestly active profile, contrast with the wildly tumbling, inert ‘Oumuamua. Scientists have emphasized that 3I/Atlas aligns with the expected behavior of a comet ejected from another stellar system, and they see no need to invoke exotic explanations. 

Nevertheless, Avi Loeb has once again challenged the consensus. In public commentary and academic preprints, Loeb has listed a set of anomalies that, in his view, warrant consideration that 3I/Atlas might be artificial in origin. Among the features he highlights: 

• The comet’s entry angle aligns closely with the solar system’s ecliptic plane, a statistically unlikely coincidence, he argues. 
• Its antisolar jet initially pointed toward the Sun, rather than away, which Loeb suggests could imply directed propulsion rather than random outgassing. 
• Its mass-to-acceleration ratio seems extreme given its apparent size. 
• Spectral data show a high nickel-to-iron ratio in the coma, which Loeb suggests hints at industrial production instead of natural construction. 
• 3I/Atlas’s inbound direction is near that of the so-called “Wow!” signal, a fact Loeb labels “curious” rather than conclusive. The Wow! signal was a strong, unexplained radio burst detected in 1977 near the hydrogen frequency—a band considered promising for interstellar communication. It lasted 72 seconds, came from the direction of Sagittarius, and has never been observed again, making it an intriguing mystery in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. 

Although intriguing, there is nothing alien about the 3I/Atlas’s jets. The presence of multiple jets pointing in both sunward and antisunward directions suggests that 3I/Atlas has several active regions on its rotating nucleus. As different surface areas are exposed to sunlight, localized jets of gas and dust are released, sometimes curving due to the object’s motion or erupting from regions not directly facing the Sun. This directional variety is a hallmark of cometary activity and reflects a complex interplay between surface composition, thermal dynamics, and rotational orientation, a more likely explanation than alien technology rocket thrusts and maneuvers that Loeb proposes. 

Both features fall within known cometary behavior and don’t require invoking alien technology.

The same can be said for other characteristics Loeb deems of alien origin. The high acceleration relative to 3I/Atlas’s apparent size can be explained naturally by low-density, volatile-rich materials like CO2 or CO ices producing sustained outgassing. Similarly, the elevated nickel-to-iron ratio in its coma may result from observational bias—nickel is more easily detected in cometary gas, while iron often remains locked in dust. Both features fall within known cometary behavior and don’t require invoking alien technology. 

Loeb’s position, as with ‘Oumuamua, is that extraordinary anomalies merit open-minded hypotheses. He does not claim that 3I/Atlas is definitively artificial, but argues that its distinctive properties should not be dismissed. He has proposed that it could represent alien debris, a probe, or some unknown technological object using controlled outgassing or exotic materials. Critics in the scientific community largely disagree, emphasizing that all of 3I/Atlas’s features—from its CO2-rich chemistry to its sunward jet and trajectory—can be explained by known physics. Observations of other comets with similar jets or compositional profiles provide natural precedents. 

While most planetary scientists remain confident in a natural origin for 3I/Atlas, its detailed study is ongoing. Loeb’s speculations, while provocative, remain unsubstantiated.

In late 2025, NASA officials released detailed observations of 3I/Atlas, and their conclusion was unequivocal: “It looks and behaves like a comet, and all evidence points to it being a comet. But this one came from outside the solar system, which makes it fascinating,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. Indeed, high-resolution images from spacecraft showed 3I/Atlas with a normal cometary coma and tail—essentially indistinguishable from ordinary long-period comets aside from its hyperbolic orbit. In other words, 3I/Atlas is far more likely a natural interstellar comet than an extraterrestrial spacecraft. 

In the end, 3I/Atlas has reinforced a key message: interstellar objects are not all alike, and some may appear quite strange by our standards. While most planetary scientists remain confident in a natural origin for 3I/Atlas, its detailed study is ongoing. Loeb’s speculations, while provocative, remain unsubstantiated. Whether the anomalies he flags prove to be outliers or just unfamiliar variations within a broad population of extrasolar comets, 3I/Atlas has already deepened our understanding of how planetary systems beyond our own may evolve—and what fragments they might fling into the void. 

