NASA Takes the File, and Names the Real Problem

NASA's sixteen-member independent study team, chaired by astrophysicist David Spergel, published its final report on September 14, 2023, after nine months of work. 14

The finding most widely quoted was the negative one: no evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin. 26 The finding that mattered more came immediately after it — that the panel could not say what they are either, because the observations do not exist in a form science can use. 1

The team put it in the language of method rather than mystery. The absence of consistent, detailed, curated observations means researchers do not have the body of data required to reach conclusions. 1 At its first public meeting in May, the panel had already said the same thing more bluntly: what this field needs is higher-quality data, not more anecdotes. 8

The recommendation

Rather than tell the Pentagon to release more videos, the panel told NASA to bring its own instruments to bear — using existing and planned Earth-observing assets to characterise the environmental conditions around events initially detected by other means. 1 That is a fundamentally different research design: instead of arguing about grainy infrared, measure the atmosphere where the reports cluster.

Alongside the report, NASA created a director of UAP research and appointed Mark McInerney, previously the agency's liaison to the Department of Defense on UAP matters. 19 The role was framed as centralising data and analysis and pulling NASA's machine-learning and space-based observation capability into the wider government effort. 7

The stigma finding

The panel also documented something that has nothing to do with physics. Since NASA announced the study in June 2022, its members had been subjected to sustained online harassment — in some cases, according to the agency, rising to actual threats. 5

The abuse came from both directions: from people who believe the phenomena are extraterrestrial and thought the panel was there to bury it, and from people who thought the entire exercise was a waste of public money.

NASA initially withheld the name of its new UAP research director to protect them from harassment. That is where the reputational economics of this subject had landed by 2023.

The report warned explicitly that stigma hinders scientific progress and deters researchers from a subject that badly needs them. 5 Two years later, surveys of academics would confirm it. 1