A team of experts and scientists assembled by NASA aims to publish its first report on unidentified anomalous phenomena, also known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOS, by midsummer. Via CNN:
“Unidentified anomalous phenomena has truly captured the attention of the public, of the scientific community and nowadays, the US government as well, and we at NASA strongly believe that it’s our responsibility all working together to investigate these with the scientific scrutiny that NASA is well known for,” said Dan Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
“We’ve tasked (the team) with helping NASA produce a roadmap, a roadmap that doesn’t necessarily look back at previous grainy footage, sort of acknowledges that many UAPs historically we’ll never be able to get to the bottom because the data are of such poor quality,” Evans said on Wednesday.
“We’re trying to assess whether those phenomena pose any risks to safety and we’re doing it using science,” Evans added. “NASA believes that the tools of science apply to the study (of) UAP because they allow us to separate fact from fiction. And that’s all part of NASA’s commitment to exploring the unknown, and doing so with the openness, transparency and candor that we’re well accustomed to providing the public.”
They concluded the press conference thusly:
“Every single member of our team is a respected authority in their field,” Evans said. “They have massive, complete and total support. And this is hard work. It’s serious work. And if we are truly to respect the sanctity of the scientific process than we need to allow science, indeed, to be free, and that freedom stems directly from an absence of harassment to this incredible team of panelists.”
The most intriguing explanation of UFO evidence suppression, to me, has come from some former defense employees who said research ran into a hard wall of religious fundamentalists at high levels of the Pentagon who believe evidence of extraterrestrials presents an existential threat to Christianity.
Which would explain a lot. The U.S. Air Force, for instance, is famously infiltrated with religious extremists.