A Netflix documentary crew has followed Loeb’s work for several years, including his 2023 expedition to recover interstellar meteor fragments from the Pacific Ocean. The film, which Loeb has confirmed is in production, is expected to be released in 2026 and will chronicle his search for extraterrestrial technology. It reflects not only his scientific ambitions but also his increasingly prominent role in the public imagination.

Smartphones, High-Definition Cameras, and the Disappearance of Paranormal and Supernatural Phenomena—a Skeptical Analysis

Over the past decades, we have witnessed a quiet yet decisive transformation in the history of human beliefs: the apparent disappearance of major paranormal phenomena that for millennia fueled mythologies, religions, folklore, and countless reports of supposed extraordinary manifestations. UFOs hovered over mountains and deserts;1 colossal creatures such as Bigfoot, the Yeti, or the Sasquatch roamed remote forests;2 spirits, apparitions, and ectoplasmic entities materialized in abandoned mansions;3 miracles occurred before the eyes of the devout;4 demonic possessions defied rational explanation.5 Today, all these phenomena seem to have taken permanent leave, an intriguing coincidence emerging precisely at the moment humanity begins to carry in its pockets (or better yet, in its hands) ultra-high-definition cameras capable of recording every detail of daily life, or any anomaly, with unprecedented precision.6

Before examining the role of smartphones, it is important to distinguish beliefs from manifestations. National opinion polls show that belief in paranormal phenomena remains high. A 2005 Gallup survey indicated that roughly three in four Americans believed in at least one type of paranormal experience, including haunted houses, communication with the dead, and astrology.7 Trend analyses aggregating data from Gallup, Harris, Pew, and other institutes show that, despite recent technological advances, these beliefs have remained remarkably stable, with only small declines in some items and even increases in specific beliefs such as ghosts and haunted houses.8 A more recent Gallup synthesis, from 2025, shows that 48 percent of American adults believe in psychic or spiritual healing and 39 percent in ghosts, while between 24 percent and 29 percent endorse six other supernatural beliefs; compared to 2001, variations are modest, with declines of only 6 to 7 percentage points in phenomena such as telepathy and clairvoyance.9 Literature reviews indicate that, in different countries, beliefs in spirits, UFOs, and other extraordinary phenomena remain widely disseminated among modern populations.10, 11, 12, 13

In other words, beliefs persist and remain widespread, but the supposed phenomena that should generate clear and reproducible evidence seem increasingly absent precisely at a moment when we possess technology capable of recording them with great clarity.14, 15 This shift invites a skeptical exercise: Why have paranormal and supernatural apparitions disappeared exactly when it became possible to document them unequivocally? For centuries, human testimony was the primary source of such accounts. However, scientific literature consistently demonstrates that testimony, even when sincere, constitutes extremely weak evidence: It is susceptible to perceptual illusions, cognitive biases, cultural expectations, and reconstructed (and often false) memories.16, 17, 18

They systematically avoid sharp, high-resolution cameras while tolerating grainy footage captured with old cameras or shaky amateur recordings. 

In recent decades, quantitative studies on spontaneous reports of “anomalous” experiences also reveal a telling pattern: Although belief remains high, the number of people claiming to have personally experienced paranormal and supernatural phenomena tends to decline or stabilize at low levels compared with previous decades. Population surveys in the United Kingdom, for example, indicate that around 25 percent of adults report having seen a ghost, a number smaller than the prevalence of belief in ghosts, which remains above 40 percent.19, 20, 21 The discrepancy between the high prevalence of belief and the lower prevalence of reported experiences suggests that direct accounts do not accompany the persistence of belief, a pattern compatible with the growing impact of recording technology. 

Recent experimental evidence reinforces this fragility. Contemporary studies show that up to 30 percent of participants incorporate false details into memories of extraordinary events after minimal suggestions or exposure to ambiguous images.22, 23 This type of cognitive vulnerability helps explain why, even before photography, reports of supernatural phenomena were so abundant despite the absence of reliable physical documentation. 

With the popularization of photography in the late nineteenth century, the first “records” of ghosts, materializations, and spiritualist phenomena emerged, almost always blurred, overexposed, composite, or manipulated.24 The skeptical science of the time, from Darwin25 to Houdini,26 had already warned of fraud, lighting tricks, and honest mistakes. Even so, these images fueled a fertile social imagination that was poorly equipped for the kind of critical analysis we now consider trivial. 

