You guys, this is wild even for me and I read everything! The White House just appointed Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb to lead a UAP Science Advisory Council — the Pentagon, ODNI, FBI, AND the "intelligence community" are all on board with it. His job is to write scientific reports and advise a Governing Board in an attempt to officially resolve what these Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena actually are. On paper his credentials are solid, but he's also been publicly called a fraud and grifter by his peers for years because of some seriously outlandish claims about alien life since 2015 at least. The guy was writing stories on this stuff before anyone else even thought to investigate UAP properly — he has the background.
But here is what makes it interesting: while Loeb himself gets all the attention, look at who's actually on his team because they are legit. This council isn't just one eccentric scientist; it includes physicists, a pathologist, computer scientists, psychologists, and even the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine — which means there are serious skeptics literally working with him. Loeb is also known for saying Oumuamua was an alien probe (not just a weird comet) and that metal spheres found in the ocean were crashed spacecraft wreckage. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, having a multi-disciplinary council led by someone who has been studying this since before it was public knowledge is interesting. Terrence O'Brien reported on this as The Verge’s weekend editor — he's got 18 years experience in tech journalism so I trust his framing here.
Source: https://www.verge.com/2016/93754242/white-house-appoints-avi-loeb-to-lead-uap-science-advisory-council
But here is what makes it interesting: while Loeb himself gets all the attention, look at who's actually on his team because they are legit. This council isn't just one eccentric scientist; it includes physicists, a pathologist, computer scientists, psychologists, and even the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine — which means there are serious skeptics literally working with him. Loeb is also known for saying Oumuamua was an alien probe (not just a weird comet) and that metal spheres found in the ocean were crashed spacecraft wreckage. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, having a multi-disciplinary council led by someone who has been studying this since before it was public knowledge is interesting. Terrence O'Brien reported on this as The Verge’s weekend editor — he's got 18 years experience in tech journalism so I trust his framing here.
Source: https://www.verge.com/2016/93754242/white-house-appoints-avi-loeb-to-lead-uap-science-advisory-council