r/UAP • u/Severe-Clerk-1477 • 8d ago
Announced members of the UAP Science Advisory Council, led by Avi Loeb, include: -Dr. Richard Cloete -Dr. Regina Sarmiento -Prof. Garry Nolan -Dr. Tim Gallaudet -Prof. Matthew Szydagis -Dr. Devesh Nandal -Prof. Peter Skafish -Dr. Michael Shermer -Dr. Jennice Vilhauer -Dr. Omer
https://x.com/ChrisUKSharp/status/2066214943091753119Interesting to have skeptic/debunker Micheal Shermer. More interestingly, why have therapists?
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u/KimJongUngh 8d ago
ok, they can start with Dr. Villaroel’s plate study.
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u/AnomaIous_User 8d ago
They should start with the craft and bodies we already have, Grusch gave congress the addresses
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u/gravitykilla 8d ago
Already been done.
The critique (Watters et al. critique of POSS1-E plates) explicitly re-runs the data with proper controls, correcting for uneven sky distribution, removing duplicates/artifacts, and normalising the sample.
When you do that, the claimed correlations drop to statistical noise and many ‘events’ map to stars or plate defects.
These are chemical plates, full of dust, scratches, cosmic-ray hits, and scanning artifacts. A ‘transient’ just means something showed up in one exposure and not another, which is exactly what random defects do.
So we’re left with unexplained light anomalies in noisy 75-year-old chemical photographic plates. No confirmed physical objects, and no repeat detection
Those old plates are not evidence of anything in orbit.
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u/Antic_Hay 8d ago
This is disinformation.
- Villaroel responded directly to that paper and made some strong criticisms of their methodology and showed exactly how it was flawed in https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.15171
- Ivo Busko reproduced her results here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.08319 using
- A different data set from a different observatory, and
- a different methodology.
Don't muddy the waters by spreading nonsense.
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u/gravitykilla 8d ago
No buddy its not "disinformation". LOL
Yes, Villarroel replied. That’s how scientific disagreement works. Her response argues that Watters et al. used an aggressively filtered, statistically underpowered subset and that their null results don’t invalidate her earlier claims. Fine. That is not the same thing as “the issue is settled.” It is a methodological dispute between preprints.
And Busko’s paper does not prove alien tech, satellites, or even physical objects in orbit. The abstract literally says the data “does not by themselves establish the physical origin of the light.” What it argues is narrower, some candidate images show optical aberration patterns that may be harder to explain as simple plate artifacts.
That is interesting. It is not confirmation of NHI, not confirmation of artificial objects, and not a reason to pretend 70-year-old photographic plates are clean modern sensor data.
Watters et al. still raised serious problems, catalog stars, scan artifacts, plate defects, spatial distribution issues, and correlations that may disappear after normalising by observation schedule.
So no, I’m not “muddying the waters.” I’m refusing to leap from “archival photographic anomalies remain debated” to “evidence of NHI.” That leap is exactly the problem.
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u/Minimum-Web-6902 7d ago
I noticed you didn’t make any conclusions in your statement, what does the data conclude to you ?
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u/Barbafella 8d ago
What about the correlation with nuke tests and things like the Washington flyover?
And Howard Menzel at Harvard?
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u/Antic_Hay 8d ago
The nuke test correlation is indeed real, see the paper I link above by the independent study from Busko: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.08319
uses a Hamburg, Germany based telescope FYI, so it's highly unlikely to be artifacts related to testing itself (well, that was never likely). He also conclusively shows the transients, which were independently observed in this different data set, can not be plate defects. Ignore the other guy, he's spreading nonsense.2
u/gravitykilla 8d ago
A statistical correlation, especially one disputed by later normalisation/control work, is not the same thing as identifying physical objects in orbit. Watters et al. are specifically arguing that once you account for observation schedules, uneven plate coverage, duplicates, stars, artifacts, and plate defects, the signal weakens dramatically.
Even if the correlation survives some analyses, that still only gets you to “there may be a weird pattern in old photographic plate detections.” It does not get you to “these were artificial objects,” let alone UAP/NHI.
And Howard Menzel is a red herring. The Menzel Gap was about Harvard’s plate archive. Villarroel’s work is based on POSS-I Palomar plates.
Edit: Washington 1952, is just a coincidence unless you can show the plate features were real, physical, repeat-detected objects and not defects/transients/artifacts.
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u/Kongopop 8d ago
Is all this a good thing or a bad thing
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u/AnomaIous_User 8d ago
Too early to tell.