Yet something fundamental changed when next-generation smartphones became ubiquitously available. Never in human history has there been a moment when billions of people possessed cameras with optical stabilization, precise sensors, 4K recording capacity, and the ability to capture phenomena instantaneously and share them within seconds. 

Paradoxically, this same technological infrastructure has fueled an entire subculture of “ghost hunters” and smartphone-based spirit-detection apps. Ethnographic research on ghost-hunting communities shows the intensive use of high-definition cameras, motion sensors, and apps that simulate paranormal measurements, but despite millions of recordings, no verifiable fact regarding the existence of ghosts has been established in a robust manner.27, 28 Independent assessments of these groups further show that most of the supposed evidence, shadows, electromagnetic noise, or video distortions, corresponds to optical or acoustic artifacts already extensively described in the technical literature and often replicable under controlled conditions.29 Even more rigorous investigative protocols, such as controlled-environment monitoring with multiple cameras, have never produced replicable or consistent results. In other words, the capacity to search for evidence has increased exponentially, but the quality of the “proof” remains trapped in artifacts, ambiguities, and wishful interpretations. 

Curiously, alleged extraterrestrials seem to prefer deserted roads, swamps, or isolated campgrounds, and maintain a distinctly selective shyness.

At the same time, astronomers equipped with powerful, high-definition telescopes that observe the sky 24 hours a day have never recorded a single robust piece of evidence for objects of nonhuman origin. By contrast, systematic surveys conducted by professional astronomers estimate that more than 95 percent of investigated UFO reports correspond to satellites, rocket re-entries, aircraft, balloons, or common atmospheric phenomena.30, 31 This pattern was already known before the widespread adoption of smartphones, but it has become even more evident as observational instruments have grown more precise. Curiously, alleged extraterrestrials seem to prefer deserted roads, swamps, or isolated campgrounds, and maintain a distinctly selective shyness: They systematically avoid sharp, high-resolution cameras while tolerating grainy footage captured with old cameras or shaky amateur recordings. 

The same inexplicable selectivity affects the great mythical creatures. Bigfoot, whose existence contradicts all biological logic, since no hominid species could survive in absolute isolation for hundreds of thousands of years without leaving fossils, consistent tracks, feces, or reproductive communities, vanished abruptly with the advent of modern smartphones. Recent research in ecology and environmental DNA biomonitoring, now used to track rare species, has likewise detected no genetic trace compatible with large unknown primates in North America, even in extensively sampled regions.32, 33 This kind of negative evidence reinforces the biological implausibility of a hidden large-bodied hominid. Hunters, hikers, mountaineers, and rural residents, all equipped with sophisticated cameras, have ceased to report sightings of the once-elusive primate. What remains alive is only the echo of old stories, always sustained by isolated footprints or shaky video footage. 

Ghosts and spirits, likewise, seem to have adapted poorly to technological advancement. For centuries, claims of apparitions spread globally, reinforcing the sense that the supernatural was a universal feature of human experience. However, the more we improved our ability to record images, the more these ectoplasmic entities retreated into the invisible, or into the past. Today, there are no sharp, verifiable, or even minimally convincing records. It is as if the very ontology of such beings were incompatible with high-precision sensors, as if the supernatural had vanished precisely when it could finally prove its existence to skeptics. 

From a methodological standpoint, this persistent absence of records is consistent with analyses in the philosophy of science applied to paranormal claims: If a phenomenon supposedly interacts with the physical world, it should be detectable by physical instruments; if it never is, despite the exponential growth in instrument sensitivity, then its existence becomes an increasingly implausible hypothesis.34

The same decline affects miracles and exorcisms. Although religious videos showing supposed instantaneous healings still circulate, such recordings never exhibit high-definition imagery, verifiable continuity, or transparent documentation. Sociological research on healing rituals also shows that, although millions of people report subjective experiences of “spiritual healing,” there is no video documentation of instantaneous, verifiable cures that meet minimal clinical criteria, such as independent pre- and post-examinations or transparent medical history.35 Medical literature likewise documents that many such claims can be explained by imprecise diagnoses, spontaneous remissions, or confirmation biases.36 The more sophisticated our recording technology becomes, the more rarefied extraordinary events appear to be. 

