It has recently been announced that some US government authority asked Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb to form an advisory committee on UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) and UAPs (defined either as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena). The committee is called the UAP Science Advisory Council. In a post, Loeb states this: "In support of President Trump’s directive on UAP transparency, I was tasked by the White House, the Pentagon’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI, and the Intelligence Community, to assemble a 'UAP Science Advisory Council'."
I'm not sure why someone at the White House thought that Avi Loeb was a good choice for such a role. In recent years, Loeb's statements regarding anomalies and extraterrestrials has been a story of bungling error.
Avi Loeb somehow got the idea that a 2014 meteor (the CNEOS 2014-01-08 meteor) may have been an interstellar spacecraft that blew up high in the sky. Loeb organized a costly oceanic expedition looking for what he hoped would be remnants of a crashed extraterrestrial spaceship. He found no sign of anything looking like a spaceship or any of its parts. All that he recovered were some tiny metal specks. The metal specks he found were just like metal sea specks found all over the world. But it seemed like Loeb tried to convince the press that he discovered smithereens of a starship. The sad story of this bungling misadventure is told in my post here.
As described in my post here, Loeb tried to persuade people that the probably-just-an-asteroid object ‘Oumuamua was an extraterrestrial spaceship. Loeb capitalized on this opportunity, writing a book trying to promote such a theory. He ignored facts defying his hypothesis. One was that ‘Oumuamua seemed to have a tumbling motion, one we would never expect an extraterrestrial spaceship to have. Another reason for rejecting the claim that ‘Oumuamua was some kind of extraterrestrial spacecraft is that the object showed no sign of moving towards our planet.
As discussed in my post here, when the comet 3I/ATLAS recently passed through the solar system, Loeb repeatedly made statements trying to suggest that the object was an interstellar spaceship. Eventually photos showed that the object was just an ordinary comet. After repeatedly trying (in the autumn of 2025) to raise suspicions that 3I/ATLAS is a spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin, Loeb confessed in December 2025 that "3I/ATLAS is most likely a comet of natural origin."
A well-selected committee to advise the government about the mystery of UFOs and UAPs would be one that had some deep scholars of spooky phenomena. There seem to be no such scholars on Loeb's new "Advisory Council."
I looked at the list of about 14 people that Loeb selected for his council. I used Google Scholar to look at some of the papers the figures had written. It seems that nowhere on this council is there any deep and thorough scholar of paranormal phenomena. None of the figures seems to have very deeply studied the topic of UFOs and UAPs. A few of them are co-authors of papers discussing the technology of researching UFOs and UAPs, papers that do not show any deep scholarship of the phenomenology or history of UFOs and UAPs. Such papers typically have multiple authors, often many co-authors.
I see that two of the council members (Loeb and Carol Cleland) are co-authors of a long paper on the scientific investigation of UFOs and UAPs. But that paper has 39 authors, so we cannot count the paper as evidence of deep scholarship of UFOs or UAPs by either Loeb or Cleland. These days a recently published paper reviewing the history of some topic is no convincing evidence of deep scholarship on the topic, because AI systems can do most of the work in gathering the history of something.
The new Advisory Council includes Michael Shermer. I have read two of his books, which I discuss in my post "Paranormal Denialists Don't Do Their Homework," and my post "Some Errors in His Hardcore Skepticism." My impression from reading these books of Shermer (and from reading some of his later writings) is that he is not any deep scholar of spooky phenomena, and is also someone who frequently states inaccuracies when writing about such phenomena. In general self-described "skeptics" such as Shermer fail to be deep and thorough scholars of reports of the paranormal, and also tend to be extremely credulous in their gullible acceptance of dubious materialist dogmas (meaning that they are not really skeptics in the original meaning of that word).
Photos and sightings of mysterious orbs are a phenomenon not at all limited to the sky. Such sightings or photos abundantly occur in people's homes, and in indoor places such as Grand Central Terminal, as you can see in my long series of more than 1000 photos here. The photography of mysterious orbs is deeply entangled with other types of extremely anomalous or paranormal phenomena, as documented in my long series of posts here. There are strong reasons for suspecting that UFOs or UAPs may be something other than spaceships from other planets, reasons I have discussed as early as 2014 (in my post here), and have continued to discuss in posts such as my 2021 post "Do UFOs Come From a Paraverse?" here.
According to the 2018 book "Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with Non Human Intelligence," UFO close encounters may often be more spiritual or psychic than typically reported in the press. FREE is the Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiences. Early in the book we read this about a survey of people claiming such close encounters:
"FREE's research suggests that the physical aspects are but a small fraction of the attributes associated with these complex manifestations. Indeed, it is the persuasive non-physicality, the parapsychological and other paranormal aspects, that comprise the majority of survey respondents' experiences. We firmly believe that the field of parapsychology needs to take note and, instead of remaining distant from the UAP phenomenon, the field needs to embrace it."
Next in the book we read an interesting hypothesis. Using the term NIH for "non-human intelligence," the book states this:
"FREE hypothesizes that types of contact with NIH (contact via NDEs, OBEs, UAP Contact, Remote Viewing, Channeling, communication with ghosts/spirits, Hallucinogenic Shamanic Journeys, Telepathic Contact, sightings of Orbs, PSI, and other types of 'paranormal' Contact with NIH) might actually be one phenomenon that should not be studied separately. We call all of the ways that humans have pierced the veil and have had contact with NIH the 'Contact Modalities'...We firmly believe that cross comparative academic research on 'Experiencers' of the Contact Modalities may provide insight into the validity of various models of consciousness. Once the necessary cross comparative research has been undertaken among the various Contact Modalities, numerous commonalities will be derived that are shared by many of the experiencers of the Contact Modalities."
That's quite a mouthful, and to aid anyone confused by this "alphabet soup," let me explain some of the terms used:
- "NDE" means "near-death experiences," discussed in my long series of posts here.
- "OBE" means "out-of-body experience," a type of experience which most commonly occurs near death, but which can also occur in those not near death. Such experiences have 11 characteristics discussed in my long post here.
- "UAP Contact" means contact (visual or otherwise) with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (another term for UFOs).
- "Remote Viewing" is a reported ability to observe in a paranormal fashion distant locations.
- "Channeling" is when someone speaks (often in an unusual voice) in an anomalous way, and later claims that the words came not from his own mind but from some other person's mind (living or dead). A very similar term is "voice mediumship."
- "Hallucinogenic Shamanic Journeys" can occur after someone takes a drug or uses a natural substance (such as certain mushrooms), and may then report seeing otherworldly beings.
- "Sightings of Orbs" sometimes occurs visually (as in the roughly 200 cases described here); but the most common related experience is photography of hard-to-explain orbs (as shown here, here and here).
- "Psi" is a general term for human "sixth sense" abilities such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and mind-over-matter.
A deep scholar of UFOs (Jacques Valee) has produced works such as Passport to Magonia suggesting that UFO sightings are part of a wider human experience involving the paranormal, one that stretches back centuries in time. Clearly the UFO/UAP phenomena is very entangled with types of anomalous or paranormal phenomena other than just seeing strange things in the sky. To properly advise the government on what is happening in regard to UFOs and UAPs, an "advisory council" would need to include some deep thorough scholars of unexplained phenomena and the paranormal, people who have been very deeply studying such topics for quite a few years. Regrettably the recently formed UAP Science Advisory Council seems to include no such scholars.
The newly formed council would also benefit from having two types of people it lacks: (1) a professional photographer or photo analyst or video analyst; (2) someone with a police investigation background, having lots of experience in asking people tough questions and distinguishing between liars and truth tellers.