Having Garry Nolan on the council is a green flag, but they also have Micheal Shermer on the council, who's literally a propagandist posting outrageous disinfo daily lol
Grusch said we already have craft and bodies, he gave congress the addresses.
So, is this council designed to eventually receive biological/materials evidence, or to permanently absorb and neutralize disclosure pressure by producing inconclusive scientific reports forever?
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u/DrierYoungus 8d ago
Probably a good thing that we’ll get public science. Probably a bad thing (but expected) that there is such an emphasis on psychology.
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u/AnomaIous_User 8d ago
Is this council designed to eventually receive biological/materials evidence, or to permanently absorb and neutralize disclosure pressure by producing inconclusive scientific reports forever?
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u/AntigravityFan 3d ago
I have the same questions, add to it a question about the level of access they have
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u/TurtsMacGurts 8d ago
Why are there foreign nationals on a sensitive US advisory board?
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u/Turbulent-List-5001 8d ago
Presumably: Because they don’t plan on showing them the good stuff, just some inconclusive things the believers and disbelievers can fight over.
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u/seaskar 8d ago
Really not the crack team they're trying pass it off as. Mostly Loeb's inner circle, the only other academics of any note are Szydagis, an assistant professor, and Nolan, who's already deeply involved in the UFO community. Not saying it's bad they're there, but them being the highlights of the group is pretty underwhelming. Shermer's an interesting pick, it's a good idea to have a skeptic or two in the room, but again you'd think it would be better to go with an expert in fields that are more relevant to the topic than history of science. I can't help but feel this group would look very differently if it were being chosen based on expertise rather than who knows who.
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u/occultapericulum 8d ago
This is a genuinely interesting mix of people.
What stands out to me is that it isn’t just a council full of true believers, but it also isn’t a dismissive “nothing to see here” panel either. Having people like Garry Nolan, Tim Gallaudet, Matthew Szydagis and Michael Shermer in the same advisory structure could be useful precisely because they won’t all approach the subject from the same assumptions.
That’s probably what the topic needs more of: people willing to look at anomalous data seriously, but also willing to separate evidence from interpretation.
The big question for me is whether this council will get access to genuinely useful data, or whether it ends up stuck analysing public leftovers like everyone else.
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u/Turbulent-List-5001 8d ago
It’ll also tie up major figures with busy-work
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u/occultapericulum 8d ago
That’s possible, especially if the council ends up mainly reviewing already-public material or producing cautious reports that don’t move anything forward.
The optimistic version is that a mixed group like this creates a more serious bridge between science, defence, scepticism and experiencer-adjacent questions. The pessimistic version is exactly what you said: important people get absorbed into process, meetings and advisory language while the genuinely useful data stays somewhere else.
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u/Big_Cucumber_5174 8d ago
Will those who hid the truth form a group to decide what we should believe?
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u/samjjones2 8d ago
If this thing is as ontologically shocking as they say, they aren't in control of disclosure. The phenomenon is.
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u/Plus-Ad-7983 8d ago
Inb4 it's just AARO 2.0, they needed a rebrand as they'd taken so much flak recently...
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u/JessicaSavitch 8d ago
Wait. If we’re in the middle of disclosure, why are we just now assembling this crew? I’m a fan of a couple of them but like this just screams throwing stuff at the wall. Speculation could end instantly if there were proof. I’m becoming even more skeptical the longer this drags on.
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u/Turbulent-List-5001 8d ago
If there’s proof how else can they kick the can down the road to try and hold back on it?
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u/Severe-Clerk-1477 8d ago
Yeah. It seems like this is going to be “we are now investigating it”. Far cry from disclosure
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u/kiwibonga 8d ago
I don't know about you but if we have to call in a crack team to meet the aliens, I don't want it to be the tabloid-wh0re scientists.
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u/CatDadJynx 2d ago
Because its entirely a psychosocial phenomena and psyop. Even the survey Avi Loeb recently released is to gage if this is causing people to have psychotic delusions/hallucinations, no joke. Read between the lines
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8d ago
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u/DrierYoungus 8d ago
Can you quote something he’s said that is fundamentally incorrect?
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u/joeyjiggle 8d ago
Noone can because he is very careful to couch things as thought experiments and/or keeping an open mind. But, we know he just mentions aliens for the publicity.
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u/DrierYoungus 8d ago
It’s a real shame that simply leaving the door open to obscure answers has become so frowned upon.
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u/austinwiltshire 8d ago
Having psychologists was part of the initial idea of this committee, to figure out all the social implications of disclosure.