Demons, once so present in cultural narratives, seem to have developed a profound aversion to high-resolution equipment. Beings allegedly so powerful, capable of opposing gods, tormenting humans across civilizations, making people speak extinct languages and levitate, now seem terrified of ordinary individuals armed with devices that could finally reveal their true face. 

Some may argue that these phenomena still occur, but people have simply stopped recording them, even while carrying cameras virtually 24 hours a day. However, such a hypothesis runs entirely counter to contemporary behavior: We live in an era in which trivial dance trends accumulate millions of views, minor accidents are filmed from multiple angles, and any unusual animal becomes viral within minutes. Studies on the psychology of digital sharing show that unusual, threatening, or extraordinary content is significantly more likely to go viral, especially when it includes clear visual elements.37 This pattern makes it even more improbable that supposedly extraordinary phenomena would occur without sharp recordings, or that someone would deliberately refrain from filming or disseminating them. 

Just when these phenomena could finally verify themselves before omnipresent cameras, they remain invisible.

Within this context, suggesting that people witness aliens, mythical primates, miracles, ghosts, or demons and simply “forget” to record them is, at the very least, an exercise in involuntary humor. In a world so deeply connected and driven by the banal as well as the exceptional, a video that confirmed, and definitively proved, any one of these phenomena would generate an almost infinite number of likes and would instantly elevate its creators to the category of highly profitable, widely recognized influencers. 

The pattern that emerges is clear and epistemologically eloquent: The massive availability of recording devices has not reduced the prevalence of paranormal beliefs, but it has made the absence of robust evidence even more striking. Opinion surveys indicate that beliefs in ghosts, haunted houses, UFOs, or astrology remain widespread and, in many cases, have been stable for decades.38, 39, 40 However, when everyone can document the world with near-forensic precision, the territory of the supernatural does not expand toward clear evidence; it remains confined to ambiguous accounts, grainy videos, and testimonies vulnerable to perceptual illusions and cognitive biases.41, 42 New cameras do more than capture reality: They make it increasingly difficult to sustain, without embarrassment, that which depends on shadows and low verifiability. 

In this context, it makes little sense to speak of the “end” of paranormal beliefs; what we observe is a growing mismatch between persistent beliefs and absent evidence. On a planet where much of the population carries in their pockets, holds in their hands, or mounts on the dashboards of their cars, high-resolution cameras with immediate access to social media, one would reasonably expect an explosion of sharp recordings of ghosts, demons, intervening deities, UFOs, or mythical primates, if such entities truly interacted with the physical world in any minimally recurrent or plausible way.43, 44

Instead, what accumulates are decades of opinion inquiries showing stable beliefs and a colossal volume of “evidence” that collapses under the first skeptical examination. The coincidence remains striking: Just when these phenomena could finally verify themselves before omnipresent cameras, they remain invisible. 

The most parsimonious explanation continues to be the same one skeptics have long articulated: It is not that the phenomena have decided to retire or hide themselves; rather, there were never any paranormal phenomena to be recorded, only human interpretations of natural events, illusions, and frauds.

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A review of This Book May Cause Side Effects: Why Our Minds Are Making Us Sick by Helen Pilcher.

In the early years of Viagra, “the little blue pill” that generated such excitement about its sexual effects on men, I read an account by a woman who decided to try it herself, because isn’t what’s good for the gander good for the goose? (Answer: Not always.) She took that little blue pill and described the exhilarating night of lovemaking that ensued. The best sex she’d ever had! Rapture divine! When she awoke in the morning, she saw that the blue pill she had swallowed was an Aleve (naproxen). At least she didn’t get a headache.

Most people know about the placebo, the inert “sugar pill” given to a control group in a clinical trial when the experimental group gets the active medication. This method allows researchers to rule out the effects of expectations on a new drug’s medical benefits, if any. (Placebo-controlled tests of Viagra for women found that women did slightly better on the placebo, which ended Pfizer’s efforts to double their market.) Expectations can be powerful: the bigger the biologically inactive placebo—a larger pill, a bigger injection—or the more complex the intervention, even a sham surgery, the greater its benefits. Placebos have been used in many settings, most dramatically on the battlefield, where suffering, dying soldiers plead for morphine that has long run out of supply. Given a saline solution but told it is that powerful pain-killer, their pain vanishes.

This Book May Cause Side Effects: Why Our Minds Are Making Us Sick by Helen Pilcher. (Abrams Press, 2026)

Where the placebo goes, can the nocebo be far behind? In This Book May Cause Side Effects, Helen Pilcher, a science writer and TV presenter with a PhD in cell biology, delves into the placebo’s “evil twin”—the myriad ways that our negative expectations affect us. If you had chills, fatigue, or headaches after getting a COVID shot, she writes, they were likely due to your being told those are frequent “side effects.” If you read the list of symptoms that your newly prescribed drug “might” produce, chances are you will experience one or more of them—and possibly decide not to take that drug after all. “If just the thought of eating a certain food makes you feel sick,” she writes, “it’s highly likely that placebo’s evil twin has struck again. Indeed, many of those who believe they have intolerances to certain ingredients, such as lactose or gluten, may well owe their misery to psychological rather than physical processes.” When self-reported “gluten intolerant” people are given gluten-free bread but told that the bread contains gluten, very often they develop gastrointestinal symptoms. “And when some gluten-intolerant people are covertly fed regular bread but told that it’s gluten-free, they don’t get symptoms,” Pilcher writes. “It’s the idea of gluten that they are intolerant to, rather than theprotein itself.”

The combination of “sometimes” with dramatic anecdotes weakens her case that the nocebo affects all illness.

Pilcher makes her case for the nocebo’s malevolent antics in 12 chapters, starting with deaths from hexes to “psychogenic” deaths that have no apparent physiological cause to the downsides of labelling mental and physical illnesses and thereby creating more cases of them. “The nocebo effect can conjure blindness and paralysis, seizures, vomiting and asthma attacks. With no brain injury in sight, it can trigger the symptoms of concussion … With no allergen present, it can induce features of an allergic reaction—watery eyes, runny nose and an itchy rash—that are indistinguishable from the more common, pollen-triggered alternative.” 

There is really no scientific reason to distinguish placebos from nocebos, since both terms describe the way that beliefs, expectations, and apprehensions affect our bodies. But the nocebo is hot; “the nocebo effect has been promoted from academic footnote to nerdy hot potato,” she notes, and Pilcher makes the most of that hotness. The nocebo “is far more pervasive and potent than most people had realized,” she writes. “All symptoms, all illness and all disease has [sic] the potential to be negatively impacted by the thoughts that swirl around inside our heads.” All disease? Yes: “Hiding in plain sight, the phenomenon is part of all illness and all disease, where it makes us more unwell than we need to be.” Does she literally mean “all” or do all diseases merely have the “potential” to be impacted?

That fuzziness undermines her reporting. To be sure, giving us details of every one of the many studies she describes could become stultifying; yet, by not providing actual numbers and percentages of people in an experiment who were affected by a nocebo, and by speaking vaguely of “most” people or “some” people who have the “potential” to succumb, we cannot assess the strength of the finding. For example, she writes that in one study, “people who were falsely ‘diagnosed’ with the ‘bad’ version [of a fictitious gene that allegedly influences their response to exercise] did much worse. They had less endurance and their lung capacity was reduced.” “People”? All of them? One tenth? How many people? 3? 30? Lung capacity “reduced” by how much? How long did that reduction last after they went home? Or, in noting that “some” people die from the stress of bereavement or surviving a plane crash, she adds “that’s certainly not to imply that intense stress is going to kill us all. These deaths are rare. You are far more likely to muddle your way through life’s major stressors than you are to die from them, but sometimes it happens.” The combination of “sometimes” with dramatic anecdotes (Johnny Cash died four months after his wife June) weakens her case that the nocebo affects all illness. Did he die of a broken heart? Or complications from diabetes, respiratory failure, autonomic neuropathy, and pneumonia? 

90 percent of the symptoms that people reported when on statins were also what they experienced when on the placebo.

More worrisome is Pilcher’s enthusiastic endorsement of experiments long discredited and unreplicated, such as Robert Rosenthal’s “Pygmalion” study, in which teachers allegedly raised the IQs of the randomly chosen students they had been told would intellectually bloom that year, simply by the power of their expectations. And because Pilcher so enjoyed meeting Ellen Langer, the Harvard psychology professor who became famous for her decades-old “chambermaid” and “counterclockwise” studies, she suspended scepticism, not even doing a quick google search that would have revealed what was wrong with those studies. In the former, hotel maids were said to have lost weight and lowered their blood pressure simply by being told their activities were “exercise” rather than “work.” But the experimenters relied on the women’s subjective self-reports, so they could not rule out whether the women actually—consciously or subconsciously—increased their activity level or changed their diet. And the 1979 “counterclockwise” study, which supposedly showed that having eight men in their 70s live in a simulated 1959 environment for a week would physically reverse their frailty and other signs of aging, was never published in a peer-reviewed journal or replicated. (It later became a made-for-TV stunt with celebrities.) Langer actually said to the participants, "we have good reason to believe that if you are successful at this, you will feel as you did in 1959." No bias there.

Although these lapses give one pause, Pilcher provides the details in other studies that rise to a “wow” level. In one, 60 patients who had stopped taking statins because they couldn’t stand the side effects were persuaded to try again. They were given 12 bottles of pills: four containing statins; four containing identical-looking placebo pills; and four empty bottles. The patients used one bottle per month, in a randomly prescribed order, over one year, recording their symptoms daily on their smartphones. The study was double blinded, so neither patients nor doctors knew which tablets the participants were taking (or none). The researchers found that 90 percent of the symptoms that people reported when on statins were also what they experienced when on the placebo. This means that most of the side effects of statins are caused by expectations, not the tablet’s content. 

You’ve nothing to lose and possibly a world of delicious bread to gain.

In her final chapter, Pilcher offers ways of countering, if not overcoming, the nocebo’s influence. Reframe the aftereffects of an injection not as painful “side effects” but as evidence the medication is working; if you need a medication, cautioning that 20 percent of the people taking it get headaches, focus on the 80 percent who don’t; and if you have been diagnosed with a serious disease, you can ask your doctor for “personalized informed consent:” telling you about possibly serious symptoms that would require medical attention, but none of the milder symptoms were more likely to be evoked by the nocebo. And if you are one of the thousands of people who think they are allergic to gluten—unlike those with celiac disease, who most definitely are—why not ask a friend or partner to subject you to a nice double-blind experiment? You’ve nothing to lose and possibly a world of delicious bread to gain.

Fascination with UFOs (unidentified flying objects) is endless. I get it – I was into the whole UFO narrative when I was a child, and didn’t shed it until I learned science and critical thinking and filtered the evidence through that lens. I credit Carl Sagan for initiating that change. In his excellent series, Cosmos (still worth a watch today), he summarized the skeptical position quite well. To paraphrase – after decades, there isn’t a single hard piece of evidence, not one unambiguous photo or video. He gave a couple of examples of evidence (widely cited at the time) that were completely useless. Now -four decades later – the situation is the same. The evidence, in a word, is crap. It is exactly what you would expect (if you were an experienced skeptic) from a psychocultural phenomenon, without any evidence that forces us to reject the null hypothesis.

So why does belief in UFOs (meaning that some of them are alien spacecraft) not only persist but are experiencing a resurgence? Ostensibly this was triggered by the release of the Pentagon videos. I have already dealt with them – they are just more low-grade evidence. In fact, as I have argued, the low-grade quality of the images is the phenomenon. UFOs, or UAPs as the Pentagon now calls them, are not an alien phenomenon, they are an “unidentified” phenomenon. Mick West has arguably done the most thorough analysis of these videos. He convincingly shows how they are just misidentified birds, balloons, and planes. If you look at the videos you will see that they are blobs and shadows and lights. They are not clear and unambiguous images of spacecraft. Believers must infer that they are spacecraft by their apparent properties – and that is where the technical analysis comes in. A sprinkle of motivated reasoning, or simply lack of expertise, is enough to convince yourself that these are fast moving large objects. But a better analysis (again, see Mick West above) shows this is not the case. They are small, moving with the wind, or flying at the speed of a bird.

But the US military is taking UAPs seriously. This is actually not a surprise – unidentified anomalous phenomena might be Chinese spy balloons, or Russian fighter planes. This has always been at the core of the government’s interest. it is now policy to scramble fighter jets for visual confirmation of anything not identifiable on radar. And now that they are doing that – 100% of UAPs so far have been identified as mundane objects, mostly balloons. In fact, the US military is happy to encourage public belief in “UFOs” because it is a convenient cover for their own top secret projects. It is not a coincidence that UFO sightings tend to cluster around military bases.

Another factor in the recent upsurge in interest is the media. The media, of course, loves stories that generate a lot of interest, and UFOs fit the bill. However, they also know that UFO stories are fringe and often based on rumor or testimony from dubious sources, so they are often relegated to “fluff” stories. They are like the ghost stories that circulate every Halloween – journalists know they are nonsense, but make great headlines. But now – the media feels they have permission from the US government to take UFO stories seriously, so they gleefully are. Here is an example from the New York Times. The author, a regular columnist, Roth Douthat, has four questions for the Trump administrations. Do they have more videos, why are there so many apparent whistle-blowers, why are some US senators calling for disclosure, and is the US government pursuing research into UFO experiencers and paranormal phenomenon (which they have in the past)?

These sound like serious questions, and so a serious journalist can write a column about them without looking silly. But the thing is – we already have the answers to these questions. The Pentagon has done a thorough analysis of all the evidence the US government has, and concluded – there is no evidence of aliens. As predicted, the whole thing is a giant nothing-burger. Except for the newer videos, most of the evidence is old and long-debunked nonsense by the same cast of characters that have been peddling this pseudoscience for decades. Why are people interested in this – because other people are interested in it. But whenever you dig down, there is simply nothing there. I have been following the UFO story for literally 50 years, and nothing has changed.

This brings me to another reason we are seeing a resurgence in interest in UFOs – because that is the natural cycle. Each generation, since the 1940s, has a fascination with UFOs. This lasts for a decade or so, then wanes for a decade or so, then comes back. This is because people get hyped up about some apparently new evidence or claim, or a movie, or now some social media video, and we get another round of people learning about UFOs for the first time. This interest lasts for a while, with many people feeling as if some big disclosure is right around the corner. They see the recent activity as a trend, rather than just as the cycle it is, and expect some big government announcement, or the proverbial aliens landing on the White House lawn.

But of course – nothing happens. Eventually, nothing becomes boring. There are always die-hards who keep the flames going, or turn their UFO interest into a job, but public interest fades and turns to something else. UFO enthusiasts then wait for another generation to forget how boring the whole thing is, or who never experienced it before, and then fan the flames back into fire, which will also eventually burn itself out.

Meanwhile, skeptics like me, who have been at this for awhile, see it coming a mile away. We can immediately respond because we have seen it all before – it’s the same tired arguments and the same lame evidence. But we still have to be careful not to seem dismissive. We are not – we’ve just been here before so we have a head start. Also we (collectively – there is a lot of dividing and conquering going on) do the detailed analysis, the hard work necessary to demonstrate convincingly that whatever new evidence is being put forward is what it is.

UFO believers reading this blog, at this point, are likely to leave in the comments – “well, what about this evidence?” Hit me. Give me your best evidence. I am happy to do a deep dive and see what we got. But you should first look for skeptical analysis of the claim – be your own most dedicated skeptic first. If you still think the evidence is worthwhile, send it my way. (And don’t tell me to read thousands of pages of low grade evidence – give me your best evidence.) Decades of making this challenge has not resulted in anything (for example), but I am willing to keep going. Also, keep in mind, if aliens were visiting the Earth, I would want to know, and if the evidence were compelling, I would have every motivation in the world to support and promote that conclusion. And I would have much to lose if I wrongfully denied a genuine phenomenon – arguably the most interesting and impactful phenomenon in human history. I would not want to be on the wrong side of that story. So yeah – convince me.

But you should be open to the possibility that you are wrong, that all the evidence is best explained as a psychocultural phenomenon without any need to invoke aliens. I strongly believe that is the case, and it would take compelling evidence to convince me otherwise. Such evidence does not exist, because if it did, we wouldn’t need to be debating this anymore. That is why believers have to invoke conspiracy theories or make the absurd claim that aliens are just teasing us with the possibility of their existence but withhold any solid evidence. Maybe that worked in the 1950s, but 75 years later it’s increasingly untenable.

 

The post Why UFOs Are Back first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

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